Habits That Harm & Habits That Heal

Transcript:

TERESA: Hello, this is Teresa, one of the dietitians at Nutritional Weight and Wellness. Before we start today's podcast, I have a question for you. Do you struggle with sugar cravings? And when I say sugar, I also mean bread, chips, crackers, cereal, and other processed foods. If so, join us August 22nd to the 26th for our free five-day online challenge called “How to Break Up with Sugar”.

During our free five-day challenge, you will learn the science behind sugar cravings while taking on daily attainable challenges that lay the critical foundation for a sugar breakup. You will have access to a private Facebook group, daily Facebook live events hosted by me, and exclusive daily challenge resources sent direct to your inbox.

If you're ready to take control of your sugar cravings, sign up for the five-day challenge by going to weightandwellness.com/challenge. That's weightandwellness.com/challenge. I hope you will join us August 22nd to the 26th for this free online challenge to break up with sugar. Thanks for listening to Dishing Up Nutrition and enjoy the show.

Join the “How to Break Up With Sugar” Challenge!

LEAH: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight and Wellness. I am really excited about the show today. Today we're going to talk about nutrition in a little different way than we normally do.

ALYSSA: How so Leah?

LEAH: Well, rather than talk about blood sugar balance or good fats versus harmful fats or the sugar connection to high cholesterol numbers or how probiotics are helpful for the gut, and don't get me wrong. All of that is super important. We love nerding out about that stuff.

ALYSSA: Oh yes. We can talk for hours about that.

LEAH: Yeah, but today we are going to address habits and specifically we're going to talk about habits that we have that harm us and habits that we have that heal us.

ALYSSA: I can think of many habits I used to have that were pretty harmful and some that I've adopted now that are much better.

LEAH: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. It's, it's a growth and learning process over time. Right?

ALYSSA: You get better with age.

LEAH: Yes. Hopefully.

ALYSSA: Hope so. That's the goal.

What are your harmful and healing habits for your health?

LEAH: Yeah. So before we get started, before we really launch into that topic, I want to just pause and have our listeners either take out a piece of paper and a pencil, or just jot down a couple mental notes. But think about what is say your most harmful habit to your health, or maybe the one that might be keeping you from reaching whatever your health goal or goals are. What do you think is that one thing that really puts the breaks on things?

ALYSSA: Another thing to think about too is just those seasonal habits. So maybe if you're a parent of school ages like myself and you know, we're starting to get ready for the school year to begin. Does that, does your schedule change? Do you have some habits during the school year that don't serve you as well?

LEAH: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great example, Alyssa, because that is, I know on many people's minds nowadays is, you know, that end of summer.

ALYSSA: Getting all that lunch stuff prepped.

LEAH: Yeah. That, that kind of changing of the schedules that's coming up in the next couple of weeks. So take inventory of maybe what's that most harmful habit. And then on the flip side, let's think about, you know, either flip that piece of paper over or, or again, take another mental note and think about what habits or one particular habit do you have that actually heals you. All right.

ALYSSA: So those beneficial habits for you, right?

LEAH: Absolutely. So I am Leah Kleinschrodt. I'm a registered and licensed dietitian and I'm also a mom to two little kiddos. So Landon, my son is going to be four years old this coming week. He has a birthday coming up.

ALYSSA: Happy birthday, Landon.

LEAH: Yeah. And I also have a little girl named Carly. She just turned six months old this past week. So we kind of had some good milestones coming up in August here. So this is our first year, to your example, Alyssa, where we're going back to school, quote, unquote, like this is the first year Landon is starting to…

ALYSSA: Starting a new process.

LEAH: Yes. It's, it's going to be a completely new process for our family. And so it is it's, this is the first time I've kind of had to wrap my brain around what is that new routine going to look like come September when he is going to school, even though it's just a few days.

ALYSSA: Do you get to pack his lunches too?

LEAH: You know, honestly, I don't even know. We're going to have to figure that out. Yeah. So again, new routines, new ways of thinking and what kind of new habits do we want to set ourselves up with?

Dietitian, Leah’s past harmful habits

So I counsel out of our Woodbury office and I am so grateful and thrilled to be able to work part-time as a dietitian with Nutritional Weight and Wellness on top of being a full-time mom. So now you know a little bit about me. I am going to get a little more personal for just a couple of minutes and share an example or two of some of my more harmful habits and some things that I've been able to change over time to more healing habits. So we're going to date back a couple of years back to my undergraduate program.

ALYSSA: Pre-kids.

LEAH: Yes, definitely pre-kids, pre-marriage, you know, long time ago. I won't even say how long ago at this point, but we're going to go back to my undergraduate program. And at that time I fell into this habit of eating as low fat or as non-fat as I possibly could, because that's what I believed was the way to…

ALYSSA: That's what everyone did.

LEAH: Yeah. It was the way to stay at a healthy weight and I have a family history of heart disease. And so that was the common narrative at that time, too, of like fat is one of those big culprits that leads to heart disease.

ALYSSA: So it's more of a family habit too, then. Just everyone in your family followed low fat.

LEAH: Yeah. So that's kind of how I believed would be healthy for me, both in that short term and long-term thinking as I aged and things like that. The problem is, and we see this in our clients all the time, when you restrict fat, when you go low, low fat, oftentimes those scales tend to tip in favor of more of the high carbohydrate diets.

ALYSSA: People aren't usually eating a bunch of chicken and steak instead.

LEAH: Yep, exactly. Because, well, because sometimes those meats get a bad connotation too. Right?

ALYSSA: They're high fat.

LEAH: Mm-hmm. And so when you tip the scale more on the side of carbohydrates, it wasn't like I was eating necessarily more fruit. It tended to tip more along the lines of the breads, the bagels, cereals, pastas. So more of those processed, refined carbohydrates. And at that time, I didn't realize that for my body that was not a healing way to eat. I, I had a lot of anxiety at that time. I also about my sophomore year in college developed some chronic digestive issues. My knees were starting to bother me, kind of getting some chronic knee pain and I craved sugar.

ALYSSA: And you were too young to be experiencing all that knee pain.

LEAH: That's what I thought too. But I also, again, family history of some of knee problems. So what I, what I ended up realizing was that this diet just was working against me. At that time though, I didn't realize that it was creating blood sugar surges day in and day out. I'll talk to my clients about this, about it being a blood sugar roller coaster. It's deficient in nutrients. And that was one big thing that was causing me to have a lot of anxiety.

ALYSSA: And you don't know what you don't know.

Dietitian, Leah’s healing journey

LEAH: Right. So, and this went on for probably a good eight years or so. I was kind of doing the math there. And so now let me tell you about my healing journey. So I, it wasn't actually until I started working for Nutritional Weight and Wellness, which was eight years ago now. I just decided to give this way of eating a try: real food, protein, carb, fat, every three to four hours throughout the day: kept it really simple. And my mindset was all right: what's the worst thing that could happen?

ALYSSA: You feel better.

LEAH: Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's the worst thing that could happen by just eating simple real foods in balance?

ALYSSA: You did a little experiment in yourself.

LEAH: Yeah. I stopped the low fat, the fat free dieting; started adding, you know, a tablespoon or so of those natural fats to each meal. I started eating more protein and I, I kept hearing from our clients and our students who were going to these classes about how great they felt and how, how life changing it was for many of them. And so guess what? After three weeks of eating this way of just really being consistent of changing up my habits and eat getting some of those real fats in, my anxiety dramatically reduced, 80% of my gut issues improved. And I had zero cravings.

ALYSSA: That's awesome.

LEAH: Yeah. I was sold: hook, line and sinker, and now eight years later, this is just the way I eat. This is my real food diet.

ALYSSA: It's just who you are.

LEAH: Yeah. It's my new habit. It's the automatic choice for me now, but I just want to also share that that was not always the case. It took changing habits and it took years to kind of instill some of those good habits. And I just wanted to share that because often people get stuck in those habits that they believe, you know, at the time they believe are a beneficial habit, but later on, they, they learn that this is that it might be a more of a harmful one or that they have some habits that are not serving them as much as they think they are. So the more we know the better we do.

And joining me today is, you've heard her voice a couple of times is Alyssa Krejci, who is also a registered and licensed dietitian. She has some personal details that she's going to share as well. As an adolescent, she had some eating habits that were not so great for her body and her brain. And Alyssa, we have about one minute before we have to go to our first break, but how about maybe just tell the listeners a little bit about you.

Dietitian, Alyssa’s past harmful habits & current healing habits

ALYSSA: Yeah. Just a quick snippet. I kind of mentioned at the beginning that yeah, I had some harmful habits earlier on similar to you, more so dating back earlier, all the way to high school that I had harmful beliefs, eating habits that I experienced. And I also experienced anxiety just like you were experiencing. I was given, you know, good, a good balanced dinner with meat, vegetables, a grain by my parents after school or after dance class. However, as a teen, you know, you're busy. You have activities. So I was in charge of my food choices most of my day. And unfortunately, was I choosing meat, vegetables, fruit, healthy fats? No. I wasn't. I was choosing more of those processed foods.

LEAH: Yeah. That's super common, especially once you have a little of that autonomy as a teenager. You go off to college and things like that.

ALYSSA: And you see what everyone else is eating. And you're like, oh, this is just, you know, everyone else has French fries or bagels and cereal. This is just what you eat.

LEAH: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, Alyssa let's, that was a great little teaser. I want to come back to your story on the other side of break. So you are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight and Wellness. And our topic today is habits that harm and habits that heal. And a little later on in the show, we will get to more of Alyssa's personal story and also talk about key points from a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. So stay tuned to learn how habits control our lives. And we'll be right back.

BREAK

ALYSSA: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Research has found that 40% of what we do daily, our actions are not from our choices, but strictly from habits we've established. If you have many harmful eating habits, we invite you to make an appointment with one of our Weight and Wellness nutritionists or dietitians to learn how to replace harmful habits with healing habits. Call us at (651) 699-3438 to get on our schedule.

Schedule a Nutrition Consultation

LEAH: Yeah, I think that is so interesting. Like you and we we'll talk about that in just a little bit here, Alyssa, where it's 40% of what we do in our day means we're just on autopilot.

ALYSSA: Yep. It's our brain wants to make things easier for us, less work for it to do. So it'll create those habits in place to save itself energy.

LEAH: Yeah. Absolutely. And it makes a lot of sense. Okay. So Alyssa, we, I had to cut you off from your wonderful story last time before we went to break. So let's, let's get you back in cause you were saying, you know, as a teenager, it sounded like a lot of times at home you were getting some good nutritious balanced meals. But it was more outside the home where as a teenager now you had a little more autonomy or freedom to make your own choices. That's where some of the stuff started to fall apart.

ALYSSA: Yeah, if you look at the meals that my parents were cooking, they were pretty square, balanced meals: meat, starch, vegetable. Did I always eat all of it? I didn't really care for a whole lot of the texture of meat. So I remember many times sitting at the table refusing to eat it and not being allowed to leave all the time, unfortunately. But outside the home, I was not choosing a lot of those foods. I was seeing what everyone else was eating at the lunch, when you would go to school lunch. You could choose from yes, the main lunch meal or you could get a la carte items. I got the a la carte items.

I wasn't getting the meal. And my parents were busy so early on in like elementary school, because I was also picky; they were like, you get to make your own lunch if you want or you get to buy lunch. I chose the easy route and I just bought lunch.

LEAH: Yeah.

ALYSSA: But yeah, those choices I was making, when I would buy lunch, it was things like I remember in, I went through the stage of getting cheese fries. That was big. Not the greatest, but that was a big thing or cereal, bagels with grape jam: very tasty and convenient foods. But ultimately they were working against me. I was tired. I was anxious. And I also lived with a lot of fear of foods. I was thinking similar to you of like, oh, fat is bad and if I want to stay this size, kind of not thinking, oh, you're a teenager and you should still be growing.

LEAH: Yeah.

ALYSSA: I was like, oh, I'm not as tall as my mom. I should be done, you know, don't get any bigger. So I had some fears that I had to work through and you know, unfortunately it wasn't and more fortunately I did eventually gain some more knowledge. I had some great teachers and mentors, especially as I got more into college. And I began to look at food more as a fuel source to nourish my body and my mind and not so much as my enemy that needed to be controlled.

I worked on slowly changing. So it was definitely, wasn't a night and day thing. I remember in high school, the first change I went from buying a la cart items to just getting the school meal.

LEAH: Yeah.

ALYSSA: So not necessarily the best choice still, but it was still, you got a vegetable, had some protein.

LEAH: Yes.

ALYSSA: Some fruit.

LEAH: Yeah.

ALYSSA: It was better than what I was doing prior. And then as I continued into college, you know, I started being even more in control, especially as I had my own apartment that I would make myself animal proteins, have vegetables at lunch, have vegetables at dinner, increasing the portion size of vegetables from just maybe like a half a cup to one cup to now oftentimes I enjoy a large serving of vegetables. Maybe not as much as my husband likes to enjoy, but I still get much more in there.

And I started using real fat. So butter; my husband, he often likes to point out to me that back when we first started dating and were together, I was very cautious about adding fat still. So I get all that fake butter and I was like, no cream have to, you know, watch things, be careful; saturated fats bad. And now you look in our fridge and there's real butter. There's cream.

LEAH: Yeah. Your husband calling it like it is.

ALYSSA: Oh yeah. Like now we even have ghee, avocado oil, we're using all sorts of things.

LEAH: Yeah. Yeah.

ALYSSA: It’s much, much better. And I discovered that when I incorporated these good healing, you know, quality proteins and healthy fats and vegetables and fruits throughout my day, I had more energy and I experienced less anxiety. So with that education and a bit, a lot of trial and error over the years, I have changed my mindset and my habits to be more health promoting.

So my mind's kind of shifted away from being more restrictive around food when I was more high school, early college to being much more thinking, okay, I want to fuel my body in a kind and loving way. And what does that look like for me? It looks like eating real foods full of nutrients throughout the day the majority of the time.

LEAH: Yeah. That's, I love that story. That's a great example. And so, you know, for you listeners out there now you've heard a little bit about both of our backgrounds and our stories. You know, examples of food habits that we've had that are harmful food habits that we manage to find or kind of develop over time that were helpful. And I think maybe a good takeaway there is, I think both of us pointed out that it takes time sometimes to sometimes it's weeks, sometimes it's even years to make those baby steps or to make those changes into more helpful…

ALYSSA: And to experiment with different things to see what works for you, because what works for me might not work for you in terms of how I manage to get those good foods in.

LEAH: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. That's a great point. And so now for you listeners, let's look at some of the daily habits you may have. And would you say they are more healing habits or more harmful habits?

Habits play a powerful role in our actions

So it may surprise you, you know, when we came back from break and I mentioned that more than 40% of the actions that we take every day are not from those actual decisions that we're making, but strictly from habits. 40%! What we do are from the habits that we have established. A book I found really enjoyable to, I listen to it on audio book, but I know some people really like the paper with, with kids in the house sometimes. The only way I finish the book is on audio. But it was called The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg and the book is divided into three sections.

The first section focuses on how habits emerge within people's lives. Charles Duhigg explored the neurology of habits, how to build new habits and how to change old habits that are harmful. His book also looked at habits of successful companies and even habits of society. So kind of like how I mentioned when we were talking earlier, Leah, about more of those family habits that you may have grown up with.

It was just the society, the culture that you lived in, and that's what you learned. Today, we are just focusing on how to develop good healing habits and how we can start to let go of some of those harmful habits we may have. A key takeaway I got from The Power of Habits book, is that transforming or changing a habit isn't necessarily easy, quick or simple. Again, we mentioned it takes time, but with the time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.

It is possible. However, you do, you do have to believe that you can break a habit. You can't just be like, oh, I'm going to break this habit. But then secretly being like, yeah, no, never going to happen. You have to believe it. And when you believe it, then that change can become real.

LEAH: Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. You have to kind of know or have some of that buy-in in the beginning. And then, you know, we do have to take our second break here, but we're going to come back and we're going to talk about a lot of grocery store habits, which I know is a kind of a special near and dear to your heart, Alyssa.

ALYSSA: Yes.

LEAH: Yes. So you are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition and I believe a quote from Maya Angelou describes my approach and, and most of the counselors’ approach here at Nutritional Weight and Wellness to counseling. She said, “Do the best you can until you know better, then you can do better.”

So in nutrition therapy sessions, we help to educate you so you will know better. So you can do better. We don't just say stop eating sugar. We help you understand why eating sugar is a harmful habit and what you can do to replace some of those habits. So if you need help with eliminating those harmful habits, we can help. Call us at (651) 699-3438 and we'll be right back.

Schedule A Nutrition Counseling Appointment

BREAK

ALYSSA: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. If you are experiencing hot flashes, mood swings, sleep problems, or weight gain, let me suggest signing up for our six-hour online Menopause Solution seminar. This seminar is taught by two charming, delightful, knowledgeable nutritionists who will help you find a solution to your personal menopause symptoms. Want to learn more before you sign up? Read the full description at weightandwellness.com or call us at (651) 699-3438 and ask your questions.

Sign Up for Menopause Solutions!

LEAH: Yes. I love the Menopause Seminar.

ALYSSA: It is good.

LEAH: Yeah. I, I took it once or twice when we were doing it in person and stuff like that. And I will argue, you know, as a woman in her thirties right now, I think if women started thinking ahead a little bit and maybe started looking into the Menopause Solution seminar or learning some about some of this stuff in your thirties, early forties before some of these symptoms hit.

ALYSSA: Yeah. I took it this last spring and it it's a good, and I definitely, not at that stage yet, but it was a great tidbits to kind of get me ready. So definitely a good class.

LEAH: Yeah. To have some of those resources or just have some of that knowledge in your back pocket for when some of these things creep in or before you get to that stage of life; so helpful to just be prepared and to know that there are things that you can do again, even simple nutrition tweaks that you can do to help mitigate some of those symptoms. I mean, I, that is just so powerful. Just that knowledge going into it is so powerful.

ALYSSA: Knowledge is power.

LEAH: Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Okay. So before we went to break, we were just kind of talking about again, habits and how 40% of what we do in our day is just some of those autopilot behaviors and habits. So now we wanted to bring us back and we said, we're going to talk about some of the habits that we have around going to the grocery store. Because that's, that's…

ALYSSA: I spent much my life in the grocery store as a retail dietitian.

LEAH: Exactly. Yes. So I know you have lots of great insights into the background of just how the minds of the retailers work, Alyssa.

ALYSSA: Yeah. You, you go in and they're all about, you know, we want to at the grocery store, the people that are setting up all those displays, they're all about adding dollars to the cart, right?

LEAH: Mm-hmm.

ALYSSA: So they're trying to sell you more food.

LEAH: Yeah, absolutely. And, and if you're not prepared or could see through some of that marketing, it's really easy to overspend a bit at the grocery store.

ALYSSA: Yeah, there’s a lot flashiness. And you're like, ooh, I'll try that.

LEAH: Yeah. Yeah. So for our listeners, maybe think for a moment, like when you walk into that grocery store, what is your first step? You know, do you head right to the bakery aisle smelling the French bread and sweet rolls? Or is it your habit to go right to the produce aisle and pick out the best looking and freshest, say fruits and vegetables? Like, what is your habit? What are those first things that you do when you walk into the store?

3-step loop process in forming habits

ALYSSA: Yes. Think through that. You know, a formation of a habit, whether it's a harmful habit or a healing habit, it's a three step loop process. So the first step is there's a cue or you might call it a trigger. And that trigger tells your brain that it can go on autopilot and use a specific habit loop that it has stored as this is what you do. This is our action that we take next. The cue could be as simple as the smell of sugar and cinnamon as you're walking past that bakery, which tells your brain to go into automatic mode like, oh, I smell that cinnamon is delicious. Now I want to go get and buy that cinnamon roll to enjoy and eat later.

This could be a trigger that's often connected to an emotion. So maybe when you were growing up, you remember your mom lovingly making fresh cinnamon rolls to have ready for you on Saturday mornings. You know, it's that warm, fuzzy feeling.

The second part have the habit loop is your routine. So how that habit influences what you do, what you think, what you feel; kind of your actions you take. And then the third step of the loop is that reward that you experience afterwards. So the reward helps your brain figure out if that particular habit loop is worth the effort of completing. The sugar and the pastry gives you a dopamine release and you're motivated to want more.

In the long run, going to get a cinnamon roll every time you smell it; we go buy groceries every single week, right? Sometimes multiple times a week. So when you're doing that, if you buy those cinnamon rolls every time that can over time be a really harmful habit and it can be difficult to break because of those strong emotional ties that you have to that behavior.

LEAH: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So when you have an established habit, your brain stops making decisions. And Alyssa, you mentioned that earlier that your brain wants our processes and our day to day things to be automatic, to be efficient and to be easy.

ALYSSA: Yes.

How to break bad habits

LEAH: So then how can you take that step back if you know you have a habit that is more harmful than it is helpful, how do you break that cycle? How do you break that habit of checking out the pastries at the grocery store?

ALYSSA: Mm-Hmm.

LEAH: you know, unfortunately as humans, we're good at rationalizing some of our not so helpful behaviors. You might end up saying, you know, I will buy just one or maybe just one more this time. Or I will I'll get the gluten free one this time.

ALYSSA: Yeah. Sometimes we have those, those cravings hit and really in the back of our minds, we've already decided that we're going to give into that craving eventually.

LEAH: Yeah.

ALYSSA: But we just kind of keep delaying it. You know, it be interesting. What would happen if, just ask what would happen if I don't buy that cinnamon roll? Kind of give yourself a pause.

LEAH: Mm-hmm. I love that question. Like, if you can, like you said, give yourself that pause and say, well, what if I were to choose a different path this time?

ALYSSA: Yeah. Approach it with some curiosity.

LEAH: Mm-Hmm. Mm-hmm. 

ALYSSA: Instead of just giving yourself all of those excuses of like, oh, well, no, I deserve this. I'm being really good so far. We, we, we can come off with all good things, right?

LEAH: Yes, yes. And so, and our listeners will know, you know, probably after many years or after listening to Dishing Up Nutrition that even, even those gluten free pastries, they're still often loaded with the sugars. They use just a different kind of starch. So maybe it's like rice flour or potato starch. So those things that still turn into a lot of sugar in the body.

ALYSSA: Exactly.

LEAH: And, and we know that, our brain knows that sugar and flour is addicting and it's hard to stop at one, but unless you deliberately fight that harmful habit, or you deliberately try to create that new routine, just that, that automatic pattern or, or habit starts to unfold without you even really thinking about it. And then you're in that habit of buying and eating the pastries, even when you know, you know, when that higher brain of yours knows intellectually, it's going to cause you to have aches and pains, or you're going to want more sugar in two hours later after you leave the grocery store. So Charles Duhigg quoted research that found that habits really never disappear. They just get encoded into the structures of our brain.

ALYSSA: Yeah. Your brain: it can't tell the difference between a harmful habit and a beneficial habit. They're just habits. So if you have harmful habits that they're always lurking in the brain, just waiting, waiting around for the right cue and you know, the trigger and then the reward that's going to come after it. And that's going to pull you off your track of healing.

LEAH: Okay. So let's, let's back us up a little bit and go through that three step habit loop again where that the first part's the queue, the next part is the, the actual routine of doing. And then the third part is, is the reward part. So what we find is that if one of the best places to intervene or to try to break that loop is at the queue part.

And that's all not always possible, but if we can kind of look at that queue and say, all right, how can we change it, interrupt it, or, or just make it different enough so that we can interrupt the rest of the loop, that's a great place to start. So let's think back at the beginning of the show, we asked you listeners to think about what is that one harmful habit, or maybe those couple of things that are getting in your way of reaching your goals. All right. So think about that. Think about, you know, can you identify that cue or what starts that habit loop for you? What starts you down that, that path?

ALYSSA: What’s your trigger?

LEAH: Yep, exactly. And how do we change that? So one way is to make it invisible, make that cue or that trigger invisible.

ALYSSA: Reduce your actual exposure to your queue.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly. And this is something we talk about with our clients all the time in the counseling room. You know, we talk about making, say your, your home environment, making that your safe place. And that means keeping the trigger foods or keeping some of those cues out of your house. Don't buy it. Don't even keep it in like the little pantry area or like that little…

ALYSSA: Your hiding spots that you keep from the kids.

LEAH: Exactly. Yes. Because you have, yeah. For some of us, especially if those habits are really ingrained or that power, that like those foods have hold so much power over us. Even if you don't see it, you still know it's there. And it just, the access is too easy at that point.

ALYSSA: Yes.

LEAH: And for some people that's the ice cream. For some people it's the breads, or maybe it's the chips and for other people, it's the wine or some of those alcohol things. So keep it out of your house. And that kind of bridges us into a different way to, to kind of interrupt those cues is to make it difficult because now if you haven't bought it, if you really choose to…

ALYSSA: You have to leave your house.

LEAH: Yeah. 

ALYSSA: You have to get your keys. You have to drive your car, use gas, which is as expensive as ever right now. So it becomes, you know, less attractive in a way, which that's another thing, you know, of course we don't always have complete control of what foods are around us in our environment.

LEAH: Yes.

ALYSSA: You know, prior to working at Nutritional Weight and Wellness, I spent many years as a retail dietitian. And I remember one perk was always being surrounded by lots of food and having those cakes and treats that, you know, the birthday cakes that the customer didn't pick up. They were still made.

LEAH: Yes.

ALYSSA: And they would end up in the employee break room for the employees to just enjoy. And I found I struggled with this for a bit, you know, I was like, oh, that looks really good.

LEAH: You were getting exposed a lot.

ALYSSA: I was, it was like constant, you know, I was a full-time retail, dietitian. And so every day go upstairs to the break room's like, oh, there's cake or cookies or candies or something there. And I found the book by James Clear, Atomic Habits, to be really beneficial. And a step he mentioned of just making those, making it unattractive. And so what I did was changing my mindset, kind of reframing how I thought about those “treats”, that narrative in my head shifted. And I would think to myself, oh, you know, maybe the, the cake is old or, oh, it's full of those damaged fats and added sugars.

And that, that just didn't really fit my food values. And so it wasn't something I wanted to eat. You know, he often in the book, James Clear often mentioned too, making it more difficult, like we said, so we're creating resistance, you're creating more steps to actually have it in place or making a habit more unsatisfying.

So looking back at those, what you wrote down for what listeners wrote down for their unhelpful habit that we’re maybe trying to change, think through how can you maybe make your habit more unattractive, more unsatisfying? What things could you do? Sometimes we have more of like a progress partner, someone that you talk, you know, someone that has your back, that's going to help you keep accountable having a contract. So if you, if you do the habit it's going to cost you. It's going to hurt in some way.

LEAH: Yeah. Well, and I love your example too, of like for you, it was just kind of flipping what you're telling yourself in your brain of, of is this going to be helpful or harmful for me? So we actually have to take our third break. You are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition and we have something special for all our listeners from Woodbury and Western Wisconsin. Starting Thursday evening, this Thursday, August 18th. And for the following six weeks, we are offering our six-week Weight and Wellness classes. For six Thursdays, you will spend two hours learning nutrition that will support you with your long-term health goals. I love this series and I love that both nurses and social workers get continuing education credit. So it's a, win-win. You get the professional education, but also education for your own personal health and wellness plan. So if you're interested in either learning more or signing up for this series, give us a call at (651) 699-3438. And we'll be right back.

Weight and Wellness series

ALYSSA: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. I want to alert you to next week's show so you can make sure to be, to tune in. It'll be Britni and Mel, and they'll be talking about why sugar makes us gain weight. If you have questions this week, leave them on our private Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook page. You can join the Facebook page by going to facebook.com/groups/dishingupnutrition.

Join Our Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook Group!

So before we went to break Leah, we were talking a little bit more about that habit loop and how we can break those unhelpful bad habits. We mentioned trying to change your environment, making those cues, those triggers invisible, making them more unattractive, finding ways to make it more difficult to actually complete the habit. So create resistance in the steps, you know, increase the number of steps. So it's harder to complete the habit and then just making it unsatisfying.

So how can you make that habit actually cost you so that you don't want to do the habit? It kind of adds a little bit of maybe even like financial pain or something. You're like, oh yeah, I'd rather not do that habit.

LEAH: Yeah. Yeah. One of those, one of those examples of making that habit unsatisfying or, or making that queue unsatisfying, you shared a great one the other day when we were talking about preparing for the show of, if you sign up for an exercise class and say, you want to try to cancel last minute, say there's a five or $10 fee to cancel or to reschedule last minute. Like that, so that would be an example of how can you make it unsatisfying or make it a little more unpleasant to…

ALYSSA: I stopped skipping any exercise classes when I started doing that.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly. So that's, I, I, I, that was a really great example of, of what you shared there in terms of trying to make it unsatisfying, or just make it a little more unpleasant to, to get out of trying to do the good habits.

ALYSSA: Yeah, yeah. Especially for those early morning classes when you're sleepy and it's like, oh, the snooze button looks really good, but oh, I don't want to have to pay 10 or $25 because I didn't get out of bed.

How can we develop more healing habits?

LEAH: Yes, absolutely. And so, so those are just some great examples or just kind of some things to think about how do we interrupt some of those old habits or those unhelpful habits. Now let's think about how can we develop more healing habits. And so realizing that the unhealthy habit cannot just be wiped out of your brain. Remember it's kind of ground into those structures in your brain now-those habits.

We need to replace the bad habits with good habits. So I want to say that again. We can't just wipe out the unhelpful habits. We need to replace it with those healing habits. So now when you go into the grocery store, instead of going right to the pastry aisle or right for the bread aisle, you take that sharp turn and go right to the produce aisle instead.

ALYSSA: Change your route.

LEAH: Change your route. Absolutely.

ALYSSA: At the grocery stores, they love to actually sometimes reset the whole store.

LEAH: Ugh. Yes.

ALYSSA: Drives everyone nuts, but it gets everyone out of their habits.

LEAH: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. It that's funny. It's, you know, that's, there's memes out there about that whole thing about, you know, if you change out the layer, the layout of the grocery store, yes. It forces you to get out of it, takes those blinders off and say, I need to relearn how to do this.

ALYSSA: And then, and then they might sell more food because you're looking other places again. Those blinders are off.

LEAH: Finding new things. Absolutely. Yes. And so once you switch some of those unhealthy grocery buying habits, you find other unhealthy habits start to fade away. So making that replacement is one way to instill some of these healing habits. Another kind of play on this concept is to actually attach your new habit or the thing that you want to do to an already existing habit. So this is one way that you can figure out how it fits into your life. One example: I, I think I shared this on the show a couple of weeks ago. For me, one of my goals was to trying to increase water and trying not to get too far into my day before I started drinking water. And so my existing habit is that coffee. I don't skip my coffee in the morning.

ALYSSA: Most everyone loves their coffee. There's a lot of people that do.

LEAH: Yep, exactly. I'm sure it's, that's a, a popular one with us listeners, with our listeners. So I decided, okay, well, and I'm going to take my coffee mug, fill it with water and put it by my coffee pot. And my rule is I have to finish the water before I can have coffee. So now I have that new habit of drinking water before the coffee, but I've attached it to the existing habit of like, I don't skip my coffee in the morning. The coffee's always going to be there.

ALYSSA: Yeah. I find sometimes even leaving my water bottle, like a fresh water bottle on my nightstand the night before, so then it's ready. And I just, I get up and I grab my water. Cause it's the first thing it's kind of, you know, the idea of making that good habit obvious. The water bottle's right there. I wake up, I grab my water and I just start drinking it right away.

LEAH: Yep. Absolutely.

ALYSSA: Don't even see the coffee pot yet.

LEAH: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great example as well. And so these, some of these are just establishing healing habits one at a time. And one thing I wanted to just mention before our show ends today is if you're just looking for a place to start or, or kind of looking for some of these ways to break some of the old habits and instilling some new habits, we are going to be running a sugar challenge at the end of August here.

ALYSSA: Yes.

LEAH: So we did this actually in May. It was so successful. So many people had so many great benefits from this. So we decided we wanted to run it again. There were hundreds of people that joined the first time around. And so it was a really popular topic. And I think this ties…

ALYSSA: It was really helpful.

LEAH: Yeah. And this ties in nicely to our topic today about the harmful habits that we might have around sugar. So if our listeners out there struggle with sugar cravings, and this includes things, not just the simple sugars, but things like the breads and the chips and other processed foods, please join us on August 22nd. That's the start date. And it'll run through August 26th. And so we'll take on daily attainable challenges that lay the critical foundation for a breakup with sugar, basically. And so if you are interested in joining that, join us, you can go to our website. It's weightandwellness.com/challenge. So that's weightandwellness.com/challenge.

Join the "How to Break Up With Sugar" Challenge

ALYSSA: I think that'd be a great challenge for a lot of people to sign up for and get that support, that community built up there.

LEAH: Yes.

ALYSSA: And you know, some of my clients thinking back to like when you were mentioning your family, where everyone was just growing up, it was all low fat, just because of some of those family health concerns, some of my clients could remember just how they grew up and their family sitting down to watch TV with the TV dinner. Right?

LEAH: Mm-hmm.

ALYSSA: So foods became more convenient and TV dinners offered that convenience. So parents didn't have to spend the time making dinner in the kitchen, especially as activities out of the home increased. Instead of just wondering, you know, maybe those TV dinners replacing those home cooked meals might have been that start generationally of that habit to just eat more convenient, eat and purchase more convenient meals such as the pizza or, or ordering out Chinese. Or now I always think about the, the phone apps that you can just click the app and then it delivers it. Right?

LEAH: Yep. Absolutely.

ALYSSA: So how, and when did you develop each of your eating habits? And most importantly, can you replace harmful food and eating habits with healing ones? For you to change the habit, it must be possible. Right?

LEAH: Yeah, absolutely. So our goal at Nutritional Weight and Wellness is to help each and every person experience better health through eating real food. And this includes getting those great habits in. It's a simple yet powerful message that eating real food is life changing. Thank you for joining us today and have a great day.

ALYSSA: Thank you.