Escaping the Diet Trap: Embracing Real Food on a Gluten Free Diet for Health and Savings Ep. 159

If you've ever felt like you're on a hamster wheel of diet trends, chasing after the next best thing for weightloss, today's episode is for you.

I'm chatting about diet culture and the unexpected ways it may be sabotaging your weight loss efforts. I
You'll hear why a focus on keto, vegan, or perhaps a low-carb diet might be confusing you more than needed - we will talk about returning to the basics of real, unprocessed food. It's not only a game-changer for your health but can also trim down those grocery bills.

This culinary journey isn't just about what's on your plate—it's about reaping the rich rewards that come from the heart of your home, the kitchen. I reminisce about my own upbringing, surrounded by the love and nutrition of home-cooked meals, and share how you too can whip up quick, healthy meals will nourish you more than processed convenience. With practical tips for meal planning and batch cooking, I aim to inspire you to elevate your well-being one bite at a time.
If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the thought of revamping your diet, I'm here to support you with better food choices to increase your energy levels and activity. Plus, I'm excited to introduce my 'Meal Plans Made Easy' program—an easy way to add in these positive dietary changes.

Previous Episodes Mentioned
Macronutrient's Series
https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/14311000-how-macronutrients-support-a-celiac-s-gluten-free-diet-part-1-ep-142

https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/14352684-how-macronutrients-support-a-celiac-s-gluten-free-diet-part-2-ep-143

https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/14396695-how-macronutrients-support-a-celiac-s-gluten-free-diet-part-3-ep-144


Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here
https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
https://belindawhelantraining.com/gluten-free-meal-plans-made-easy

 Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes

Check out my Daily Health Tracker here
HEALTH TRACKER | The Healthy Celiac (belindawhelan.com)


And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac

If you have a spare moment, please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. Thank you!



Music Credit bensound.com 

Chapters

• 0:00 Breaking Free From Diet Culture
• 11:40 Importance of Simple, Healthy Meals

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

All right, so welcome back to the show. We are talking today about weight loss. We're talking about diet culture and we're talking about how, you know, certain diets could actually be impeding your weight loss goals. So what kind of triggered me to have a chat about this today on the show was I was talking with a friend last week and she was saying how she's gone gluten-free. She started eating gluten-free and she's put on a lot of weight since she had her baby and she thought it would be the other way around, that she's breastfeeding and that she thought the weight would drop off. And you know she was doing really well before she had her baby and we were talking about different diets and things that she's tried. And she was saying how she used to do keto and she did really well with that and then, when she felt pregnant, she had to stop doing that.

Speaker 1: 1:15

And it was just an interesting conversation because she was asking about gluten-free. She was asking about what I do and it's so interesting because there's so many diets and I know I've talked about this in the past, but there's so many different diets and when I studied to become a health coach, we were encouraged to try a heap of these different diets. Obviously, every diet that I had to try all still had to be gluten-free, but there's so many different diets. There's so many different ways of eating. You know, you might have heard of the keto diet, you might have heard of the vegan diet, the high protein diet, the low protein diet, the high carb, low carb, like. There's all these different ways that we can eat, but at the end of the day, the best way to eat is just to eat real food. And it's so funny because I'm on instagram a fair bit and I post on there and I look at what other people are posting and sharing, and so many people post this quote that goes something along the lines of people don't bat an eyelid when you eat McDonald's or you buy bakery food or you're eating all this junk, but as soon as you start eating healthy food, people ask if you are on a diet. Isn't that interesting? Why do people question when you eat healthy, but no one questions when you're shoveling junk into your mouth? It's a really funny concept that we've now got to this point where people don't think it's normal to eat well and to eat healthy. So what I love to do is just eat well majority of the time.

Speaker 1: 2:57

And when we talk about eating well, what are we talking about? It's basically eating real food, and people think it's hard, but it's really not that hard. And when we look at a gluten-free diet, it's actually easier to eat a healthy, gluten-free diet. When we focus on these real foods and when I say real foods, I'm talking about low process, so hardly any processing involved in your food is the best way to eat. And another thing that I find is people discover how much money they can save when they eat less processed food. And you know you've probably heard this all the time oh, it's so expensive to buy, you know, fresh food and healthy food, but it's actually cheaper. So if you start buying more real food and less packaged food, you will find that your grocery bill is less and you'll be feeling better. You'll probably lose weight because you aren't eating processed junk, which is generally full of, you know, sugars and like bad fats, things that aren't going to do your body any good.

Speaker 1: 4:11

You know, most of these processed foods that people buy are not full of any nutrition. They're not good for us. They. They're just there to make us feel good because, you know, we get that endorphin, we get that release of that feel-good hormone, that we eat something and we feel good. But when we stop eating that way, we start to feel better all the time, rather than when we just eat these types of foods. Isn't that interesting? So you know, so many people reach out to me and say, like I just feel like everything is just about eat this processed food and eat that processed food. I'm like, yeah, that's what we've been taught, that's what we've been told by society, by different celiac organizations are pushing these unhealthy products because they're endorsed, they've got the gluten-free label on them, but they're not good for us, there's no benefit to them. So what I love to teach my clients is focusing on adding in food that is actually valuable to your body. Think of what you do as an investment in your health and your future self, because it's all about the way you feel now and the way you feel in the future. If you keep fueling yourself with healthy, nourishing food, you are going to live such a different life to if you continue to constantly eat packaged foods.

Speaker 1: 5:41

And I'm not talking about cut them out completely, I'm talking about a balance. And you know I've talked about the 80-20 rule before, where 80% of the time you focus on eating really really well and eating really healthy, and 20% of the time you know you have these things that you know might be deemed as treats or that you eat and enjoy without feeling guilt, because it can become obsessive not to eat some of those things. So I love to have balance in my life. You know it was Mother's Day yesterday and we went out and we enjoyed a bottle of wine, and you know that's balance. It's not like I drink a bottle of wine every single day, it's every now and again. And it wasn't just me drinking, it was my husband and I. We shared a bottle of wine. So you know it's not about all or nothing, it's about having that balance and enjoying life.

Speaker 1: 6:31

But if you're finding that you're trying different diets, what happens is people go on diets and and you go off the diet Okay. So if you've ever seen anyone that's a yo-yo dieter, they go through this stage where they try different things. So they'll try this diet and they'll lose all this weight and then they go back to how they used to eat before and they put the weight back on. This is not healthy. This is actually really bad for not only your hormones but also your metabolism and your mindset. It can drive you crazy. So what I love to do is I love to help people get to a point where they're never diet. They're never on a diet, ever again. They're just eating well and focused on adding in good, healthy food. It's such an enjoyable way to live.

Speaker 1: 7:22

I find it so interesting when people ask me about diet culture and ask me about what the best diet is, because I never, ever give my clients diets. The only thing that I get people to do every now and again is a detox or a cleanse or an elimination program. These are for a result. These are for a reason. These are not to just quickly lose weight and put it all back on. Okay, these are very, very different to going on a diet. So a diet is something that I would never recommend to anybody.

Speaker 1: 7:58

And when I see people get that gastric sleeve put on, so they go and get a gastric sleeve and this is like a last resort for a lot of people, right, so they get the gastric sleeve and then they lose weight because they cannot eat as much food as they used to. But what happens is these people generally get so used to eating the foods that they've always eaten and they still eat that way. So what happens in time is they put the weight back on slowly. I know of multiple people that have done this and it's heartbreaking to see because they've gone through some major surgery to achieve a goal. But it means nothing if they haven't dealt with the mindset, because living a healthy lifestyle starts in the mind. So if you can make that shift in your mindset to eating well and looking after yourself is very different to restriction and missing out and feeling left out. It's such a different way to live and I honestly see true health freedom in people and people that you know take themselves so far away from this diet culture that it is life-changing. It is absolutely life-changing.

Speaker 1: 9:23

If you are stuck in that rut of constantly dieting or constantly trying the next new thing, this is such a different way to live and, like I said, you never feel like you're on a diet and you never feel like you're going to stop something. So there's not like, oh, I've got to eat this food for this period of time and once I've lost this 10 kilos or you know however many pounds, then you can go back to living your life how you lived it before. That's not healthy. That's not a good way to think. So it's adding in more of the good stuff. It's adding in more healthy, nutrient-dense food that fuels you and makes you feel amazing and pushing out those inflammatory foods that make us feel rubbish. You know people that complain that they've got sore knees, sore joints, their wrists hurt. You know they've got no energy. They feel like rubbish. You can look at their diet and you can see a huge correspondence in their food to the way that they are feeling.

Speaker 1: 10:29

So if you've gone gluten-free and you still feel this way and you still feel that you know you've got these pains in your knees it might not be anything to do with gluten. You might be struggling with a lack of collagen. You might be feeling a lack of energy because you're not getting enough nutrients. You might be eating a lot of calories but it's not nutrient-dense food that gives you that energy. Now I've done a three-part series on macronutrients so fats, carbs and proteins and I talk about the balance of eating those. So you can go back and have a listen to those episodes. I'll link those below for you to check out and that might just give you some idea of how to get started and what to focus on, because even if you don't want to lose weight, you just want to eat well and focus on your health. This is a really great start. And then, of course, if you want my support, you can reach out to me as well. If you want to work with me with coaching, I'm more than happy to have a chat with you about what that looks like. But it is a new way of living. That shouldn't be new, it should be normal and this is how people used to live and you think about it like my husband and I talk about it all the time.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Growing up as kids, you know meals were very simple. We had, you know, as children it was like meat and three veg. He was the same. He grew up in a household where they ate a lot of fresh food. You know his dad was a cray fisherman. They lived on seafood. They ate homegrown vegetables. You know there was the opportunity for them to go hunting. They ate a lot of kangaroo and you know there were so many opportunities for them to eat fresh food and they didn't live anywhere near fast food restaurants. So it was not an easy option for them and for me. Growing up, we didn't have much money. My mom was a solo parent and she didn't have a lot of money, so we didn't eat junk. It was not an opportunity for us to go and buy takeaway. It was like a very, very rare treat, whereas people are doing this constantly. They eat takeaway all the time. They're eating processed food because they're time poor and they think it's easier.

Speaker 1: 12:38

But there are meals that you can make that are quicker to make than buying takeaway. I'm serious when I say that and I know you're probably going yeah sure, belinda, like I've got to go shop, I've got to prep for the food and shop for the food. You can do home deliveries if you don't have time. You can get food delivered directly to your door. You can cook meals in under 20 minutes. I promise you that. So start with super basic meals. You know some sort of meat if you're a meat eater, and some vegetables or a salad. It doesn't have to be, you know, fancy and gourmet, it can be simple to get you started. So you know I do have a complete meal plan program that's available. Meal plans made easy, completely 100% gluten free. I'll also link that below. You can check out that's got super easy meals in it and I teach people how to cook once and eat twice, which basically means when you are cooking, cook extra, cook more so that you have leftovers.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Leftovers are amazing for time. Poor families, I know. For me we are so busy but I cook as much as possible. There are nights where we still get takeaway every now and again. It's not very often but it is nice to still do it. But majority of our meals are home cooked meals. You know my daughter. She very sporty. We're always in and out the car. I'm dropping her off at work, picking her up from work. We have to make life easy for ourselves and those nights where we are in and out the car, we do have simple meals. You know, sometimes I do a lunchbox for my kids where it's leftover meat chopped up with some salad and some veggies and you know, it's just. It's just simple, easy meal that we can grab and go and they can eat it on the go, because sometimes that is the only thing that they can do. So for you it might be the same, but you can do something really simple that doesn't have to be cooked it can be leftovers that doesn't even need to be heating up, heated up.

Speaker 1: 14:34

So there's options, there's ways to make your lifestyle easier and your diet work for you, because it's not about, you know, living on processed junk and living on food that doesn't make you feel good. So start to incorporate some healthy food into your diet, if you're not already, and just notice what it does to the way that you feel, whether your energy levels change, whether you sleep better at night. And then from there you'll start to notice this flow-on effect and I've done an entire episode on this before how your body will naturally want to exercise more or go out and be more active when you have more energy, when you have eaten well, and then, because you've slept well, you will have that energy as well. So it's just this beautiful flow and effect that one thing affects the next thing, that affects the next thing and, as far as lifestyle goes, it just becomes a way of life, it just becomes who you are and what you're known for, and it becomes easier to say yes to good food. When you eat this way normally and it doesn't, it doesn't feel like a diet. So you know, reach out to me if you want support in this area, or go ahead and see if meal plans made easy is maybe an option for you just to get started down this track. But yeah, if you've got any questions or you want to have a chat to me about what my coaching might look for you look like for you rather, just send me a DM over on Instagram. That's probably the easiest place to have a quick, easy conversation with me. So my handle there is the healthy celiac and, yeah, we can see what that might look like for you moving forward.

Speaker 1: 16:21

But I hope this episode has helped. You see that diet culture is over. Skinny is out and healthy is in. So if you look at marketing these days, if you look at what's being pushed in our faces, we're not seeing way thin models anymore. We're seeing healthy women who have a healthy body standard, and that is what I want for you. I want you to feel healthy and I want you to feel great within your body. You've got this one amazing life to live, so you may as well live it to its fullest. So thank you so much for tuning into today's episode and I look forward to talking with you again on the show next week. Have a great week. Talk to you then. Take care.