Today our expert guest is Erin Wathen, a holistic health coach, food abuse counselor, and the inspiring author of Why Can’t I Stick to My Diet?: How To End The Food Drama. Her philosophy is, simply put, that health isn’t a number on the scale or how often we exercise, but how we live our lives as a whole.
As a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and a Food Addiction Counselor, Erin was well versed in the science behind health. As a Certified Spinning® Instructor, Vinyasa Yoga instructor, and Classical Pilates instructor, she understood the mechanics of health and fitness as well. But, still, she was not at peace with her body for many years. She had all of this knowledge and was always on a diet, yet she never reached her goal weight.
However, through a lot of trial and error, Erin found true nutrition to be the missing piece of the puzzle. It was then that Erin started her last diet, which ultimately became her food plan and the basis of her health coaching program and her book.
Erin realized that what she was taught was okay to eat was, well… not okay! Growing up in the 90s, people would demonize fat with the drop of a hat, but no one questioned Diet Coke as a staple in your diet. Obviously, the pendulum has shifted a little in the nutritional world today, but there’s still a mass normalization of sugar in our society – and it’s hurting us.
“Sugar affects our mood, affects our health, and affects our body in all of these amazingly negative ways – it’s just completely normalized in our society,” Erin says.
The truth is that most of us are addicted to sugar. So many of us wake up and immediately go to sugary coffee drinks, then we snack on sugary treats throughout the day, and in the evening, we drink beer or wine. It’s so easy and so accepted that most of us don’t even realize we’ve become addicted.
So how do you know if you have a sugar addiction? Well, if you don’t consume any of those things, anything with added sugar, how do you feel? Chances are you feel pretty crappy.
So, what can we do about this addiction?
- Take stock of what you’re drinking – high fructose corn syrup is the easiest way to get more sugar into your diet.
- Stay away from the middle aisles in the grocery store.
- Don’t add extra sugar to your drinks, meals, or snacks.
- Avoid fake sugars; they trick your body into thinking it’s had sugar, which has its own negative impacts.
- Don’t go on a diet – embrace a lifestyle change!
One of the biggest reasons that people can’t stick to their diets, Erin says, is the mindset they adopt when they start. They’re doing the diet with the intent to stop eventually, instead of adopting healthy lifestyle changes that will make them healthier in the long-run. It’s a juice cleanse today so that you can go back to eating things that are bad for you tomorrow.
On top of that, we don’t address the emotional component of why we have unhealthy eating habits in the first place; the why behind our sugar addiction or other bad habits.
The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway
“Just be very aware of how important food is in our life versus the people in your life – because this isn’t that big of a deal. It’s just food! And when we put food in front of everyone else, we’re missing out on an opportunity to connect with others, to make good memories, and to really find out what’s going on with ourselves.”
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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.
Resources:
- Learn more at https://erinwathenwellness.com/
The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters
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