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Showing Up Anyway is a podcast about unlearning diet culture, redefining health, and making peace with food, movement, and your body -- without needing to have it all together. Hosted by Coach Adam Wright, an anti diet-culture personal trainer and body-trust educator, each episode dives into the imperfect side of wellness and how to navigate motivation burnout, body image struggles, emotional eating and the pressure to be "healthy". This is your reminder that progress doesn't need to be perfect, and you'll still see progress as long as you show up anyway.
Welcome to Showing Up Anyway,
the podcast for people
who are not perfect.
On this show, we talk
about intuitive eating,
fitness without obsession
and healing your relationship
with food and your body.
Hello, everybody! Welcome
back to Showing Up Anyway,
I am so excited that
you're here. Happy November!
Uh, I am really thrilled
about today's topic
because it's going to be about
something that you use every day,
and you probably don't
even realize it.
It is your inner food voices.
We're talking inner food voices.
This was a concept that was created
by the authors of Intuitive Eating,
and it is referring to that ongoing
commentary in your head about what,
when, and how you need to eat.
Some of these voices
are really harsh
and strict about the rules
that you have,
and others are caring and helpful,
but all of them shape how
food feels in your life,
and being able to understand
which inner food voice you're using
to speak to yourself
can really be helpful,
because it helps
you gain more control.
It'll really help you start
to gain more awareness
around your thoughts and,
if those thoughts are negative,
how to be able to
start to reframe them.
So, in this episode, we're going
to explore the
landscape of these voices,
I will explain each one, I'm
going to tell you how they tend
to sound with some examples,
and how they influence your
choices and your emotions,
and we're going to also
talk about what it looks
like to respond with more curiosity
and compassion instead of judgment.
It might help you to think
about these inner voices
as different characters that are
in charge of telling you
how to feel about your food choices,
okay?
So, I don't care how you do it,
whatever helps you remember.
You want to assign a character, a
cartoon character to each voice.
go ahead. You want to
make one Mickey Mouse
and one Barney Rubble and
one Pikachu or something,
that's fine!
Whatever helps you remember.
But what's important is
that you understand
that they're all going
to tell you different things,
and they work in different ways.
Um, there are seven in total, okay?
And they fall into two groups.
The first group is going to be your
destructive dieting voices, okay?
Maybe these are the villains,
you know?
Maybe you have Jafar or something,
I don't know.
These are your
destructive dieting voices,
they're going to be
your rule enforcers
and the pushback in your head
that follows those,
you know, those, those judgments.
Um, they do feel really judgmental,
they moralize things,
they make things feel good and bad,
and they tend to lead to
"all or nothing" type thinking,
which, of course,
makes you feel really guilty,
uh, makes you feel out of control.
It makes you feel, you know, just
disconnected with your body's cues.
The second group on the other side
are your powerful ally voices.
These are the helpful ones.
They notice things about
your habits without judging,
they offer compassion,
they help you look at
nutrition as just a tool,
and they help you set
boundaries around eating
that makes it feel safer
and makes it feel just
overall more satisfying.
Now, I do not want you to try
and fight every thought
that comes into your head, okay?
Every thought's not going
to be negative.
Um, your goal is just going to be to
recognize which voice is present
and to turn down the
destructive voices
that you hear and turn up
the allied voices
so that you can respond with more
curiosity and care, all right?
Different voices are going to
take the lead on different days,
some voices are going to be much
louder than others might be,
so I just want you
to know this going in,
this is going to take
a lot of listening
and that is why people
struggle with it, okay?
As you've probably learned from this
podcast, mindfulness is challenging.
It takes practice to pay attention.
But every time you do it,
you gain a little more awareness.
So, let's go through some of these.
We're going to start
with the first group,
the destructive dieting voices.
The first destructive dieting voice
is probably the most
prevalent for most people.
It's called the food police, okay?
This voice acts as judge
and jury over what you eat.
It talks in absolutes and hard rules
and it keeps a running
scorecard in your head.
Good day, bad day.
Allowed, not allowed.
The second you reach for
a cookie after lunch,
that voice is right there to be,
like, "Ah-ah-ah, don't you dare.
"You already had too
many carbs today."
It's gonna tell you things
like "Sweets are bad for you."
"Don't eat after 7pm."
"Low fat foods are
always a better choice."
"You already had dessert today."
"Fruit has too much sugar."
"Breads are gonna make
you gain weight."
"Don't eat too much salt."
When we talked about food rules
in an early, early episode,
the food police is
what we're talking about.
Now, you might logically know
that some of these things are BS,
but, for a lot of us, they are
so ingrained in our brains
from a lifetime of dieting
that it's really hard
to objectively let these
feelings and thoughts go.
But the food police is
essentially the accumulation
of all the food rules in your life,
and all the diet culture
that you have been taught.
The tricky part is that this voice
feels like it's
protecting you, right?
If you follow the rules, well,
then you'll be healthy
and you'll be accepted.
But it really just escalates
your anxiety.
It makes you question yourself.
It makes you feel guilty
and ashamed,
and it makes eating feel like a
test that you're always failing,
instead of something that feels
enjoyable and makes you feel good.
Let me give you an example. Um,
imagine that you are a little
hungry in the afternoon, okay?
And you have a pan of brownies
sitting on the stove, freshly baked.
That sounds really good, right?
But you have this thought
in your head that is like,
"You know what?
"If you start, you're not
going to be able to stop."
Or, "You didn't exercise today,
so you didn't really earn that."
So you just decide, "I'm not gonna
have it. It's not worth it."
But you just end up
feeling really hungry still,
really deprived and you keep
thinking about those brownies
because it just sounds so dang good.
Well, later, you go downstairs
and you have four brownies
because that craving
was never addressed
and it went from a level two
to a level ten.
The food police in that moment
did not keep you safe, folks.
It kept you disconnected and
it led to a worse result later.
Can you see how that
voice can be harmful?
The second voice in this group
is the nutrition informant, okay?
This is a voice that
sounds level headed
and it sounds very scientific,
it's always thinking about labels
and ingredients and macros.
Honestly, this voice sounds like
every terrible wellness influencer
that you see on social media, okay?
It is insisting that you know
the macros of every food,
you know how many calories
and what the ingredients are.
It's going to tell you things
like this has too many
artificial sweeteners,
that has seed oils in it,
or you can't eat that potato
because you've already reached
your carb goal for the day.
Basically, it's going
to take any fact as a rule
and instead of asking
what would satisfy you,
it becomes about how
compliant you are.
The nutrition informant
uses the knowledge
that you already have around food,
okay?
Which is a good thing to have,
knowledge around food,
but it uses that
knowledge against you.
It puts those food into
good and bad boxes
based on the ingredients
and the nutrients,
and completely
ignoring actual context, okay?
An example of this voice would
be if you're out grocery shopping
and you want to pick up your
favorite loaf of bread, okay?
Picture it in your head,
you're gonna see that loaf of bread
and you're gonna see
right next to it,
the low-carb, gluten-free,
keto bread
and the nutrition informant is going
to tell you that's a better option.
Okay? Or if you're out
at a friend's party,
the informant might tell you
that you only have...
You can only eat the vegetables
because you don't know how many
calories in that pizza, okay?
The biggest problem
with this voice is
the guilt and the anxiety
that the nutrition informant
creates inside your head.
If you're still not sure
about how to identify it,
here's a little self-check
that you can do.
Right before you're about
to make a healthy choice, okay,
or after you make a healthy choice,
do you feel calm and satisfied,
or do you feel tense and deprived?
Okay? Uh, if it's
tense and deprived,
that was probably a choice that was
made by the nutrition informant.
All right, now, the third and last
destructive dieting voice
is the diet rebel, okay?
And this one may be
the most obvious,
the easiest one to
identify on the list.
It is the angry, defiant voice
that shows up when you
are tired of being told
what to eat and how
to behave around food.
It's gonna feel like
that internal teenager
that is pushing back
against strict parents.
It's loud and impulsive.
It's that voice in your head
saying, "Forget this diet.
"I'm eating whatever I want."
"My husband says I
can't eat that pizza?
"Well, I'm gonna eat the whole
damn thing. That'll show him."
It usually appears
after you've been restricting
or after some sort of criticism.
The diet rebel exists as
a way of proving a point
rather than meeting a need.
And, admittedly, it can feel
a little freeing for a moment, okay?
It's like, "Fuck it,
I can do whatever I want."
But it often will lead to you
pushing past that fullness level,
pushing past that
level 7 to 8, 9 or 10.
You know, you're thinking,
"Well, I already had that cookie.
"I might as well
finish the whole box."
And you already know how you
feel after you overeat, right?
You feel physically ill,
you feel guilty,
and you feel more
distrust around food,
which puts the power right back
into the hands of the food police,
which just tells you again,
reinforces the idea
that you're a bad person
and you've done bad.
An example of the
diet rebel would be,
let's say, you know, you've been on
a really strict diet of salads
and protein shakes all week long,
but when Friday comes along
and friends invite
you out to burgers,
well, then the diet rebel
is probably going
to come out to play as well.
It's gonna come and say,
"Hey, you know what?
"I've been so good all week,
I deserve this.
"I'm gonna go all out. I'm gonna
get a double cheeseburger,
"I'm gonna get a large fries, I'm
gonna get a milkshake and dessert,"
and you eat until you feel stuffed
and uncomfortable
and maybe even past that, right?
And then the next morning,
the food police is there,
puts you on the scale and said,
"See? You have no control,
"you gained weight.
What have you done?"
Now, if you really know
the diet rebel well,
if you experience that voice
in your head often,
I want you to understand this.
There is usually a message
underneath that voice, okay?
The diet rebel is a signal
that something is not working.
It's your brain telling you
that the rules you're following
are way too rigid, the criticism
that you're experiencing
from whoever is taking a toll,
and that you need more freedom
and trust in your life,
and being able to address any
or all of those things
is the only thing
that's going to help reduce that.
All right, now let's talk
about your powerful ally voices.
There are four of them.
These are the parts of you...
These are the parts of you
that help you get away
from the rigid rules and
the shame and the guilt,
and move you towards curiosity
and kindness and self-care.
Instead of using
nutrition against you,
they use nutrition as a tool
in a non-judgmental way
that makes eating feel safer,
more enjoyable,
and in a way that gives you more
freedom and power and control.
The first of your powerful ally
voices is your food anthropologist.
Now, what is an anthropologist?
Do you know?
It's a type of scientist that
studies humans and human behaviors.
They're not out there
judging civilisations, okay?
They just collect and report data.
So, your food anthropologist
would be
a non-judgmental scientist
in your mind.
A neutral, curious observer
that notices your food
and your eating behaviors
without blaming you,
but also without praising you.
Again, it's neutral.
Would say something like,
"You know what?
"I ate half my sandwich
and now I feel full."
Or, "I noticed I was hungry again
two hours after breakfast."
No good or bad.
It's the epitome of
it is what it is, okay?
This voice helps you see patterns
to learn what your body needs.
And when you're able to
just gather information
in a relaxed, calm, neutral way,
that is a foundation of
becoming an intuitive eater,
because it keeps you in
touch with your body's cues
and what your experience was like.
When you approach your meal,
your plate like an anthropologist,
you just naturally
quiet the food police
because there is no judgment.
Now, the second powerful
ally voice is your nurturer, okay?
I like to call this
your gentle parent.
This is the compassionate voice
that you probably
hear way too little,
if we're being honest.
When I talk about being
your own best friend,
your nurturer is
what I'm talking about.
It is offering comfort,
it's offering permission.
it'll tell you things like,
"Hey, it's okay to have dessert
if you want it."
"I'm proud of you
for listening to your hunger."
"Your worth is not
determined by what you eat."
"And if you're still hungry,
seconds are allowed."
It sounds like me,
I think, to be honest.
Maybe we should call it
your inner Adam!
I'm renaming it,
this is your inner Adam.
No. This voice, your nurturer,
counters the food police
with kindness.
And when outside criticism shows up,
or when your own self-talk
is really, really harsh,
the nurturer is there to tell you
that you're doing your best,
and especially when
you are around family,
or if your social circle often
is commenting on your weight
or your food, the nurturer
becomes really essential
because it reminds you that you
are competent and adequate,
and offers positive self-talk
when you need it the most.
The next one, number three,
it is your nutrition ally,
which is the calm
and practical voice
that uses nutrition to care
for you rather than control you.
It is supportive and it's specific,
and it's going to tell you,
"Let's add something with protein
"so that this meal keeps
you a little fuller longer."
"Let's grab a carb and a fat
"so that we have more
energy for our workout."
"Too much garlic is gonna make my
tummy a little upset."
"A piece of fruit is gonna make this
meal more pleasing to the eye,
"and it's gonna
add some more fiber."
There's no fear, there's no grade,
okay? There's no judgment.
The key difference between this
one and the nutrition informant is
the intent behind it and the
feeling that it leaves you with.
If you really can't quite tell
the difference,
I'm gonna give you
another test, okay?
Let's say that two foods
are equally appealing,
but one has a little
less saturated fat.
Your nutrition ally is going to
guide you towards the option
with less saturated fat.
But, again, these are equal foods.
You're not choosing the
less saturated fat bread
because you feel like you have to,
it doesn't make you feel deprived,
but it still can honor your health
and take satisfaction
into consideration as well.
Does that make sense?
So, we are moving on to the last
and the most powerful ally of all,
and this is the one that
we're all trying to achieve,
it is the accumulation of all
that we're working towards.
This is the intuitive eater.
The intuitive eater is
the wisdom that you achieve
once the diet mentality is mostly
extinguished in your brain.
It asks simple questions
and it trusts the answers.
What sounds good right now? Am I
still hungry or am I satisfied?
All of the thoughts
that the intuitive eater has
are flexible and kind.
The intuitive eater notices things
like the food anthropologist,
it has the compassion of
the nurturer,
and it has the practical
sense of the nutrition ally.
It honors whatever your body
is asking for - biological hunger,
satisfaction,
self-protective instincts.
It knows that life happens and
it helps you adapt accordingly,
and it helps you make
neutral decisions
that can best help
you care for yourself.
And that's it.
Now you know your
destructive dieting voices
and your powerful ally voices.
There is and will continue to
be a mix of them in your head
every single meal
and every single day, okay?
You're probably
not going to ever defeat
your destructive dieting voices
entirely, don't worry about that,
just try to turn down
the volume through recognition
and through understanding,
and turn up the volume
of the powerful ally voices.
You do not need more rules
and more judgment,
you need more flexibility
and kindness and trust.
There's going to be slip-ups,
we're doing this imperfectly, right?
That's part of being human.
You don't need to feel guilty.
The food police and the
diet rebel are still going
to pop up from time to time,
but when you catch
that harsh thought,
try renaming it and
asking a kinder question.
"Oh, you know what?
"This is my food police telling me
that I'm doing bad.
"What would my
inner nurturer say?"
I'm not exaggerating when I tell you
that little moments
of recognition like that
are going to
completely change your life.
Every meal and every snack where you
can listen to those helpful voices
over the hurtful ones is going
to help you gain a little more
and more trust in yourself.
Thanks for listening today, folks.
Your homework assignment is
to give a few minutes thought
into the destructive dieting voice
that you heard the most today,
and I want you to name one thing
that you can start to tell yourself
to feel a little bit better
about your decisions
at your next meal.
I'll see you next time.
Thank you for tuning in to this
episode of Showing Up Anyway,
you can find it
for free on Spotify
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And wherever you're listening,
if you like the show,
I'd love it if you gave
me a five-star review,
because that does help
other people find the show,
and hopefully it'll
help change their life,
just like you're looking
to change yours.
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when new episodes come out.
I'm Coach Adam. Remember -
when things get challenging,
keep showing up anyway.