Fitness & Sushi

So many people like the idea of breaking free of Diet Culture, but they're afraid. They have fears surrounding weight gain, losing control with their eating, and worsening health. It's normal to have fears when undergoing such a big lifestyle change, but there's really nothing to worry about. All of the fears are just that - fears. Rarely do they manifest in the way you think they will. Understand...

Creating healthy habits is hard enough as it is. We don't need to add unnecessary resistance to the process. There are some very specific things you should consider doing, as well as avoiding, when attempting behavioral change. When done right, new habits are easier to implement, which makes it possible to stack more and more habits into your life. In episode 239 of Fitness & Sushi , Deanna and I...

Why do we struggle to do the things we know are good for us? Enter self-sabotage. The failure of our goals tend to be a result of subconscious thoughts and behaviors that feel out of our control. Rarely do we just decide to fail. Instead, our psychology leads us to that path due to past experiences and the identity that they create. Addressing self-sabotage at the source is the key to overcoming o...

We tend to think of losing weight and getting healthy as the same thing. But they aren't. In fact, the one-dimensional way most people approach weight loss tends to lead to worsening health over time. Weight loss based behaviors are not the same things as health based behaviors. They can be, but they usually aren't when you're part of Diet Culture. But if you approach your health in the right way,...

Diet Culture typically portrays your health and fitness journey in an unrealistic way. You're expected to flip a switch - going from one lifestyle to the next and never looking back. But anyone who has tried to undergo a big lifestyle change knows that things rarely play out that way. The thing is, the path you experience during your typical weight loss journey is nothing like the one you experien...

Despite what you might hear in the media (or from that ignorant commenter on social media), your weight isn't 100% in your control.   People like to put others down and write off their weight loss struggles as simply being lazy or not having enough discipline This is ridiculous. We are not carbon copies of each other, which means the way our body's work are all unique. But I'm not just talking abo...

We've been getting a lot of questions lately about the best way to make adjustments to your diet. People want to improve their health, deal with food sensitivities, live in spiritual alignment, or eat differently for performance or weight change (increase or decrease) reasons. But they're worried that if they start trying to manipulate their diet again, they'll slip back into Diet Culture and re-e...

On the surface, it might seem like the standard prescription for exercise is good for you, but that actually might not be the case. It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish in your life. When you see someone who is in "great shape", what does that really mean? Is it about how they look? How strong they are? How much endurance they have? Do these metrics automatically translate into im...

Many of us struggle to overcome society's message that you need to look a certain way to be valued. Adopting these messages/beliefs, willingly or not, tends to create debilitating body images struggles for people. This negative body image then permeates into nearly every aspect of our life and diminishes our life experience. We end up spending our days living with someone (ourselves) who we don't...

We have a tendency to label our food as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. But what most people don't realize, is that there are consequences to these labels - and they usually aren't good ones. For people who are trying to heal their relationship with food, these labels tend to keep you stuck in the diet cycle (and actually result in UNhealthy outcomes), even if your intentions are good. So then...

Deanna and I have been getting a lot of requests to talk about all these shiny new weight loss medications hitting the market. You can't watch TV now without seeing an ad about them or hearing about some celebrity who has lost weight using them. So what's the deal? Are these miracle drugs? Are we being pushed something that's harmful to us? Is there ever a time when it makes sense to use them? In...

I'm going to get right to it - as a society, we approach New Year's resolutions wrong. It's not hard to understand why I say that. All you have to do is look at the success rates of said resolutions. Year after year we keep setting the same ones. We keep going through the same yearly cycle. There is a reason we keep doing this over and over despite not getting the results we want. If you understan...

Most of what you see in the weight loss space is simply a repackaged version of Diet Culture. The strategies might be different on the surface, but they still all share ineffective common denominators that set you up for failure and keep you stuck in the diet cycle. They may throw words out there like "lifestyle" or "psychology" or "mindset", but that doesn't change the fact they will continue to...

Much of the messaging that comes out of Diet Culture is centered around pushing yourself to achieve a particular goal. We're told to have discipline. We're told "no pain, no gain." We're told to suck it up and just do it if you want it bad enough. Hungry? How bad do you want to lose weight? Lacking motivation to work out today? "Just do it". And as I'm sure you've experienced, rarely does this kin...

Most health and fitness advice isn't all that helpful. We're usually given a series of behaviors to aspire to. Eat more vegetables. Eat less, move more. Eat xxxx amount of calories. Hit your macros. Don't eat this/that food. The list goes on. It's not that these things don't work or can't work. It's just that we struggle to actually do them. That's because we're neglecting the real influence on ou...

I don't think I've met a single person who didn't experience a period when they just didn't want to exercise. They know it's good for them. They say they do enjoy it. But they're still feeling a lot of resistance. There are many reasons this happens, and you don't necessarily need to be a participant in Diet Culture to experience this unwanted lack of motivation and drive. But you should understan...

When you're stuck in Diet Culture you don't realize just how much you think about food. It's like there's a mental program running that's sucking up all your emotional bandwidth. How much do I eat? Am I eating enough? I shouldn't have eaten that. I really want that. Don't eat carbs. I'm hungry. When's my next meal? Don't eat another slice of pizza. Stop eating these cookies. Cravings. Calories. Pr...

Most people are engaging in surface-level weight loss strategies. As a result, they end up getting stuck in a cycle where the strategy they're using to solve the problem is the very thing creating it in the first place. This is yo-yo dieting, and if you're not careful, you can spend a lifetime with little to show for it. There are good reasons for why we choose these weight loss strategies, but th...

Your relationship with your body impacts every aspect of your life. I've spoken to so many people who have shared how a negative perception of their body has affected everything from their eating, to their exercise, to their career, social life, and intimate relationships. We can get so caught up in "protecting" ourselves from criticism and judgment that we forget what a full life experience even...

There are some really cool things that happen when you heal your relationship with food. A single tweak to your perception of food and the meaning you attach to it can create a cascade of positive food experiences. Imagine a world where your eating doesn't have a cloud of guilt or obsession looming over it. I'm talking about freedom. Food is taking up too much of your emotional resources. You shou...

When I shared my experience having an 8-5 job the last 6 months, I explained how the time and emotional energy commitment to it had burned me to the ground. And I got a lot of feedback from our community about how so many people are feeling the same way. You're grinding day after day and feel like you have little space to do anything else. You're just trying to survive. And you feel like a shell o...

Most people aren't trying to gain weight, yet they're constantly immersed in a mindset and behaviors that all but assure weight gain over the long term.   I'm talking about dieting, of course.   And when I say dieting, I'm not just talking about following a branded diet. Everyone already knows diets don't work.   cue the "it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle" rationalization   Dieting, in this case,...

Many of us are doing our best to try and eat less so we can achieve our goals. However, most of the strategies people implement have the opposite effect - leading to out of control overeating. The key to achieving your Ideal Body is understanding what is causing you to overeat in the first place. Only then will you be able to get to the root of the problem and address it at its source. In episode...

In this episode, you will learn: The process for identifying beliefs that are causing misalignment and self-sabotage What is confirmation bias and how to stop collecting proof of disempowering belief systems How to create new empowering beliefs and actually believe them The common limiting beliefs you need to break to stop self-sabatoge with your health and fitness journey Why Tony will be standin...

Improving your nutrition can feel impossible and overwhelming if you've been conditioned by diet culture, and are fearful of giving up the foods you love. In today's episode with special guest Amanda Bullat, RD, you will learn: How Amanda went from endurance athlete with a disordered relationship with food, her body, and exercise to an intuitive eating dietician The difference between expansive an...