5 New Years Resolutions You’ve Never Heard Before

Transcript

Irreverent, entertaining, cool. You're listening to LA Talk Radio. You're listening to the Dr. Nina show, with Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, only on LA Talk Radio.

Dr. Nina:
Hey there, welcome to the Dr. Nina show here on LA Talk Radio. I am your host, Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, and I am here to help you stop counting calories, carbs, and fat grams. I am here to help you stop dieting so you can easily get to a healthy weight and get on with your life. That is my goal for you. I want you to wake up and think about your day, not your diet.

Today I am going to be talking about five New Year’s resolutions that you have never heard of before, and after that I'm going to take calls. The number here is 323 203-0815. 323 203-0815, give me a call after I talk about the New Year’s resolutions because I really want to hear what is on your mind. I really want to hear what is going on with you, because the real problem with binge eating, stress eating, any kind of emotional eating, the real problem isn't food. The real problem is what is eating at you.

Okay. So here we go, five New Year’s resolutions you have never heard before, probably. And these will get you off to a great start in 2021. This is the last show of what a year, 2020, I am so ready to say bye-bye to 2020 as I'm sure you all are as well. So let's talk new year's resolutions.

Have you ever wondered why so many new year's resolutions fail? That is one simple reason, and that is because goals for a new year new me, they're usually all about behavior. It's something that you're going to do or not do. You're going to lose weight, you're going to stop eating carbs, you're going to go to the gym more often, you're going to do whatever it is that you are going to do, it is all about behavior. And while those are good goals to have I guess, they are doomed to failure, because as I'm sure you know, will powering your way through will actually prevent you from achieving those goals in the long run. Will power doesn't work in the long run.

So try this instead. Instead of focusing on changing your behavior, focus on being your own best friend. Yes, your own best friend. Why is that? Why is it important to be your own best friend? Because when you are your best friend to yourself, you are being nice to yourself, and when you're nice to yourself, you are more likely to be motivated to do and achieve the things you want to do. When you are mean to yourself, you are more likely to do the things that continue to keep you stuck or use will power or feel bad about yourself, and then there you are slave driving yourself and you end up going to the kitchen to eat something. So, let's try this in 2021. Let's try something new.

Instead of setting a resolution to lose weight, stop eating carbs, go to the gym more often, I challenge you to do one of these, or all of them. All would be good, one is good too. Because if you take up one or five or somewhere in between of these resolutions, you may actually achieve what you want and you will maintain it in the long run. We want this to be a longterm solution and not a short term, grit your teeth and bear it and bake yourself do something or make yourself not do something.

So commitment, number one, resolution number one is recommit. Take a moment to recommit to you. Recommit to yourself, visualize a revitalized, glowing, thriving you, a happy you, a you that feels good in your body and in your life. Create an intention to recommit to your wellbeing, your emotional wellbeing, your physical wellbeing, your wellbeing. And that can sound like, “I am committing to myself, I'm committing to my health, to my happiness, and to self acceptance and love.” That is what it means to recommit.

Number two, reevaluate. Ask yourself, what is stopping you from feeling good and being happy? Maybe you believe you need to lose weight to feel happy. Maybe you believe you need to lose weight to feel confident. Listen, you know how much I like these gardening metaphors, which is very ironic for someone who truly has a black thumb, I can pretty much kill any plant. I can kill a silk plant, but when I say the problem with binge eating, stress eating, and any kind of emotional eating it's actually a solution or a symptom of the problem, it's like a weed. We can't get rid of a weed by plucking it. We've got to get to that root, we've got to get to what is actually creating this behavior, and so similarly, think about this.

Our minds are like gardens. If you plant seeds of hopelessness, criticism, frustration, what is going to happen, you are going to feel terrible. You are going to feel awful. But if you plant hope, if you plant self acceptance, if you plant compassion, guess what? You're going to feel good. Change will flourish, you'll feel great. And when you feel great because you're being nice to yourself, because you're thinking about what is right for you, what is good for you, how you want to take care of yourself, then you don't need food to reward yourself, to escape the bad inner critic. You don't need food to numb yourself. You don't need to do any of those things if you already feel good. So reevaluate what it is that makes you feel good about you, will create change, you will flourish, you will feel great.

So today, why wait until later, yes it is December 30th as I am speaking, and yes the new year is still a couple of days away, but today, why not today, reevaluate what kinds of seeds you are planting. Are you planting self criticism and frustration, you're all mad at yourself, I can't believe I did that. Or as our frequent caller Karlygash has shown us, when you talk to yourself as, “Ugh, I can't believe you did that.” You feel bad. But when you plant seeds of hope, acceptance, and compassion, as Karlygash, if you listen to the last time she called in, she was planting more loving seeds. When you are doing that, you're going to feel better. So reevaluate what kinds of seeds you are planting.

Resolution number three, rely on someone else instead of going at it alone. We often think that we have to be self sufficient, no one wants to hear our problems, we've got to figure it out ourselves. No. No. Try leaning on a friend or loved one. Try sharing your goals. Try talking about your stumbling blocks. Try planning solutions together. When you go it alone and you don't lean on someone else, you think you're a burden to someone else and you don't share. What is the old saying? Troubles shared are troubles halved. Isn't that great? I love it.

You're not a burden to someone else if you share what is going on with you. You are burdened by something and it so important to share your troubles, rely on someone else. And remember this, a good friend is like a good bra, they're always there to support you. Hah. I would make a terrible stand up comic, comedian. I love that. That's so funny. I did not make that up, someone said that, you've probably heard it a million times. For me it was new. A good friend is like a good bra, they're always there to support you. So think about that instead of oh no I can't impose upon my friend.

Number four, resolution number four, revere your body instead of hating it. And hey, if your mind just went to Paul Revere, I've got you covered. To revere something means having a deep, adoring respect for it. It is the most profound feeling of gratitude that we can feel, to revere something, have reverence. So essentially, you're going to want to have a deep respect for your body. Imagine looking into the mirror and saying, “I accept you.” When you accept yourself, you are not coasting, you're not saying, “Oh, I accept myself, it's all cool.” You're telling yourself you don't need to change your body to be acceptable. When you feel good about yourself overall, it is easier to take better care of yourself. Karlygash is on Instagram and she's saying, “I love it, a good friend is as good as a good bra, I finally get what a friend should be now.” Oh Karlygash, you're so funny in the best possible way.

And last, number five, the fifth is to reengage. Ever wonder why eating is so complicated? Ever wonder when eating became so complicated? We have so many choices, so many ways of dieting, we call them meal plans or life choices or whatever, but hey, they are diets. Low fat, low carb, juice cleanses, keto, paleo, vegetarian, vegan, no sugar, gluten free, organic, non GMO, the list goes on and on. So how did our ancestors survive so many thousands of years ago without dieting? You know what, they listened to [inaudible 00:11:34] throw out all the rules except one. All the food rules, I can't eat after seven o'clock at night. I can't eat sugar. I can't eat anything with a carb, simple carb. I can't eat this, I can't eat that.

Throw out all those food rules, they are not helping you at all. The only rule is this, listen to your body, reengage, listen to your body and honor what your body tells you. Reengaging with your body means listening to your hunger signals, it means listening to your satisfaction levels, and other messages your body sends you. It means what are you hungry for? Do you want a salad or do you actually want a sandwich? Giving yourself what you need and you want from a place of really figuring out what your body needs and sometimes you're going to have the salad and sometimes you're going to have the sandwich, and then you're not in a place of depravation, because if you're always having the salad and you really want pizza, then when you finally let yourself have pizza you're going to have too much pizza. If you just can say, “Hey do I want pizza today or do I want a salad or something else?” Then it all sort of normalizes and you don't eat out of deprivation.

Learning to eat when you're hungry and learning to stop when you're full, learning to enjoy food again is a process, it does take time, it is much harder than it sounds, but you can start that process today. Start it today.

So those are the New Year’s resolutions to think about. Recommit, recommit to yourself, reevaluate what is going on, what is going to make you feel good, what is going to make you feel happy. Try relying on someone else instead of going it alone. Revere your body instead of hating it, and reengage with your body. Reengage with what are you actually hungry for, and this is just food. It also is emotionally, what are you hungry for? What are you starving for? Are you hungry for love? Are you starving for attention? Do you need recognition? Do you need acknowledgement?

Hello from Ecuador says Kenny on IG. So Hi. Hi, I don't speak Portuguese so I don't know what to say other than I'm glad you're here all the way from Ecuador. So which one of those resolutions are you going to implement first? Which one sounds easiest for you to do? Which one is doable? Give me a call and let me know which of those is … I'm hearing weird things. Give me a call, let me know what resonates with you or if there's anything else that is on your mind, call me, I have a caller. Hi caller.

Karlygash:
Good morning Dr. Nina, you were hearing my reminder beeping. That was the sound.

Dr. Nina:
Oh. Welcome. I just want to say this to Josh who says, “You seem very animated today, Dr. Nina.” What you are seeing is the result of having my dog keep me up all night, which made me have three cups of English breakfast tea this morning, hence the animation. Just had to explain that. And now Karlygash. Hi Karlygash, what's going on?

Karlygash:
Good morning. Well, Dr. Nina, I love you all the time in any way, animated, not animated, any Dr. Nina is good for me, I love you all. I love you in all your states. For real.

Dr. Nina:
Thank you, Karlygash. I hope you can be as loving to yourself as you are towards me.

Karlygash:
Yep. I'm actually calling to share a win. So I took care of myself right now. I had a call with my very good friend and coach, and it happened to be in the morning and I didn't have a chance to have breakfast. We finished and your show started, but I was like um, I wanted to drink and eat and I kind of was weak, sometimes it happens to my body, and I wanted to call you right away, and I was rushing myself [inaudible 00:16:11] I need to call now, because later on I won't be able, there will be other people calling, you know? And then I said, no, I need to do my breathing exercises, I need to drink water, my supplements, and eat something, because I'm shaking, I need a bit of something, I'll take care of myself, and if some people call then I don't call today, well I'll call next time. So I took care of myself in all the sense, feel so much better and capable actually talking to you.

Dr. Nina:
Good for you Karlygash, so happy to hear that. There's that trite but so perfectly true example of the oxygen masks in an airplane, that the flight attendants say, “Hey, if the oxygen masks fall, parents put the oxygen mask on yourself, not on your children, because you're no good to anybody else if you don't have oxygen.” What happens? You suffocate, so you put your oxygen mask on yourself and instead of being in a panic mode or ignoring what you needed, and that's great, I am so happy to hear that.

Karlygash:
Thank you. You taught me that. Before, the voices would be and the thinking would be, your favorite voice, “See, you couldn't plan your time, as usual, you're late to the show-

Dr. Nina:
Ronan, we need like a boo.

Karlygash:
Booing.

Dr. Nina:
We need a large crowd boo.

Speaker 5:
Boo.

Dr. Nina:
Hopefully Ronan's going to put large crowd boo.

Speaker 5:
Boo.

Dr. Nina:
I'll just do it, boo, with the aunt’s voice within you. Anytime you talk to yourself like that, “See, you.” Boo.

Karlygash:
But today, those voices were kicking in, but with less strength. Maybe it was because I was talking with my friend earlier, and I really had very good, good, good time with her. That helped me. And then I said, yeah, I was able to take care of myself without beating myself up in my head, and then I said, I did what I did and we'll go from there. Regarding eating, it actually ended up very well. I was listening to you when you were saying about our ancestors listening to their bodies, this is how they fed themselves. Because originally I started again being obsessed with the COVID 15, I gained, I have very mixed feelings and mixed thoughts about it.

Karlygash:
It used to kill me when I gained weight, to the point I couldn't function and live my life until I lose the weight. But I have the more healthy thoughts, many of them come to my mind. I wake up in the morning, I look myself in the mirror, and I like myself. The way I look, the way my body looks, and I consider myself actually very skinny, thin, and pretty. But the just number on the scale bothers me, and I'm like doesn't matter then if my thighs are bigger, if I feel good and I feel myself good. So I'm trying to changing this thinking from beating myself up and tying up my whole existence to the number on the scale, or how thin my thighs are.

And when the thoughts come and this voice says, “Huh? You still have those fat thighs or whatever it is.” I say I'm not fat, I'm not only my thighs, and my thighs are normal. I am a woman and I look great and I like myself. I'm not spending my whole life trying to lose weight and trying to get those thighs thin. Hell no. I'm going and I don't know, I'm going and getting something nice to myself, or I'm going and getting myself a new laptop so I can create music and do my hobbies. Now I said am I going to be just this my whole life over the size of my thin or thigh gap or whatevers and be unhappy because it's not there? And I said no.

But sometimes I feel bad and I still challenge those thoughts. It's all of them together in one thought, which is a good thing, because before what was in my thought was only beating myself up for the size I am. So it's definite progress and I'm very happy.

Dr. Nina:
I am thrilled to hear that. Ronan, if you're there, if you're hearing this, now we need large crowd applause.

Karlygash:
Thank you, I love it.

Dr. Nina:
Thank you, Ronan. That's my amazing engineer, Ronan, who somehow does the show from, we're not in the studio anymore, obviously, from his house to my house to somehow y'all, makes it work, and he has really cool sound effects. That is amazing, Karlygash, because what you're saying is so important. Women, and men, are reduced to thinking about the size of their bodies, either way. Men feel like they've got to be bigger sometimes, and more muscular. And women think that they need to have smaller thighs or whatever, and this is the thing that takes so much space in our minds. Guess what? We have other things to think about. We have other things on our minds other than what our size is.

Karlygash:
Yes.

Dr. Nina:
We have to do, things to think about, we have a world to change, whether on a global level, on an individual level.

Karlygash:
Yes, oh my god.

Dr. Nina:
[These are the things that we need to think about, and it is so important to not let society and the 60 billion dollar diet industry keep you thinking that you need to be this size in order to be acceptable. There is a wonderful book, and I am blanking out on the title for some reason, but it follows the diaries of girls from the 1800s to I think the '70s. And in the 1800s girls were writing about am I a good person? Are people going to find me moral? Am I doing good deeds? What kind of a person am I? And as we got closer to modern times, I think somewhere after I believe it is World War II, they started writing about am I thin enough? Am I pretty enough? Until that became more and more all about what their size was. So in 150 years, our society has gone from people being concerned with their level of morality and being a good person to being a good weight. And that is tragic.

Dr. Nina:
We have to think about what kind of a person are you and what do you want out of your life, not what do you freaking weigh. Okay, I'm going to get off my soap box.

Karlygash:
Yeah. Actually I'm very hopeful. It's sad that we changed that thinking, but I'm very hopeful about us people, humans in general, humans. I think all of us have a very smart brain, smart mind, and I think we adapt and adjust very well. And I think we recognize the problems we have globally and we're doing something about it, everyone on their level. I think I'm very hopeful. I really believe in people, and I don't support [crosstalk 00:24:35], no, I don't think so. I believe if you open a script from any century, people used to write like, “Oh my god, we're doomed.” You open those books 2000 years ago, people were still thinking that we are doomed. No we're not, we're changing, we're transforming. Things are not going to be the way they are, that's for sure, but it's our mind who doesn't like to be anything new, but it's going to change and I see that we're going to be fine.

I'm very hopeful, I want to pass this hope to all people around their struggling with their weight and eating disorder and things, and I want to just give everyone hugs. I want to give hug to myself, to them, to you, to say thank you Dr. Nina, you really saved my life, you really changed it for, for whatever I have I now am very grateful because you made it happen, otherwise I could not even imagine what could be with me. And yes, I'm very hopeful and I'm sending you hugs.

Dr. Nina:
Aw. Thank you Karlygash. I'm so thrilled to be able to be part of your journey and to hear you each week change and challenge and I know how difficult it has been to challenge your ideas about yourself, and to even identify those voices of those mean aunts, “See, you.” Every time I do that it hurts my throat, I swear, it's awful. Awful voice. But even for you to be able to see that that wasn't you. That wasn't your voice. That was the voice of other people that you internalized and then used against yourself, and to be able to hear that voice less and less and hear the true you is really beautiful and I hear from people who write me who listen to this show and they say that it's really inspiring to them as well.

Dr. Nina:
So I want you to know that, that not only are you calling in and sharing your story and getting whatever it is that I'm able to share with you, but you're also helping other people and I hope that that makes you feel really good as we go into 2021 and I'm sending you a big hug.

Karlygash:
Thank you so much. I just wanted to quickly add that this concept of, which you explained to me, that I internalize those voices of mean people I was surrounded by growing up, to the point that I cannot even distinguish them in my head and I think those are my thoughts and this is my reality, that was monumental, that was life changing, that was the biggest answer of my life I've been looking for. Because I don't like certain ways I behave and do and act, but now since you introduced me to that and explain how this mechanism works, I am like wait a second, I do some wrong stuff but that's not actually me. And I'm not shedding of the responsibility, I am just acknowledging and being aware of the mechanism, and I'm like oh this wrong, ineffective ideas, which I have in my head, and then I exercise them in life and they don't work, those are not my ideas.

Karlygash:
Those are not even the ideas of the people who plant it in me in the first place, maybe not intentionally. Those are just ineffective ideas, and if we, all of us, would be aware and really checking, make an inventory in our heads, does this idea work, and we would just throw them away out of necessity because it's not necessary, like old garbage. I think if all of us do this work on our level, we will just help ourselves and help each other by really forgetting the old ideas which are not working anymore and investing in watering and growing the ideas which are effective and efficient and helpful.

Dr. Nina:
Thank you, Karlygash. What a beautiful summary and wish for yourself and all of us for this year and going forward. Thank you for sharing that and for sharing your journey with me and with all the listeners and happy new year.

Karlygash:
Thank you so much. Happy new year, woo hoo!

Dr. Nina:
Talk to you next year, woo!

Karlygash:
Yes, talk to you next year!

Dr. Nina:
Okay, bye for now.

Karlygash:
Bye for now. Bye.

Dr. Nina:
So I also want to share a question someone had about, where's my question. I asked, if you guys are not a part of Dr. Nina's Food For Thought community, please head on over to Facebook and join. So Maya said, although we know we have to feel feelings in order to avoid turning to food, what are ways to make sure we face those feelings? I find sometimes I just don't want to face those feelings.

Well absolutely. There are two ways to deal with emotions. One is to distract from them, and one is to feel them. So distraction, there are healthy distractions and then there are unhealthy distractions. Eating is a distraction. If you're eating, you're not feeling whatever it is that you don't want to feel or maybe you're converting it from instead of being mad at so and so, your boss, your spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, whatever, someone in your life. If you feel, for example, guilty about being angry with people then you can eat and eat for comfort and then you get mad at yourself. So now you've transferred anger at certain people onto yourself.

So there can be so many reasons why you're turning to food, but it is always a distraction. There are other healthy distractions, but they don't work, ultimately. Taking your dog on a walk is a distraction, but ultimately you're not going to solve any issue by taking your dog on a walk. I've had many people tell me that people have told them that if they want to eat something they should go brush their teeth. Well if brushing your teeth was as great a way of coping as stress eating is, then people would be going through tubes of toothpaste everyday. It just doesn't work. It's a distraction but it's not really helpful. Ultimately, you have to be able to feel those feelings and process them, and not think them away, and not positive think them away, or any of that.

So Maya, I would just normalize. Of course you don't want to feel certain feelings. Who wants to feel difficult feelings? We don't. But that's where it's how you respond to those feelings that makes all the difference. So a lot of people say things like, “Oh, I guess I have to feel my feelings, that means I have to just sit there with them.” Well that sounds terrible, who wants to just sit in feelings, and how do you sit in feelings? That's horrible. What do you do with them? No. You don't just sit in your yucky feelings, you don't just sit in a vat of yuck, you have to respond to your feelings. Think about the way you respond to someone else, that might also be a clue, someone might be upset, if your kid's upset you don't just say, “Oh, well you're upset, go deal with it. Be upset.”

No, you respond. So you remember my acronym, VARY. Validate, acknowledge, and reassure yourself. If you're feeling something, you have to respond to it. Oh I'm angry, of course I'm angry. This is the situation that's going on, and who wouldn't be angry in a situation like that, and it doesn't even matter, I feel it. I feel this way and I feel it for a reason. Then you've got to feel it. Going, “I'm really angry.” Is different from going, “Oh my god, I'm so pissed. Ugh.” Right? Saying, “I'm sad.” Is really different from saying, “Oh god I'm really sad.” And crying.

So feelings are just not something that you just sit in, there's something that you have to respond to yourself and feel, and you keep remembering, I feel this way now, I'm not always going to feel this way. Often it feels like you're never going to get out of it. People have told me things like, “Well if I get mad, I'm going to have a heart attack.” Or, “If I start to cry I'm just going to lose it and I'm never going to stop.” Well, you're not going to have a heart attack if you get mad, and you will stop crying eventually. You just have to trust that these are temporary, and that they need your attention. You need to respond to feelings instead of reacting and escaping them.

So even if you do something to avoid it, to distract yourself, a healthier distraction than eating, you still eventually have to deal with the feeling. Because if you don't, it just grows and grows and grows. I've shared the story of how my college roommate kept borrowing things from me, and I kept saying, “It's not a big deal, it's not a big deal, it's not a big deal.” She would borrow everything, borrow, borrow, borrow. My clothes, my jeans, my this, my that. One day, she reached for an eraser on my desk and said, “Oh can I borrow that?” She was doing math or something, “Can I borrow that?” And I said “No. You cannot borrow my eraser. Oh my god, no. No.” I just lost it on her, and she just looked at me like, okay it's just an eraser.

Well it wasn't just an eraser, it was the eraser and it was my favorite shirt and it was my jeans and my this and my printer. It was all the things that she had used and just borrowed, and I had not let myself address that I was getting upset about it. So finally, it was the straw that broke the camels back and I lost it on her. So if you don't deal with something that's small, it just grows and grows and grows. If you keep pushing things under the carpet, that carpet is going to get taller and taller and taller. And it's going to get more and more intense.

The other thing to realize, Maya—oh, Josh is asking if I was jealous of her. No Josh, I was not jealous of her. I was angry at her because she was inconsiderate of me and I was trying to be nice at the time and not say anything because I thought that that was how I should handle it, but obviously I suppressed all these feelings that came up. Jealously had nothing to do with it.

The other thing is that often it feels like all these feelings are going to be super intense, like my example. If you don't deal with things at the time, everything can feel on a scale of one to 10, like a 10. And if you don't say okay, I was frustrated which was maybe a five, or I was annoyed which was a four, I was really irritated and maybe that's a six or a seven, I was angry, that's an 8, I was furious, that's a 9, enraged, that's a 10. You really have to start gauging the intensity of the feelings, otherwise everything feels like too much. And if it feels like too much, you're going to be overwhelmed, you're not going to be able to handle it, then off to the kitchen you go. And that is why it's important not only to identify what you're feeling, but to identify the intensity of it, because there's a big difference between expressing frustration and expressing rage.

But if you don't express frustration, annoyance, or irritation, those things are going to feel like a 10, and it's going to be overwhelming. That is something important to keep in mind.

Maya, I hope that answers the question. Another question from Kyleen, I actually have two that are sort of similar. Kyleen says I never thought of food as a relationship. Food is very quiet, never interrupts me, always there for me, sometimes hurts me. No wonder I don't care for many relationships. And Lisa says, how do you have a good relationship with food so it doesn't morph into a diet?

Well remember that food in our psyches represents relationship. When we talk about comfort food, we're really talking about a wish to be comforted. And when we think about food as relationship, it is so primal from the very first moment that we're born and we're fed, the experience of being held, being safe in that sort of blissful place of connecting with your parent is fused with the experience of being fed. So we don't consciously think of it this way, but food equals relationship. When we say food is love, yes, later on people say my mother expressed her love by cooking for us. So in other ways we learn to connect food as love, but food is relationship in our psyches.

Food represents love, food represents comfort, and that is relationship. We can't have comfort without another person. We get comfort from someone else, we get love from somebody else. So there's this idea that there's somebody else there. If somebody else is not there, if someone else is unreliable or unavailable or unpredictable, food then becomes the substitute. Food which represents people becomes that which is reliable and available and we can count on it, as Kyleen said.

But it also hurts. But turning to food is a frenemy. It does something for us, it helps numb us, comfort us, it's a reward, it takes us away from something, it displaces, it does so many different things. But of course it also hurts us, because it doesn't resolve the problem. So Lisa, how do you have a good relationship with food so it doesn't morph into a diet, well by dieting you're creating a bad relationship with food. You're creating deprivation. You're creating a disconnection from your body. When you're on a diet, a piece of paper in a book or something on a screen is telling you this is what you should eat. And you lose touch with what you want to eat, or what your body needs. It's like telling yourself, well I should go to sleep at 10 o'clock, and what's wrong with me that I'm not tired at 10 o'clock?

Well sometimes we're tired at 10, and sometimes we're not tired until midnight. Sometimes we're tired at nine. We have to listen to ourselves internally, what is it that we need? I need sleep now. But if we tell ourselves we're only being good if we're tired and go to sleep at 10, we lose touch with ourselves. The same thing with food, where a diet or a meal plan or something else is telling you what you should eat. It distances you from you. So the question is how do you form a good relationship with food without going on a diet, so it doesn't morph into a diet, you have to think that dieting is that which is keeping you from having a good relationship with your body and therefore with food.

When you are tuned into what does your body want, what are you hungry for, and the more that you do it, the easier it gets. At first you might be like, my body wants ice cream clearly. But if you really listen, do I want protein and which kind, what is it that my body is craving? What is it that I need? And you start listening to that instead of doing what someone else is telling you to eat, eating something that's outside of you, then you have a good relationship with food, because it's just oh that's what's going to nourish my body, that's what's going to nurture my body, and then sometimes you say I want dessert. Nothing wrong with dessert. Instead of, “Oh know I'm bad because I ate that.” And then it's, “I'll never eat it again.” So now you have the anticipation of depravation, so then you're going to say, “I'm never going to eat cookies again until I lose X many pounds. So anticipation of depravation makes you want to eat more cookies now. And it just messes you up.

So I hope that that answers your questions, Kyleen and Lisa. I thought I had maybe a last minute caller. Ultimately, binge eating and stress eating and all that, it isn't about food. It's a solution to a problem. If you are turning to food, you are turning away from something else. If you are thinking about what you are eating, what you're not going to eat, what you're weighing, all of that, what else would be on your mind? What else is on your mind other than what you weigh, what you look like, what you ate? And when you get in touch with that, oh Josh is saying he thinks he might be scared of calling in. Am I that scary, Josh? Why don't you post your question and I'll share it.

Well for anyone else who's scared of calling in, I'm really nice. I'm not going to yell at you unless you say something mean to yourself, then I'll yell at the mean part of you that's being mean to yourself. My whole point and I want to leave you at the end of 2020, end of a very challenging, difficult, terrible year, is really kindness is key. We are seeing that, we have to be kind to ourselves, we have to be kind to each other. We have learned through this time, for some people, I'm in LA and I'm still … oh, caller on.

Dr. Nina:
Okay, caller on, we have three minutes. Hi caller.

Jeanine:
Hi Dr. Nina, it's Jeanine, how are you?

Dr. Nina:
Hi Jeanine, how are you?

Jeanine:
I heard you say we have three minutes. That's fine.

Dr. Nina:
Ronan is saying we have extra time today. So we have more than three minutes.

Jeanine:
Okay. Along the same lines of what you're talking about, not dieting and trusting our bodies and what to eat and all that, and I know it's about feelings and all that, but it's so hard, I keep judging, judging, judging myself for being heavy, and every time I see a picture or I was watching a video with myself in it, and after that, the whole next day I just get totally obsessed with how heavy I am. It just goes around, around, around in my head. It's like ugh, so embarrassing. It feels like it's not about the food, it's about the judging of myself and my body. That's hard to deal with sometimes.

Dr. Nina:
Okay. This is a good question or a good comment because yes, it's okay to not be okay with your body. But not being okay does not mean being mean to yourself. I think that what you need to do is say, hey, I don't like what I saw in the video. I don't like what I saw in the picture. I'm not happy with how I look. Okay. I'm not happy. Acknowledge and validate it. It makes me feel bad and I want to change.

And rather than then castigate yourself and say mean things to yourself and be hard on yourself and plan what diet you're going to go on, you should just say look, there are reasons that made me turn to food and I am going to address those reasons, I'm going to figure it out, and I'm going to be kinder to myself because there's nothing I can do about the past, here I am, but moving forward, I can commit to being kinder, more understanding, more curious, and gentle with myself, and that is going to make you actually change your relationship with food, make different choices, because if you're nice to yourself, and you calm yourself down, and you soothe yourself and you comfort yourself, you don't need food for those purposes.

It has to come from a place of kindness to say okay, I don't like what I see in the mirror, I just don't. I'm going to change what I see but I'm going to do so from a place of compassion and care. I started today saying you've got to be your best friend. You've got to be a best friend to yourself. And that's what I'm talking about.

Jeanine:
I feel like it triggers my, it makes me feel angry, partly to myself, but then I start feeling pissed, like I'm so pissed at all the people that made me have to cope by eating, and then it just gives me this spiral, I think honestly, I don't even want to look at pictures and stuff for a while until I can get more of a handle on this, because it feels like it turns me into a tizzy, so maybe the gentle part, being gentle on yourself, is a key to it. It's hard for me to be gentle on myself, like I'm so sorry that you're fat right now, that doesn't feel very …

Dr. Nina:
Well first of all don't tell yourself that, let's say, using validate, acknowledge, and reassure yourself, validate. Of course I'm not happy with my weight, and that's okay. I am not happy with my weight, and I and my, no you.

Jeanine:
Okay yeah, that's right.

Dr. Nina:
I am not happy with my weight, and I understand there are many reasons for why I'm here, and I am going to take care of myself going forward. I am going to be nicer to myself so I don't use food for comfort. I'm going to understand and process the anger I feel towards other people so I don't turn it on myself because of my weight. I am going to be a friend to myself and I'm going to be curious about this and I'm not going to be so mean to myself. See the difference?

Jeanine:
Yeah, I definitely do feel the difference. Even just you saying that to me helped. So maybe I feel less, I guess judgemental of myself is really what it comes down to. Judging myself and my body is just another way of saying mean things to myself, really. And it is frustrating because it's not like okay, well tomorrow will be better. It's not like okay, tomorrow I'll look better, that kind of stuff. I know it's a process.

Dr. Nina:
You can say but right now, right in this moment, while I am not liking what I am seeing in the mirror, this is my moment to make a difficult choice. Instead of saying, “Oh my god, I can't stand it, it's horrible, I hate myself.” Instead of doing that, which is never … listen, nobody has ever hated themselves into loving themselves. You can said right now this is my opportunity to actually practice compassion. This is my opportunity to say okay. Here I am. I will make it, but I am not going to do what I did before, because that got me here.

Jeanine:
Right.

Dr. Nina:
I'm going to do something different. I am going to take my own side. I am going to say I don't like my weight, but I like me. I'm going to be nice to me.

Jeanine:
Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Thank you.

Dr. Nina:
You're welcome. So quick tip, never talk to yourself in second person. Never-

Jeanine:
Very, very true.

Dr. Nina:
-say you. When you say you, even if you're saying it in a nice way, it's still distance. Even if you're saying, “Oh you got this. You did a good job.” There's a distance there. If you say, “I did a great job.” It's really within you. You can feel it more when you say, “Well I did that, I did great.” Versus, “You did great.” As you're talking to yourself. You have to just eliminate that second person voice, come from an I place, first person.

Jeanine:
Yeah, because when I say it from I, I don't think I would be as mean to myself, like I am working on this and I'm doing pretty good for as much as I've been through, like that kind of stuff. So it does feel way different when I say I, so thank you for that reminder.

Dr. Nina:
You're welcome. I'm going to give you a new years resolution. Jeanine, your new year's resolution is to only talk to yourself in a place of I, no you.

Jeanine:
I like it. I'll take it.

Dr. Nina:
You can do it. I know you can.
Jeanine:
I will.

Dr. Nina:
Thank you so much for this call because I think it was a really important one that a lot of people can relate to and I know you can do this, you learn this way of relating to yourself, you can learn a different way, and you can start doing it right now.

Jeanine:
I will. Thank you so much.

Dr. Nina:
You're welcome, happy new year.

Jeanine:
Happy new year.

Dr. Nina:
All right everyone, that does it for this episode of the Dr. Nina Show. Last show of 2020, and if anyone has any questions, feel free to email me or reach out to me on my Facebook group, Dr. Nina's Food For Thought community. You can join right now and Kyleen says thank you Ronan for helping us in 2020, you are a rockstar. Yes, Ronan, thank you. You are a rock star. You are amazing. And you really have helped me help so many people, and for that I'm really grateful, and you're wonderful. You need to give yourself loud crowd applause, Ronan.

So everyone, happy new year, yay. If I didn't get to your questions, I'll get to them next week, or again, join the Facebook community, ask me there and I will answer them either here or in the community because I started to do that as well. Have a very happy 2021 everyone, happy new year, and 2021 is going to be a better year. I can't wait. Bye for now.

You're listening to the Dr. Nina Show, with Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, only on LA Talk Radio.