It doesn’t work for your taste. It doesn’t work for the rhythm of your life. It just doesn’t work for you. And until someone’s ever offered you this concept of evaluating that, you believe that you are wrong, that you are doing it wrong. And so today, I want to play around with this concept of no rules weight loss.

And I mean no rules. I mean no other people’s rules. Because in our community, I really encourage people to discover what works for them in this season of their life. And once you do that, this process might reveal rules,”rules” that you love, that totally work for you, that are part of your plan. 

And so by ditching other people’s rules, I want you to start cultivating the fill in your blank with your name plan, the Anne plan, the Fran plan, the Jan plan, the Joanne plan, the Suzanne plan, the Leanne plan, the Diane plan, and the Roseanne plan. And if your name doesn’t rhyme with plan, just fill in the blank with the Denise plan.

But you, if your name is Denise, not Denise Jelinek’s plan. And so what we get to do during this brief time that we’re together now is to just believe that there are rules and ways that you work best the way that the Lord designed you. And that if weight loss has felt hard for you, it’s just because you haven’t realized what those “rules” are or your unique design. 

And so  today what I want to do is go through how the rules that you have been holding on to for dear life could actually be slowing down your progress, holding it up, making you feel stuck, making you feel defeated. I want to challenge those rules and the rules that we’re going to be challenging are things like you can’t eat in front of screens, you can’t eat in the car, you have to eat according to hunger, your weight or your measurement will determine if your weight loss is working.

I know that’s like a crazy concept that you have to log your food, that you have to use an app. You have to know your macros that you can’t eat after seven or seven thirty or you have to pack your food if you go somewhere or you have to have certain restaurant rules. So there’s just a variety of rules that I want to throw out to you. 

And your brain might be like, oh, well, yeah, that’s totally true. And then I just want you to be able to challenge that and decide, hey, does that work for you? Does that make you feel successful? Is that something you want to experiment with? Or is that potentially just a should rule that when you think of it makes you feel defeated.

Makes you feel confused and leaves you just judgey mcjudge diving yourself. All right, so let’s dive in. One of the reasons that these rules are not working for you and the benefit of having no rules or weight loss is that you will stop the hard part. And the hard part is doing something that was never meant to work. 

Yeah, all the things that you’re seeing on Instagram, all the things that you’ve heard about in Weight Watchers, Nome, Keto, Paleo, Carnivore, whatever the label is that didn’t work for you, maybe it’s just because it was never meant to work for you. And when it doesn’t work, you start the Judgey McJudge straw on yourself.

And that feels horrible and when we’re judging ourselves and we feel wrong, what do we want to do? Yeah, we want to eat. The other thing is that when you follow someone else’s rules or a rule that you haven’t uncovered that works for you in this season of your life. And it doesn’t work, it’s someone else’s rule and we start to get confused. And actually, if you’re following a rule that doesn’t work for you in this season, but it worked for you in the past, that’s even more confusing. You’re like, it used to work and now it’s not working. And I have to tell you what a confused brain does. A confused brain does nothing. 

Nothing. That is why you’re feeling stuck. If your brain is thinking, well, this worked 10 years ago, this worked 20 years ago, this worked last year, why is it not working now? By staying in that place of believing that this rule should work for you now just leaves you confused. And so again, continuing to give yourself unconditional permission to discover what works for you in this season of your life and to put down food rules or uncover the food rules that work for you now.

And hey, by the way, if you can go speak with the Holy Spirit about that, hey Lord, what do you think? Even better because the Lord created you. He knows what works for you now. One of the final things I believe is when you have rules that feel very fixed and black and white is you get also stuck in this, there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way.

And the truth is that if you believe that in any area of your life, it prevents this playfulness, this funness, this experimentation. Meaning, I don’t know, let’s just try this. You know, I want to give you an example. Right now I’m having some gut flare up issues and there’s this concept of meal spacing in, I have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, that you should have four to five hours between your meals.

And so I have been eating my meals closer, but today I thought, well, let’s just try that. And I made a game plan. Well, what if I get hungry in between? All right. Well, I think I’ll have this electrolyte drink, but if I get hungry, I’m not going to die in four to five hours. I’ll learn something. So I spaced my meals today four hours apart. 

A little bit later, I was thinking, oh, maybe I should really think of the spacing in my meals to be more about when I’m sleeping. And so that means when I wake up, maybe I’ll have my first meal earlier so that I’m eating more frequently throughout the day. Anyway, so you can feel already a little bit of that tornado thinking. 

There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way. And I just thought, Denise, well, what if we just try what you already wrote down? Let’s just try this for today. Do you feel the lightness, the experimentation, the fun in that? Let’s try this today. And if we find that we want to have the first meal earlier in the day, utilizing the overnight gut clearing fast, then we can do that. 

And I was like, okay, yeah, I just like took a big exhale. Like, there’s just nothing to lose here except for learning. Nothing to lose. And that’s the benefit of having no rules, being able to realize that, hey, I’ve never lived this day before. What could we maybe try today? What could we try today? Okay.

So, I want to talk to you about my experience with some of these rules and some of the rules that you may have been hearing, and you can just decide, is this something that I want to keep? Do I want to drop it for today? Do I want to pick it up tomorrow? I don’t know, but I just thought we could play around in your brain with the rules that could be feeling really heavy. I hear it all the time in our community.

Alright, so the first thing. The first rule is I have to plan my food and if you just listen to my podcast, I believe it was a few weeks ago. That was like no you don’t. No, you don’t you guys  Now, you’re probably like raising your eyebrows right now if you are in my community because I do believe, for me, my experience is that when we plan our food it creates brain space so that we can live the rest of our lives.

And I would say the majority of the women in our community find that to be true for them. The majority do, but guess what? I was coaching a woman earlier this week who was saying she was feeling so heavy and so burdened by planning her food. She said to me, you know, I just, it doesn’t make sense to me because my days are pretty much all the same.

So I just kind of eat the same thing. I really like to write down my plan during vulnerable times. Like when I know I’m going into a stressful situation. And I said, so how does your body feel if I say to them, don’t worry about planning on the everyday situations and just trust that you’ll know when you need to plan in advance for a stressful situation. 

And she said, oh, that feels like relief. Great! Then that’s what works for her and I guess I want to ask you that. Does planning your food bring you peace? Does planning your food feel like a really heavy burden? Is it simply a new skill that you don’t feel good at yet? And so it’s not, I don’t want to do it, I want to develop the skill. Is it one of those things that you just need to start giving yourself permission to plan the food that you actually like? Maybe planning food is easy when we drop the other rules. 

When we dropped the, oh my gosh, I was just coaching a woman yesterday. And what we do in our community is we create an easy to stick to meal plan. And the reason we make it easy to stick to is because what we’re trying to show your brain is that the food that you eat is not what’s keeping you overweight.

The food that you eat is not what’s causing you to be an emotional eater. The food that you plan, that you plan to eat ahead of time, you can plan whatever you want, honestly, and you will not be overweight. The only food that keeps you overweight is the food that you eat when you’re stressed, lonely, tired.

Because I feel good, because I feel bad, because somebody offered it to me. For all the things that we’re running from, right? We’re running from feeling bad, so we want to eat. And so speaking with my client the other day, she said, well, my easy to stick to meal plan I want to make, I feel really good about an omelet with veggies and I, oh, it’s just, I love it.

You could tell she genuinely loved that. She wasn’t planning it for should reasons and she goes, and then I want to have a piece of toast. But then my brain says, is that really keto? Is that really, you know, all the carb things? And so then we just started talking because that was the rule that made planning feel confusing. 

It was that shenanigans and that mind drama over the bread. And so where we eventually got to was If our goal is to create an easy to stick to meal plan, that’s ridiculously easy to stick to, impossibly easy to stick to. And I say those two words not to say that if you don’t stick to it, it’s a problem, but to challenge your brain to be so in tune with you and honest with what you love, what you enjoy. 

To be able to anticipate the needs of the woman that you’re living as. To be able to anticipate the needs of your future you. That’s why I call it ridiculously and impossibly easy to stick to. It really forces you to just be very honest with yourself. What do I really want later? And believe it or not, we even made a plan for if she feels like she needs food because she’s stressed out.

We’re just trying to meet her where she is. So I hope you see that you do not need to plan; if you love it and it’s working for you and it’s a skill you want to develop and although there are uncomfortable parts of it you’re willing to actually dive into what makes planning challenging and likely what makes planning challenging is you’re still planning should foods or all the other rules that you have and what if we just set those down. What if we just said I’m just gonna discover what works for me? What do I really want to eat? 

And you allow yourself to plan that. You just get to decide, is this a tool I want? Is this a tool I want to use? All right, moving on. I cannot eat with screens. I cannot eat in the car. Here’s a couple things that I want to show you. My experience with screens is this. I have cultivated the habit of chewing my food 20 or more times and I like to eat in front of  my computer when I’m working at times, and sometimes I don’t. 

Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn’t. And what I mean by work for me is sometimes I just want a break. I just want to enjoy my meal in the quiet and look outside. For some of my clients, they’re developing that skill. They want to get away from the screens because they see the screens are only leading them to mindlessly eat because their brain knows that to sit in front of a screen, eat fast, mindlessly eat.

So they want to cultivate a new skill. And so they’ll pick a meal here or there  to sit without a screen because they want to practice that. But is it a rule for you? Does it work for you? Do you like it? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe your brain really likes it, but you see some habits that you want to start changing while you eat in front of the screen.

Some people even notice that their food choices are different in front of a screen and not in front of a screen. Hey guys, there’s no specific rule. You just get to decide. Be playful with it.  Experiment. See what you like. You get to decide. How about eating in a car?  There was a long time that 

I would eat in my car. It was no big deal. I would eat on my way to places, and this was after I came into food recovery, and I had my planned meal, and I would eat in my car, and now I find I do not like to eat and drive. I don’t mind bringing my food with me in the car if I’ve got, you know, things going on with kids or I can’t get back to a meal or I don’t want to stop at a fast food place.

Not that you can’t stop at a fast food place, but for me, I really like the food that I pack and I’ve kind of got a great system down, but I pull into a parking lot and I give myself at least 30 minutes to eat. Why do I do that? Because I found that I used to eat while I was driving and I’m going to tell you my stomach is not happy about that anymore. 

I really have to be in a very relaxed state to be able to eat. I don’t know, as I get older, I think my digestive issues are, my stomach just becomes a little more sensitive. But what’s so cool is you guys hear how it used to work for me. That was a rule, if you will, that used to work. It doesn’t work anymore.

Doesn’t work anymore for me in this season of my life. I’m not confused. I don’t have to say, well, it used to work. Why isn’t it working now? What am I doing wrong? It just doesn’t. I don’t have to figure it out. I mean, I could, I guess. I do find that if I am driving and I have chosen to not take some time in a parking lot, I’ll have a smoothie and I have a place that I love going for my smoothies and I’ll do that like once or twice a week. 

More than that, I’m kind of like, I don’t, I don’t really love that smoothie thing more than that.  And then I kind of wonder, like, if I’m having smoothies that much, what am I doing that I’m not allowing space in my life? Honestly, that’s the truth. It’s not even about the smoothie. It’s just like, Denise, you’re running a little hot.

In my, in my opinion, I’d be like, it’s time to  pump the breaks. That’s what I say to myself. It’s time to pump the brakes girl. It’s time to pump, pump the brakes. We’re running a little too hot.  And that might mean that I pump the brakes the next week.

Maybe it’s just a week that’s a little bit busy or okay. Another common rule that people have is I can’t eat if I’m not hungry or I have to stop eating when I’m full. Here’s what I want to say about that. I believe hunger is a very nuanced skill and that there are foundational skills to learn that get people to separate their emotions from their food choices before hunger. I just think that there’s easier skills that you can attain and make progress with before hunger.

And I say that because I think a lot of our hunger cues are thrown off. And so by asking someone to make a plan. Stick to it. If they don’t stick to it, surrender it. That feels very doable. That feels very much in reach, but having someone check in with them. Am I hungry? Am I not hungry? Am I full? Am I not full? 

I know other programs do that and that might work for you. That’s my point is you might love that. Then do that. But if you find your hunger cues are a little thrown off and you would rather just make your meal, eat it, and then move on, and that feels peaceful, then do that. It’s totally fine. I think there’s a point that you will eventually get to where feeling over full is just so uncomfortable that you want to start detecting your fullness point.

And that’s, see, that’s just a natural progression where it’s like, oh, this is what I want to do now. I don’t feel good when I’m overstuffed. I don’t like that bloated feeling and then you recognize, hmm, it’s a rule, if you will, that you’re discovering works for you. I feel best when I eat to whatever on the fullness scale, whatever number that might be.

Or you might start to detect the sensation in your body. But that’s a rule that you’ve discovered, nobody’s put it on you, you’ve discovered it works for you. Okay, a couple of other things you can’t eat late, you can’t eat after 7:30.  And I would say, okay, well, why not? Tell me why you cannot eat after 7:30?

And if it’s not something that you have discovered is a reason for you specifically, and Diane, Suzanne, Joanne, Jan, and Roseanne, because that’s the plans we’re making that are specific for you, whatever your name is, then just challenge that. Is that even true? Because I know plenty of women who end up losing weight because they do make it.

They do eat late. They do plan an evening snack, whatever late is. Planning an evening snack is part of that rigorous honesty of being truthful with what you will want. Authentically and honestly anticipating the needs of you in the evening. If you know you like to eat in the evening, a nighttime snack, then plan it. You will feel so good planning something, having something to look forward to, knowing that you’re cared for. 

Conversely, if you find that eating after a certain time leaves it so that you can’t sleep well, you have acid reflux, or have something else that doesn’t feel great for you, then that’s what you’ve discovered works for you. There’s just no magic time and I’m going to prove it to you because the Lord lives outside of time. Which tells me that if you’re following a rule that you can’t eat after a certain time, and it’s not because you have a negative consequence of eating after a certain time, it’s a rule that a human made for you. Now, here’s another thing you might say, but Denise, if I eat after nine o’clock, I just will just binge my brains out cause I’m so tired. Okay, is it nine o’clock? That’s the problem or is it that you are so exhausted and you’re not allowing yourself to go to bed? That’s the problem, right? It’s not time. There’s no magic time. The clock doesn’t do something and then automatically your body changes. 

You may have conditioned your brain to be that way, but let’s just really uncover what is the problem with eating later?  Then whoever made a rule says you just get to decide does this work for me? Does this not work for me? I have had times I would say 90 percent of my being in peaceful food land, I have had a snack right before I go to bed.

And then I went through this season about six months ago where I was not bringing a snack to my bed. And I felt really good about that. I was like, this is so cool. I felt a lot of freedom. It was just really neat. In fact, as I’m talking now, I really felt good about that and it felt just like I was being more intentional and it wasn’t like I was white knuckling not eating it, but I would just check in with myself and I’d be like, I need sleep.

That’s what I need. I need sleep and I’ve just relinquished myself bringing this bowl of this chocolate pudding that I make or whatever I would make, it would be some sort of yogurt, something, something. And I would just say, Oh, you know what? You just want to go to bed, don’t you? And I was like, yeah, I just want to go to bed.

So I guess again, there is no rule and there is no rule in each season. I have since found that I’ve been taking a piece of sugar free york peppermint patty to bed and eating that in bed and I kind of like it. And then last night I was like, I don’t even, why am I even doing this? But it doesn’t mean anything. 

I can choose to have that York peppermint. I mean, it was planned. So it’s fine, but I could not have it as well. And do, I hope you hear that that’s just what I noticed. Oh, I’m noticing that this is kind of planned, but do I even want it? So maybe I’ll just write the word optional, which makes me feel like, Oh, I’ll just leave that for a different day because I really just want to go to bed at this point. 

So these whole food rules. Oh, and then here’s the last one I thought I should talk to you about is packing your food. Do you have to pack your food? When you go to a party, when you go somewhere, do you have to pack food? And I want to tell you my experience with that. 

Early in food recovery, I don’t remember packing my food much because I didn’t really have a lot of stomach issues. A couple years after I was in food recovery, I was diagnosed with this small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And it made it so that my food choices were like down to five for me to be able to, at times when I have a flare up, which isn’t that often in the last nine years, I guess that was 2016. 

I just really have learned how to take care of myself and be able to go places and either Not eat or I will supplement like I will bring additional food like extra eggs because eggs are really safe or an extra certain kind of bread that is really safe for my gut and gentle at that time. And so I just know I’ll hardcore pack food so that I can be part of things when I have stomach issues. I remember one time it was my husband’s birthday and he wanted to go to White Castle.

No judgment on White Castle, but honestly, the first time I ever had White Castle, I was in college and it was out of a vending machine. I grew up in rural Illinois and it was down in central Illinois and I’d never even heard of White Castle, but it was in a refrigerated, this is so funny, a refrigerated vending machine in my dorm in their lobby area. 

And one of my jobs in my freshman year of college was working at the front desk of the dorm.  And it was like, some of my shifts, I remember one was like two to 4 a.m. on Tuesdays or something ridiculous like that. Anyway, so I remember one time getting the white castle hamburgers out of the vending machine, and I remember being like, what?

What is this? It was not fantastic, but I still ate it anyway. So my husband grew up in the Chicagoland area where White Castle is a very big thing. In fact, when his mom comes to visit  from Pennsylvania, apparently they don’t have White Castle there. I don’t know. She comes and she always gets the 30 pack and we have like White Castles for days in our fridge.

It’s crazy. But anyway, it was my husband’s birthday and he wanted to go to White Castle. If you haven’t heard, I have two boys and my boys were like, junior high and like grade school at the time. And okay, so we’re going to go to White Castle. I am in a huge flare up with my stomach. I bring my little container of what I’m going to eat.

So we’re all sitting around and eating. My older son is just like dying that I brought my own food into a restaurant. He’s like, you are not going to eat that in front of in this place. You can’t bring your own food. And I’m like, listen, you guys all bought food here, it’s totally fine. And he just gets so embarrassed.

And so my point is, is that my rule at that point, if you will, if we’re just going with this rule analogy is that I want us to eat with my family.  I want it to be part of this and I was willing to pack my food and I take care of myself and don’t feel obligated to put things in my mouth that will cause me extreme pain. 

And so yeah, packing my food was a necessity at that point. That was a rule that I chose to follow. I loved it. It was part of the Denise rules. The Denise plan, but you just get to decide what’s working for you in this season of your life. And I want to give you full permission to also define a season as today.

What’s going to work for me today? Let’s experiment. Let’s have fun. Let’s see. Does this work for me? And you’ll know if it works for you because it feels light. It’s for your greatest good. Let’s don’t be scrupulous friends. Let’s don’t be like, well, Is my greatest good two pieces of bread or one piece of bread?

Hey, listen, what is for your greatest good is for you to feel peace. What feels peaceful for you?  I was coaching a woman the other day and she was saying, oh, bread is on my chaos list, but I really like to have sandwiches. I’m just having a hard time making my easy to stick to a meal plan because bread is on my chaos list. 

And so we talked a little bit about it. Is bread on your chaos list? Because when it’s not planned,  She said that what is not planned she goes I will eat like five or six pieces of bread at one time or I’ll make what she called a poor man’s Cobbler, which was bread and butter and sugar and I think some peaches or something and I said, well I don’t know if bread is a chaos food for you.

What if you plan to  have a sandwich? How many pieces of bread would you want to have? She said two and I said and then what do you what does your brain think would happen if you had two pieces of bread on a sandwich, she didn’t feel like it would lead to anything else. I said, well, why don’t you plan it and try see how that goes?

And by the way, if you really love your little poor man’s peach cobbler thing, why don’t you plan to have it  as your nighttime snack or as an afternoon snack or after a meal or as part of a meal? Because the poor man’s cobbler’s not the problem, my friends. If it’s something you love and you really enjoy it, put it on your plan. 

You will know if it’s true chaos food. If you find that you want to have one serving or whatever your portion is, and I say serving like whatever is considered whatever you planned. If you find you want to have two, three, four, five, six, huh? Maybe that’s a problem. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a situation you need to tend to. 

Maybe it wasn’t the food that was the problem. It was because you were having all the shenanigans. I never get to have this. I shouldn’t be having this. Just, by the way, I, if I notice myself say those, I shouldn’t have this, I never get to have this. I’ll just kind of step back and notice that and I’ll say to myself, oh my gosh, my brain really thinks I shouldn’t be eating this right now. 

Hmm. Oh my gosh. My brain really thinks I shouldn’t be doing this. That’s so interesting. And then I’ll always say, I never get to have this, but I don’t always say it. But if I find myself saying that, I’ll just check in. Is that true, Denise? You never get to have this or do you just never allow yourself to have this? 

That’s interesting. Why are you not allowing yourself to have this at other times? Because the, I have found when I’ve said to myself, you never get to have this. I’ll be like, oh my gosh, you’re right. You don’t ever let yourself have this. And I’ll be like, oh, that’s interesting. Why don’t I do that? What do I think is so wrong about this food? Huh?  Would you like to work it in your plan a little more? Maybe we’ll do that. 

But what I noticed when I say you never let yourself have this is I want to eat all of it. That’s my initial, like, I better get it all. But what if I just said, Hey, you are right. We have been denying ourselves this. What if we have it today and we have it tomorrow? Maybe we can put it on our plan every single day. 

You guys, as odd as this is, I can have that thought about certain condiments, especially mayonnaise. So I recognized, I don’t know when it was, that I would be like, oh, you never get mayonnaise. You, isn’t that funny? Yeah. Oh, not mayonnaise. As I remember, I was putting it on a burger. Because I love my burgers with mayonnaise and ketchup and mustard  and I was like, oh mayonnaise and I was just like starting to slather it on and I was like, oh you never get mayonnaise and I was like oh my gosh, you’re right.

Why are we not eating more mayonnaise? If you like mayonnaise so much as a condiment, why are we not doing that? And then I recognized I could just not slather it on. I could take a reasonable amount and plan a sandwich with mayonnaise the next day. It’s just so freeing you guys. It’s so freeing that you have unconditional permission to eat any food and you have unconditional permission to set down your food rules. 

I want you to just imagine that you are, however many days old you are, and every food rule that you’ve ever had, just imagine putting it, like, logging it into a book. You’re putting it in a book, and it’s called food rules. It’s a book. It’s as big as the Bible. Let’s even give it some gold edging, right?

Let’s imagine it’s the size of that family Bible, and it says food rules. And it’s even got gold edges. And it might even be glowing a little bit. Like this magic book. 

And just set it aside. I want you to go put it on the shelf. Go put it on the shelf. And recognize that those are the food rules that you have learned. Kind of like an encyclopedia. If you’re old enough to know what an encyclopedia is. An encyclopedia is a place that you can go and look for information.

An encyclopedia is a place that you go to, like, see, did I get that right? Or you want to learn a little bit more about, like, marsupials. What the heck is a marsupial? But it’s just there, and it’s on the shelf. And you’ve never lived today. So you don’t even know what your food rule is. And I want you to imagine that you’ve got this beautiful journal, beautiful.

And if you’re a journal person like me, you go into TJ Maxx and you go to the journal section or you go to Barnes and Noble and you just go and you look at all the journals and then you touch them. I mean, seriously, my kids are like. And I’m like, I’m not buying them. I have way too many journals, but I just want to touch them and feel them and thumb through them and look at them and like, look at the paper.

I know it’s so bizarre. I have a journal obsession. So imagine that you have this new journal and your favorite pen. It’s like a blue gel pen, or maybe it’s a different color and you are ready to check in with your brain and be your own secretary as you’re writing down the new food rules that work for you and you don’t know them ahead of time.

You’re just going to uncover them. They’re going to be revealed to you by you and they’ll be, you’ll know it’s a food rule that works for you because you’ll feel peace. You will also know it might be a nudging or prompting from the Holy Spirit. Let’s experiment with this and you experiment with it.

And then you’ll know if it works for you or if it doesn’t work for you. And maybe it works for you today and it might not work for you tomorrow. But it is just a big experiment. It’s fun. It’s light. If something feels heavy, you look at it. And chances are, it’s not the food. It’s a rule or something that you’re telling yourself based on a rule.

It’s a rule. And you’ll know that you’re following a rule or having thoughts about a rule because you’ll feel judgy about yourself. You’ll hear the word should, or you’ll believe there’s a right way and a wrong way. So I hope that this podcast has given you some freedom to discover what works for you in this season of your life. Okay, everybody, have a blessed day.