Hello everyone, welcome back. So today I wanna talk about feeling full because I

cannot tell you how many women say to me, "Karen, I just like feeling full." And

they usually say it like it's some kind of bad thing, a scourge on their humanity,

or like it's this fatal flaw that's gonna keep them from losing all the weight. But

this is what I want you to know. Wanting to feel full is not a problem.

Wanting to feel full is not some kind of weakness on your part. It is not a moral

failing. It honestly doesn't mean dick about you. You see, one of the dumbest

fucking things diets have done is convince women that fullness is bad,

that it means that we're out of control, that it's the reason why we can't lose

weight. And I'm just calling total bullshit on that. Fulness is just your body and

your brain trying to give you something. Behind feeling full is something you crave,

whether that safety, comfort, maybe even relief. And then once we understand this,

once I teach you this, you will be able to work with the feeling of wanting to be

full instead of just beating yourself up about it all the So I think it's normal

to want to feel full. In fact, when you get into maintenance, you're going to eat

until full again. This is not when we talk about full, a bust in your pants

stuffed feeling like a Thanksgiving Day turkey. I'm talking about normal human full.

Now, you know I teach that in order to lose weight, one of the things that we

want to do is we want to stop short short of full. I always say we're gonna stop

it enough and you are gonna lose weight. Enough is literally right before fullness.

The way I help my clients understand this is by telling them this stuff. We're

gonna start out by just eating a little bit less than you do now at meals where

you know you eat until you're full. This isn't a shit ton less,

y 'all. It's just usually a few bites. It's not like half the food you normally

eat. It's just a little less than you normally eat. But the most important thing to

do while you're eating just a little bit less than full is to start noticing what

your body's physical cues are. So a lot of my clients, they haven't even paid

attention since probably

birth or it's just been a while since they paid attention to what their body

sensations are. So when they first start paying attention of eating until full or

eating until enough it's kind of shocking and they are like this is really

interesting. I didn't really even know this stuff was going on so they'll tell me

things like I didn't realize I was so, when I'm full, that I was so out of breath

for a few minutes. I didn't realize that my pants get that tight. I didn't realize

I'm eating and not really even enjoying the food anymore. I'm just cleaning my

plate. And this is great stuff to notice. And a lot of people, they'll feel like

enough is free because not only can they lose weight and eat shit they love,

but they also, those types of feelings, they can like stop feeling them.

They just got used to it. But I think the most important thing that feels free is

that when you're stopping at enough, you're not feeling as deprived or under fed

like most diets require. Now, that is for some people, but there are a lot of us

out there that enough feels like a diet. It makes you feel restricted.

You feel like it's unfair. You are sad that the eating is over. That is one of

the things that I work with my clients on all the time is figuring out why we're

so sad about now just eating according to what our body really needs.

Or We feel like we're losing some fun and something important in our life when we

start trying to stop it enough. So if that sounds like you,

you have that sadness. You don't like it. It makes you feel like you're on a diet.

You suddenly feel restricted. You're the one I'm helping in this episode because I

was you. When I started, y 'all, I wasn't ready to stop it enough at most of my

meals. I could do it at breakfast, and I was pretty good at doing it at lunch,

but dinner? No. It was a hell no, in fact. And so I decided that when I was

going to lose weight, instead of strong omen her, wide knuckling her,

making her eat less, that I was going to listen to that part of me instead. I was

going to not any more tell myself, "Well, I either have to eat all I want or eat

hardly nothing. And if I can't eat all I want, then I guess I'm just not ever

going to be able to lose weight." And I refused to tell myself that I wasn't

addicted to food or that I loved food too much. That wasn't what was going on for

me. When I really started paying attention,

I started noticing other things. And that's what I want to get into today for y

'all. Because food did taste good and I did love it. And I'm going to be real

honest. I still love food. I still love the taste of food. And I think we should.

Like to lose weight, I don't think you should have to give up everything you love.

I do think you should enjoy your meals. I think food tasting good is just a

fucking right, if nothing else. But the problem for me was that I needed to feel

full, because without that fullness, it felt like the one thing that took care of

me was being taken away. Dining for me, even when I first started doing my own

shit, it meant losing the fullness that I use to comfort myself, to entertain

myself, to take my worries away for a while, or just to get through my days. So

when I was thinking about how the fuck am I gonna lose weight? Like if I'm not

gonna do a traditional diet, if I'm not gonna do the 180, if I'm not gonna give

up all the foods I love, if I'm not gonna starve If I'm not going to kill myself

in the gym, if I am really truly done with stupid antics all in the holy name of

getting weight all, what am I going to do? And one of the things that I knew that

was going to have to happen is I needed to figure out how could I keep some

fullness for a while and lose weight while doing it? I gave myself what I would

call the quality problem to solve. That took what I call a two -step approach.

The first thing, I needed ways to feel full that wouldn't keep me from losing

weight. Then second, I had to figure out what was feeling full actually doing for

me. I want to start with figuring out what's going on Because the tips and tricks

that I give you, they are only going to feel easy, and they're only going to be

able to be used by you if you are thinking about what fullness is also doing for

you. So please don't try all this stuff. This is the biggest mistake I watch y 'all

make. I come up here, busting into your life like the Kool -Aid man, offering you

to actually fix the shit that's going on deep inside you, and y 'all skip that part

and be like, I don't wanna work on that. You know what I wanna do? I wanna do

cramps, tips and treks. I don't wanna try to get some weight off. Then what happens

is you don't fix the reasons why you're eating. And when you don't fix those

reasons, the seconds that you feel good about your weight loss and stuff, those

reasons are gonna be knocking loud and clear in your life and you haven't solved

them. If you Don't solve them in new ways other than food. You will go back to

the food because you've not taught yourself anything. So do not listen to this

podcast and just try my tricks on fullness without doing the real work that makes

it all work for the rest of your life. Because I'm not here to teach you how to

do a bunch of stupid shit to lose weight and then you just regain your weight

because we didn't do the real junk. All right, that's my rant. So we're gonna start

with figuring out what's going on so that the tips and tricks will actually work

long term. So I wanna kinda tell you what happened for me. When I was a kid,

we didn't always have enough food. There was a lot of times during my growing up

where my daddy wasn't paying child My mama was working a busted ass minimum wage

job, trying to raise two kids on her own. She had to pay babysitters, all kinds of

shit. Y 'all know it ain't easy to raise kids on your own. And my mother was

really young. She was 17 when she had me. And by the time, you know, I was,

well, hell, when I was eight years old, which would make my mama what a whole cool

25 years old, we were moving to Nashville so that she could try to get a job that

wouldn't just pay minimum wage. So a lot of times,

we just didn't have money for food. So my mom, when we would, you know, get a

little scratch together, she'd take us to buffets because they were cheap and you

could eat a lot of food and I always remember her saying, "Eat all you can because

I don't know when the next meal is, so even when I grew up, when I had a job,

I had money for groceries. When I got married and we would have plenty of food in

the house, and I didn't have broke -ass worries anymore, I still carried this panic

inside me. There was this little voice when I was eating that was like, "Oh my

God, you're not going to get enough. Sure, you're eating right now, but in a

minute, you're going to be starving and it's going to feel awful. Like I really did

feel like when I was eating that I needed to eat to full, just to feel like

everything was going to be okay. So when I went to fullness, y 'all,

it wasn't just about the food for me. It was giving me safety.

It made we feel like, okay, we're not going to star and everything's fine. And I

think that's true for a lot of you too. For a lot of us, fullness is the only

time of the day we feel satisfied. So for me, I was giving, like getting the

satisfaction of knowing I was safe. But I want you to think about what it might be

given to you given you in order to feel satisfied. So think about your day. A lot

of you are going all day long. You wake up and you're taking care of the pets,

you're taking care of the kids, you're taking care of your partner, you're just

trying to get your ass out the door. You are taking care of everybody else. You're

also spending your day worrying yourself sick about all kinds of things like what

people think about you. If you're doing a good enough job, if you're going to get

everything you need to get done, we just worry, worry, worry, worry. And then on

top of that, We're doing a million things. We're doing so much shit because we're

people pleasing and we're saying yes to things we want to say no to. There's just

a lot going on for a lot of us. So by the time we sit down, especially at night,

eating until you're full feels like, this is the one break I get.

It's like, finally, I can relax. Finally, this is for me.

And so I want you to think about that. If this is your only time, why would you

not want to eat till full? Why would you not want to keep extending the eating?

Because it's not extending the food because it tastes good. It's extending the break.

It's extending the relief. It's the extending the ability to relax for a minute. And

then sometimes this panic around fullness runs even deeper. So we had a client

recently to tell us, I just feel better when I'm full. Like I feel emotionally

better. And I don't know why, there's just a sense of calm that comes over me when

I feel full. So one of my coaches was working with her and she was digging into,

kind of just asked her some questions about where this might have started. And what

turns out was she talked about when she was a kid, her dad had explosive anger.

And very often at night he would come home and he would just explode on the whole

family and he'd be yelling at the mom and all kinds of stuff. And so her and her

brother, they would take their food and they would go upstairs and they would eat

in front of the TV and they would just zone out with food so They didn't have to

worry and fear with all the yelling that was going on downstairs. So for her,

fullness became safety. It meant, "I'm not in the line of fire. I'm going to be

okay." And then for some of us, the rest of us, sometimes it's just diet trauma.

If you've done really low calorie diets throughout your life, miserable ass diets

where if your cat or dog walked in front of you, they would start looking tasty to

you. And you were just hungry all the time,

hangry, snapping at people, constantly thinking about food. Your brain remembers all

of that.

what to you and your mind is one big miserable ass experience. So now when you

start something new, even if you're working with me, where I don't want you

starving, your brain does not know the difference. It just thinks that this must be

like the others. So the second you're not eating to full and you're just eating to

right below full, It's like, uh -oh, this is like last time. I know what's

happening. You can't fool me. Your brain is like, we must be dying again,

bitch. And that means we're gonna be miserable and I ain't having a lick of it.

And your brain will push you hard to eat to full. It will tell you,

you won't get this very often. It will tell you, you better eat all you can. Don't

waste your food. It's going to tell you all kinds of things. Ooh, it just tastes

so good. It's going to say a lot of shit to you, but it doesn't mean any of

that's true. All it's trying to do is to not get you put back in a miserable

experience again. So it's going to push you to eat. This has nothing to do with

you lacking discipline. This is not because you're addicted to food and it is for

sure because you don't have enough willpower. Your brain is just trying to protect

you from feeling that shitty ass hangry stuff that diets have done to you.

So all of these reasons, that's why so many of us panic when we have to stop it

enough. It's why some of us feel like we can't stop it enough, even though we know

intellectually how. So it's not that you can't do it. It's that your brain senses

danger. Your brain thinks something bad is about to happen because fullness to your

mind feels like safety for some reason. And until you understand that piece,

you will keep thinking, I must have a willpower problem. This must be a problem

with me. I'm the problem. It's not. It is just how your brain deep down is

thinking about it and it just needs to be rewired. That is all that has to happen.

And the good news is it doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter how long

this has been going on. I don't care if you're 85 and years old. Our brains have

the ability to be rewired at any age. We do not lose that talent.

So I want to talk to you about some actual food tricks that you can use because

if you're somebody who just wants to feel full, I think what is going to be

important is that you do this two -step approach. We're gonna create a sense of

fullness so that you can feel safe. While you are studying yourself to figure out

why the fullness is so important to you, why you currently need it and how we can

meet those needs in new ways so that you no longer crave it and need it and

desire it.

I just want to promise all of you that I know that you can want to feel full and

still lose weight. You can actually eat to some fullness and still lose some weight,

especially in the beginning. So we are not going to cut out all of our favorite

foods. We're going to be looking at the foods that you love currently and we're

going to ask ourselves, how can I level this up so that I can feel satisfied and

feel like I'm still taking care of myself. So when I was losing my 100 pounds,

one of my favorite meals in the world was spaghetti. I love spaghetti. My mama made

it a lot when I was a kid 'cause it was one of the cheap ass things that she

could make. And my grandfather always grew tomatoes, so we would get free tomatoes

and guess what? She could make sauce and you know, pasta don't cost hardly nothing.

So when I was losing weight, I didn't wanna give that up. I didn't wanna live

without pasta. I didn't wanna live without spaghetti because everybody tells you

there's no way to lose weight eating spaghetti. And I'm like, that is some fucking

bullshit. So let me tell you my trick. This is how we're gonna eat spaghetti and

it's how we're gonna lose weight, y 'all. I would make meat sauce, First of all,

instead of making just plain sauce, because when you put some protein in shit, you

are going to feel full and you are going to have that sense of fullness last you

longer. So meat sauce instead of spaghetti sauce was one of the very first things I

did. And then the other big substitution that I made was I stopped eating the white

-ass pasta and went with a whole grain pasta. There are, like back in my day,

that was the only option. And there are some good tasting ones out there. Don't let

the shit fool you. Just try some. Buy some of the cheap ones at first. And just

see if you notice a difference. Hell, if you want, for now, just mix whole grain

with white as an early start so that the reason why I want you to eat in The

whole grain one is because they have fiber in them. Fiber also cleans the duty

shooter good and it's gonna keep you full longer. So what I did was I just went

straight to the whole grain and then nowadays y 'all can even buy some that has

protein in it. We didn't have that back in the early 2000s. I feel like nowadays I

was losing weight, like a caveman trying to lose weight. I'm like, y I've got so

much stuff available to you now, it is fucking ridiculous. Stop complaining. I

literally feel like that person who says, "You know, I walked uphill through the

snow, both ways to school and back." (laughs) So, we're gonna use our whole grain

pasta instead of just white ass pasta. Then what I would do is I would steam up

some broccoli or zucchini or just any kind of vegetable you and you're going to

take your bowl and you're going to do half pasta, half veggie of choice.

If you ain't ready for a half a veggie, this doesn't mean you can't do it. What

can you do? Bitch, you can always, you can blend it. You could chop it up finely.

You could do three quarters pasta with a quarter pasta. We can baby step our way

there. Do not slip into some black and white stupid thinking and thinking,

"I gotta do it 'cause I don't like red data." "There's no way I can do it." Y

'all perfectionists and business are gonna have to stop doing that stuff. So we're

gonna do half whole grain pasta. We're gonna do meat sauce. We're gonna toss in

some vegetables of choice. And then we are going to stir it all up real good.

And we're gonna Sprinkle some cheese on top. It's delicious. I was able to get my

spaghetti that I love, but I was also getting some protein. I was getting some

fiber, veggies that actually helped me feel full longer. All right,

I did the same thing with macaroni and cheese. To this day, I still add in like

finely chopped cauliflower or broccoli that I steam. If you wanna steam some like on

a Sunday and just have stuff that you can scoop and dump into your meals. That is

a great way to make it easy and convenient. You can buy a microwave shit and just

throw it in the microwave and do it while you're cooking, it does not matter. So

back in the day, I love Kraft macaroni and cheese. I still love it to this day,

I'm gonna be quite honest. But I would buy Kraft macaroni and cheese, make that

shit. And then I would put in a quarter cup of cottage cheese for protein I would

put in my veggies and sometimes even if I've got chicken laying around I'd throw

that in. Nowadays what I use is I like the Linguazine Vermont cheddar mac and

cheese. It's like I think it's two and a half minutes then you break the seal stir

it it's another a minute and a half and it's done and I think it's got maybe 15

or 18 grams of protein in it, something like that. That's the reason why I eat it.

Plus, I just think it tastes fucking good. I like it. But if you don't like it,

then you stick with craft macaroni and cheese. Whatever it is you like. But nowadays

I do the same thing though. It's a quick and easy lunch. I take steamed broccoli,

steamed whatever, dump it into a bowl, throw that macaroni and cheese on top, a

quarter cup of cottage cheese to boost the protein a little. Now I got protein and

I got fiber. I stir it all up and then if I've got chicken, I can throw chicken

in it, whatever I want to throw in there. And then a lot of times I will have

fruit as the dessert. It's very filling. It lasts me a long time and I get a lot

of fiber out of it. Y 'all know it's important to me that I am going to the

bathroom on the regular. If I do not go to the bathroom on the regular. I am one

cranky fucking bitch. The other thing that I used to do is cereal. I love cereal.

Me and my child, we adore the cereal. My husband, he literally ate Rice Krispies

for lunch and dinner with protein shakes poured into it for three months after he

had colon cancer surgery. He had like a a little bit of colon cancer a few years

ago, and he wasn't allowed to eat like soft palatable things. Now, Chris can eat

the same damn shit all the time and never get tired of it. But he ate Ross

Krispies with a 400 calorie protein shake poured over a chocolate one.

And I mean, that man ate it like there was no tomorrow and loved every bit of it.

What I do is I take, instead instead of saying, you know, cereals off limits. I

take one of my favorite cereals. I pour it in a bowl and then I add a half a

cup of cottage cheese to it. I put a packet of Splenda on top of the cottage

cheese because I want to sweeten the cottage cheese. You can put sugar if you don't

like artificial sweeteners. I just don't mind using the Splenda. And then I mix it

with my cereal. And then Sometimes I use some berries in there too,

like I might put a lot of berries in there and just some cereal. One of the

cereals I really like to use with berries, especially strawberries, is peanut butter

cap and crunch. I love peanut butter cap and crunch, my God, I could eat it for

days. And so I will use that, and it kind of gives you that PB &J feel. But I

also happen to like fucking bran flakes. I don't know why, but even as a child,

I loved bran flakes. My great grandfather got me started on them long time ago and

I still love them to this day. So if you like the bran flakes, if you like raisin

bran or whatever, eat that. Put some cottage cheese in there. I use unsweetened

vanilla almond milk. Throw you some berries and stuff in there. That is a filling

fucking breakfast. Whether you go cap and crunch or wheat bran, doesn't matter. So

What I want you to take away from that is I am just teaching you how to level up

some good foods So inside my membership I teach a system called good better best

and if you go back through all the podcasts I bet you will find a podcast titled

that But here's what that means a bowl of cap and crunch is what we call a good

food. And it's good because it tastes good. But nutritionally,

it's just not doing shit for you. Nobody try to even write in and tell me all the

nutrition benefits of good old cap and crunch, peanut butter crunch. So what I do

is I level it up by adding some protein and fruit to it. The whole point of this

is so that you learn that you're not taking food away. By leveling it up,

you take a good food and you make it a better food. A better food means like I

like it and now I have some nutritional bang for my buck and that's what we're

doing here. Then a best food is where you switch over to what I would consider

more of the like natural. So like wheat brand to me would be in the best category,

whereas cap and crunch is gonna fall into good and better when you level up. But

best foods are like, you know, salads. It's what you would traditionally think of

when you think if I went to a nutritionist, this is probably what she would tell

me to eat. So the big thing is that we're just not taking food away from

ourselves. We're not saying you can't have this anymore if you would like to lose

weight. All we're doing is saying I need to feel safe in order to lose weight and

I'm not not be ready to give up my fullness and I happen to like a lot of good

foods so we're gonna ask ourselves how can I make what I already love a little

more filling a little more nutritious and still enjoyable so that I can get on that

path to losing all of my weight for the last damn time And that's how I kept that

sense of fullness that I wanted back in the day. But I also started losing weight

by doing it. Stuff like this helped me not be afraid of eating to lose weight.

I did not have to wipe knuckle through hunger anymore. I didn't have to have like

crazy ass cravings. And I didn't have to sit there and feel like, like all my

favorite foods were taken away. I was learning how to make food work for me instead

of just taking foods away from me. So if you're someone sitting there thinking I

just want to feel good or feel full at dinner, I don't want you to freak out and

think it means you can't lose weight. Just start with this. Take something you

already eat and ask yourself, how can I do like Korean? Is there a way to level

this up with some protein, veggies, or fiber? You don't even have to do do all of

them. You could start with one. And that's it. Keep your foods, but give them a

little more staying power to where you get that sense of fullness and it lasts for

a little while. So for some of us, fullness equals safety.

If that sense of I'm okay, I'm not going to starve kicks in. It's a lot easier to

lose weight. For others, eating to full is the one moment of the day that feels

like you finally get something for you. And when we do some of these tricks,

we still feel like we're getting to do something for ourselves until we learn how

to do other things for ourselves and take away the need for food to do it for us.

So just remember it's not weakness or lack of discipline or addiction as to the

reason why you eat the way you do. It's always your brain and how it's wired. And

to me, that is the most relieving thing that I learned losing weight, that there

was nothing inherently wrong with me, that I had a lot of patterns and habits. I

had a lot of emotional reasons why I was doing things, and nobody ever really

combined for me how to examine what I was feeling, examine why I was doing the

things I was doing, and combine it with simple habit changes. No diet did that for

me, so I had to do it for me. And that's why I teach it to you this way today.

So I just want you to start noticing what fullness means for you. Is it safety?

Is it comfort? Is it your one little, you know, slice of joy at the end of the

day? And then I want you to start playing with how you can keep that sense of

fullness while also leveling up your meals with more protein, more fiber,

more veggies. And remember, we're not taking food away from you anymore. We're not

gonna do any more punishing things to ourselves just to lose We are going to add

things to our life so that we can stay satisfied, we can lose weight,

and we can actually feel better while we lose weight. So if you want more help

figuring out kind of what's that deeper reason, what's really going on behind Feeling

Full, I've got a quick resource for you. It's called Why I Want to Feel Full. It's

going to walk you through some simple questions to uncover what your fullness might

be doing for you so that you can start meeting some of those needs in different

ways while still enjoying your food. So the link is gonna be in your show notes.

'Cause I promise you, once you understand why you wanna feel full, it's gonna get a

lot easier to stop overeating without feeling like you're missing out on something in

life. All right, y 'all, I'll talk to you next week.