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Bye!

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team, Mikki here, you're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday and I want to chat a little bit about conflicting nutrition truths or beliefs. You know, how can we think and feel one way yet in fact know that the opposite thing or action is actually in our best interests and this has just been on my mind because we've started another round of Mondays Matter.

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I chat to people in my nutrition coaching pod, Mondays to Mastery. And a lot of it is when you have the tools in front of you and you have the education and knowledge, if you like, of how food affects you and what is quote unquote preferable for fat loss and for meeting composition goals, why is it that your mind sort of tries to get you to do the opposite? Your emotional brain will...

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undermine your logical brain when it comes to food. And a really good example of this before I sort of crack on into some quite common nutrition truths that can be true at the same time yet be conflicting is working with a client of mine. He's decided to overhaul his diet actually. And for some people, this is a little bit radical and potentially unnecessary. But for him, he recognises that when half of his daily intake

01:31
Probably even just the idea of getting rid of bread and just removing it entirely will really help 50 or 60% of his problem, right? Because then of course we give him options what to eat instead, his energy improves after the sort of initial withdrawal, obviously. And he can start to make different decisions around his food. And for him, the decision to just get rid of bread entirely is way better than trying to reduce it because he was having it for breakfast.

01:58
at Smoko for his mid afternoon break. And then when he was hungry after dinner, he was having four slices. It doesn't matter whether or not it's Vogel's bread or white bread. It's still unnecessary carbohydrate. And there was a real pull for him to have it. And I think as well with products like Vogel's bread or cornflakes or wheat bakes or something like that, where they have this sort of health halo around them, people just think, oh, these are just healthy foods.

02:28
can belong in a diet, in somebody's diet. But for some people that is actually just not true. Like some people just cannot moderate. And if you are familiar with Gretchen Rubin's models of moderating or moderators versus abstainers, like people who can eat a little bit and then move on versus people who once they have a couple of slices, they just, they go all in and they devour the entire loaf. Understanding yourself and your response to certain foods.

02:57
can really help you understand if you should be moderating a particular food or abstaining entirely. And this of course falls under the remit of food addiction, I guess, and potentially not addiction to alcohol or other dangerous substances. Anyway, that's where Gretchen Rubin's concepts come in. But in order to have a really good relationship with food and feel amazing day to day, we need to, I guess, be aware of...

03:27
how the way that we feel about food in the moment may not necessarily reflect what is good for us long term. And so eating and eating in the moment can be filled with emotion. And we are very good at telling stories to ourselves and coming up with excuses, reasons, justifications, self-deception, lying to ourselves in the moment, which we only realize or recognize after the fact.

03:54
Over time, these types of feelings and your ability to override a potential decision to not eat a food and then suddenly you cave, leads to this, like just a reduction in your ability to trust yourself and your instincts actually. And that's not necessarily on you. It is to some extent, but it's just can be about the way that food makes you feel, how it impacts on your hormones. You know, I've talked to Dr. Anna Lemke.

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Dr. Jen Unwin about the impact of dopamine and how this can change our drive for particular foods. And of course, our blood sugar also plays into this. But sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the moment and to believe something until after the fact and then go, actually, I was wrong. I wasn't really craving XYZ. I didn't need this to self-serve. I should have or could have looked for other alternative practices.

04:52
One thing I will say is that when it comes to cravings and how we feel about food in the moment is that like my client I was talking about, the best way to reduce your cravings isn't to reduce the amount you have, it is potentially better to omit it entirely. The reality is we crave what we eat. Therefore, if we remove the exposure to that particular food, we'll be far less likely to crave it. Not immediately. Not like...

05:21
after a day or two days, you do have to allow for some time for the dust to settle on your craving. But if you give it 10 days, that'll make a huge difference. And I think Jen Unwin talked about this, to your ability to say no, or not even think about a particular food. This is, you know, in the case of my client, he got through the first day, no problem at all. The second day,

05:43
He'd cut back the amount of toast he had from four pieces to two. And he said, I just needed something else with my smoothie. So I thought I'd just have two slices. And I just had to pull a hard line and say, look, you cannot have any bread. Right now, your body and your brain is trying to do everything in its power to protect the dopamine hit that it's getting from that carbohydrate. The more often that you feed that hit, the more often that you expose yourself to that.

06:11
the harder it is going to be in the long term to remove it from your diet and to see the results that you want. You will struggle every day with a craving for it if you just reduce the amount and you not remove it entirely. That's because the longer that you go without consuming a food, the less you'll experience a drive to consume it actually. Going a prolonged period without it, your brain will forget the large release of dopamine that it gets from consuming these foods.

06:40
I'm talking about bread, but the same thing is true really of foods like peanut butter. If anyone has ever had like a jar of peanut butter and found themselves going through it like an entire jar every single week, the best thing to do on that in that instance is again to go top cold turkey. Like it's a little bit of a craving. It's likely a substitute for something else that you're wanting, but it's that habit of always going to it that you really want to break. So if we break that habit of consumption.

07:10
That means that at the end of say 30 days, you're likely able to go back and enjoy it in amounts that are much more reasonable than a jar of peanut butter a week. For what it's worth, there is actually research around that frequency of consumption and frequency of cravings. The more you eat it, the more you crave it. If you've got a thing right now, if you're struggling to give up, bread, peanut butter,

07:35
yogurt, and you know that you're not good on dairy, then really the best thing to do is actually just to cut it entirely. Give yourself that challenge of 30 days without. On a more global nutrition front, if you like, when it comes to things like cleansers, detoxes, particular diet patterns, paleo, keto, vegan, we always pick on those two or three. Don't we? Carnivore. It's almost easier for people to go extreme.

08:05
absolute extreme rules because it then takes the decision making out of it for them. They've suddenly, they can no longer eat many of the foods that were likely tripping them up in the first place. I do think for some people actually, the more extreme approach can be helpful, but only really in some sort of therapeutic context and not necessarily in just, you want to lose body fat. If anyone wanted to lose body fat, I wouldn't.

08:32
suggest that their first line of defense was to go carnivore or to go paleo or to go keto for that. I see these approaches as being more useful in that therapeutic setting and not necessarily just for fat loss. But there's no doubt about it that it can be easier to be rigid around your diet than to be a little bit more flexible, particularly if you are someone with an all or nothing personality.

08:58
Knowing that about yourself might make it easier to understand why you have an easier time of sticking to a certain diet protocol than what other people might or if given some flexibility. And I do see this a bit in Monday's matter, you know, we've got some very good guidelines around protein only or protein-spearing modified fast days. But then also we've got diet break weekends, and some people really struggle to eat more in that instance. And it's because being

09:28
on a particular plan and being very rigid about it, it's easier for them to get their head around than getting a little bit more flexibility and choice because they don't trust themselves to make good decisions. And they don't trust that a diet break is going to then result in more progress over time because it often does. So whilst the rigid, regimented sort of way can work for a time, it's not going to work long term. And if you know that you're more type A,

09:56
you're probably going to get more out of an approach that gives you some guardrails and allows you a little bit of flexibility within a structure. And that's okay as well. Recognizing that some of the work you need to do isn't necessarily on following a plan or following a diet protocol. It's probably more the deeper work of being less all or nothing and living a little bit more in the gray zone. One other

10:22
thing which I think is worth talking about is, you know, how we use food to soothe us. Because the truths, the sort of conflicting truths here is that food can absolutely soothe and alcohol in the moment when you need it. When you're stressed, when you're bored, when you need a distraction, when you're happy and joyful, or when you would feel sad. These things really can help calm your central nervous system and help.

10:50
I guess distract you from what's going on and sort of remove you from that uncomfortable feeling or dealing with those emotions. But the reality is, is that long term, whilst it's useful in the short term to give you some relief, we've got to think about the long term and long term, these strategies of using food and alcohol to soothe you are not helpful. So finding other solutions in this instance is going to be far better long term.

11:17
than holding onto this crutch that we have around using food and alcohol to soothe. So, you know, there are a lot of strategies around that can be helpful for this. And I wrote up an emotional eating PDF for my Mondays to Mastery group. And a few people are sort of working through some of the exercises now. And one of those exercises is first to understand better when you eat, why you're eating and why you're making the decision that you are.

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Was this driven by a physical hunger? Was this more of an emotional response to what's going on? Were you able to stop when you were satisfied? Did you feel over full? Did you eat quickly? Actually doing this sort of work around your eating behavior but understanding why you eat can be so, so helpful. And then coming up with other ways to soothe that isn't food. And I think one of the problems is, and if I go back to my client, it's the...

12:16
concept around using food as a treat. We often say this, right? You can have that treat meal or you can have dessert if you eat your vegetables. That's a real classic thing. I'm not sure that parents actually say that anymore. They might do. But it's this idea that food that doesn't align with our goals is still considered the treat rather than the food that you are eating to nourish and build a better physique. That is the treat food. That is treating your body with respect and it's giving you the nutrients you need.

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yet somehow we're caught up in this idea that the junk food and the processed food is actually the treat. So reframing what a treat is and how to feel better can also go along with this understanding better using food to soothe. So things like gratitude journaling can also help. Doing some breathing exercises can help.

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on your throat or behind your ears or on your neck. These are tactics that people can use and have used to move beyond always turning to food to soothe in the moment. Because ultimately, while it does work in the short term, long term, as I said, it's not doing you any favors. And the other topic, which I will just briefly address in this sort of conflicting truths, is that tracking food.

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Yes, it's uncomfortable, it's time consuming, it requires effort, it does require more time and you do have to become familiar with technology that allows you to do it. However, tracking food is actually one of the best and most efficient ways to get more predictable outcomes from your nutrition approach. I think that a diet plan initially for people is a really good starting point.

14:11
Obviously, because this is how I work in Monday's Matter. But ultimately, most successful people move beyond a diet plan, take those principles and put it in the context of tracking what they eat, ensuring that we're nailing their protein macros. We've got enough calories to support their goals and to move them from the diet to the maintenance mindset. And it's very difficult to do that if you don't track your food. So...

14:40
The other thing I see with tracking food, and this surprises me because I see this from dieticians and other nutritionists, is that they say that tracking food is some sort of disordered eating pattern or behavior. And I think nothing could be further from the truth. Tracking your food will not create an eating disorder. An eating disorder is a symptom of an underlying psychological issue. It's not going to take someone who isn't wired that way to a

15:09
Of course, people who might be more at risk of suffering from an eating disorder may be more likely to track for sure, but the tracking itself isn't the issue. So I did just want to sort of clarify that. Tracking can actually give you a lot more freedom and give you a lot more flexibility. And as I was sort of talking earlier about being like a type A personality type, which might find it hard to make decisions that are beyond the guardrails, if you like, of a particular diet plan.

15:38
Tracking allows them to sort of freeze them a little bit of that because they realize when they track what they're doing that things which they thought would be a diet catastrophe aren't nearly so bad. Things like eating hot chips, for example, in your head, and this happened to me, I used to catastrophize eating hot chips. Like, oh my God, I just ate half my daily calories in these half a portion of chips. It was so beyond true.

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funny. And this is me who is, you know, nutrition is what I do. But it's very easy when you have a propensity to a restrictive mindset, as I've shared before, that is absolutely what I have. Then it's easy to see how these small decisions can really make you ruminate and make you feel like you've really ruined things. Where when you have the ability to track and you have a goal or a target in mind, then you're able to fit these things in and

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that half portion of chips was only 270 calories. It was basically nothing compared to what it was in my mind. So in fact, tracking for me, and I know several other people in the same place, allowed me much more food freedom and flexibility. So if you, one, feel like you could benefit from tracking, but still find that you have this idea that it is cumbersome and time-consuming, then I really sort of encourage you to reframe what tracking is.

17:07
And this could be because you don't have to track forever. That's the thing. Like you gain a lot of knowledge in a short sort of window of tracking. And the, and the women I'm working with in Mondays to mastery, we like together for eight weeks. And to my mind, if people are on board with it from the get go, then they get eight weeks of really good data to figure out, you know, how good they feel on the macros that they're at, how to adjust their macros to more meet their goals.

17:34
how to choose foods that sort of fit within the framework of what we're trying to achieve, that aren't just safe foods if you like. Because really when you're macro counting, you can make anything fit to some extent within those macro counts. So yes, tracking can be cumbersome, it can take a lot of time and it does require effort, but if you wanna see results, it is one of the fastest ways to do so.

17:59
Alrighty, well I've probably gone on enough, haven't I? These are just a few things I'm thinking about with my new cohort of Mondays Matter peeps and also with my Mondays to Mastery people. If you're listening to this, you pretty much have a great idea of, you know, what you should be doing if you need to make diet change to help improve body composition. But there are some things that can hold people back and the sort of keeping in foods which are...

18:23
Trigger foods for you, that's definitely one. Using food to soothe and not coming to grips with other ways to help deal with emotions and feelings, that's another. And ignoring the fact that being much more rigorous around what you're doing with the tracking is going to give you better outcomes than just that sort of guesstimating approach that you might be dealing with. So hopefully that's helpful for you. I don't know, you might've got something from that. Let me know. You can catch me over on Instagram, threads and Twitter @mikkiwilliden.

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Facebook @mikkiwillidenNutrition, head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com and book a one-on-one call with me and we can talk about which, if any of these, might be most helpful for you. All right, team, have the best day.