How to Enter Fall Without Food Fear
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Fall is here! And I know with all the fall treats and the holidays approaching, it causes many of you to experience some major anxiety. You either feel like it's going to be impossible to stay on track and reach your goals, or impossible to stay on track and maintain your goals. So, what's your plan for navigating your anxiety this year? That’s exactly what I want to dive into in this bonus episode of Embrace Your Real. Willpower obviously isn’t working for us, so let’s work on figuring out a NEW plan that allows us to get rid of our food fear!
Are you going to try macro counting this year? Woohoo!
Check out my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy here and let's do it together!
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, hey, beautiful human, can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it, let's go.
Hello and welcome back to the Embrace Your Real podcast. You are back for another bonus episode, and guess what? By the time of this recording, fall is officially here. How crazy is that? Now I know 2020 feels like it's been a decade in and of itself, but it's also kind of crazy because I almost feel like I was taken from whenever life started changing very rapidly, which was around like March 20th. But it's crazy to think that literally fall is here and I sometimes feel like I'm still living in March of 2020.
So anyways, without further ado, we're going to dive into the episode. To be honest, I am so ready for fall. Bring on all the pumpkin spice goodness. Bring on the snuggly weather, the sweater weather, the fires. There are so many amazing things about fall. I am a complete sucker for everything fall and winter and I know that I'm not the only one.
But I also know that a lot of the fall treats and holidays approaching can cause a lot of anxiety for people, especially around food. I know this because I experienced it for a decade plus of my life. I love fall, but I hated fall. I loved winter, and Christmas, and all the things, but I was so terrified of it because it would give me so much anxiety around the food because so much of the season, fall and winter especially, is surrounded by food. So I wanted to just briefly touch on this. Whether you feel like it's going to be impossible to stay on track and reach your goals, or it's impossible for you to maintain your goals, whatever your plan is for navigating your anxiety this year, I wanted to just dive into this topic.
But before, you know that I need to share the most recent review. It comes from Emma [Ash Jane 00:00:02:19]. She says, "Breath of fresh air and keeping it real. I recently started listening to Julie's podcast and she is a breath of fresh air who truly keeps it real. Trying to navigate the constant influx of information being thrown at us all around in the health and fitness community is challenging, but she really breaks it down into manageable pieces." Thank you so much for the review. I love reading your reviews. I really appreciate them.
All right, so what is your plan for navigating all of the delicious fall treats this year? Let me guess. And I'm speaking from experience when I say this because this was me. You're going to just repeat what you do each year. AK, you're going to deprive yourself as long as you can. You're going to stare at the pumpkin muffin, the pumpkin lattes, the apple cider donuts, the warm hot chocolate with envy, wishing that you can enjoy all of those treats.
And instead, you're just going to say, "I can't have it." Or you're going to put yourself in this position of, "I'm strong. I can resist all of this." And yet, that's the one thing that you're constantly fixating on. Trust me, I am speaking from experience when I'm talking about this, because eventually you're going to cave, and then you're going to eat all the treats. In the moment you're going to come up with excuses all day as to why it's okay that you are binging on eight apple cider donuts and four hot chocolates. And then later, you're going to feel so guilty and have so much regret, and beat yourself up, and punish yourself.
This is a cycle that I went through for years. You're going to do this on repeat until you finally say, "Oh, I'll start at the new year." Trust me, I know this cycle all too well. Is this sounding right to you? I have some real talk for you. If you approach every year as though it depends on your willpower to get you through, this is what you will experience every single year. You cannot continue to repeat the same actions and expect a new outcome. I'm telling you if you are relying on willpower, nothing magically is going to change this year than it did last year.
Let me ask you this. What if this year you tried a different approach? What if you didn't rely on willpower to navigate you through the holiday season and instead learned how much your body needed in order to properly function? And as long as you're nourishing your body with that amount of protein, carbs, and fats throughout the day, that you are able to incorporate these delicious fall treats into your daily intake without hindering your progress and results.
This will be my eighth holiday season. I can tell you from experience, it is the most freeing feeling to enter into the fall season without fear of food, without depriving myself, without anxiety, and without hindering my progress. If I want to have a pumpkin spice muffin for breakfast and actually enjoy it, I will. No guilt, no regret, no punishment, just enjoyment. Sure, the muffin might be a third of my carbs that day, but it's fine. I will readjust and I'll eat the rest of the day to account for those carbs that I consume.
Like it's really that easy. If the muffin has 75 grams of carbs and I aim to eat 225 grams of carbs daily, that still means that I have 150 grams of carbs that I can eat throughout the rest of the day as long as I stay around 225 grams of carbs. This is for me speaking, remember, this is my customized macros. Everybody's different. Your metabolism's different, your history's different, all of those things. But for me, it's not going to hinder my progress. It's not going to hinder my progress.
Even if you aim to eat 150 grams of carbs per day, and the muffin is 75. Sure, that's a big chunk of your carbs, but it's like a budget. You have a budget every day. You can absolutely get really nice stuff on a budget if you want. You save for it, you account for it, and then you enjoy it. It's the same thing with food. It's the same exact thing with food. This allows me to enjoy all of my favorite fall and holiday treats whenever I want without fear of weight gain, without fear of not seeing results. Seriously, zero fear, zero deprivation, and the holiday season is so, so, so much more enjoyable this way.
The best part is since I allow myself to have the pumpkin muffin, or the pumpkin spice latte, or the apple cider donut, or whatever it is that I want, I never feel the need to overindulge because I'm allowing myself to have it to begin with. I'm satisfied with having a treat because I know I can have another one tomorrow if I want one, and the day after that, and the day after that.
But most often when we deprive ourselves and then one day allow ourselves to eat what we want, then we feel like we need to eat everything. And because we don't know when we will allow ourselves to do that again, this puts you in this negative cycle that's so hard to break. Long term, you're going to see way better results by having a little bit of what you want daily, rather than depriving yourself, and having one big day of overindulging, and then feeling guilty, and then saving up all of this willpower, willpower, willpower, and then breaking it again. And then it's this vicious, vicious cycle.
So if you want to enter the fall and holiday season without fear of food, I want to challenge you. And I want to more importantly invite you to learn how to properly fuel your body. If you've never tried macro counting, it's a great way to start. I say start because I think it's so important that when we go into a holiday season and we know what it's like, and what it feels like to properly fuel our bodies, it allows ourselves the opportunity to stop stressing so much on, "Am I eating enough? Is this enough? Is this good? Is this bad?"
It doesn't matter. We don't label foods as good or bad. We allow ourselves to eat all foods in moderation and we do so because we're honoring our body with nutrition. And that means yes, nutrient dense food, but that also means less nutrient dense food. Girl, if you want the pumpkin and banana bread that your mother-in-law made, have a freaking slice. It's not the end of the day. It's a beautiful thing about learning to properly fuel your body.
Again, telling you speaking from experience, I have gone through seven holidays now where I have felt like I have been able to be free from this vicious cycle of just relying on willpower. I know if I can do it, you can do it. I'm speaking from experience. We can do it together. If you want to learn more. I do have a Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy, where we personally calculate your macros. We show you, we guide you every step of the way as to how to properly fuel your body so that you can not only maintain, but you can progress even during the holiday season. You can feel like you're getting stronger, and stronger, and having more energy every day throughout the holiday season, while still enjoying all of the sweet treats and the delicious foods that the seasons come with it. So I'll leave the link in the show notes if you want to learn more.
I would love to know though how you plan to approach the fall and holiday season. I would love to hear maybe your favorite food that you're excited to eat or your favorite fall tradition. I would just love to hear what came from this episode. So be sure to screenshot this, post it up on your stories, tag me, Julia Ledbetter. I would just love to know a plan of action of what you have or your favorite fall food, so be sure to tag me. As always, feel free to send me a DM. Any questions, comments, I am here for you, my girl. I love you so much. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's bonus episode and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, Julie A. Ledbetter... yes, it's with an A in the middle... for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check.
The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.