New Ideal Body- Stop Yo-Yo Diets with Deanna Schober Ep#71

Hey everybody. Welcome to habits and humor. My name is Suzi B and I am the host of this show. This is the show where you come for very quick, very direct, and very important information regarding your health, your habits, your happiness, and your lifestyle. Because we want you to be able to take some action away from this conversation and actually put something into your life.

That works for you today. We are talking about the all important message of how to overcome all the diet culture that's out there, everything that is overwhelming and you have to eat this, you can't eat that all of these kinds of conversations that are so confusing and overwhelming. We brought on a phenomenal guest today.

That's going to help us sift through that information. What really matters and what doesn't help us to take action moving forward so that we can succeed with what we eat, how we move and how we feel about ourselves. That is so important. So welcome to the show. Deanna Schober. We're so excited to have you here.

Deanna. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. You bet. So Deanna, you have a podcast yourself called fitness and sushi. Tell us a little bit about your podcast. And then we'll get into some questions here. Fitness and sushi is my husband and I, and we, it's like sitting down and having sushi with us.

Sushi is something that we used to not allow ourselves to eat back in the day when we were both really disordered in our eating habits and really disordered in our exercise. And we actually overcame eating disorders together at the same time. So sushi is significant. It's not just a fun little play on words.

When we were healing from our disordered eating patterns and coming out of that, we decided to or we would go on a weekly date night to the sushi restaurant for the first time, in years. And we would talk about our healing. We would talk about what a healthy relationship with food looks like and a healthy relationship with exercise looks like, and how we were going to change not only ourselves, but our message, because we were in a really well known fitness.

Business. And my husband looked over at me one night and was like, we shouldn't call this. We should have a podcast. We should put microphones right here and we should call it fitness and sushi. And so that's how the podcast was born. That's amazing. Just a discussion between the two of you about reality, right?

That's amazing. Yeah. You talked about how you both overcame disordered eating define to me what disordered eating means and what your personal experience was with that whole lifestyle change. Yeah. At the time we both just thought that we were really into fitness and we thought that we were really into health and we were both really intent on not getting on like a competition stage, but following those kinds of people, like the bodybuilding physique type thing, because we figured if we did what they did, we would look like they, they looked.

So we were obsessively dieting obsessively Yeah. Accounting every calorie and getting down to just the perfect macros. At one point we went through intermittent fasting before anybody had even heard of it. It was. It's a constant. It took over our lives. I think that the whole idea behind a disordered eating pattern is that it does tend to take over your life.

You're thinking about it all the time. You're thinking about food on all the time. And it rules your life. It takes over your social life. It takes over your your thoughts throughout the day. For me distracted me from parenting. It distracted me from the things that were most important in life.

And it was just like not meeting my needs. I wasn't meeting my needs. He wasn't meeting his. And so we were going through this yo cycle for us. It was really extreme. It's the same yo yo cycle that a lot of people see, which is why, we help people the way we do now, but it was really extreme for us where we were, Holding a beach ball under the water for a good amount of time with the dieting that we were doing.

And then we, one of us would break and we'd be like, let's go to the store and buy all the food and binge for the weekend and take a break, and it was just this back and forth constantly. So it takes over your life. Like where you were saying, it pulls over you and distracts you from everything else.

That really is true. And so many of us have experienced that. If you've experienced that, where you feel like. You're obsessing over what you're eating and how you're moving and all of these different tracking and things like that. Type that in the chat, because that is so relatable. That is absolutely what, you're not alone in this.

If you're feeling like, yeah, I've been there. You are definitely not alone. So Deanna, you guys went from counting macros and counting calories and probably supplements and other extremes. Like you're talking about what. How did you decide to make the shift and what did you shift to? I think that he probably got fed up first because he was he was having like a binge eating disorder where he would lean out, like what we called leaning out cut for 12 weeks.

And then he would break and he would gain 30 pounds within 30 days. And it was really extreme for him. I was just so obsessed and. He started to look into help first and started reading books and exploring options out there. And we kept thinking. Maybe you need to be sugar sober.

And this feels like an addiction. Maybe you need to approach it in the same way that you would approach addiction. And we quickly found out that made everything worse, which was really interesting. So he started looking around, he found intuitive eating. He found a book written about.

Binge eating disorder that basically said, stop dieting, stop trying to manipulate your body. Stop trying to count every calorie and live a life of weight management, which is what we were both doing. It was just all that we were doing. So I was right behind him in that I saw how healing it was for him immediately.

Like just that shift in mindset away from scarcity around food and into abundance was. Fast. He changed his relationship with food. It felt like overnight and it was a long process, but the big shift was made pretty quickly. And then, so I followed suit and it was scary because I had gotten a lot of attention for the way my body looked at that time.

I had three kids and everybody was like, Oh my God, you've got six pack. And I was posting these selfies and talking about how healthy I was, but I wasn't sharing that behind the scenes. We were really. Obsessed and struggling. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys went from, focused on the very details all of that minute stuff to, not dieting anymore and all of that letting go of so many things that all of us have been told to do.

What difference did that make for you mentally and physically? Mentally, it was really scary at first. And I, I remember being angry at the idea, like you're telling me I'm supposed to let myself eat anything I want. That's crazy. And, there was a lot of fear around my health and a lot of fear around what that was going to do to my weight, but it felt like the safer alternative and like the more sane alternative for both of us.

And the more that we did it, the easier it was to let go. And so the first word that I can use to describe is freedom. It was just. Freedom from having to think about these things and having to be scared, but I had to do a lot of work around my body image and my self worth at the same time. This was the beginning of a spiritual journey for me, for my husband too, about who we were.

If we weren't just these fit bodies, who else were we and what did we have to offer the world? So it was very liberating. Eventually it was scary and then liberating and has led to me and him finding Our purpose in life, which is to help people break those same cycles. So you're finding some balance, you're finding some reality, some normal that feels right and feels good.

And you can stick to it. What did you gain weight at this point? Did you feel like your muscle, obviously your muscle tone is going to change. What physical changes did you go through at this point? And how did you learn to accept that being, going from one life, the way that looking one particular way to looking a different way and being okay with that.

It was really interesting. I ended up at the weight that I used to eventually end up at anyways, whenever I, we would come out of the diet and binge. So I was always fluctuating probably five to 10 pounds depending on where I was at in the yo cycle. And when I just finally let go I still wanted to take care of myself.

I still preferred the way that I felt when I ate like mostly whole foods. And I still. Wanted to exercise. And so I kept that up, but I just didn't do it obsessively. And so my weight, I gained, I still fluctuate five to 10 pounds here every so often, depending on the season of my life. But I ended up the weight that I was my body tended to want to go to anyways, whenever I was actually eating food.

Because I thoroughly believe that those binges had a lot to do with my body, like asking for more food and really driving me to eat the amount that it actually needed. So I have stayed stable at that weight five. Like I, if you had asked me at the time, I was ready to gain 30 pounds. It was a miserable life and I was ready to do anything to get out of it.

So I was really surprised and. I think that I, it showed me that I could trust my body and he can, he's had the exact same experience that I did. Fascinating. So I talked to a lot of clients about that last 10 pounds. So there's like the first bit of weight loss. And then there's the last bit of weight loss.

And there tends to be two kind of rounds with us. And that first round is exactly what you're talking about with. Yeah. Consistently exercising and enjoying yourself. This is a huge thing that we talk about all the time is exercise. Shouldn't be a form of torture. Find the thing that you enjoy doing and turn that into your workouts.

You guys, you can enjoy your health and be happy at the same time. So find the exercises that you enjoy and be consistent with those. This is not about allowing yourself to just, eat anything and just let it all go. This is. This is about being healthy, not being extreme and doing specific things that overwhelm you and take over your life.

It's about being healthy in a way that works for you. That feels right. Would you agree with that? Deanna? Totally. I think that's, everyone's going to have their own version of what their health looks like, but you have to widen that lens too, to be. To include your mental health. It's not mentally healthy.

You can be physically healthy. I was really physically healthy, but I wasn't mentally well. And the up and the down and the back and the forth, the back and forth was not healthy at all for me, or really for my body at all. And widening that lens and finding what felt healthy for me and defining that for me and not letting diet culture define what that meant for me was the big game changer, I think and consistency.

Beautiful. Not letting diet culture define what health means to you. Oh my gosh. I'm just going to print that out on vinyl and put it on my wall. Tattoo it on your forehead. People feel what feels right for you. That's what health is. It's not about. The craziness, it's really not about the craziness. If we can simplify health, that's where we can be healthy and happy.

So like I mentioned earlier, there's that first round of where you get to a healthy lifestyle and that first, amount of weight might come off or might go back on depending on where you're at in your life. And that first round consists of Deanna, what would you say? I would say exercise. And like you talked about eating mostly whole foods and foods that are good for you.

And then sleeping meditation, water, all those things, but all the things can become overwhelming. So where would you say that we should start if we're like, we got to overhaul everything to do this first round. I know that you talk about the ideal body kind of, what would be the first round here to get us in a place where we can be consistent.

If I'm being honest, it's having a healthy relationship with food, body exercise and mind, which is, that's what we define as the ideal body. It's really hard to create habits. If you don't have, if you're coming out of diet culture and you have an unhealthy relationship with those things, and a lot of people do and don't realize it, they go into those habits.

Thinking that they're gonna white knuckle through them and gonna force themselves to make changes. And having a healthy relationship with food and exercise and your body means that you will, it'll be so much easier. You're not gonna have to be relying completely on willpower. Willpower will burn out so fast.

It's. It's vital to have those, like a lowered intensity relationship with food. If you have an intense relationship with food, no amount of trying to force yourself to change, to make those changes to whole foods is going to work. You're going to constantly feel like you're in a feeling of scarcity and scarcity builds intensity you'll binge.

So that, that has to be the foundation for every habit, but change without it, long term consistency isn't possible, but then. It's very simple. It's whole foods. It's water. It's sleep. It's stress reduction. And I think that it's just those little baby steps into doing, like you said, the exercise that you really enjoy that has to be a prerequisite.

If you don't enjoy it, at least the feeling of it. Or the way you feel after you do it, then you are not going to do that for the rest of your life. So finding those things experimenting with whole foods, think of it, think in abundance not what you can't eat, but what you'd and what you can, what is a whole food that you enjoy that you could put together that will make you feel really good and light.

And that will that'll be self. Sustaining you'll be gravitating to feeling good and gravitating to those foods that you like and that you enjoy in the exercise that you like and enjoy. Beautiful. I like that. You're saying bring down the intensity of the relationship that you have with this different stuff.

So if you feel like when somebody says, all right, I got to get up and do a workout. If you instantly feel like, Oh, that's a barrier that we got to break down before you're going to be able to be successful. So a lot with a lot of my clients, I tell them to just do something simpler.

So if waking up in the morning, like for me personally, I'm a personal trainer, I've been working out for my whole life and I preach this stuff up and down all day long, but when I wake up in the morning and I think, all right, I got to hit the gym. I don't want to wake up. So rather than thinking to myself, I got to go to the gym and I got to work out and I got to do this hard thing.

I wake up and I just sit up and I think I'm just going to sit here and breathe for a second. And after I sit there and breathe for a second, I'm like, okay, now I can stand up. And then after I stand up, I'm like, okay, now I have a little bit of motivation to do the next thing. So it sounds silly and it sounds simple, but really practice this.

So whatever it is that is your that gasp reflex that you have, that maybe you're feeling stressed about, whether that be food, whether you're like, okay, I gotta go make dinner. And you instantly feel like, Oh no what am I going to do? Those are intense. Responses, physically, mentally, emotionally, all the different ways that is where you should start.

I love this conversation. Deanna, you're so right about that. If you can break down the intensity and that's what people are talking about when they're saying you have a positive relationship with food. That's what it is. When you've talked about food, you shouldn't feel immediately stressed out. If you do, let's start there.

Start there. Give yourself. And then if you're like where do I start? What do I do there? Just exactly what Deanna said. Think about, okay, you know what? I got to make dinner tonight. Do you know what I love? I love Romaine lettuce or spinach, or you know what? I love carrots. Whatever the thing is that you enjoy.

Start there. Start there. Don't feel like, all right, I can't do any of this and I have to then. Nope. Start with what you like. And then we can build on from there. Deanna, what's your input on that? Yeah, I think that like the idea of diet culture is to have a bunch of rules that you have to follow. And that's what makes food feel so intense is you're in intense is that you're in a state of scarcity.

You're always thinking about the things you can't have. And as a state of abundance. You're not, there's no rules. There's no good or bad, right or wrong. There's just cause and effect. If I want to feel my best, then I'm probably going to eat fruits and vegetables. If I'm going out for a girls weekend, like I just did this weekend, I'm going to have banana pancakes with my friends because that's what we're doing.

And because of that, because I'm, I can do those things. I don't have to follow any strict rules. I can, it's not a big deal. And these things are, there's not so much like huge back and forth and swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's the middle. And because of that, it's easier to make the choices of.

What makes me feel my best most of the time when I know that it's not forever and I'm not beholden to it. So it's really important just to not have rules. You just, you have guidelines and like the cause and effect of the foods that you're eating. But you're not trying to force yourself through any situation.

Beautiful. Keep it more broad. You guys, this is one thing. A lot of people come to me and they say, Hey, will you write me up a meal plan? My instant answer is no, I will not do meal plans because If I put three ingredients in there that you don't like, you're not going to eat that food and no longer makes sense.

The whole thing is Nolan void now because it doesn't work for you. So rather than get the specifics, make it more general. And as we're doing this, as you're thinking about this stuff, a lot of us feel the pressure okay, I can relieve the pressure on myself of having to follow the rules and all of that.

But. What if I gain 10 pounds? Like you talked about earlier with that fear of, what if I suddenly lose my muscle mass or what if I gain weight or what if I, all that fear, how do we overcome that part to allow ourselves to, to step into this ideal body and these simpler, less intense habits.

It's so important to, to have to do the spiritual work. Like we are, it sounds crazy, but a lot of people's disordered relationship with food and with their body comes from A poor relationship with themselves and feeling like they have to earn their worth or they have to earn their place in society or their attractiveness is who they are as a person.

And a lot of the work that we do with women is just showing them that they are so much more than the size of their body and the weight on the number on the scale. We get away from objectifying the body. I like my body or I hate my body, we don't teach body positivity in the way of learning to look in the mirror and lie to yourself and say, Oh yeah, I like what I see.

We teach them, stop judging this as an object. This is your home. This is where you live. And if you think of it that way, then you're thinking about the way you feel in your body, which is going to naturally lead you to make those changes that. Support that and that feel the best. So you're naturally, if you're in your body, experiencing it, you're noticing I'm a little stressed and need some stress reduction.

My digestion hasn't been very good lately. I probably should be eating more fruits and vegetables. You're experiencing your body rather than looking at a mirror and picking it apart and judging it, which is just going to lead you right through that yo diet cycle. So really. Like declaring that you are a human being who deserves to be taken care of.

And just the exact same way that we take care of our children, that we would take care of our best friend. We deserve that care as well. And then just thinking of your body as your home, not. Something that you have to control and go to war with beautiful. Think of your body as your home and not something you go to war with.

Oh, that's so good. So good. We, you guys, I hope that you all understand this part of the puzzle. And if you don't get with Deanna, like this is such a crucial piece that if you don't understand and appreciate that this incredible mechanism is how you experience your life without this body. You don't see, hear, feel, taste, and touch.

It may not be exactly the way that a magazine or society has told you that it needs to be, but you know what? It's yours. And you have the only one like it. You have the only one like your body, which is why we can't compare them. We cannot compare. There is no ideal, perfect look because your body is going to be different than everybody else's body.

This is one of my strongest foundations for my belief in God. Just because. There's no other way. There's just your body is yours and it's individually, whatever you believe in. I'm not preaching or suggesting anything like this, but I just want you to think about nobody has what you have. And you were made specifically the way that you were made.

And once you understand how powerful that is, I've got a friend who always says, when I stopped worrying about what my body looks like and started thinking about what my body could do, that's when things changed for me. And I think that's so beautiful. So anybody here, go ahead and type in the chat or in the comments here, if you guys have go ahead and drop a heart.

If this is making sense to you, if this is sounding like something that you need help with, or yeah, just go ahead and drop an emoji in the chat here and just tell us that this is resonating with you. I love this conversation. I love where you head with this. So when you talked about we weren't, we're eliminating the rules.

We're going from meal plans and weigh ins to, focusing on our action, taking responsibility for what I can do today. That's another big piece of the puzzle that sometimes what we want feels so far away. You know what? I'm 40 pounds from ideal, or you know what, I'm, I want to be able to walk three miles and I can barely even get to the mailbox.

If our goals feel so far away, how do we break down that mental barrier? How do we get through that piece of the puzzle where we can feel connected to what we want and what we currently have at the same time? It's so I think it's the, it's what you just said. It's staying present. I think that, it's great to have goals for everybody.

I believe like having a goal, having a North star, having a trajectory is important, but that's where most people focus. And focusing on that is so can be really frustrating because it, if you're laser focused on a goal, you're not thinking about the process. And so the goal, you reach it and it's just a moment in time and then it's over.

And then you're left feeling like now what? So it's really important to be focused on the process and to love the process. That's so vital. I tell my clients like. I think that the way that things change for me is I just wake up every day and ask myself, what can I do today? What can I do to feel great today?

What do I need today? I think that's probably the most important question because most of the time I need to move my body and I need fruits and vegetables, but sometimes that's not what I need. I need to lay in bed. And watch housewives like that's every Saturday for me. So that's not, the answer is not always the same and having that flexibility and just tuning into yourself and what it is that you need on a day to day basis and asking that question from that place of nurturing, not.

Control. That will change everything for you. And then the process, you just wake up, you're present every day. You're just taking care of yourself every day. And then those goals, for us, it's the new ideal body is at the end of that. And it happens naturally. You're not forcing it.

You're not having to hammer it down. It's just happening as a natural side effect. Excellent. Oh, so good. So good. So one thing that we can do is shift from, doing all of the things and looking forward to that future goal to what can I do today? If you were to give us maybe a couple of different habits that we could start with today, maybe three takeaways that each of us could start with today.

What would those three things be? One of the first things I, that we teach our client is to feed themselves three core meals. Like it doesn't matter even what's in that meal that we just start with, feed yourself three times a day. And that sounds so simple, but so many of the women, by the time they reach me, they're so dysregulated, they're skipping meals, they're skipping breakfast.

There are a lot of people now are coming into with intermittent fasting where they're missing meals. And then they're beating themselves up because they're binging at nighttime or they're grazing all day. Eat three times a day food that satiates satisfies and nourishes to the best of your ability.

That's my, probably my number one tip. The second thing would be move your body in a way that feels joyful. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to get your heart rate up. You don't have to do it. You can go for a walk, but something that makes you feel present and makes you feel proud of yourself. And.

Excited to move your body, like something that, that feels good. And then notice that those, the way that those things make you feel, I think that's really important is to tune into how does my body feel when I do these things, not how does it look now is the scale changing, not, am I getting healthier, but how do I feel after I do these things?

Cause most of these things make us feel really good. And we're missing it because we're worried about what's happening. What's the side effect? So that would probably be the third. Awesome. I love it. Those are so good. You guys. So I'm a habits coach. You guys know this. If you don't know this, I am a habits coach and I help you to simplify it down.

We work on three simple things every day, just like Deanna just talked about. So if you're like, Hey, I want to do this kind of stuff, but I have a hard time actually implementing what I've learned. Reach out to me, reach out to Deanna. She also does this as well. So we're all about helping you guys to take what you've learned and put it into action in a way that you can keep forever.

That's totally why I brought Deanna on the show. She's very much about. Lifestyle. It's about loving the process, embracing the process and celebrating the process. So that it's not just, Oh, okay. I'll be happy or I'll be healthy when I get there. But today I'm going to do something that I feel good about.

And that's where your progress is going to come from. So if you guys need a little bit of help, a little bit of guidance or some support on that, please feel free to reach out to Deanna. Deanna, where can people reach you? The best way would be to start with an assessment where you can come to our I'm actually setting up a link for.

People who watch your show and it's builtdaily.com/SuziB. And so you can go there and take an assessment and see what is your relationship with food, body, exercise, and mind. And we'll give you a score and then we'll give you some guidance on what to do with that score. And don't worry if it's low everybody's is when they first take it.

And help you to see where you are still stuck in diet culture and still have those disordered patterns. And we'll show you how to get out of it. Awesome. Start with that assessment to give us that website one more time. It's built daily. com slash Susie B. Awesome. That's S U Z I B y'all.

And if you want to learn more about the habits process, I do a free habit challenge every week in our Facebook group. So every, , month in our Facebook group, we do a free habit challenge where we're going to take one of these things and we're going to work on it for a month.

If that sounds interesting to you, go ahead and join the habits and humor, Facebook group. That's at facebook. com /group/SuziBHabits. You can join either of these options. Go ahead and check out her assessment. That will be a great place to start. Go ahead and join the free challenges in our group every single month.

And if you get nothing else out of this today, I guys, I hope you shift your mind from needing to lose that last 10 pounds or what, those last few calories, those specific numbers that are stressing you out. Let them go and swap them for how you feel. Swap them for how you feel. Move your body in a way that is enjoyable for you.

Eat food in a way that, you know what, these are the foods that I really like. These are the foods that nurse. I like how you just said it satisfies, it satiates and it nourishes. That's beautiful. Head in that direction and that last 10 pounds won't even be. An issue anymore. Go ahead and just let that go.

Whether you are like she's talking about, she was fluctuating 10 pounds all the time, based on where your body wants to go, learn how to trust your body and clear your mind so that you can enjoy your health. Again, if you can enjoy the process, the results will be phenomenal. That's all there is to it.

Every time you enjoy the process results will come and we'll follow after that. Thank you so much, Deanna. This was such a beautiful conversation. I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. All right. So those of you that are catching us on Facebook or on a replay on the podcast here, know that you can join us live.

We are every single week, Thursdays at 9 00 AM mountain time. On win women TV. So you can join us here and you can join in this Q and a conversation. Those of you that are here, go ahead and stay here. We're going to open the room for questions. Now, those of you that are catching this on a replay, please feel free to join us in the future.

Thanks for being here, everybody. This is habits and humor. I'm Suzi B and I'll see you next week.