Hi, guys, welcome to today's episode, and today we are talking with Camille Martin and today we are talking all about not to ever go on a diet, talking about the anti diet, but we're also talking about how to fuel your body with healthy things so that you can feel great as well. So there is a really good balance there with not feeling deprived, but also fueling your body with great things. So welcome.
Thank you, Chantel. I'm happy to be here.
Tell us a little bit about your story and a little bit about yourself, and then I'll dove in with a few questions.
OK, I'll try to keep it and not give you the full breakdown because I could go on all day. But I am a registered dietitian. I've been a dietitian since 2007. But prior to that, what led me to become a dietitian was that I spent about twenty five years of my life dieting, dieting, failing over and over again. So I started when I was 12 years old and I tried every diet that you can think of and failed on every single one and then really struggled with self-esteem issues using food to make myself feel better. In other words, eating emotionally, which combining that with dieting was a recipe for massive failure and shattered self-esteem. Because the more you diet, it creates resistance. And any time you feel that resistance, you're going to neutralize it with something that makes you feel better, which for me was food. So I stayed locked in that cycle for almost twenty five years until I was in my late thirties and I decided I was going to just stop everything. I was going to quit dieting and just basically start treating my body, fueling it with whatever. If I wanted to eat something, I listened to what my body was saying and I ate it even if it wasn't super healthy. But that was a massive improvement over the emotional and physical torture I was inflicting on myself. But the cool thing that happened was once I start really started listening to what my body wanted. The opposite of overeating is what happened as I started to my eating behaviors started to change and I stopped. Fuel are bingeing, food, really. I stopped using food to make myself feel better and just started taking actions toward what made my body feel good, whether it was going on a one mile walk as opposed to a five mile dead sprint, which is what I used to do. But yeah, then I started feeling my body, feeling better emotionally, feeling better physically. And then I, I decided I wanted to learn more about how food affects my body. So I took a nutrition class after work in Atlanta and I loved it so much that I kept going and ultimately did a whole career switch and became a dietitian.
Well, let's talk about overeating, because I think that is the number one piece and we all need to check ourselves on this is what would be some of your top tips on what helps people to not overeat? Like, give us kind of the three practical things that you would suggest that are the big game changers, the top three to help people not ever eat?
Well, the first one, I would say is if you eat emotionally instead of what most women do is go straight from eating, overeating or binge eating and then shaming themselves for it, shaming themselves for it. So that eliminates this whole wonderful opportunity for asking yourself questions of what's going on, like why am I feeling the need to binge on food or to eat too much or clean my plate. But if you go straight to shaming yourself, you miss this whole opportunity to really find out what's going on. So that would be first is to counterintuitively engage in the behavior.
If you tend to overeat instead of like saying, I'm not going to do that today, I'm not going to get a cheeseburger and fries and scarf it down at lunch, I'm going to get a salad instead.
Those kinds of drastic actions don't work. You have to start modifying a behavior, gradually set your tendencies to overeat. You want to make small, consistent changes with what you're eating and how you eat, and then that helps you take the shame away from it.
But the second big thing I would say is that most women and men I don't know have any how many of your listeners are male or female? But my experience has been this is most.
And with women, we don't set our environment up for success and a lot of ways your environment can be pushing you to overeat. Obviously, if you have all the wrong foods in your kitchen and none of the right ones, that's going to lead to, you know, you're not eating healthy anyway. But as far as overeating, if you leave, you know, chips and sodas and stuff out on your counter and you're you're stressed out and you're walking through your kitchen, you're just going to start grabbing whatever is in front of you. So one of the keys is to set your environment up so that it helps make decisions for you so that what you want to eat is right there in your face and right there on the counter. And once you start eating the healthier foods, it starts changing your thought process. It starts making you say, wow, you know, I really feel good when I eat this.
And my experience is that the people are the foods that people overeat on are the unhealthy foods.
Know most people don't binge on salads. So if you want to start changing over eating, you want to start first with change some of the foods that you are eating on a regular basis.
And if they're sitting out on your counter, then then you will eat those foods. So I think that was only two. I'm trying to think of something else basically for me is eating slow.
Oh, yes. So one of the things I wrote another book and one of the things I talk about is literally setting a timer. Yes. Because I eat so fast. If when I eat fast, I'm going to overeat. So I have to take a break in the middle of eating. Otherwise, that is it. It's a disaster waiting to happen because then I yeah, it does take 20 to twenty five minutes for you to feel full. Yeah. You're eating in ten minutes you're going to overeat because he doesn't feel full yet. Because you've eaten so fast. Yes. That's an excellent tip.
And I actually I read that, I wrote about that in my book as well. I can't believe I didn't think of that right off the bat.
But yes, eating slowly is a huge one. And also not eating in front of your computer or the television, which is a hard one. That's a hard habit to break because we're all so busy. But if you sit in front of your computer or the TV, all of that food is just going. You're not focused on what you're eating. Yeah. So that's that's a recipe for overeating also.
I know that a lot of people who struggle with overeating, they love to reward themselves with food. So I want to talk about choosing a non food reward and we get that to be kind of the the first reaction because, yeah, you know, when I interview women who have been thin their whole life, one of the things they say all the time is when I'm stressed, food is not even something that comes to the top of my mind. Like, that's not you know, if you ask somebody who is an overeater or non overeater, the biggest difference is, is like I'm stressed, the first reaction or a thin eater is something else. It's a whole host of other things, the one who is an over eater. Their very first reaction, it's like a name. It doesn't matter what it is, if it's Brownie or this or that, but it's their first reaction to talk about how to choose a non food reward and walk us through that process.
OK, well, so first of all, I don't think it's necessarily a manifestation of women who aren't then and them grabbing someone who is not a thin person, whose first reaction is to grab something to eat when there's stress that comes from way, way, way back. That's that's a sign of emotional eating, rewarding yourself with food. So you want to start there. First of all, it's like, why am I doing this and unpack all of the you have to go way back and it takes a lot of work and practice. But the second thing you want to do, if you want to start using non food rewards, I think it's helpful to make a list of the non food rewards like manicure, pedicure, light a candle and meditate. Go buy a new pair of yoga pants that she's been wanting to buy. Whatever it is, make a list of those things and keep it handy. So when the urge to eat strikes, you've got to right there and you can say, you know, I'm breaking this pattern and I don't know. Have you ever heard of Mel Robbins? She's a, I guess, a motivational speaker, but she came up with this very simple and sort of obvious tactic that she uses. And she's created a whole business behind it. But she it's called like the five, four, three, two, one idea. So whenever she felt an urge to her thing was oversleeping, she kept hitting the alarm and didn't want to go to bed. And she was depressed and the whole thing. So she just decided, you know what, if I just count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, and then bam. And so it really worked. And she has the whole thing about how it's proven, backed up by science. But if you feel the urge to strike, it's worth a try saying you recognize it. Five, four, three, two, one, walk out of the kitchen, go pick up your list. And then just the act of doing those things starts to train your brain, rewire your brain that you're doing something positive and that the first thing that you're going to do is not going to reach for a bag of chips.
Yeah, for me, the thing that really helps me is getting a massage.
Yes, that or like we have a massage chair, like sitting there. But number one, the number one thing that helps me is going for a walk because I can if it's cold, I could walk around the building. I can leave somewhere, but I'm going for a walk would be number one right after that would be like going to get a foot massage.
Yes. Well, this is this isn't a reward. But just to your point of walking around the block, and that's relaxing. But I still struggle with emotional eating. I mean, I don't think that will ever leave me. And I'm fifty one and I still have that voice or that urge that strikes. So some of the things that I do, if I can't immediately take a break and go do something relaxing, I get on the floor and I do 10 pushups and then snap myself out of it and then I keep moving or, you know, walk up and down the stairs five times. Just something that takes you out of that. Going straight from the idea of I want to eat something and then you're off to the races eating, you know, just that one little break. But, yeah, rewarding yourself, it's huge.
And we don't take care of ourselves. I don't think as women, emotionally and mentally, you know, it's I think it's a struggle and we don't realize how stressed out we are.
I don't think we realize how hard we are on ourselves. And it's hard to even say, like, oh, yeah, I'm going to take a break and do something nice for myself.
But yeah, that's huge.
Now, if you had to say, like, what would you say is the kind of like your top three recipes that you would say, like, these are kind of my go to, like, these kind of satisfy me. I feel good when I eat them. They kind of take care of this craving, like, do you have anything that, you know, it's healthy, but I still feel super, super satisfied.
Yeah, well, I mean, I've practiced this for quite a while, so the foods that I choose now are very different than the ones I used to. But I always feel good after I have I have this little blender. It's tiny, the master blender.
I don't know if that is fill it up with fruit and blend it. So that combined with a little bit of coconut oil, you have to have a little bit of fat in order to absorb the nutrients better. But and then the fat makes it more satisfying. So I just lit up a blender with bananas, blueberries, coconut oil, raspberries, whatever I have on hand, really cucumber blend.
And then and that is very filling. And also that is a good one because you can prepare it, put it in the blender and stick it in the fridge and says instead of saying, oh gosh, I just want a bagel and cream cheese, it's already right there and you blend it.
I love black bean burgers. They're super easy. You just mash them up and put a little some breadcrumbs with it. You can fry it and you can bake it and put it with a whole Wayburn and some avocado slices and tomato. I love that. That's super easy to make, really. Anything with avocado and make avocado toes.
The things that I, I have to make them are fulfilling for me are very simple because I'm so busy.
So I have to if I'm not prepared and I don't have a meal planned, I can run into the kitchen, put in a piece of toast in the toaster and mash up an avocado and put some salt on it. So those are the kinds of things that I gravitate toward.
I also do love pasta. I'm a carb heavy eater and I know that's not for everybody. It works for me because it gives me quick energy, but not the sugar. A blast of fruit does.
Corn chips are of energy, but yeah, those complex carbohydrates, rice, beans. Yeah. Avocado, any kind of monounsaturated fat like that. Like avocados, coconut oil. Those are, those are my juice and of course fruit. It satisfies me to an orange and a handful of nuts. But you have to you have to get there. Yeah. Yeah.
Well thank you so much for being with us today. Tell listeners where they can find you and where they can follow you.
Sure.
My website is Camiel Martin are the dotcom Arty's for registered dietitian. And I'm on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and I'm trying to think LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. But yeah, those are the big ones that I'm on. So.
Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much. And you guys, stay tuned. We have another episode coming up in just a few. Bye bye for now.