Episode 287: Building Confidence with Eating More Food | GET LIFTED
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
On today’s episode, Erin discusses how to transform fear and uncertainty into self-trust so that you can build a healthier relationship with eating more food. To do this, listen to the powerful mindset shifts shared throughout this discussion that will encourage you to reflect and then take action with confidence.
This will be the last Get Lifted Thursday episode for now - see you next Tuesday!
Resources Mentioned:
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
Learn more about Mindset
Related episodes:
285: Uncover Your Core Values | GET LIFTED
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt, and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast, where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model, they're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school in mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same.
Erin Holt [00:00:45]:
This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. You'll get things here that you won't get other places. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show rate review and share, because you never know whose life you might change and, of course, keep coming back for more. Now give me the mic so I can take it away. Hello, my friends. Today we're going to discuss a listener question about building confidence while eating more food.
Erin Holt [00:01:24]:
This is going to be a shorty episode because it's still technically a Get Lifted Thursday. However, this will be our last Get Lifted Thursday for a while, anyway. You know, I started adding a second episode every single week, and it was an experiment to see how it went. And I gave myself permission to change my mind, and I communicated that with everybody, and we are officially changing our minds. What's interesting is that despite adding a second episode every week, our listenership, our downloads actually decreased the past month. I historically have not been very focused on the numbers in my business in terms of downloads and social media engagement. I tend to do what feels good versus what the numbers tell me. And I'm also somebody who's extremely overworked, you know.
Erin Holt [00:02:19]:
That's the reality of the situation. I actually just started doing a strategy circle with Tanya Dalton where we are unpacking my entire business and reflecting upon 2023 and creating visions for 2024 and saying, hey, where's the gap? If you want to build all of this in the next year, what do you actually need to do in order to allow yourself to do that? What needs to come? What needs to go? And so I'm in that phase right now. It has been a very confronting experience because this is not the way my brain works. I'm like, I have an idea, wee let's do it. But the size of my team and the amount of work and responsibility on my plate really necessitates that I be a little bit more methodical about my choices. And so it's been kind of sobering because I'm recognizing that in order to do one thing, I have to let go of something else. So this is the something else.
Erin Holt [00:03:20]:
It just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't feel good to myself or my team to essentially do twice as much work every single week only to have a reduction in listenership, like, obviously just common sense. That doesn't feel good to anybody. The reason that I'm sharing all of this with you is because, number one, I always like to be very transparent in my business about decisions that we make. And number two, I want you to permission yourself to adopt a similar mentality when it comes to your life. Maybe your relationships, maybe your business, if you've got one of those. And I'm about to use a swear word, so ear muffs if you need them. But my philosophy is fuck it up and see what happens.
Erin Holt [00:04:08]:
And this is what I share with my mentees in the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. And we just had somebody recently share a big win in FNA. One of our practitioners shared a big win, and she said, drum roll, please. I used Erin's motto of fuck it up and see what happens. And so there's no failing. There's no failing. There is, I try something on for size.
Erin Holt [00:04:35]:
Do I like it. Does it work? Am I getting good results? Yes. Cool. No? Okay, we won't do that anymore. Nothing is, like, a big deal. So here we are. We're going to be, effective next week, going back to weekly episodes, and maybe that will change in the future too. The good news is that this will create more time and space for me to work on some other projects that I have in mind, one of which is our Funk'tional Friday sales.
Erin Holt [00:05:06]:
Those are going to start the Friday after Thanksgiving, and we are running huge sales on all of our self led courses, so get ready for that. My goal is to create at least one, maybe two more low ticket courses. So the ones that I'm currently creating the space to work on are diet-free digestion. So ways to support your overall digestion without having to do anything food related. So you can use this alongside any other healing protocol, any other dietary strategies. It's kind of like an adjunct therapy. And then also food sensitivities. So for those who struggle with a lot of ongoing food sensitivities, I want to build out a course for you too.
Erin Holt [00:05:51]:
So stay tuned for all of that. Okay, so let's get to the task at hand. When I first started these Get Lifted Thursday episodes, I put a poll on Instagram, or not a poll, a question sticker. And I said, anything you want me to talk about. These are short, like quick and dirty episodes. Anything, any topic you want to see and somebody submitted confidence to eat more food, that was it. There's no context. It's just confidence to eat more food.
Erin Holt [00:06:15]:
So I'm going to speak into this, okay, let's go. Now, the way that we build up confidence is not by not doing the thing. We build up confidence by doing the thing. So if you are looking to get more confidence eating more food, you're going to have to eventually get yourself to a place where you're eating more food. There's going to have to be some action here to actually build up that confidence. And also the action most likely is going to need to be pre framed with thought. Belief in mindset work in order to get you to a place where you feel safe enough to take that action step. And that's what today's episode is going to be all about, is how to preframe.
Erin Holt [00:07:00]:
I'm not going to tell you exactly how to strategize which foods to eat or what time of day to eat them or anything. I want to talk about the preframe because that is super important. Now, to me, confidence is the same thing as self trust. I trust myself to be a pillar in my own life. I trust myself to have my own back. I trust myself to uphold commitments to myself. I trust myself to carry myself through a hard situation. I trust myself that if something goes pear shaped, I can pull myself up, dust myself off and keep on going.
Erin Holt [00:07:34]:
So if you're telling me that you are experiencing a lack of confidence, that really translates to me as a lack of trust in oneself, a lack of trust in your own capabilities or your own body's capabilities. Also, if we are expecting something bad to happen on the other side of the action, that is of course going to impact our confidence to actually take that action. So what we need to do and what we need to drill into specifically for you, dear listener, is what that thing is on the other side. So I want you to fill in the blank here. When I eat more food, I will blank. What do you think or expect to happen on the other side of eating more food? And then a helpful question to ask is and why is that a problem? So when I eat more food, I will blank. And that is a problem because blank. So maybe when I eat more food, I'm afraid that my stomach will become bloated and distended.
Erin Holt [00:08:46]:
And that is a problem because I can't zip up my jeans and that makes me feel really uncomfortable and self conscious in public. Or when I eat more food, I will be in a lot of digestive pain and discomfort. And that is a problem because I don't really know what to do to get myself out of that digestive pain and discomfort. Or that is a problem because that triggers fear that something is really wrong with me digestively. When I eat more food I will have diarrhea and loose stools. And that is a problem because that's probably a fairly obvious problem. But fill in the blank when I eat more food, I will gain weight. And that is a problem because fill in the blank.
Erin Holt [00:09:39]:
So you can start to, using this, you can start to drill into what might be the underlying fear. What's underlying the fear or the lack of confidence of taking action steps. It might not be the actual food itself. We oftentimes make food the proxy for something much bigger in our lives. So an example of this, when I was 13, I dramatically reduced what I was eating. This started a long term relationship with disordered eating and eating disorders. But food itself wasn't the issue. Withholding food from myself, abstaining from eating made me feel powerful, it made me feel strong and it made me feel in control.
Erin Holt [00:10:24]:
This translated to safety to me, like I felt safe, I felt more stable when I was able to withhold food. So food became representative for my feelings of lack of power, lack of control, lack of agency and even lack of safety in my own life. So that's what I mean. We can use food as a proxy for something else in this is the deeper work that when we bypass it, it becomes more challenging to achieve long lasting sustainable results. This is the real root cause work that I talk about. If we do not dig this stuff up by the roots, it will most likely eventually grow back. So start here. Get clear on what you are afraid will happen when you eat more food.
Erin Holt [00:11:15]:
Get clear on why that registers as a problem to you. Now chances are you are expecting something bad or unpleasant to happen. Otherwise you wouldn't be lacking confidence. So two things to consider here. One is more like strictly biological. If you are expecting something bad to happen when you eat more food then every time you go to actually take that action step to eat more food, your body is going to be more pitched into a fight or flight, freeze or fawn response, not a rest and digest response. And we all know and understand that we really in order to appropriately digest process, metabolize our food, our bodies have to be in a rest and digest response. So already that's going to set you up for some potentially unpleasant reactions.
Erin Holt [00:12:04]:
But the other thing that has happened here is that you've coupled up an action with a result. You've coupled them together and then you've anchored them in as a belief. The thing about beliefs is that they defend themselves. So the belief is when I eat more food, this happens. And you have bought into that story hook, line and sinker. The longer that you believe the belief, the longer your brain is going to continue to look for and gather up evidence that it's absolute truth, meaning it is irrefutable, meaning that there is no other way to see this, meaning that this is the only potential for your reality. So if we want to change that result, that result that's coupled up with the action of eating more food, that result that is most likely unpleasant, the result that you most likely don't want to receive, part of doing this, part of this work is disproving and disrupting the belief. I call it poking holes at the belief.
Erin Holt [00:12:59]:
So we start to poke holes at the storyline that we're telling ourselves in believing as absolute truth. So one way to do this is to ask questions. Do I actually have evidence that this actually does happen, this thing that I'm afraid of? On the other side, do I have evidence that this actually does happen? Has this happened to me in the past? Does it happen all the time to me? Is there a time in my life when this didn't happen? Is this an absolute truth for everyone, everywhere, all of the time? So when other people do this, do they experience the same exact result that I'm afraid of? So what you're doing with this line of questioning is you're basically showing your mind that there is possibility, there are places and spaces where this belief is not absolute truth. And this is so important because the body is simply responding to the mind all of the time. So if we can get the mind to see something different, if we can get the mind to change its tune, if we can get the mind to believe that there's something else out there, this is not absolute truth, then the body will be more likely to follow suit. So we want to shout out Organifi. They make some awesome powders.
Erin Holt [00:16:01]:
It'll save you 20% off anything you buy. Whip. So again, we want to get really clear on what are you afraid of? What are you afraid will happen when you eat more food? And then I want you to ask yourself, and this is such an underutilized tool, I want you to ask yourself, what would I rather believe instead? This is what I believe will happen when I start to eat more food. What would I rather believe instead? That's like, write that down on a sticky note and put it everywhere. Real underutilized tool. Obviously, you don't have to just use it for food. You can use it in any aspect of your life. The next question after that is, ready? If I believed that, how would I feel before I ate? So that thing that you would rather believe instead, if you actually believe that, how would you show up to mealtime? How would you show up to food? What would you be thinking about before you ate? And can you practice feeling those feelings right now? Can you practice that behavior even right now? Can you approach sitting down to a meal as though those new beliefs were true? So, yes, all of this work so far up until this point is all happening at the level of the mind.
Erin Holt [00:17:40]:
I'm not telling you you have to chew more slowly or chew more quickly or eat right when you wake up, or make sure you're avoiding broccoli and cauliflower. I'm not saying any of this. This is all happening in the mind. Here's a really interesting study that I'm going to share with you. They looked at children with peanut allergies who are going through oral immunotherapy. And so oral immunotherapy is a treatment where you basically gradually consume small doses of the allergen until you steadily and slowly build up a tolerance to it. And so you're no longer allergic to it. Okay? That's what oral immunotherapy did.
Erin Holt [00:18:20]:
So they were looking at kiddos and they saw that by guiding these children to the mindset, that the uncomfortable side effects that they experienced going through this exposure therapy to peanuts were actually a sign that the therapy is working. When they did this, when they were like, hey, here's what's going to happen, and here's why that's a really good thing. This reduced overall anxiety. And this is a study by Stanford researchers. Stanford medicine researchers. Okay? And so when it was pre framed in their minds for these kiddos, all this is happening in the mind first, right? When it was pre framed for them that these reactions are actually helpful. They're actually useful. They're actually a good thing.
Erin Holt [00:19:08]:
The kids were not only less anxious when they were experiencing symptoms through the treatment, but they were less likely to experience symptoms. And same is true for after the treatment. When real peanuts were introduced, they were less likely to experience side effects. So what can we learn from this? We can learn that Expectant State is a really BFD. It's a big freaking deal. If you are sitting down before you eat and you are expecting something to happen, the likelihood that will happen is pretty high. The other thing is that part of the problem with symptoms and with reactions is the significance that the brain attaches to it. So telling ourselves a different story can be really helpful to navigate discomfort.
Erin Holt [00:19:59]:
So, for example, again, I don't have context for this individual who wrote in, but let's say part of the food fear, part of the lack of confidence of not eating more food is that you're worried about digestive discomfort. What if you created a whole new storyline around that digestive discomfort? Maybe it's not indicative of something is wrong. Maybe that's just your body getting used to digesting and processing more food. Maybe that's actually a really good sign. Your machinery, your equipment is getting ready and prepared to take on more. We know that the microbiome goes through a transition or adjustment period whenever we shift our food. So all of a sudden, if we start eating more fiber, we're going to get symptoms because the microbiome, the bacteria in the gut are like, whoa, we have this brand new food source that we haven't been exposed to, so there's going to be this transition period. So therefore, in those cases, digestive discomfort, digestive symptoms, it's not indicative that something is bad.
Erin Holt [00:20:57]:
It's indicative that, like, hey, the body is doing exactly what it needs to do. This is a good thing. This summer, I was going through what kind of felt like a bit of a flare up. I just had these really kind of wild and big symptoms, and they were relatively long lasting. I happened to be working with a phenomenal healer at the time who really helped me understand that this is reflective. What's happening outside in the body is really reflective of what's going on inside. I don't have to share the nitty gritty details of what was going on inside, but suffice it to say, it was big. It was a huge thing.
Erin Holt [00:21:35]:
Now, when I chose the story, I had really two options. I could choose the story like, oh my gosh, is this an autoimmune flare? I haven't had one of these in years. Does that mean my autoimmune condition is not in remission? Holy hell, this is scary. I'm using all of my tools, and if those aren't working, what else am I going to do? What is that going to do that's going to perpetuate more fear that fear is going to perpetuate more of a flight or fight response in my body. That flight or flight response in my body is going to perpetuate more stress and therefore more symptoms. So it's like the beat goes on. It just becomes this ongoing situation. Or the other option was to choose a different storyline.
Erin Holt [00:22:13]:
This is actually a natural and perhaps even necessary extension of my inner growth. So the body is sort of expressing what's going on with the emotional body inside. And I opted into that storyline, and when I was able to commit to that, oh, hey, guess what? The symptoms went away. So again, I will reiterate. Part of the problem with our ongoing symptoms and our ongoing reactions is the significance the brain attaches to it. So if we can give the brain a different story to attach to, then the body will respond differently. Another thing that we want to tuck into with this question is what is the reason for wanting to eat more food? If you're saying you're lacking confidence with eating more food, chances are there's some impetus to eat more food. There's something telling you that you should, or there's some desire there.
Erin Holt [00:23:04]:
And this actually might be helpful to go back to last week's episode where we talked about core values, because we unpacked desired values versus embodied values and the difference between the two. And it is a way to help you filter through and prioritize your values. And there might be conflicting values here. There might be one value that tells you, hey, don't eat the food. And there might be another value that tells you, hey, do eat the food. And so understanding what your drivers are, what your real top priority core values are, can maybe help to make some decisions in a different way. But really, this is all the stuff that needs to come first. Without understanding the whys behind your action or your lack of action, you're going to keep telling yourself, well, I should be doing this, but I'm not.
Erin Holt [00:23:56]:
You're going to label it as self sabotage or just continue to be frustrated with yourself. None of that, I repeat, none of that actually builds up the confidence that you're looking for. So understanding the whys behind all of this stuff helps you be more compassionate. It helps you be more forgiving. With this process, you want to do all the pre framework. So you're getting yourself to a place emotionally, mentally, and even physically, where you're not expecting the worst possible outcome. So that will help to shift your biology and your results. So if the person who submitted this question applies some of these tactics, please reach out DM me and let me know how you're doing with them.
Erin Holt [00:24:41]:
All right, my friends, I will see you next Tuesday. That old chestnut. And remember, be on the lookout for our Funk'tional Friday sales. They're coming in hot and they're going to be awesome. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.
