Nourishing Habits: Rethinking Eating Routines and Emotional Eating

Introduction

Struggling with meal timing or emotional eating? 🍽️ 

In this episode of Fit and Fabulous, Dr. Orlena shares her personal journey of adjusting meal routines and offers a fresh perspective on avoiding emotional eating.

Discover how treating every meal as a reward can transform your relationship with food. 

Whether you're juggling family schedules or looking to improve your self-care routine, this episode is packed with practical insights. Tune in to learn how small changes can lead to big improvements in your overall wellness!

Want Dr Orlena's help in doing a Reboot? Book a free chat here: https://calendly.com/orlenakerek/breakthrough-call-pod

Want the Replays of the Healthy Amazing You Boost?
Sign up here: https://www.drorlena.com/healthy-amazing-you-boost

Transcription of Podcast

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling fabulous. Before we start today's episode, oh I've got exciting things to talk to you today, I want to let you know that I am working on a new free handout which is called Five Easy Steps to Lose Weight and Keep It Off for Women Over 40.

So keep an eye out for that. I will share it as soon as it is ready, hopefully, by next week. Okay, today what do I want to talk to you about? I have two messages for you today. Firstly, I wanted to tell you a little bit about how I have changed my eating routine, and why am I telling you this? Because I think when we make changes, It can be difficult, and so I just wanted to tell you a little bit about my experience in case you are thinking of changing your routine, eating routine.

And secondly, I want to tell you one big thing that I do to avoid emotional eating. So I will tell you that in a little bit. First of all, I want to tell you a little bit about changing my eating routine. So, here in Spain, just to set the scene a little bit. Children in primary school go to school in the morning and in the afternoon, which means they come home at 1 o'clock and then they go back to school between 3 and 5.

Now, when they are 12, they go to secondary school and they have a totally different timetable, just to make life easy for us. And they go to school from 8 o'clock in the morning till 2. 30, so they get back from 3. Now, last year I had two squids in primary school and two kids at secondary school, which basically meant that None of us ever ate at the same time, or at least four of us did, and then the other two ate at a different time, and it all felt very hicklety picklety with people coming and going.

This year, all four of them are at secondary school, which now means that they all come back at three o'clock, which is good on one hand, it means that I have a little bit more time, it means things are more streamlined, we're all doing the same thing. Thoughts? In my opinion, it makes it very difficult for me to feed my children a sensible routine.

So they have breakfast before they go, but they don't really have time to have much more than an apple, a short snack when they have their breaks. It's not like they sit down and have lunch, which I think would be a good idea. Sadly, I am not in charge of the entire schooling system of Spain, so I just have to suck it up and they get back at three.

So, we used to have lunch at one and then dinner at around six o'clock. Now, interestingly, that's a sort of English routine. In Spain, a lot of people have dinner much, much later, at like eight, nine, even ten o'clock at night time. And for me, that feels really, really late. One of the things that I recommend people do is have an eating window of lunch.

12 hours. So you really want to be resting your gut 12 to 14 hours if you can. What does that look like? It looks like having dinner, stopping eating, and then leaving 12 to 14 hours before you have breakfast. And ideally, you want to be doing the same thing time every single day if you can. Why do you want to be doing the same thing every single day?

Because your body gets used to Gets used to that rhythm basically and when we think about hunger Actually, one of the things about hunger is hunger tends to happen at the times that we eat now I know that that isn't possible for absolutely everybody it depends on your routine and sometimes you might do things on one day that you don't do on another day.

So, for example, I go swimming on some days and so I don't get back till 9. 30 when I eat my breakfast. In fact, I do that most days, but some days I don't go swimming and so I'll have my breakfast a little bit earlier. So, you can have a little bit of flexibility in your routine, but ideally, you want a routine that stays as similar as it can every single day.

Or you have two separate routines depending on life and work and things like that. So anyhow I decided that what I wanted to do is eat everybody at three o'clock. So we have a big lunch at three o'clock and then we have a smaller supper at later on. Now I had kind of thought six o'clock but what I hadn't envisaged was actually when you eat a reasonable amount of food at three o'clock you're not hungry at six o'clock.

So that kind of threw a bit of a spanner in the works. And on top of that, all my children seemed to think at 6 or 7 o'clock that it was just, Hey, let's all make something different. Which really, for me, wasn't really working. I kept thinking, hey, this isn't a student kitchen. Let's all eat the same thing.

So the reality is we have had a little bit of teething problems making this change. Now some interesting things. I have not felt super hungry at one o'clock. When I know that I'm eating at three o'clock, at one o'clock I can just carry on going. I thought I would find it really difficult to not eat at one o'clock and actually that hasn't been the case.

But you know I allow myself to eat if I think okay. I need a little snack, I'll go and get a little snack. I'm not making myself push through that time to eat more at three o'clock. I hope that makes sense. So that was an interesting thing. Another interesting thing that I have seen is that I do feel I eat less.

One of the reasons I decided this was because I felt I was eating quite a lot at one o'clock and then having dinner and eating quite a lot later on. So having two big meals and feeling like, I felt like I was constantly eating and feeling full up all the time. Now, as a side note, I'm eating lots of healthy foods, lots of fruit and vegetables, foods that fill you up.

So feeling full up is not necessarily a bad thing and it's not necessarily an indication that you're eating too much. I clearly don't have a problem with weight, so I wasn't eating too much. I just felt full up and didn't want to feel full up. So that has changed a little bit. I We've been doing this for a couple of weeks now, and I'm not a hundred percent sure that this is the way we want to move forwards.

Partly for myself, partly for my family. Like, the other way we could do it is my husband and I could have lunch at one o'clock, and then we could all have dinner at six. Now, as I say, we've been doing this for two or three weeks, but I think it's still early days. And what I'm doing is just trying it for another few weeks, so that we can then Re evaluate after that and really be in a place where we think okay, does this work?

Does this not work? And I'm sure all of you who know who have kids and you have kids doing extra school hours, after school activities here and there and everywhere, your whole routine can take a little bit of time to settle in and for you to really find out what's working and what's not working. And so if you're looking at your eating routine, or bringing in exercise routine or changing your sleep routine because you've realized you need to prioritize your sleep and that means re changing things up a little bit.

Actually, there can be some teething problems and you can think okay this doesn't quite work but actually if I change it It might work. Or do it for a period of time and think, do you know what? This really doesn't work. I'm going to go back to how I was doing it before. My main message for you is, if you make changes, give them a little bit of time to see if they work.

And if you have to change things, again, that's not the end of the world. But it does take time for your body and your brain to adjust to a new system. So those were my takeaways from that that I wanted to share with you. Now, Emotional eating. I have been thinking about emotional eating. We did the Healthy Amazing You boost last week and we were talking about emotional eating.

Side note, if you want to listen to the whole of the healthy eating boost, the replays are still available. I will leave a link in the show notes and it will send you out the replay. And it was the third day that we really focused on emotional eating. Now, if you are somebody who turns to food for comfort, what we were really looking at is what happens underneath.

that situation. What happens to the emotions underneath? And one of the big things that I see is people get to this situation where they feel, I need to treat myself. I need to look after myself. I need to give myself a reward of food for whatever has happened. And this made me think, why is it that I don't do this?

And the answer is this. When I eat my breakfast, or any meal, but let's talk about breakfast. I eat. A delicious, healthy, decadent breakfast. Let me tell you what that is. I have fruit. I may have loads of fruit. So today I had a bit of pear, a bit of nectarine, a bit of plum. I'm sure there was something else in there as well.

Handfuls of nuts, a bit of oats. some ginger, some yogurt, some cocoa nibs. Yes, it's what I call my amazing, giant, healthy breakfast. And when I eat that food, I really enjoy it. I sit and I enjoy it. And I think, I am nourishing myself. I am looking after myself. I am giving my body what it needs in terms of deliciousness, but also what it needs to fuel my body.

And I do that again at lunchtime, and I do that again at dinner time. So I am constantly rewarding myself, nurturing myself, and giving myself treats. It may be the same thing every single day, but every single day I think of it as a treat. When I drink my coffee, I think, oh my goodness, I love coffee. Isn't it amazing?

And yes, I did give it up last winter. I might give it up this winter again, we'll see. But my point is, every single time I eat, I think how I'm nourishing my body, and looking after myself, and being kind to myself. And so, when life is stressful, and life can be stressful, I don't feel the need to reward myself with that food because I've already done it two or three times a day.

Now, I have other tools that I use as well when life is stressful. Life is always busy lifing, sometimes more, sometimes less, but I use those tools as well. But I think one big thing that I do to avoid emotional eating is to think that I am constantly looking after myself, such that I don't need to look after myself more.

Another example of this. I used to have the habit years ago of having a massage every single month. And this was at the beginning of my self care journey, where really when I first started looking at self care, I had to force myself and go and look after myself. And one of the things that I did was had a massage every month, which I totally loved, but it was also really stressful.

a big statement to myself of I am somebody who looks after myself. Now for various reasons I fell out of having this habit and on one hand I would love to get back into that habit because oh having a massage every month is wonderful and lovely and who doesn't want a massage every month unless you're somebody who doesn't like massages.

But I don't feel that I need that massage in terms of feeling that I look after myself because I feel like I look after myself all the time. I always ask my clients, and I'm asking you now, out of ten, how much do you believe this statement? I am somebody who prioritises my health and wellness, and I should add, in a way that's fun and enjoyable.

I always mark myself eleven out of ten. Definitely for the fun and enjoyable bit. My entire life is geared up to looking after myself and making sure that I have enough energy to do all the things that I need to do and want to do. And that I just have these habits that I enjoy that are also supporting my health and wellness.

So as much as I love a massage, It would be the cherry on top of a beautiful cake, that's probably not a great analogy, but I don't feel that I need a massage. And so I hope you can just see a little shift in thinking about that, and thinking what are some of the shifts that you can make to help you look after yourself.

Okay, my friends. I hope that has been helpful. Have a fabulous week. Remember, if you want to chat to me about having support, helping you create your healthy, amazing life so that you can do all of these things on autopilot, create a healthy system that works for you so that you can keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it, please book a free call and we will chat.

Have a lovely week and I will see you next week. Bye bye.