Today I’m excited to have Lisa Salisbury join me to explore the role of our higher brain in making better decisions about our health and the concept of portion distortion and its impact on our food choices. In this episode, Lisa talks about listening to our bodies, the negative effects of the clean plate club mindset, food waste, and sustainable eating.

Lisa is a weight loss life coach who helps women shed pounds without tracking food. Her personal struggle with chronic dieting drives her expertise in breaking free and achieving weight loss success through coaching.

Lisa is a certified Health Coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and a certified Life Coach and Weight Loss Coach through The Life Coach School. She also has a BS from Brigham Young University in Health and Human Performance.

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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:13] Lisa’s personal journey from chronic dieter to health, life, and weight loss coach
[7:15] Using our higher brain to make better health and wellness decisions
[12:22] The importance of a long-term, sustainable approach to eating and how to achieve it
[18:24] Portion distortion and how it impacts our food choices
[21:29] The impact of the clean plate club and strategies for breaking free from this mindset
[22:54] Stephanie shares her experience with her one-on-one nutrition coaching with Philip
[25:06] Food waste and why it’s important to address
[28:16] Overcoming portion distortion and learning to listen to our bodies
[30:24] The diet mentality and diets with end dates
[34:30] Overcoming the mindset of labeling foods as “good” or “bad”
[38:54] How to pick “power foods” that work for your body and lifestyle
[40:36] Success stories of others who have transformed their relationship with food and their body, and the impact on other areas of their lives
[42:50] Choosing the exercise you do
[47:14] Where can you learn more about Lisa
[48:18] Outro

Episode resources:

• Lisa’s website: wellwithlisa.com

• IG: @well_with_lisa

• Podcast: Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well

• Lisa's Go-To Meals Guide

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Transcript

Lisa Salisbury  00:00

Everything really that puts us in that diet mentality is can be really damaging to creating a lifestyle that you really want to live if you're looking at your future self five years, 10 years, you know, however many years down the road and you can't picture yourself eating this way. That's a diet.

 

Philip Pape  00:21

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome to another episode of Wits & Weights. Today I'm excited to have Lisa Salisbury join me to explore the role of our higher brain in making better decisions about our health, and the concept of portion distortion and its impact on our food choices. In this episode, Lisa reveals how to listen to our bodies and discusses the harmful impact of the clean plate club mindset. We're also going to delve into the issue of food waste and the importance of a long term sustainable approach to eating. Lisa Solsbury is a health and weight loss life coach for women who want to lose weight without counting and calculating their food. As a former chronic Dieter, Lisa knows what it's like to be all consumed with everything that goes into your mouth. It was only when she learned the tools and skills through coaching that she was able to drop the dieting obsession and drop her weight. Lisa is a certified health coach through Institute of Integrative Nutrition, and a certified life coach and weight loss coach through the Life Coach School. She also has a BS from Brigham Young University and health and human performance. She takes her clients through a 12 week program designed to help them eat well think well and live well. When you learn the skill of paying attention to your body and losing weight. You'll be surprised at how it translates into other areas of life. And Lisa also shares many of her best tools and solutions on her podcast. Eat well think well live. Well make sure to subscribe. And Lisa, welcome to the show.

 

Lisa Salisbury  02:08

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.

 

Philip Pape  02:11

Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. And you know, I mentioned in the intro that like many of us and many people listening your former chronic Dieter, right, the yo yo diets, you try it, you probably tried a lot of different things. And then you learned and grew. And you develop these skills that help you drop the obsession. Now you're paying it forward with your coaching as a health life and weight loss coach. So tell us more about the discoveries, the transformation that you went through that now give you this power and ability to help people today?

 

Lisa Salisbury  02:40

Yeah, so I was on a roller coaster of diets. It's I started dieting in high school when several adults made mention that I should lose some weight, which is like crazy when I look back on pictures. Yeah, so you know, just then I went on to get married had four children. So those years 910 years of being either pregnant or breastfeeding. So the in between times was just an absolute roller coaster. I just thought, well, I got it, I kind of get my weight down before I get pregnant again, blah, blah, blah. And then you know, with my last baby, I've told this story lots of times, it's very rare that you can really think about your thoughts so long ago unless you have a journal that you like, specifically wrote it down in but I distinctly remember having the thought, this is the last time I can be fat. Like how was so much scarcity around that. So in an untrue like being pregnant is not the same as being overweight in any way, shape, or form. But this is where my brain was like I'm just being honest with what I was thinking. But you know what that created is I have to eat all these foods now. Because I'm not going to be able to eat them later.

 

Philip Pape  03:57

This is this my only moment. Yeah, this this Yeah, nine months and time.

 

Lisa Salisbury  04:01

This is the last time I'll be allowed. And then everyone will tell me I have to lose weight. And so, you know, my youngest is 15. It took me still several several years after that. To get to the point of being ready for coaching. I just decided all these diets like this one is going to work for sure this one that tells me what to eat on Monday and Tuesday and then something different on Wednesday and Thursday. And now broccoli is off limits for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Like it didn't make any sense the kinds of diets that I was doing. And so I ended up really heavy into counting and calculating weighing all my food to the point where I was bringing my food scale to the dinner table in front of my children. And I know that there are people out there that absolutely can count calories and count macros in a healthy way. It wasn't for me. I think it's just part of my personality part of where my brain goes. It creates A lot of obsession and a lot of anxiety. And so when I would go to a restaurant, for example, and not be able to figure out the nutritional information, like just just a calorie count wasn't good enough, I had to know how many protein macros. So I went one or two ways, I would just not enjoy the meal, be completely anxious and be like, I don't know what I'm going to do about this. Or I would be like, well, I can't track it. So I'll just eat all the things. So it it just wasn't a healthy place for me. And whether I was Orthorexic you know, with the obsession with eating healthy. I don't know that I was actually had an eating disorder. But I was definitely had, I definitely had disordered eating. And I think a lot of us can have disordered eating without being a diagnosed eating disorder. And I think that's definitely where I was. So the first time I sat down to eat lunch and not track it, it was like, it still produced a lot of anxiety. But I was like, yeah, yeah, I was like, Okay, but what if I eat too much. And so what I learned was to just really depend on my body more, and to use a hunger scale. And what I figured out was that I can use all of that information I learned about health and fitness and nutrition and protein, and the importance of carbs and all of those things. I can use that without being obsessive about it. I recently actually started making a recipe, it's just a silly little thing. It's just for Turkey, breakfast sausage. But originally, it came from a diet cookbook that I had. And I realized, you know what, I just actually like that sausage, it's okay for me to eat that. And this is to take advice from my past self. Like, actually, you feel great when you eat a lot of protein. That's okay. You don't have to count count and calculate it. If it makes you feel obsessive. But you can also just make sure you're eating protein at every meal. So there's a difference between throwing it all out the window, and just picking and choosing what is what is brain healthy

 

Philip Pape  07:14

for you, Lisa, there's so much in that story. I really love it. Because a lot, a lot of us coaches do have very similar approaches. And when you think of flexible dieting, it's like hey, just count your calories and macros that that's that's effective, go and do it. But you have to meet people where they're at and what works for them. And you said that you had to figure all this out before you were ready for coaching. I haven't heard somebody put it that way. But I love that because you're saying that to help others, you have to help yourself and understand and have gone through that journey. And you said, Hey, counting calories wasn't for me. But you figured out what was things like how you felt, and having the freedom to do it in a different way, the hunger scale, right? How you could still have disordered eating patterns if you're not careful, even if you don't have an eating disorder. So really good stuff. And I wonder if all of this then leads to how you use the higher brain discussion in all of this context to make these decisions. Is that Is that what you mean by that? Or can you explain the higher brain and then how we can maybe tap into that? Yeah,

 

Lisa Salisbury  08:18

so part of like, what I was ready for was, I was so dependent on either the book that I had purchased, whatever diet plan, the food list, or most consistently, my technology diet apps, that I just had no trust in myself whatsoever. And that's what learning about coaching about the higher brain really helped me to do was to be like, actually, I have a lot of wisdom here, my body has a lot of wisdom. So using your higher brain to make your food decisions. Well, let me back up the brain, you can kind of divide into two parts. When you're thinking about thinking your higher brain is the one that does all the planning all of the thoughts ahead of time. It's your human brain. It's the part that makes the good decisions, right? The lower brain is the habit brain, it's the part that we want to delegate things down to. We don't want to have to consciously think about brushing our teeth, for example, we have delegated that down to the habit brain, we can do something else while we're brushing our teeth. Like maybe you're scrolling Instagram, while you're brushing your teeth because it's a habit. I noticed this especially with like driving, a lot of times you like you get home and you're like, did I like past the park? Like,

 

Philip Pape  09:32

how did I get here?

 

Lisa Salisbury  09:34

Like because it's you know, somewhat delegated to that lower brain. Part of the issue when we delegate eating down there to the lower brain, which, by the way, the brain wants to do this as much as possible because it's very, very efficient. And so when we delegate eating down there, we get into habit eating, mindless eating, and emotional eating. So habit eating is like, Well, I always have a snack when the kids come home from school because that's what we do. Like regardless of if I'm hungry or not, regardless of, you know, whatever is going on, like, we have a snack, like you're not a toddler, so we don't have to. So there's that, right, that's a habit mindless is when you're like passing by your co workers desk, and you grab a handful of candy, because it's there and you're, you know, 17 jelly beans in before you're like, oh, oh, I'm eating again. Right or if we're, if we choose to eat while we're doing other things, if you're eating in the car that's mindless, if you're eating in front of the TV that can be mindless, we're not we're just delegating that habit of getting food into our mouth down to that habit brain. And then this also is where emotional eating comes in. Because the habit brain or that lower brain wants immediate gratification. And it also wants to solve for emotions. When you're tired, sad, bored, stressed, you want to solve for that, and your lower brain goes, Hey, you know what solved for this in the past. And by solved I mean, what gave me a big dopamine hit. You know, what solve for this in the past is some, you know, some caramel corn, that's gonna help us right now, that will give us a big hit of of dopamine. And sure enough, it works. And so then we use that as evidence going forward. So we've got to take our eating up into our higher brain in order to really not only connect it with our body, but also just make those decisions from our future selves from our human selves, not depending on that habit brain, because frankly, she just doesn't do that great of a job.

 

Philip Pape  11:43

This is this is such a good classification for people. How you how you separate the higher and lower and just to clarify, you're putting the habit eating mindless eating and emotional eating all in the lower brain. Is that right? Usually, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And that's a good distinction. There's actually a friend of mine, if he's listening, his name is Tony and my barbell club. And he's always getting on me for we tried to work on his macros and, and shift his protein and carbs for his training. And eventually, he's like, I just can't do this. This is not for me. He's like, I listen to my body. And it all works out. I'm like, perfect. And that's, that's what you want. That's for you. Anyway, get it off off track here. But the habit eating the mindless eating and the emotional eating, taking from that to a place of control is, I think, where a lot of people want to be right. They want to be empowered, they want to have control over the situation. So how do we do that?

 

Lisa Salisbury  12:34

Yeah, yeah, a couple ways that you want to keep your eating in the higher brain realm. Number one, you gotta plan ahead. Because the habit brain is the one that's like chocolate plate. Excuse me, chocolate cake for breakfast sounds great. Your Higher human brain is never going to write down let's have chocolate cake tomorrow morning for breakfast, like it just doesn't, right. So we want to plan ahead, I have my clients do a 24 hour plan. So most often they do this in the morning, they're just going to jot down what I'm going to have for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not necessarily the amounts, just what I'm going to have eggs and toast for breakfast, I'm going to have leftovers for lunch, leftover pasta from last night for lunch, you know, whatever it is, they just write it down. And when they get to dinner, and they've written down broccoli, and they're like, no broccoli doesn't really sound good. Like maybe I'm just gonna, that's where we go, Oh, I've made this decision from our higher brain and right, we've got to get our commitments in but, but first and foremost, we want to plan because that keeps our habit brain out of the decisions. Yeah. So that's, that's first and then secondly, we want to eat without distractions. And this prevents our that mindless and and habit eating. So we want to say I only eat when I'm sitting down at the table or at your breakfast bar or wherever you like to eat from a plate. And without I'm going to everyone's gonna grow in here without your phone

 

Philip Pape  14:07

or tablet or TV or anything.

 

Lisa Salisbury  14:11

Yeah, just you know what if you've given yourself 30 minutes for lunch, like eat for 15 minutes and then scroll Instagram for 15 minutes. We've got to separate it because especially at first when you're really wanting to listen to your body and really deciding have I had enough Is this the right amount of food for me? Do I Do I need to eat more to sustain myself till my next meal? You have to pay attention to the food. And when we're just habit eating either by this is the amount I always eat. When I really got out of this like habit eating I realized you know what is too much is the portion of oatmeal I always fix for myself. I realized every every time I ate it I was like that's a little too much. I started just experimenting with the amount I'm like, Oh, I was only eating that amount because it was my habit to eat that amount. So, you know, just these habit portions and, and just times that we eat. So we just we got to stay in touch with the food that we're eating, even if you can only practice this for one meal a day at first, like just practice we want to sit down, smell the food for just a couple of breaths, take a deep breath, get yourself into rest and digest mode to your food, Put your fork down between bites, all of that stuff, all of the mindful eating. Not only is this going to help you, you know, keep that eating in your higher brain area. But it's also going to increase your satisfaction. Over time that you'll find that you just don't need. Like, I just need a little something more just a little something sweet now, because that's usually coming from I just didn't get enough dopamine from this, I need a little more.

 

Philip Pape  15:53

It's true. How would you handle? Is there sort of a breaking in period for this where you'd recommend limiting going out to restaurants? Or how do you deal with social situations here where you're distracted by other people?

 

Lisa Salisbury  16:06

Yeah, I would say that there is a breaking in period only because as far as the way I work with my clients is we just make one tiny change every week. Just one tiny change each session. Because if you try to overhaul your whole eating nutrition life at one time, that's called a diet. And it's not sustainable. Right?

 

Philip Pape  16:27

Whatever. Yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  16:30

i We practice these things at home. Yes, there's a breaking in period, I had a client who was she was a travel guide, not just an agent, she would plan at home, but then would also guide the the trips over in Europe. So mid mid working with me, she had a six week break where we weren't working together because she was going to be guiding. And it was part of the part of the trip she was guiding was in Italy. And she we literally practiced eating pasta, because she's like, I love the pasta. I like you know, I want to be able to eat and I was like, Absolutely. There was no way I was going to that she was going to go to Italy and not eat pasta. But what she wanted to figure out is how to not eat all the pasta, how to not be too, so much that she

 

Philip Pape  17:15

felt slurping it up. Yeah, we tend to do.

 

Lisa Salisbury  17:18

Right. And so, you know, she came back from that six week trips down, I think, I don't know, it's been a few months now. So I can't remember if she was down four or five pounds, something like that, but not what she expected. She had consistently gained on all of her of her guiding trips, which is why she came to me, of course. And so not only did she lose weight, but she ate all the she ate pasta when she wanted. But she was aware and and had practiced and knew that she didn't need to eat everything on her plate, and was able So yes, there was like some practice time at home before she put herself in that situation. But certainly don't like say, Well, I can't go out to dinner because I haven't practiced enough.

 

Philip Pape  18:04

Use it as an opportunity, perhaps. Sure. Yeah, this is good. I'm glad I had some protein before we recorded this because I'm just thinking of Nucci. It was like the first time I ever had it or gnocchi, I'm sorry. My wife and I honeymoon. That was the first first time I had that back then I did not have these strategies. So it would have helped. So you mentioned portions. And I know there's a phrase you've used, I could guess it what it is, but I want you to help us understand portion distortion, how it affects our ability to make choices about how we eat and again, more strategies. People are getting a lot of great strategies from this conversation.

 

Lisa Salisbury  18:38

Yeah, maybe not as much in Europe. I noticed when I was there last summer, the portions weren't nearly as big. But here in America, we are really, really fighting with a huge increase in portions. Primarily, we're seeing this in restaurants, which is a concern because we the average American consumes somewhere around 65% of his energy at home. That was actually the last time that that was studied is was in the late 90s. So I think now we're well well over that percentage. So we we've just continue to see a decline decade over decade of the amount of food that we are consuming at home, which means we're consuming far more in restaurants. So what we're seeing in restaurants is this huge increase in portions, then our brain is like this is the amount I should eat because this is the amount they've served to me. And then we go on to duplicate that at home. Just for an example in the 80s our bagels were about three inches across. And now today they're about six inches across. So that's right, like yeah,

 

Philip Pape  19:51

my daughter has made homemade bagels with with and they were like half the size. I'm like, oh,

 

Lisa Salisbury  19:57

what's wrong with this bagel? Oh, it's from the 80s Yes. But yeah, it's so not only are we seeing this increase in portion that were served in restaurants. And also, let me say that if you were to look up the nutritional information for that restaurant, it's going to tell you that that large fry that you ordered is actually like three servings, right? But it the serving sizes hasn't really changed as much as what we are served, which is our portion. So it gets tricky too. Because even if you look at, like cookbooks, like the Joy of Cooking, for example, which is like a classic cookbook that they've revised over the years, the they even specify fewer servings, so like the same, the exact same recipe for brownies served 16 in the 80s. And the new version, it serves nine, it's the same recipe. So

 

Philip Pape  20:50

double double the size. I got it. Yeah, or per serving. Yep.

 

Lisa Salisbury  20:53

So ultimately, when there's more food in front of us, we're just more prone to eating past fullness. It just, that's just the way it is. And I think if you don't mind I'll go into it's because of we have this, this aversion to number one wasting food. And number two, we have an aversion to not being in the clean plate club. Right, most of us from our childhood.

 

Philip Pape  21:18

So true, I was just thinking about that this morning, Lisa, just coincidentally how you know, our parents were would would want us to clean our plates. And on top of that, we would tie that to getting dessert. And also it was tied to not wasting food and not just food but not wasting it because it costs money. You know, we don't want this money to go to waste. And it just compiles and compiles especially when the portions get bigger and bigger. So that's so relatable to people. Yeah,

 

Lisa Salisbury  21:42

yeah, it's all tied together. And it's, it's interesting, because we use this phrase, collectively, the clean plate club are cleaning our plate. And turns out the clean plate club was a government program in World War One, and then again in World War Two. So our parents and our grandparents, literally might have been members of the clean plate club in their elementary school, because it was instituted during the time where there were rations. And if your parents ever said to you like, well, they're starving children in Africa, because that's where there were issues. You know, in the 80s, when I was a child, it's because they're probably their parents were like, hey, they're starving children in Europe that we need to really conserve, so we can send a food over there. That really did happen at that time that you were serving. Yeah, I wasn't aware of that. That's yeah, it's crazy, actually, like you can find like the government posters and things that they were putting up for the kids. So it's no wonder our parents told us to clean our plates. And the idea back then was take what you need, because of course in school cafeterias back then it was all homemade food, and you know, not Lunchables, and uncrustables, and whatnot.

 

22:54

The most value that I got from this was the fact that I had someone that I could talk to about anything, and that there was going to be no judgment, it was just Well, here are your goals, here's the best way that you're going to achieve it. And then let's work together to help you feel inspired and motivated to do that. And a lot of people out there trying to be coaches, and not all of them have done the work. And also just be a genuine person that is positive. And coming from the heart in terms of wanting to help and Philip really embody all of those qualities, I would recommend him to just about anyone that's looking to achieve goals in that realm of their nutrition and building new habits.

 

Lisa Salisbury  23:39

Take what you need for your body. And by finishing, you've told us that you took the amount that was right for your body, right over eating wasn't glorified as much back then. So first of all, just the clean plate club is not a cool club, you don't get your photo in the yearbook. Like I renounce your membership now, like throw away your membership card, we don't need to be in that we're not in that situation. Now. We can obviously do what we can for people that don't have enough food and you know, use our money wisely, their donate to charity, all of those things, but you not cleaning your plate actually doesn't affect them. Like it maybe did some more time. Right? Yeah. So we want to practice like leaving a little food behind to let our brains know nothing bad happened. Nothing bad happened when I left two bites of food behind that lunch. And so being able to throw away just a little bit, just a little bit of food. Number one, you're going to decide you're going to help to determine if you actually need to eat as much as you do, which two bytes is probably not going to make or break you. But it'll get you used to the idea that food can be left behind and then when you're at a restaurant and you're like no really they brought me to him. Watch your like, it's okay to leave it behind because your brain is like, if nothing bad happens.

 

Philip Pape  25:05

It's funny, at least you say that because my wife would say, I'm gonna take those two bites, and we're going to take them home as leftovers, like, even if it's just two bites, you know, which is not letting food go to waste, but you're also not eating it in the moment.

 

Lisa Salisbury  25:18

Yeah, the thing about, you know, wasting money, and especially when we're talking about restaurants, we attribute the amount of money that we're paying for the food as if that's the same as the value or it being worth it. But when you go to a restaurant, you're not actually paying for volume of food. Unless, you know, it's like the supersize menu or whatever like, but that's not really what we're talking about. You're really paying for the taste, the experience, not having to do the dishes, the time that you're spending with your spouse, or loved one, or friends or whoever you're out with, and getting enough food that your body is no longer hungry. But you're not really paying for the volume. That's not really where the value of going out is, if we were like, I have to get all the value out of my food we would only ever cook from scratch and

 

Philip Pape  26:10

cook our own food. Yeah, totally, totally true. I hear what you're saying. And going back to your earlier comment about listening to your body and becoming mindful. I wouldn't be surprised if you find that many of the much of the food you get at restaurants does not make you feel the best compared to cooking your own food. And you start to be like, Hmm, well, I'm not even getting my money's worth for the food itself. And I do this for the other reasons. Yeah, it's really good that people are aware of that. And to

 

Lisa Salisbury  26:35

like, especially when you're like out on, you know, for fun at a nicer restaurant, more of that food is actually past your fullness past your comfortable fullness, more food is actually going to start decreasing your enjoyment of the experience. Fair enough. Because more of the food. Yeah. And you're just going to end up thinking, Now I feel gross. Now. I feel bloated. I don't like that restaurant because I feel I feel yucky when I go there because only because you ate too much. I found myself at Olive Garden recently, which was actually we've lived in the town that we live in now for almost 11 years. My husband, I have never been to the Olive Garden. But we were going out with friends. The place we were gonna go to was was booked and they're like, hey, the friends were like, let's just go to Olive Garden. And my husband and I are like, Okay, I mean, I guess like,

 

Philip Pape  27:28

like who goes to abortions? Yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  27:30

We told him to go to Olive Garden. Like, like 55 and above. Anyways, we go to Olive Garden. And I was like, you know, I can enjoy Olive Garden. Like, it's a salad and I make pasta at home. I just as soon as my portion came, I just cut it in half. I just made a delineation. And I was like, I mean, I say that's going to be about enough. I ate what I what I had, you know, kind of designated as we were talking and enjoying the company. And I really thought I was like, I could totally keep eating here. Sure. I could totally but I was like, I'm just gonna see what happens if I don't. I'm just gonna see if and turns out. I didn't feel gross after eating at the Olive Garden. I was like, oh, yeah, you can just you can eat food and not feel gross if you don't over eat it. And my enjoyment of that experience was way more than I've had I had eaten the whole portion. And then I would have been like all of our and basically feel gross.

 

Philip Pape  28:25

Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's so many these are great strategies for people. And you mentioned the other one about the the more you pay for the food the general you're not paying for the food. We're I'm thinking of here is my wife and I went on a date night to a very nice restaurant and all the portions were pretty small, beautifully prepared, beautifully plated, and there was a lot of variety. And actually reminded me of years ago when I went to Japan and everything was like dim sum it was which is not a Japanese term, but it was like you know, 18 different things on the table but tiny bits of it and felt like it was just a wonderful culinary experience. So just people listening there's a lot of ways to kind of skin the skin the cat here and still meet your goals is what Lisa is trying to say. Yeah, yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  29:08

Here's here's kind of a side note to being you know, date night. Another thing especially I have this one particular client that this was always her thing she's like, we go out for dinner and we're like out on date night and then like I eat too much. And I don't want to you know, keep doing date night at home. You want to think about how you want to feel in an hour in two hours and three hours not always your your long term goals. Although very important, don't always create the behavior you want in the moment. So you want to have some like shorter term like how do I want to feel in two hours? Do I want to feel like getting naked? I should probably stop it just enough then instead of over eating this meal. Because I'm not going to feel like that. What I'm saying

 

Philip Pape  29:54

that's a good one. That is a really good way like how am I going to with this date night has a certain you know, story behind it and That's gonna conclude a certain way. Do I want to feel like, you know, I'm pushing the limit there of my, my belt? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  30:08

Great, have a short term goal, you know?

 

Philip Pape  30:11

For sure. No, yeah, short term goal. Yeah, you're right, because we can't think long term humans are pretty bad at grounding ourselves in the moment when the goal is so far out. And that's why we do baby steps and habit forming. You know, I want to keep looking at some of your philosophy here, because one of your, one of your tenants is about diets at end dates like that diets within dates are one of the worst things you could do, mentally. And actually, this segues a little bit nicely, since we were talking about deep further down in the future with a goal. And we're talking about sustainable eating and said, So tell us about your thoughts on that. How do we transition from the dieting mentality?

 

Lisa Salisbury  30:49

Yeah, when when you have these diets that have end dates, like six weeks slimmed down, you know, the famous one that has a 30 day end date, it really just tells your brain on day 31, we can have a cupcake, you're not building what I like to consider as a lifestyle. Nobody should be dieting for their whole life. Nobody. Dieting is not a hobby. Like, we don't want to just pick it up every other month. Right? Like, take up knitting, if you need a hobby. But when we have these diets that have end dates, it just tells our brain that what we're doing right now is very limited, and it creates a ton of scarcity. So I mean, so much language has scarcity, we are like I better I better not eat this food, because, you know, we might not, we might never get it again. So I better eat all of it at one time. It then it when you're on those kinds of diets with end dates, you have things like cheat days. So we end up referring to food as good or bad. We add these morality, like everything really, that puts us in that diet mentality is can be really damaging to creating a lifestyle that you really want to live, if you're looking at your future self five years, 10 years, you know, however many years down the road, and you can't picture yourself eating this way. That's a diet. I can picture myself prioritizing protein, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, choosing whole grains, I can picture myself doing that for the rest of my life. I don't want you to diet for the rest of your life. I want you to care about your health for the rest of your life. It's it's a huge difference between caring about your health and caring about what goes in your body. And eating as little as possible. Yeah, I know especially sorry, one more thing I know is for your clients and mine. Sometimes we are in a fat fat loss phase. I get that ask about that. This is okay. Yeah. Okay. So I get that sometimes we need to be in a fat loss phase. But I'm eating protein. I'm prioritizing protein and eating lots of produce in a fat loss phase as well.

 

Philip Pape  33:02

Yes. Yes, exactly. You're eating the same, you're just scaling it and you may maybe some slightly different decisions for hunger and things like that. Yes.

 

Lisa Salisbury  33:11

Right. So it's an end to we want to decide if, if our future self if that lifestyle we want to lead eats a cookie now. And again, we need to learn how to eat a cookie now and again, in the fat loss phase. Because part of the problem is we overeat the cookies because we've put them on restriction. And so if you're like, I want to be able to eat one cookie, I want to walk through the room where there's a plate of brownies, and either just casually say no, or say Oh, I do have a brownie plan for today. I'm gonna have one. We want to be able to do that. And so incorporating those things into our even into our fat loss phase can be very healthy because then your brain is like, Oh, we get to eat this. Like whenever we plan it like that seems weird for us, but also very cool.

 

Philip Pape  34:06

Oh, so many stories about that a fellow coach of mine, she did a in her last fat loss phase. She promised to eat a doughnut every day just to show our clients you could do it and she likes donuts. So of course she of course she made it work. And she talked about some of the consequences of when you do that is there's there's choices you have to make. So obviously you're gonna have four donuts a day, it's gonna affect everything else you're eating and make you feel a certain way. But yeah, I was gonna ask you about that exact thing about playing devil's advocate and Alan Aragon you know, the founder of flexible dieting, so to speak, is a phrase in one of his books called straining the conscience. It's what happens when we make food, a moral decision. And it's when we have good and bad and we have this rigidity and restriction you talked about versus any food is really possible as part of our diet. It's just we have to align it to our goal. So what do you have any more thoughts about that morality thing which effectively goes away like You said when you can just allow yourself to eat anything at any time. Just just with these, this mindfulness associated Yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  35:06

I think the biggest problem with assigning morality to food is that then we then it inadvertently becomes the label on ourselves. How many times have you heard someone say, Well, I was really good today. I had a solid.

 

Philip Pape  35:18

I know, I was good. I was bad. Yeah, I was bad. I was on me at this point. Yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  35:24

Right. Like, I know, you hear it, and you're just like, oh, it's like nails on a chalkboard down for me. But oh, boy, did I use that language all the time. And so that's really the biggest problem with assigning these values to food. And then, and then we use words like cheat day, you know, someone, you're, you know, you're eating something and someone's like, Oh, is it cheat day? Like, no, no, Karen, it's just.

 

Philip Pape  35:53

Yeah. Or like, clean, right? Clean. Even that has some judgment to it. Yeah, whole natural, maybe not as much. But you get labels like healthy is a label, like all these labels have some judgment to them? For sure.

 

Lisa Salisbury  36:06

And the thing is, you can just decide like, you know what, I feel better, my body feels better. When I generally am choosing single ingredient foods would some diet guru call what I eat what you know, call this meal clean, maybe. But I don't need to label it that way. This is just food that works well in my body. These these foods work well. For me, I made a cake over the weekend that my son was here, he brought his girlfriend home. And so you know, I made a dessert for the dinner. And I had like a, like a little sliver of it yesterday. Like I'm like, I'm just gonna have a few more bites of this cake. And right afterwards, I was like, I do not feel very good. And I'm like, Yeah, that's so fascinating that my my brain is still like, oh, have a treat, have a snack. But really, I just feel better on single ingredient foods, I just feel better on foods that have less sugar. That's not diety for me. That's just like, hey, I just want to be able to work and not feel gross. I want to be able to sleep and, and not be woken up by these digestive symptoms, like, it's just all about thinking about how you want to have your body feel. If that looks like what somebody calls a clean diet, that's fine. But you don't have to call it that, for sure. And if any of you eat things that aren't clean, quote, unquote, that's also fine. I will function mostly on a like an 8020. Sometimes no fat loss phase, maybe 9010 rule as far as like 80% of the time you're eating those single ingredient, whole foods, things that are going to really feel your body 2010 20% of the time, you're going to choose some pleasure foods.

 

Philip Pape  37:45

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I mean, and sometimes people have specific needs, like for fiber, or saturated fat, or they're watching bloodwork and things like that. And again, you kind of look, you break it down to your goals and what you're trying to accomplish, not so much this or that food, and you still have this diverse set of foods to choose from. Oh, you know, what I wanted to ask you about this is, we talked about fat loss all the time. I don't know if you're working with anybody who's building muscle who's having to eat in a surplus, is that in your client base of primarily weightlifting?

 

Lisa Salisbury  38:14

Yeah, generally not generally, I'm working with women who, typically women that come to me are emotional eaters. They're just like, I just eat when I'm not hungry. Like I know this. I overeat at meals. So they're, they're generally not in A. But yeah, I am aware,

 

Philip Pape  38:32

I asked because there's issues on that side as well. When it comes to now you have to eat way more calories. Again, there, there are challenges with, you want to incorporate more processed foods to do it sometimes because you get too full. And it kind of presents the mirror side of the equation. But we'll focus on on your area of expertise here with the fat loss side of things. You mentioned something called Power foods. I don't know if it was today or in my notes, but you mentioned that things that work for your body and lifestyle. Is that what we've been talking about, or is that a separate? Yeah,

 

Lisa Salisbury  39:03

yeah, like those those foods that are like these helped me feel powerful. These helped me concentrate these foods helped me, you know, function at my best. I mean, yes, it's a label as far as like, good or bad. I just don't ever say I feel really powerful today because I had a salad. So when you just change your language around it, like power foods, 80% of the time pleasure foods 20% of the time, that that just it changes it enough that you're not going to translate those labels to yourself. Right. And so, it's just a way to give language to some of the foods that you're choosing. Another thing I do sometimes with clients is like a good better best. So like those processed foods or you know, protein bars that maybe have some questionable ingredients. Those are good foods, they have some good protein but maybe not like helping us feel our most amazing self better. And then best foods and So you can kind of look at it in that way, too. As far as like, I know, it just said don't use good and bad. But what I mean by that,

 

Philip Pape  40:07

I mean, as your minimum is good, yeah. So it's on the positive side of the spectrum. Right? Reframing, I mean, that's what you're doing is reframing, which is great. It's like the the taking, you know, a kind of mindset. Oh, I had a bad workout. I'm like, Okay, let's reframe that. Was it a bad workout? What did you learn from the work? And maybe it was not as productive as you want it? So what are we gonna do next? I mean, it can play in life.

 

Lisa Salisbury  40:28

And like, Were you tired? What can you learn? Like, did you come to that workout? Already? Fatigue? Did you sleep? Well? Did you have enough?

 

Philip Pape  40:33

Opportunity? Yeah, totally an opportunity. Alright, so is there? Is there a memorable story of a client maybe who went through this transformation of their relationship with I'm sure you have a lot of them. So I'm wondering, like one? And then and then how it kind of cascaded into other areas of their life? Yeah.

 

Lisa Salisbury  40:52

I don't know that this is like a full story. But I think one of my favorite things one of my clients has ever said to me, is she was like, you know, I'm becoming an emotionally stronger person, which is almost more important to me than then becoming a thinner person. And she was already well, on her way, I think she was, you know, 20 pounds down at that point. And she was like, I mean, that's cool. That's great. But she was shocked at how learning to trust her body trust herself, make decisions from her higher brain was helping her in so many other ways. One of the things I teach is how to process cravings. And it's really the way that we feel our feelings, which I know is kind of a mindset, buzzword kind of thing. But it's not. It's not for the faint of heart, just deciding to feel stress instead of eating through it. So learning to do that, and learning to eat the doughnut when she wanted to. She actually doughnuts were one of her things. And she went to a wedding. She was like the maid of honor. And the bride wanted donuts for breakfast. And so she's like, I knew I was gonna have a doughnut. And I was like, it wasn't even that good. I was so shocked. Because she just had mindlessly eating doughnuts for so long. But yeah, just for her to say like, I'm just becoming emotionally stronger. And really, that's what you get out of learning to trust yourself. Again, learning to trust your body, and just going all in on your goals and commitment to yourself.

 

Philip Pape  42:25

And it sounds like it's, it sounds like it's not really about food is at least it sounds like it's about sitting with these things. I mean, even just made me reflect a little bit on how we are distracted, not just when we eat, we're distracted all day, or busy all day just hustling and working. And especially when we have businesses and how often you just take the time to yourself for any of this reflection of how you feel in the moment. It's a good it's a good lesson. Yeah, so Okay, so I like to ask this second last question of all my guests. And that is, is there a question you wish I had asked? And if so, what's your answer?

 

Lisa Salisbury  43:01

I saw this there, and I forgot you're gonna ask it.

 

Philip Pape  43:05

I even give you a little bit of a heads up with the notes, don't I? Not everybody sees it though. This usually leads to a pregnant pause for most guests. So that's why I love it.

 

Lisa Salisbury  43:15

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Love it, too. So I guess I would say I wish we had. Usually I talked about good bad foods when people say what's like your, your biggest thing. Okay, hold on, you're gonna have to edit this out.

 

Philip Pape  43:32

Maybe, maybe not. Let's see, this is this is raw. This is real. This is podcasting. You know. I mean, maybe there's something in what you do that we just didn't cover. And it's okay to say, hey, this was the perfect interview, the best interview I've ever been to and you asked every question I could possibly be asked. It's okay to say that to solely trying to. Okay.

 

Lisa Salisbury  43:59

I think it would I think I would have wished you asked me about exercise and how I incorporate that with my clients. Oh, sure. Training, go for it. Yeah. Because I'm not a personal trainer myself. And so people are always like, well, like, what should I do? What should I do for exercise? And I always tell them, what do you like to do? Let's do that. Like the exercise that you're going to stick with is the one we need to do. And what I've been learning about even more so lately is the importance of your NEET your non exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which is just your movement throughout the day. And so so many people link this diet and exercise together. I got to lose weight. So it's diet and exercise, diet and exercise, diet and exercise. And I really love to disengage those two things. So I actually I kind of looked at becoming a personal trainer like as an add on to what I do, and I'm like, You know what, I'm going to consciously not do that. I'm going to let those folks do what they're good at and if my clients need a personal trainer, like refer them out. But I'm going to consciously stay in the eating space. Because when we link exercise and diet together, we end up deciding that we have to be either punished for what we ate. And how many times have you heard a trainer be like, let's work off that meal, right? Or we're going to torch those calories. Like that's not actually where a lot of your energy expenditure comes from your your exercise for the day accounts for some something around the realm of 5% of your energy expenditure for the day. So we want to exercise for all the other benefits, the mental benefits, the mental health benefits, the the cardiovascular improvement, the balance, all of those things that have nothing to do with the scale. And so I actually love to separate it out. And then just encourage my clients to do what they are going to continue doing. If they don't have any ideas, I always suggest weight training, resistance training. Absolutely. I know that you're a big fan of Yeah, so I do want to make sure that if at all possible they're doing that or if they're open to it, but we just start we just start with if you're like, I just am not sure if I'm ready for resistance training, like start with what you will keep doing. And and if you're still at a loss, start with walking. So that was kind of a roundabout, but just separate it out, you know,

 

Philip Pape  46:27

just Yeah, no, I couldn't I couldn't agree more. And if we think about the common theme here, it's it's do what you like that fits within your lifestyle. And I think the mindless eating that you that we originally talked about isn't the thing you'd like to do. It's just the thing you're conditioned or you've developed. And the thing you like to do is the thing you choose and plan for which is the same when it comes to exercise. So it sounds like there's a common theme of taking control of your life and making those decisions with the higher brain. Yeah, and the neat. I mean, my listeners have turning talk about that too much. Although it's been a while. But yeah, you're right. Like, if I have a client a fat loss phase, and it's getting a little bit dicey with their their body's response to somewhat modest intake. It's like, maybe we just need to walk more, you know, let's get a little more movement going throughout the day. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So that was that was the perfect last question to tie in. Lisa, I appreciate that. Where can the listeners find out about you and your work?

 

Lisa Salisbury  47:22

Yeah, so my website is well with lisa.com. And you can find me on Instagram at well underscore with underscore, Lisa. I do also have a podcast and you're going to be a guest pretty soon here as well. So that's eat well think while live well, you can search for that on any podcast app. And I'm not sure if we're going to put this in the show notes. But I also have a free ebook called go to meals, which just helps you construct some of those meals that work really well for you and eliminate some of those decisions day to day where we are wanting to plan our meals. But we don't want to come up with something new every single day. We have some go to meals that are always on plan.

 

Philip Pape  48:01

Perfect. Yeah, I'll put the go to meals guide in the show notes along with your IG, your website. And of course everybody here is a podcast listener who's listening to this. So that is a very easy thing for them to go and find you and follow right now because they are listening. So go find eat well think well live. Well Lisa, it's been a real honor and pleasure. I enjoyed this conversation and thank you for coming on the show.

 

Lisa Salisbury  48:21

Thank you for having me.

 

Philip Pape  48:25

If you've been inspired by today's interview, and are ready to take action and build momentum on your health and fitness journey, just schedule a free 30 minute nutrition momentum call with me using the link in my show notes. I promised not to sell or pitch you on anything but I will help you gain some perspective and guidance so we can get you on the right track toward looking and feeling your best