From Weight Loss to Wellness: How Self-Compassion and Mindful Eating Transform Women’s Health Journeys

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the pressures of weight loss, especially during significant life transitions? You’re not alone. In this heartfelt episode of Real Food Stories, host Heather Carey opens up about the transformative power of self-compassion and its crucial role in navigating the emotional landscape of weight loss, career changes, and health adjustments. Drawing from her personal experiences, Heather shares poignant stories of emotional eating and the challenges she faced after her father’s death, as well as the trials of young motherhood.

As a culinary nutritionist, Heather emphasizes the importance of treating ourselves with the same kindness and understanding we would offer a dear friend. Self-compassion, she explains, is not just a buzzword; it’s a vital practice that fosters resilience and personal growth, especially during tough times. Through her journey, she highlights how journaling has become a powerful tool for self-reflection and emotional healing, helping her navigate the complexities of weight loss and emotional eating while encouraging listeners to embrace their own personal food journeys.

Throughout the episode, Heather addresses the societal pressures women face, particularly around body image and the emotional toll of midlife changes, including menopause health. She invites listeners to challenge weight loss myths and become their own cheerleaders, advocating for their well-being and making healthy lifestyle choices that resonate with their true selves. By sharing her insights on mindful eating practices and the seven pillars of abundance, Heather provides valuable nutrition advice that empowers women to embrace their unique food beliefs and cultural influences.

As the episode wraps up, Heather introduces her Healthy Midlife Fall Reset, a two-week program designed to support listeners in making healthier choices as they transition into the fall season. This initiative is not just about diet; it’s about cultivating a sustainable eating mindset that aligns with personal food stories and family food traditions. Whether you’re navigating perimenopause nutrition or exploring the Mediterranean diet insights, this episode is packed with practical tips and emotional support for women seeking to redefine their relationship with food.

Join Heather on this journey of culinary wellness and discover how self-compassion can lead to a more fulfilling and balanced life. Tune in to Real Food Stories and take the first step towards embracing your unique path to health and happiness!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Hi there and welcome back. And if you were just tuning in for the first time with me, it is so nice to meet you and I’m very glad you are here with me. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relationship to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. So hi everybody, how are you this week? Are you transitioning into fall like I am? I thought this would be a great time to circle back a little bit. I’ve mentioned this topic a couple of times in a few of my other podcasts, but I wanted to dive deeper with something that is near and dear to my heart, which is self-compassion and really being your own. cheerleader, when it feels like you have something truly big to achieve, or you are just going through something hard or painful. I feel like a lot of people are going through some transition right now. So I just thought it would be really important to dive a little deeper into something I feel like is a game changer when it comes to making changes with yourself. This might be a career transition that you’re going through right now, weight loss. Maybe you want to make a big health adjustment like cutting down or quitting drinking. Whatever it is, I totally understand. The road can feel lonely and even bleak sometimes. And it might feel like no one else really, truly gets you. I have felt this way many times in my life. particularly when it has come to my body, my body image, losing weight, or one of my biggies, quitting my wine habit. And when you’re tackling something big, like I said, it can feel lonely, and it can feel like you’re alone and the only one who was going through it. Now, I may be extra sensitive too. I have been called an empath more times than I can count. An empath is just a person who is highly attuned to other people’s feelings and emotions. I became a master listener from a very young age, and sometimes I even feel like it’s one of my superpowers. But in turn, I became so focused on the welfare of others that I rarely asked for the same in return. Through journaling mostly, I instead focused. inward on myself rather than asking for help from people. I am also highly attuned to my emotions and feelings, and because of how I was raised, I learned to take a lot of things on my own. I didn’t always do this in the right way, though. I have mentioned in past episodes my emotional eating issues that grew you pretty strong right around the time when my dad died when I was 14. Now I was doing my best with the tools that I had, but I became very, very comfortable with using food as a crutch to soothe emotional pain. And when I was a young mom, exhausted from three kids under the age of three, an autoimmune diagnosis and juggling a career, sugar and wine came met. right out of the woodwork again to help me through all of that exhaustion and overwhelm. It was right at this time when I began to wake up, so to speak, and practice the one thing that changed my life and made me realize that if I wanted to make effective change and long lasting change, I needed to turn the compassion I gave everyone else you onto myself. I was sick and tired of beating myself up over failed diets, not being able to figure it out, and just overall feeling alone. Now, I was, and I still am, a big journaler. I’m not sure exactly how I got into the habit of journaling, but I do remember getting my first journal when I was about 10 years old. And Being able to take my thoughts and feelings out of my head and onto paper was a lifesaver for me. I’m not sure who gave me that journal. I think I got it as a gift. But whoever did that, I want to thank them now. In my journals, I could share all my secrets, my fears, my anger, all the emotions really just poured onto those pages. And it was really, really. incredibly meaningful to me. Now, as I got older and continued my journaling practice, I started to feel as though maybe journaling was holding me back from really opening up to people and being brave enough and vulnerable enough to express my emotions out loud rather than keep them solely to myself on paper. And I certainly have. I’ve done that more and more as I’ve gotten older and learned more about myself. I’ve even taken long breaks from journaling. But I realized that for me, journaling was the first form of real self-compassion that I gave to myself. And when I was ready to recognize that this was kindness to myself, I utilized it for so many hard moments in my life. My journal is… always with me. Is it like my pacifier or my baby blanket? Maybe, but I liken it to having my best friend with me. That if something distressing happens or I need a moment to figure something out, I open up the pages and I write it out. Now, I want to say that in order to cultivate self-compassion, you absolutely do not need to start a daily journaling practice. I just wanted to give you my experience with it. But if you do, it does not need to be as intense as mine is sometimes. I admit I’m a little crazy with my journaling because it works so well for me. Journaling was and is simply the vehicle for my self-compassion. I’m so programmed to… documenting my life into a journal now that I just have a connection between self-compassion and journaling. And it might help you too. So I wanted to let you know the importance of journaling and what it means for me. And just a couple of more thoughts about journaling before I dive deeper into self-compassion. Writing it all down is so much more than what I used to do when I was 12 years old, you know, like, dear diary, today we went to the mall, or I would spend time talking about the new boy I had a crush on. You can totally do that too, of course. But if I have a problem, I go straight to my journal. I get it out. I look at it. And this gives me the opportunity to remember to be kind to myself, seeing it on paper, rather than letting things ruminate my head. is powerful. It’s also important to remember that your journal is for your eyes only, no one else’s. This is not so you can have a written document that you share with your husband or your best friend. So knowing this can give you the freedom to write down all of those deep, dark secrets. Journaling helps. structure your thoughts and overall helps you feel just less alone with them. Because I’m not sure if you’ve had this realization or not, but people inherently are pretty self-absorbed. And I mean that with all the peace and love in the world. Everyone has their own problems to work through. And I can guarantee that unless you are paying a therapist or a nutritionist, that most people do not take your problems and concerns as seriously as you do. And that is where journaling with self-compassion in mind can be a huge benefit. And last point I want to say about journaling, you do not need to spend hours a day journaling. It can be five minutes in the morning to write down what you want for the day. It can be five minutes at the end of the day to just Give a little scenario about how your day went or a few minutes to consider what you’re grateful for in that day. It’s really up to you and very personal to you. But let’s talk about self-compassion in more detail so you can see if this might be the missing link for you in your search for self-improvement or when you were just going through a difficult time. So what is self-compassion exactly? Now, when I ask myself this question or people ask me this, I always turn to Kristen Neff, who is the consummate researcher on self-compassion. So this is what Dr. Neff defines as self-compassion. Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a, quote, stiff upper lip mentality, you stop to tell yourself, this is really difficult right now. How can I comfort and care for myself in this moment? You may try to change in ways that allow you to be more healthy and happy, but this is done because you care about yourself, not because you are worthless or unacceptable as you are. Perhaps most importantly, having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness. Things will not always go the way you want them to. You will encounter frustrations, losses will occur, you will make mistakes, bump up against your limitations, fall short of your ideals. This is the human condition, a reality shared by all of us. the more you open your heart to this reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more you will be able to feel compassion for yourself and all your fellow humans in the experience of life. And here’s what self-compassion is not, just so we have a measuring stick to compare this to. Self-compassion is not self-pity, and it is not self-judgment. Self-compassion is not saying to yourself, I’m having a bad day, so I guess I’ll just hang out and play video games and eat chicken wings. Self-compassion is about taking care of your health and yourself and doing this because you want to be kind to yourself, not shame yourself into making a change. The change may be uncomfortable for a while, as if you want to quit smoking. It might not feel great for a couple of weeks. But you’re seeing the end game and that could save your life and ultimately just make you feel healthier and better. So in the last 15 years about, I’ve come up against a number of big changes where self compassion was not only necessary, but absolutely moved the needle on my success. And I’ve mentioned this one before. The first was losing weight. And most importantly, keeping it off. Now, if you’re a woman living on this planet, you have likely been on a diet sometime in your life. And if you have been on at least one diet, you know that diets do not work. At least I hope you know this by now. It’s not your fault. Diets set us up for failure, and they want you to come back for more. Do you honestly know of any other industry rate. where you are known to fail, but you continue to pay with money, time, and frustration, there is about a 90% failure rate, and the diet industry makes billions of dollars. It’s unbelievable to think about. So when I lost weight, I knew enough to know that another diet was not going to change me, and I knew enough to know that suffering and starving were not an option for me. I had to make a deal with myself. With all the self-compassion I had, I had to make a commitment to myself to stay on track, even when it felt hard and I wanted to give up. This is where self-compassion really steps in. I had to look at my emotional eating, why this occurred, what I could do instead of eat when I knew I wasn’t hungry, and cheer myself on every day for standing up to myself in a culture that honestly wants you to fail. Now you might be wondering why I’m saying that. Because when you are looking to improve yourself for the better, when you are showing kindness to yourself, saying no to people, setting boundaries, letting go of the people pleasing, you are standing up for yourself. And our culture and our society does not like outliers. An outlier uses grit and perseverance and struggle to succeed. Outliers go against the grain. And when most people are failing at diets, but you learn a new way to lose weight and keep it off. You’re being an outlier. When you are surrounded by friends and family on diets, but you have found a, quote, secret, you are being an outlier. Or when you get the courage to stop drinking because you know it is not serving you anymore, yet everyone around you does it, you are definitely an outlier. I lost weight and kept it off. And soon after that, I decided to stop drinking and talk about pushback. Losing the wine habit is one of the best things I have done for myself, for my family, and for my marriage. I am overall happier, I’m healthier, I’m more clear-headed, and more reliant on myself than a glass of wine to numb out on. But, like the diet industry, the alcohol industry is big business. And I want you to believe that alcohol is the solution to all your problems. And that you literally cannot socialize without a drink in your hand. That is certainly how I grew up. And it’s definitely what I believed. It’s what most of my friends believe. And going against that standard in the pursuit of better health and then feeling amazing about the decision because it helped me so much in my life, that is definitely being an outlier. And it takes a great deal of self-compassion. and being your own cheerleader to make that happen. And most important, to stick with it. It’s hard to go against the norm, and it cannot happen without a self-compassion practice. So those are two examples of where I have been practicing self-compassion, but here’s what’s on my mind currently today. Just the mere fact of transitioning into a new season, into the fall, is feeling hard for me right now. Honestly, as sensitive as I am with other people’s problems and emotions, I am equally as sensitive to physical changes around me. Going into less sunlight, darker days, cooler weather, and a different season, it can feel like a big change physically as well as emotionally. And to a larger degree, I’ve been feeling lately that women just simply have it hard. And again, in our society, you… don’t hear many people talk about this because I believe that we don’t want to be perceived as weak or judgmental. But right now, I’m really struggling to reimagine my identity as a woman in midlife with all my hormonal changes and everything else that comes along with just getting older. Who am I at this stage in my life? Who am I as a sister, as a daughter, a wife? And as a mother, a friend, an entrepreneur, all at the same time. It’s like women have a pie chart and the pie is sliced into pieces, yet we’re expected to perform and get the A in all of these areas. Now, behaviors, good and bad, can be contagious. I have friends and have separated from friends because of quitting drinking or losing weight. And when I was drinking, for example, I didn’t have many friends who didn’t drink. And if I did, they were either pregnant or had a health issue. The healthier non-drinkers were just not on my radar. When I stopped drinking, it suddenly became crystal clear who my friends were. I lost friends because I didn’t drink anymore. And I believe that my stopping and choosing my health and well-being over anything else was threatening. I had many instances where I thought it. might just be easier to start meeting my friends for a glass of wine rather than a coffee because I couldn’t stand the pressure or the judgment. Again, going against the grain and feeling like an outlier takes a lot of perseverance and courage. And back to being just a woman in general, I’ve also been feeling that there’s just a lot that women have to deal with that men just do not have to contend with. Wait, I take that back. I actually don’t totally believe that. Now, I’m not talking about all the men in the world, hardly. I’m in my bubble right now, thinking about the men in my life. And I think, actually, I know that there’s a lot of emotional baggage that men struggle with, too. I know that men feel vulnerable about being good providers, fathers, sons, and friends, too. Yet still, it just feels different for women. I’m not trying to take sides one way or the other politically because I will not do that on this podcast, but women have notoriously struggled more than men. Feeling bad about our bodies, our weight, no matter how small or large you are, your health, feeling like it’s a man’s world, having to please men with your physical appearance and don’t get me started on all the hormonal changes that women go through in midlife. This fact cannot be disputed. Women are in for a wild ride with female hormones. I have seen many women suffer as a result of unexpected weight gain, especially in their belly area, changes in mood, brain fog, not to mention hot flashes and night sweats that can be debilitating, leading to lack of sleep and just overall health. even if you have the most supportive family, the kindest husband, the best wife, best friends, you need to look within for support first, not out there. So it’s more important than ever that we cultivate a practice of self-compassion and kindness. You can look at this like being a cheerleader for team you. A cheerleader is someone who is in your corner, who has your back, and who picks you up when you face a setback or disappointment. And it’s not easy finding cheerleaders. People are busy. Everyone is in their own head. I’m not saying that we don’t have good friends or family members to help cheer us on, but honestly, that’s not their full-time job. You are your full-time job. No one is going to care about your weight loss or your health issues as much as you do. It’s just a fact. This is what self-compassion is all about. It’s not selfish to think of you first. all know the overuse analogy of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before putting it on others. If you don’t support yourself first, you will never be able to be useful to anyone else. Look after you first. So I think you might get my point. Self-compassion, advocating for ourselves, being our own cheerleader, no matter how you do it, with a journal practice, with a meditation practice in your head. talking to a therapist, talking to a nutritionist is the best way to make change in your life. So on that note, this is a great time for me to segue into talking about my healthy midlife fall reset. Now the reset is only two weeks and I want to be real here. Two weeks is not enough time to make permanent lasting changes with your weight. You’re not going to drop 20 pounds in two weeks. I don’t want you to do that. This is not a diet, but it is enough time to begin realizing the benefits of a more health supportive way of eating that supports your hormones, your weight, your energy, and most of all, the chance to have some extra outside support. So the reset is a two-week meal plan that just helps you get back. on track with curated recipes, a game plan, shopping list, other guides to support your emotional eating, set up your kitchen for success, and most importantly, a one-on-one coaching session with me. I hope that you consider joining the Healthy Midlife Fall Reset. I think it is a great way to give yourself all the kindness and compassion you need for this time of year. The link… is in my show notes. You can also go onto my website, heathercary.com, for all of the information. That link will also be in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening today. And as always, if you have any thought on today’s topics, please feel free to leave a comment to continue the discussion. Look for my links in the show notes, and don’t hesitate to reach out. And if you loved this podcast today, do not hesitate to rate and review it. I would love it. Have a great week and bye for now.