Ep. 60 Healing from Chronic Dieting and Emotional Eating with Tracy Desjardins

[00:00:03] I'm Michele Simms and this is The Beauty in the Mess, a community where people who crave a shift in mindset, personal growth, and connection to like-minded people come together to start rewriting their stories. Through engaging, honest, and insightful conversations, the show will help you embrace the mess

[00:00:23] to recognize the meanings and the lessons it holds and discover its hidden treasures to help you start making a mindset shift. Let's listen, learn, and reclaim who we were meant to be. Hi friend, welcome to The Beauty in the Mess.

[00:00:39] For this episode I'm happy to welcome Tracy Desjardins to the show. Tracy is a coach who helps women heal from chronic dieting and emotional eating. She shares her personal journey starting from her early struggles with dieting and binge eating to her eventual aha moment in her late 40s.

[00:00:56] She discusses the importance of telling one's food story, mindfulness, discovering personal values, and building a balanced relationship with food. Tracy also talks about her five-step healing pathway, the importance of rejecting diet mentality and fostering self-acceptance and compassion.

[00:01:15] The episode delves into practical tips for managing cravings, food boundaries, and integrating joyful moments into your daily life. Tracy is a national board certified health and wellness coach, a mind body eating coach, a fitness professional, and the international bestselling author of the diet free diva.

[00:01:34] Tracy has evolved her multi-decade fitness career into coaching holistic wellness for women, specializing in emotional eating recovery and healing from the damage of dieting, restrictive eating, binge eating, and sugar addiction. After many years of personal struggles with being overweight, dieting, emotional

[00:01:52] binge eating, sugar addiction, and warlike exercise programming, Tracy shares her deep compassion with other women for these unwanted eating concerns. Her focus for coaching is dedicated to helping other women find freedom from the shackles of

[00:02:08] dieting and emotional eating challenges and to find sustainable peace with food, body, and self so that they can live their life on their own trusted terms without ever going on another restrictive diet again. So join me for episode 60 of the Beauty and the Mess called Healing from Chronic

[00:02:25] Dieting and Emotional Eating with Tracy Desjardins. So without further ado, let's dive right into today's conversation. Hi Tracy, welcome to the Beauty and the Mess. I'm so happy to have you with me today. Hi Michelle, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh absolutely.

[00:02:42] Now I know you help women heal from chronic dieting and emotional eating and I know you're an author and a coach and so many other things. But before we kind of dig into those things, I was wondering if you would start off today

[00:02:55] by telling us some of your personal story like what has led you down this path? Oh sure yeah thank you so much. It's actually it's still surreal to me to realize that I'm in the line of work that

[00:03:07] I'm in now because the problem that I coach women through is something that I held very privately for a long time. It wasn't something that I wanted anyone to know about and now I talk about this all the time.

[00:03:18] So I grew up in the 70s and right around the age of 12, I started dieting. I was a slightly overweight child back in the early 80s late 70s early 80s and there was

[00:03:31] a time up until about age 12 really where like I was kind of a free spirited little girl. I had no problem making friends life was good. I'd like to who I was.

[00:03:40] I was confident all of that and then you know whether you're a boy or a girl when you turn around like 12, 13 life gets a little challenging. You know things start shifting and things start happening and I just started to notice the women that I saw on TV.

[00:03:54] I started to notice other girls my age and what seemed to be admired and I all of a sudden it was like overnight I needed to change myself quickly and the pretty plus type clothing sizes

[00:04:08] that I had to wear was that was embarrassing even though it was comfortable you know a few months before all of a sudden now it was embarrassing and so I started to restrict food. I started to just diet and that really began my cycle of restrict and binge.

[00:04:27] Nobody really talked about that being a thing back then but that's what I was doing and I was very ashamed of that and I thought well I just need to get used to being hungry all the time.

[00:04:35] I guess that's just what you do and that perpetuated a problem for decades to come. Wow were your parents aware that you were doing this? Yeah you know I had very very loving parents and I think that they weren't overweight

[00:04:50] themselves and so they didn't really understand the challenge that I had and with all due respect the thin is in mantra really was a thing and my mom was thin and my dad was thin and everywhere you went it was you know especially for women thin was in

[00:05:08] and they saw me as they were trying to protect me and it wasn't okay for me to be you know gaining weight what's wrong and they tried to support me as best as they could but I will say they

[00:05:19] didn't understand the challenges that I had so they their motivational let's say skills that they use with me actually kind of prompted that a rebellious side of me like wait a minute

[00:05:30] you know like do I even care do I even want to be thin like I was okay before I'm not okay now and that was really difficult so I developed a binge eating disorder problem and I became a

[00:05:43] really great talented food sneak and I was always binging on sugar and that made me feel not so good about myself. I can relate I'm wondering like what was the aha moment for you then what I mean what

[00:05:57] because as we grow older and I think a lot of women a lot of men struggle with weight problems we all know what we should do or what we think we should do but something I feel like for for

[00:06:10] some people something has to click or you know there has to be that aha moment where everything changes because all of us have the information available or some information available I don't know if it's the correct information.

[00:06:25] Yeah yeah you know Michelle I nobody ever asked me that and I think that's a great question that aha moment it actually became let's say a stepping stone of perceived ahas within the trajectory of my war with food and body because everybody seemed to be doing something

[00:06:46] to further the quest for weight loss I became immersed in the fitness world I wasn't very good at sports as a child but I discovered that I could go to a gym and take a class where

[00:06:58] all these people are jumping up and down and the music's loud and that felt really good so I got into the fitness industry but my problem with food continued although I thought

[00:07:10] I was fixing it okay so I'm going to pave the road a little bit so I'm 12 I start dieting I go through junior high school I was trying to figure it out you know I was jumping from

[00:07:20] either eating foods that I didn't like forcing myself to be hungry giving up and starting over there was a lot of that and I started to put on weight it wasn't working then when I got to

[00:07:28] high school things got even more intense and I put on more weight when I got to college and I was on my own this was in the late 80s early 90s and group fitness became the thing the

[00:07:40] fat free nation came on the scene okay I became certified as an aerobics instructor it kind of saved my life in one way because it was a release that I had for life's pressures but then it came

[00:07:52] an emiss became a nemesis because I was using exercise to compensate for my my full-on binge eating disorder that was happening so while I thought I was figuring out figuring it out and losing weight because I was exercising a lot in college I was actually perpetuating a problem

[00:08:10] so Michelle I will say that the real aha for me didn't happen until my very late 40s and I just turned 54 in May if that tells you anything so what can you share what that aha was yeah oh I'm

[00:08:24] so happy to share so as I got older you know through college I got married had two kids they're grown and gone I continued it was weight watchers it was paleo it was all of the popular

[00:08:36] stuff following my my fitness friends and what we were all doing and again I was like leapfrogging to one program to another staying miserable the whole time and then us something happens to women

[00:08:48] when they turn 40 these hormones start doing weird things and you can't get away with what you used to get away with so I started to notice Michelle like I'm not binging like I used to

[00:09:01] because I started to notice that I don't recover from it as fast anymore my old compensatory tactics were no longer working I continued to feel lousy so I started to cut back and I started to

[00:09:13] focus on healthy baking and healthy sweets but I was always really really overeating those and feeling terrible so my hormones had had had it I was exhausted I was working as a personal

[00:09:25] trainer and I still had this private relationship with food that really made no sense to me whatsoever and quite frankly when pandemic hit March of 2020 right out of the fence I had to close down my

[00:09:40] business just like everybody else did I had to go home just like everybody else and hunker down right and I really fell into a pattern with sugar like never before like I'm 16 again with

[00:09:52] the ice cream and it really scared me because I couldn't control anything in my world and the sugar was the only thing that brought me any relief and I just kind of took my hands off the wheel

[00:10:01] and I handed my problem over to God and I said you know I have a problem as much as my fitness girl ego wanted to believe that it was the next rigid plan or I just need to lift more

[00:10:12] weights or whatever that was I had to give up on that because that wasn't serving me it was actually killing me so I ended up getting some therapy for this hiring my own coach I had to put

[00:10:22] my ego in my back pocket that was probably the hardest thing and when I did tools like learning to identify feelings and emotions learning to take care of myself and holistic ways and take

[00:10:34] the focus off the fight with food I kind of got a little like productively angry about this like why didn't I know all of these tools before why didn't I know how to do this before

[00:10:46] I really started to dive into the mindfulness work and finding peace and freedom with not just food and body but mind and spirit I was so disconnected from myself I don't even know how I got through a

[00:11:00] lot of the things I got through in life I started to do a lot of inner work that helped me heal my relationship with food and I knew that there are a lot of other women that are going

[00:11:10] through the same thing right and I had to write about it so I started writing and it turned into a book and that turned into me exiting my personal training business I basically didn't renew my lease

[00:11:23] and I now I coach online and I write and I help women heal their unwanted eating concerns in the name of emotional eating stress eating chronic dieting weight loss there's a whole gamut of challenges and these are conversations that I don't think are are had enough

[00:11:39] right and I love how you do the mind body spirit all three approach because you know obviously just going after the body or or just trying to change your mindset isn't working for most of us

[00:11:52] I mean so there's obviously missing components the way you know the traditional dieting approaches yes so I love that you go after all three but one thing I wanted to ask and I know

[00:12:06] you've had your sugar battles and you know I think all most of America has a sugar battle but how do you deal with because now there's even an addictive component right we get addicted to

[00:12:20] this stuff and not just addicted to sugar itself but now they're putting all kinds of chemicals in our food to make us addicted so how does that play into what you do another great question

[00:12:31] and this is a really tough one because like I said before I spent so much of my life I call it shoots and ladders in my book ping ponging and shoots and ladders you know climb the diet land

[00:12:41] on something slide back down eat something off plan so I'm really very pro the concept of we need to get real about if we want to feel good in our bodies have good energy right I tip

[00:12:56] toe around weight loss gives it gets it just gets too much attention I will say taking best care of ourselves the truth is when we eat healthy foods we feel better there's no denying that right I know

[00:13:08] if I eat a green apple I'm going to feel one way if I have a cream filled donut which I happen to love I'm going to feel a different way I don't want to feel that way because it drains me in

[00:13:22] how I want to show up in the world right so in terms of what you asked me about sugar can be addictive or feel addictive or feel abusive and ultra processed foods everything that tastes amazing

[00:13:35] that's always on our face all the time it's difficult to avoid it is it's really difficult to stay away from the extremely tongue pleasing foods that are created for certain reasons I

[00:13:48] completely get it and part of the work that I do with women and I write about this in my book I write about a five step healing pathway to find peace and freedom with food body and self without restrictive

[00:13:59] dieting we don't discuss food until step four oh wow now the step four is discussing how to start eating healthfully without dieting and what worked for me and I help other women through

[00:14:14] this is I do believe in giving yourself a loving phase or you go through I call it a cleanup I call it a whole foods cleanup in other words the example that I gave you you eat the green apple right

[00:14:28] you notice how you feel you eat the donut you notice how you feel these connections these mind body connection with what we decide to eat produces experimental data for ourselves that

[00:14:41] helps us to make future food decisions I love donuts I really do I love how they taste right and I'm not even going to say that I never eat dough I can't remember the last time I had a donut

[00:14:51] but like I love birthday cake when it's one of my kids birthdays or my husband's birthday or mine I'm having cake it's a mindful decision to eat the cake there's no rules associated with that

[00:15:01] there's meaning attached to it right I help my clients discover how can I fall in love with healthy foods that I really enjoy and make that a sustainable pathway that's not in the name

[00:15:14] of restrictive dieting and also include the treats that I love it's summertime I'm going to have ice cream on the 4th of July right like that staying out of the land of deprivation it's tricky

[00:15:24] so how do we fall in love with ourselves enough because I think that's a key component because to be real honest I can walk the right path for quite a while and then I slide down

[00:15:36] the slip brief and I know if I eat this I feel better if I eat that I'm going to feel worse and yet I still let myself slide so what what what am I missing in that scenario yeah yeah I love that

[00:15:49] so when you say you let yourself slide I teach a balance of fun foods and healthy foods and how to achieve that and how to stay out of the land of I screwed up I ate something off plan

[00:16:04] it's bad there's an approach that I take with regards to noticing how we feel in our bodies when we make eating decisions and without that ability to be mindful in our eating approach

[00:16:15] we miss out on the clues that our bodies give us when we eat something let me give you an example I strive to eat healthy now I would say probably 85 percent of the time but tonight we're going

[00:16:27] to an event where there is going to be a lot of decadent rich foods and I'm going to I'm looking forward to going taking a look at everything and with permission trying what looks really good

[00:16:38] the old me would have been scared to death to go to this party and I would have almost been a fear factor and I would have gone way overboard because I wouldn't have any tools to

[00:16:48] think about those foods because of the restriction factor and the judgment of it so when we learn to remove the judgments and trust our instincts and practice one day at a time we

[00:16:59] can start to discover what terms work for us that's good yeah because I think it's a struggle that a lot of us have that you just learning that balance I guess that relationship with food because it's

[00:17:14] it's a comfort and it's joyous usually I don't know so but the other aspect I've noticed on my own journey is the family right the family can get involved in saying you know oh a little's

[00:17:32] not going to hurt you oh it's you know and you're trying to do your best or you know that this is a trigger food and by trigger I mean like if I eat a little I'm going to eat a lot yeah so you try to

[00:17:42] avoid that food like maybe the donuts for you yeah I mean it doesn't sound like a problem for you but yeah if it's something you really love that you know is not good for you

[00:17:52] so how do you battle those outward influences you know the other people then yeah that can really be a tough one a tough one and there's really a pathway for basically forming I call it a personal bubble

[00:18:05] of peace which is boundaries within your food decisions right you know as a personal trainer I used to have a client that brought me sweets all the time all the time I finally had to

[00:18:15] ask her to stop he said you know what I know how much you appreciate what we're doing together bring me a plant I love plants but I have a problem with sugar so I'm going to ask you

[00:18:24] if you want to do something nice for me please don't bring the sweets and I think that learning to say no with grace that's like a new language and it can be done a lot of the food pushers

[00:18:36] that I personally experience rightly and my clients experience are with their own families because food is associated with what do you mean you're not participating in these brownies they're a part of a loving experience within our family yeah and that can really be tough let's

[00:18:52] just validate that that that's tough and sometimes we have to say no thank you three times and on the third time we have a fake smile because we ran out of steam in the first two smiles but it can be

[00:19:04] done and here's where it gets tricky you know we're really not responsible for other people's reactions we're not responsible for how they're reacting to our decisions and that's probably one of the more difficult things here I will say how I personally manage this is for example

[00:19:19] if I have family coming to visit and I know we're going to have a family dinner and I know that they're bringing let's say the brownies or whatever I will plan for that

[00:19:30] I will plan for that to enjoy a brownie with a lot of awareness with a lot of mindful slow eating how does this brownie taste where am I on the third bite have I had enough does

[00:19:41] it taste as good as the first bite if I have two more bites if I finish the whole brownie my stomach feels okay if I have another one I'm going to start to feel bloated and uncomfortable and sugar

[00:19:52] foggy I don't like that right so you see how there's still there was a plan there were no rules there a lot of mindfulness and intentional thinking about well at what point do we want to

[00:20:03] stop because we like how we feel now but if we keep going we're not going to feel so good in our stomach so I hope that I addressed the food pushers and the boundaries how tricky that can be

[00:20:12] and some ways to approach that and some ways to think about it yeah and Tracy I think you brought up another good point too and you know that's that mindfulness part is key because I've noticed

[00:20:24] even with myself that things don't taste as good as what you think they taste I mean if you really stop I mean we kind of eat so fast a lot of times that we it doesn't even register

[00:20:36] but if you slow down and you're like man this doesn't even taste that great why was I craving it you know why do I think it's all that so yeah I think that's a big part is that mindfulness too

[00:20:47] yeah absolutely I know you talk about healing from dieting and restrictive eating are you talking about the emotional healing or is there a physical healing like the gut health of yeah what can you

[00:21:02] yeah you know that I'm not a gut health expert quite frankly right right yeah the only part of the food that I that I manage with my clients is I help them make decisions about what sounds good

[00:21:14] to them what they want to eat and ultimately that that's really what's most important anyway because they're the ones that are going to make their food decisions ongoing so I don't do plan

[00:21:23] food plans for my clients I help them create their own but in terms of you asked me about the emotional component I'd like to address that question with my approach to healing from

[00:21:35] from chronic dieting and what I talk about in my book which by the way I have it around here somewhere it's called the diet free diva and it's on amazon it's on my website so my five step approach

[00:21:46] I think is going to be the answer to your question if you don't mind I'd like to know I'd like you to yeah well one of the things that helped me when I was early on in my journey

[00:21:56] to figure this out I had a story and that the story that I had is something that I ignored something that I was ashamed of and something that nobody knew about except maybe my best friend

[00:22:06] and my husband so part of my healing we were locked down in pandemic mind you is I found a group of people online that shared my problem with sugar especially and between me starting to write

[00:22:21] about my life because I was so bored during pandemic that turned into an unintended journaling exercise that turned into a book wow so where am I going with this I realized that my story had a

[00:22:33] lot of validity my story also inspired other people to then tell theirs so I'm making all kinds of friends on just on zoom just like you and I are doing now I'm meeting with people

[00:22:43] and hearing their food story I'm telling mine we're healing together in the sharing of our stories so step one is discover and write your food story when did it start for you I shared a little bit

[00:22:57] in this interview with with you about mine I started I told you at age 12 that's when my problem started so stories are inspirational healing tools between people and it really has to start with everybody has a story and that's where I start with all of my clients

[00:23:13] step one tell me your story is it just getting it out or is it sharing it or both it's the same thing it's a I mean like if you just write it down for yourself it's the same as if you shared it

[00:23:26] this is really great so in my work with people I have them write about their food story and they share it with me okay but I work in this space as a coach but somebody listening in if you

[00:23:38] have a close confidant friend I'd be happy to be that person for you I'd love to hear your food story because when you talk about where you've been when you verbalize this when you type it write

[00:23:47] it or verbalize it you start to bring it into awareness like wow that is my reality look at where I've come from here when I did that for myself I realized I've really been through

[00:23:58] something wow look at that this is really crazy well no wonder I was binging on little Debbie snack cakes in high school and college and hiding the rappers no wonder I was doing that

[00:24:09] so just a lot of like personal validation when we when we share our stories we discover write our stories okay and then step two is we have to get to know ourselves we have to get to

[00:24:21] know a lot about who we are what we stand for what our values are before we can move forward and repair a damaged relationship with food and body so again most of us that have been at war with

[00:24:34] food whether it's chronic dieting following the latest restrictive pathway which is also dieting we it's anything but being checked in with who we are we're actually checked out and I've said before you know restrictive eating plans they actually teach us how not to eat and it's based on

[00:24:51] external rules and restrictions and programming and it teaches us anything but to trust our own decisions with eating it teaches us how to not trust ourselves and it really robs us of that

[00:25:03] of that intuitive nature with food and eating that we were all born with so step two is all about discovering your personal values step three and this is probably my favorite part of the work

[00:25:16] that I do and it involves mindfulness tools and I developed this thing called and any for anybody listening in especially work for emotional eaters that was me for so long emotional eating stress

[00:25:28] eating I developed a tool called a personal inquiry which is the simplest thing known to man and I learned this and all of the healing work that I embraced and that's basically to institute a nurturing voice and ask ourselves questions not just with our eating but with

[00:25:48] everything it's a sense of being checked in and tuned into what's going on around us it's a sense of learning how to be mindful like here's an example Michelle I'm sitting here right on the

[00:26:00] floor and a room in my house the floor is hard I had to come up here to get peace and quiet for our interview today and let's see my left hip is hurting a little bit I'm a little hot because

[00:26:10] they are conditionings not great in here right now my throat has been sore all week I'm noticing that I'm not hungry at all I'm excited to be here talking with you with something that I love so much

[00:26:21] you get the idea of mindful exactly yeah so especially with regards to I do a lot of work in the emotional eating space and a personal inquiry involves a series of questions number one

[00:26:34] what's going on number two what am I feeling that's a big one can you name notice and name and identify and name what you're feeling number three what do you need a lot of times we need

[00:26:51] relief we need soothing we need to cope we need to change our state and number four what will I do right now what's available to me and what can I do right now to meet my needs

[00:27:02] and that that personal inquiry right there that can be utilized for any situation really it's a wonderful way to to practice mindfulness and I do that with my clients all the time that right

[00:27:12] there is something we never learned like we never learned in the eighth grade in health class how to be mindful I hope they teach that in school these days because our our young people

[00:27:20] need it and it's such a powerful tool because it helps us to tap into who we are and what we need because a lot of us who have been through a war with food and body we never learned how

[00:27:36] to attune to our real needs and frankly to take best care of ourselves we learned how to fight and pursue and to push and it's cold it's harsh it's restrictive and it also doesn't work right

[00:27:48] I'm exhausted step number four we talk about whole whole foods cleanup I give you a 14 day whole foods cleanup experiment and then we talk about some joyful movement because our

[00:28:00] bodies were meant to move and I bring in some of my my fitness expertise over the years and then step number five I call it a toolbox of treasures and what that means it is we need to know how

[00:28:14] to navigate and one of the things that you brought up Michelle is really good about the food pushers about how to say no about how to honor and stay true to your let's say your goals

[00:28:25] and your healthy habits that you you really want to further and be consistent with and how to how to be consistent and navigate all of the snake pits that are out there all the time

[00:28:36] attempting to derail us life on life's terms we have fast food nation that'd be dunking donuts right down the road for me where I live how to navigate life and stay the course and stay out

[00:28:48] of the land of perfectionism because it's impossible and how to manage staying out of the trap of deprivation because that's what dieting teaches us to do how to identify where am I still falling into the falling into the trap of diet mentality have I really rejected that yet

[00:29:09] and it takes practice but those are the five steps that I share in my book and I walk my clients through that at the end I talk about working in all five of these steps I call is one's

[00:29:19] very own path of excellence which brings you to an ongoing journey because it's never it's never a destination but the journey is where we find peace and freedom with food with our bodies and with ourselves because it feels really good to trust our own decisions

[00:29:37] with food and with other habits but if for people listening in if you've had a chronic damaged relationship with food when you finally discover that you can trust your own decisions with food like going to this fancy party I'm going to tonight that feels pretty good

[00:29:51] and those seeds of empowerment they tend to spread into other areas of your life like I never thought in a million years I would have written a book I never thought I would be an

[00:30:00] online coach I never thought that I would be doing podcasts talking about this it's pretty surreal but it's probably the most fulfilling thing that I've ever done in my life is to work

[00:30:10] with women and help them to take back their own self trust not just with food but with everything right and I you know I think you because for me when you first talked about trusting your

[00:30:20] own decisions with food it was literally an aha moment for me because I thought wow I have never trusted myself with my food choices and I think that's why I'm always looking for this diet or that diet or you know I'm looking for somebody else's wisdom right yeah

[00:30:39] and how they handle food because I I I guess you know it just hit me when you said that that I've never trusted myself with that because I've been taught not to trust myself with that

[00:30:50] you and millions of others exactly yeah yeah yeah absolutely yes you know I'd like to share something as I heard you talk about your own personal like the plan and looking for the next

[00:31:03] one or not being able to trust yourself anybody listening in that's resonating with this topic you know I can't trust myself with food either oh my gosh you know this this subject really speaks

[00:31:13] to me I also want to say that we need to be able to use our own inner wisdom when it comes to listening to the experts and here's what I mean by that okay several years ago in fact

[00:31:25] Michelle I think it was like 2018 okay I was working at an exhaustive level in personal training I was exhausted pushing pushing pushing getting older I was so tired and I was using food to fill up on

[00:31:39] energy to keep going to keep going and to reward myself at the end of a long day like I didn't know anything else but to go and grab sweets and then I wouldn't eat dinner I was so tired of not

[00:31:49] being able to control that right it was really judging myself harshly over that and in this is how desperate I was okay so I found this high profile doctor I won't mention names a high

[00:32:01] profile doctor and I reached out to this doctor oh my gosh work with me okay let's see what that's all about so 500 dollars an hour wow have a one-hour phone call phone call with a doctor

[00:32:16] and this doctor talked 80% of the time and I had to like dive in to be heard red flag number one but I didn't know that then right and this doctor told me I needed to intermittent fast

[00:32:31] that women my age that was the thing that's what was going to fix me and that is what I needed to do because of the circadian rhythm and my hormones and whatever else I was skeptical

[00:32:42] I was really skeptical Michelle and my that skeptical feeling came from the wise part of me that has been suppressed for so long being like Tracy no stop it so I had several sessions with

[00:32:54] this woman hiding behind the fact that intermittent fasting was actually from a person that battled binge eating disorder intermittent fasting is a disaster wow I'm sorry it's a disaster because

[00:33:07] what did you have to do I went back into my like in my mind I've got a risk I can't eat breakfast till 11 o'clock damn it I'm in there I can't have breakfast until 11 o'clock right yeah so what do you

[00:33:20] think I did at 11 o'clock ate everything in sight and then I felt like crap I'm not saying that that's the intermittent fasting is bad I'm saying that we are all unique individuals and

[00:33:33] my son intermittent fasting works for him it's a disaster for me I don't even want to talk about it it might work for somebody else I work with the people that are tired of like I can't have breakfast

[00:33:44] till 11 because she said so right so I encourage everyone to really just kind of trust your intuition trust your intuition with what you're told because we know what's best we just need to

[00:33:57] figure out how to start to trust that voice that's trying to show us the way yeah I think you're exactly right and I think society kind of programs us to not trust and that's why we're always

[00:34:08] looking instead of looking within or he's looking out you know who's got the best next idea and I think you're exactly right yeah spending the money on the programs and the supplements and everything and everybody's confused exactly everybody's so confused and it makes me very

[00:34:26] very sad the women that I work with do you want to know what the most common request is Tracy I just want to know what's livable for me with food I just want to be able to live

[00:34:39] and be happy that's sad and they're all well I shouldn't say all the common the common client I get is someone that is trying to eat extremely healthy with a vengeance right and they don't

[00:34:54] understand why they can't handle going to a party where there are sweets and they go overboard they're very down on themselves because they see themselves as lacking the control in those environments when it's really not the case because they're very accomplished in other areas of their

[00:35:10] life but the way that they're thinking about food that was programmed somewhere in their story that they bought into some plan or some program and we take a while to chip away at that and

[00:35:23] it takes it takes a little while but there is freedom on the other side that really ends up feeling great for them that's beautiful to know so I want to ask you Tracy I know you're a fitness

[00:35:36] expert and so how much does fitness plan this and what is fitness I mean for the average person that you work with is it just getting out and taking a walk every day what

[00:35:47] what does that look like I love that nobody's ever asked me that it varies Michelle it varies I have some clients they go for daily walks I have some clients that have personal trainers and

[00:35:57] they have a regiment I have some clients that have a small home gym and they they don't want to be around other people in a health club and so they do their own thing at home I have some that just

[00:36:07] prefer gentle stretching and yoga they love yoga and I will say that I have a lot I could talk for an hour about fitness but I will say that over the years we have been bought into

[00:36:19] what appears to be optimal well you have to have x amount of cardio sessions and x amount of strength training sessions you got to stretch by the way you got to get yoga in there too people

[00:36:29] are flipping out right like what do you mean the whole goal Michelle people listening in is our bodies are meant to move what do you and talk about this in the Diet

[00:36:38] Free Diva book what do you like to do what do you like to do and if you're not sure try some things because we were all meant to move and there is something that you like to do

[00:36:50] whether it's walking whether it's like my mom she loves working in the yard planting flowers moving rocks replanting pulling weeds my father is a walker he is a power walker and he likes

[00:37:03] to lift weights I love still to this day I jump up and down in a room with women and we blast the music and my clients are in their 50s 60s and 70s wow we have a time I hate running

[00:37:16] I'm not doing it my body never liked running some people like to run some people like to ride a bike but the goal Michelle and I work with my clients on this one what do you like to do

[00:37:26] right we find that out and then we figure out well how often do you think you could squeeze in some of that because when we move our attitude perks up it happens it's part of the

[00:37:40] chemistry in the brain that brings us the endorphins that that help us to feel good it's a real thing that's how I manage my hormones frankly really I'm a hot mess if I don't exercise I get I get

[00:37:54] I get very impatient with my husband it just he's the easiest one for me to take things out on and so I do him a favor by by exercising but we have to once again just like

[00:38:04] our food choices we have to just kind of trust that we can decide and do a little bit of it when it fits into our schedule if you can do it every day great if you can do it a few days a week

[00:38:13] great but we have to calm the noise of what's optimal and perfect and if I see one more woman in my age range that's doing selfies with the crop top on social media I'm gonna I'm gonna

[00:38:23] pull out every strand of hair on my head we're not inspired by that we're really not we want we wanted to have real conversations about other things and you know it's like I don't care about

[00:38:36] a woman my age that has an abdominals that you can see the rack and like we appreciate other things you know what I mean right and I think on some level at least for me I know that's never

[00:38:50] gonna be me you know so I can't relate to it because that's not I mean I want to be healthier and fitter but I'm never going to be in a crop top on social media so you know and I also want to say

[00:39:04] I know plenty of people that have the chiseled look like that oh wow they criticize themselves more than anybody so it's all really quite elusive that the main thing that women go for

[00:39:18] my clientele is we want to have good energy right and regardless however we live our lives good energy helps us to do the things that we want to do with vitality. Am I good energy? Do you mean

[00:39:30] physical energy or do you mean like positive attitude? Yeah physical and mental energy both okay to show up in our own way for you to show up on this podcast Michelle for you to do

[00:39:43] what you do and to host all of us in these conversations you have to show up with a sense of energy and vibrancy right it's what you do you love this and I have to show up for my clients I

[00:39:54] have to show up when I write I've got to have a good headspace and if I'm not doing certain things to have good energy I feel lousy and I just want to go back to bed. Very true so I'm

[00:40:07] I just popped into my mind how do you feel like as a person works on all this stuff and their energy gets better during the day does all of this work together to help women sleep better because I

[00:40:20] hear that a lot sleep is a huge problem especially in the older you know I don't want to say older but 40s 50s 60s 70s I know people in their 70s I mean sleep is huge or lack of sleep. It's a giant

[00:40:34] conundrum Michelle. Yeah. From like personal experience here especially with our hormones shifting it's really a difficult thing right so let's go back to well to answer your question just about everybody that I talk to sleep is a challenge and we're at work in progress it

[00:40:53] requires that we are more mindful of a sleep routine in the name of self-care really okay so I know that if I'm on my cell phone anywhere if I'm if I scroll even an hour before bedtime

[00:41:08] I'm laying there my feet are twitching I'm hot so I have a no phone zone I have it on in the kitchen because my kids are grown and gone but for emergencies but I don't scroll. Oh wow.

[00:41:22] I do different things at my husband and I watch a show together we have we're pretty anal about getting to bed no later than nine the dark room and even that some nights it works some nights it

[00:41:32] doesn't but everybody has to think about at my stage now what could I possibly start to try to see if that will help me sleep a little bit better I know if I take a nap at four p.m. I'm

[00:41:43] not going to fall asleep right think like that yeah I've tried foregoing the nap though and then I still have trouble sleeping so I was just curious yeah it's a jigsaw puzzle it is a

[00:41:55] jigsaw puzzle we do the best we can but it's tough it is it is tough so what do you think is the if there is one or two keys to sustainability what do you think that would be for most people

[00:42:11] you mean sustainability with food with food yeah yeah with with being in a healthy relationship yeah first of all we must must must identify and reject diet mentality that's going on the food

[00:42:26] police the food critic the committee that exists in our heads judging every oh can I have that cookie we need to work on that and that doesn't happen overnight okay okay that's that's the work that

[00:42:38] I do with I love doing that kind of work helping to break down that diet mentality and notice when it's showing up and when we do that and we start to give ourselves permission I call it tippy towing

[00:42:49] through the forest with our food decisions and eating slowly noticing what it tastes like do we even like it is it satisfying is it aligned with how we want to feel in our bodies in other words

[00:43:04] that's the little code word for does it meet your healthy standards everybody has their own food guidelines that they can develop based on the experimental data that they have on a day-to-day

[00:43:13] basis with food and in that regard when they start to trust that they can go anywhere and be anywhere they know how to manage what food is showing up what they need to bring with them and what

[00:43:27] the system for them looks like then they have a sustainable pathway but there's a there's we connect the dots to get there it doesn't happen overnight because remember I'm not telling you

[00:43:38] what to do I'm helping you figure that out and when you figure that out through trial and error now you know what is sustainable for you and what is sustainable you can do consistently

[00:43:52] and that takes you to where you want to go especially with feeling better if you have you know unwanted pounds that need to that really don't need to be there that can shed when things are sustainably and consistently happening that makes sense for you it's amazing

[00:44:07] right I didn't even realize that I had some excess weight it just started to shed when I stopped fighting with food so there's a pathway to get to that sustainable place and in my book the five steps represents that pathway that's awesome so do you feel like

[00:44:25] some of this mindfulness work also addresses like I know we from my journey and the people I've talked got blessed to talk to on this podcast that a lot of the stuff we carry forward in life

[00:44:38] came from childhood and I'm not picking on parents or anything we all do the best we can yeah yeah it's all we can do but I'm just saying does does this mindfulness address like some of those

[00:44:51] things we're carrying forward that we've never even thought about like how valid is it and how and why are we still reacting this way that's a very very real thing and that's part of I'd say

[00:45:03] it's a it's a part of step one in the food story okay it comes into play big time with step three because what I talk about these two voices that we have I reference the

[00:45:14] the green-faced witch from the Wizard of Oz we have the inner critic and then we have Glinda the lovely witch that comes down in the bubble and she's so gentle and compassionate and kind

[00:45:23] I was just on a podcast yesterday where we talked about the inner child and I talked about these voices that we have within part there's a part of my book called The Voices Within

[00:45:34] where I discuss this okay so this is really great right we have an opportunity to invoke a nurturing parenting voice to ourselves right okay now I say this without any reference to

[00:45:47] murdering or victim hood or any of that exactly yeah those of us you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that hasn't been through something with regards to I mean I work in the the food and

[00:45:59] body space but we have an opportunity now to be that own nurturing parent to our self because there's a younger part of us that's still showing up every day right whether we realize it or not

[00:46:13] if we realize it or not and the younger part of us oftentimes is scarred and wounded and those scars and those wounds are still there and they we can just how do I know when the scars in the wound

[00:46:26] show up well we feel off about something certain circumstances certain times of day certain decisions that we make we can just feel off and we need relief from that in the emotional eating space I talk a lot about this and there is a way through the personal

[00:46:41] inquiry that I talked about before will we learn to ask ourselves questions in the nurturing parenting voice we can help ourselves and a lot of this has to do with validating you know what it would make sense Tracy why you have this why you dealt with pain using

[00:47:00] donuts it would make sense why you did that so a lot of self validation is really part of this healing but we need to be able to have someone hold space for us to be able to do that it almost sounds like

[00:47:11] there's a self forgiveness component too and absolutely yes in the name of acceptance self acceptance and compassion right without self acceptance and compassion by the way if anybody thinking out there like oh my gosh I don't know how to do that I didn't either we never learned

[00:47:27] these kinds of things but we can learn them now you know being able to accept ourselves for who we are right now that doesn't mean we have to like everything that means along with our junk because

[00:47:37] everybody has it I call it a childhood backpack we all were carried around so we all have our junk and being able to say you know what we're doing all right yeah it would make points it would

[00:47:49] make everybody's got junk even though it can seem like we're the only ones with junk everybody has it how can I start to be a little kinder to myself I think that's huge yeah

[00:48:00] so do you recommend people write this down like these inquiries do you have them journal it I'm a big believer in journaling and some people cringe at that and I think that there's a negative

[00:48:11] reference to journaling because that seems like part of a diet yeah true right you know journal your foods and all of that I help my clients journal other things one of the big things that I work on

[00:48:24] and in the this speaks to the conversation we were just having is we need to learn to talk to ourselves differently to be that inner nurturing loving parent to this day Michelle I write in

[00:48:35] my journal in the morning three empowering thoughts about self oh wow I have my clients we were learning a new language about how we want to talk to ourselves because we have to take agency over our voices we can't expect the world or externals around us to boost

[00:48:55] us up all the time life is tough it's tough right and believing that we're worthy of speaking encouraging things to ourselves is another is another part of this work so yeah there's a

[00:49:09] lot of work around noticing those voices and intentionally I hear you there I go again it happened earlier today Michelle I was feeling a fear about something and I was really really criticizing myself about something and I just said Tracy there you go again you know what that

[00:49:25] makes sense why we feel like that but what's one thing that we can do moving forward to take action on this particular thing and it felt better but if I didn't have that voice

[00:49:37] I would have gone down the pathway of judgment and criticism yeah if you went and also had the awareness of hey here I'm doing it again yeah that's huge so I want to be respectful of your

[00:49:50] time and I know we're kind of winding down but is there anything we haven't talked about today that you want to make sure that the listeners hear yeah well you know we we talked about

[00:49:59] so much and I'm assuming that anyone listening in that can relate to this these topics with having a damaged relationship with food with food and body we talked about a lot and I know that

[00:50:13] a lot of this it can sound inspiring and then it can feel overwhelming okay so um I encourage everyone to just maybe play this interview back and to just sit with these concepts and just

[00:50:30] when you feel a little ping of wow that makes sense you're really on to something there you know right and if anybody especially can really relate to what I said about using food to soothe numb escape

[00:50:45] check out comfort using food to cope with life I want you to know that I understand that so much it was such a nemesis for me for so long and I was really hell bent to find a solution for this

[00:50:59] and I did notice that a lot of people were having difficulty understanding the personal inquiry okay where I talked about those questions and there's so much power in the ability to do that

[00:51:13] that I wanted to create something where they could just tap into it and I walk them through it and I have a lot of blood sweat and tears in this thing but I created an emotional eating

[00:51:23] rescue audio it's like a meditation okay about I think it's like 10 minutes and I have my client it's free and I have it I have the link here I don't remember if I gave that to you for the show

[00:51:36] or not but I have the link where people can just tap into this put their email and it goes right to their email um it's my emotional eating rescue meditation and I basically walk you through that

[00:51:46] personal inquiry I walk you through those questions and it's very relaxing in the background and I I ask you additional questions to help you understand how to talk to yourself with that inner nurturing coaching voice that we were discussing great yeah right because we need to

[00:52:05] learn how to do this if I did somebody else taught me how to do this and then I thought you know what I can do that in my own voice and I have this and it's really helpful to learn how to

[00:52:18] do this to learn how to talk to yourself because cravings and triggers especially for sugar cravings come in waves and most of the time I learned early on in my healing that if I can get to the other

[00:52:30] side of that craving and do something different about my thoughts I don't crave it anymore why didn't I learn this before why why was I missing this little tool I could have avoided so much

[00:52:44] strife so I have that to offer your listeners and um I'm really kind of because nobody I well I'm not going to say nobody talks about this I I think it's because through my own hard knocks and my own mess I wanted to have something that was like

[00:53:01] third grade language come on people let's go let's try this we can get to the other side I think that's beautiful yeah if you'll send me the link I'll definitely put it in

[00:53:10] the show notes with all the connection yeah thank you for that I'd be so honored oh thank you it sounds beautiful do you want to tell us more about your coaching programs yeah yeah so I I um

[00:53:24] I just launched yesterday a um a mini course on self-nourishment I'm super super excited about this and that's going to be featured on my website very very soon it is out to my email list so if

[00:53:36] you if you sign up for the emotional eating rescue audio you will have that connection to me where you can you can find my um at my self-nourishment course it's a 30 day experiment it's self-paced

[00:53:46] it's evergreen you can do it now you can do it later but I give you daily daily self-nourishment tips for holistic wellness and it's super fun I kind of guide you through that but um there's

[00:53:56] a link where you can book a call with me uh I have another course on on healing from chronic dieting coming out in the fall super excited about that right and my book Diet Free Diva can be found

[00:54:09] it's on the first page of my website the holistic divas.com right there on the front page you'll see the link that takes you to amazon and I reported it in my voice too oh wow because nobody likes

[00:54:21] those robots you know when you hear a robot well they're not going to hear your emotions exactly yeah and Facebook uh I'm Tracy L Desjardins and I'm on Instagram Diet Free Diva I have a

[00:54:32] private Facebook group for women um Diet Free Divas and all of that can be found on my website can anybody join that group? I work with women only so I will say just women yes okay but I'm at

[00:54:45] they they don't have to be a client yet right they can just oh no they don't have to be a client yeah okay that's awesome well thank you for being with us today I really enjoyed it truly and

[00:54:58] I love that you share all your wisdom that you're learning and have learned with us so thank you it's been great. Thank you Michelle and I also want to say like the theme for your show is really

[00:55:11] cool I was going through some of your episodes and the beauty in the mess it kind of aligns with everybody has a story. Exactly. So let's start talking about our mess because we are going to heal

[00:55:23] and somebody else is going to benefit too because we connect by sharing our messes. I think you're exactly right and I think you know so many people heal themselves by sharing and and then

[00:55:36] like you said it's helping other people because people listening like me or like having aha moments and wow I never thought of it that way if you see something a little bit differently or

[00:55:45] somebody's already done what you're trying to do and they can accelerate you it's a beautiful thing you don't have to waste the five I don't want to say waste but you don't have to take the five years

[00:55:55] that maybe it took that person you know you can learn from them and get their five years quicker so yeah I think it's beautiful and I appreciate people like yourself being willing to share

[00:56:05] those things with us so well you know it's doing the personal personal heavy lifting and I always tell people like the sexy way out is to subscribe to the next hot diet. All right I'm getting

[00:56:17] it fast or I'm gonna do keto or you know I'm just gonna do that that's the sexy quick fix right that's it comes with a lot of promises and we find hope in that it's like the honeymoon

[00:56:28] and I do the unsexy work that actually helps it is unsexy because we get in there we dig up roots and we have powerful conversations and I love saying that I do the unsexy stuff.

[00:56:45] To your point earlier I think the reason we have hope in all of these different bad diets for lack of a better word is because we don't trust ourselves because we've been taught not to

[00:56:56] and you're teaching women to learn how to trust themselves and more than just food choices everything but definitely in food so I think that's a beautiful thing I really do. But just like Donna Summer said back in the day enough is enough remember that song

[00:57:12] with barbis ricaan and enough is enough yeah 70s it was a big hit and like enough is enough so this has really been fun I really enjoyed our conversation today thank you for having

[00:57:23] I have too thank you yeah it's been great yeah well I appreciate the work that you're doing and the opportunity to meet you and to be a part of your mission I don't take that lightly so

[00:57:36] thank you again. Thank you have a great day bye bye bye. As we wrap up today's episode I hope Tracy sharing her knowledge experience and wisdom has helped you in some way you can really tell

[00:57:49] that Tracy has done the work she inspired several aha moments for me during the taping and I think one of the main ones was just the realization that many of us don't trust our food choices we

[00:58:02] don't trust ourselves to make those food choices and you know I totally believe it's on us to figure out why and build that trust with ourselves but I think it's definitely one of the root

[00:58:13] causes of some of these food challenges. I love how she approaches the food challenges with the mind, body and spirit approach because I believe it's going to take working within all three avenues

[00:58:26] to truly gain the control that's needed. She also refers to mindfulness a lot which I believe is just truly learning to become aware of what you're feeling what you're eating and maybe even why

[00:58:38] and I think awareness in anything all things is a huge factor so that kind of leads into her five-step healing pathway which included writing your food story down and sharing it getting to know your values use mindfulness and ask those personal inquiry questions adopt a whole foods approach

[00:58:59] or at least try it out and create your own personal toolbox to navigate these food decisions to help you do all that you can of course pick up her book the diet free diva on amazon or on

[00:59:10] her website which is in the show notes if that appeals to you but I would like to know what stood out to you today. I would love to hear from you and as always I hope this episode helps at least

[00:59:22] one person and with that I hope you have a blessed week my friend. Thank you for listening to The Beauty and the Mess. If you enjoyed what you heard please share it with a friend and if

[00:59:36] you haven't already please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your favorite pod player. If you have any questions or comments any topic ideas you would like to hear about or you think you would be a great guest on the show you can reach me directly at the

[00:59:50] beautyandthemess.com thanks for listening.