Summary:

In the podcast “Wellness Your Way”, Molly Zemek, a former professional chef and sommelier, discusses her journey from mindless eating and drinking to mindful consumption. She explains that her love for food and wine led to unhealthy habits that affected her wellbeing. After realizing this, she transformed her life and career, starting her own business and writing a book to help others heal their relationship with food and themselves. Zemek emphasizes the importance of commitment, consciousness, and consistency in changing one’s relationship with food. She also discusses the concept of emotional appetite and the importance of understanding it. She suggests that people can enjoy the food they love in a balanced and intentional way, without denying themselves or overeating.

Full Episode:

Find the full episode here and be sure to subscribe to Wellness Your Way so you don’t miss future episodes!

Transcription:

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much Molly Zeek for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am so excited to have you here today.

Molly Zemek:

Hi Megan. I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Megan Lyons:

Of course. It’s going to be a great conversation. I would love if you just start by telling the audience a little bit about yourself.

Molly Zemek:

Absolutely. So I like to first identify myself as a lifelong food lover. I grew up in a family of foodies. My father’s side of the family is Italian. I was born into this culture where food is very much a love language and I really developed that passion for eating throughout my life to the point where I dropped out of graduate school and I enrolled in culinary school and I worked as a professional chef for 10 years and then as a way to pursue my love of wine, became certified as a sommelier and food was just almost like a love affair is the way that I like to describe it. Until I reached the point in my forties when I was taking care of three young boys who are now almost teenagers and recognized that my habit of mindless eating and drinking was really affecting my overall wellbeing, and it really forced me to kind of take a look at my relationship with food and alcohol and figure out a way to really change it so that I could feel better and show it better for my family. And that’s what led me into totally transforming my life, not just physically, but also in terms of my career. I left my job as a professional chef and I started my own business and then eventually wrote this book that’s coming out soon where I’ve taught people kind of the same approach that I used to really heal my relationship with food, but also heal my relationship with myself.

Megan Lyons:

That’s so incredible. Unfortunately, I think many of us wind up going through a somewhat painful or twisting journey to arrive where we are in the place to be able to help others, but I’m so glad you were able to turn your own story into something that is helping so many people. Incredible,

Molly Zemek:

Thank you. Well, I think it’s what helps me establish trust with the people that I work with because I’ve been through the exact same process and I understand the obstacles and the suffering, but I also know the way out. And so it is just such a privilege to be able to empower other people to figure this out themselves.

Megan Lyons:

Absolutely, and I’m sure you relate to this same thing as you have your own podcast, which we will link in the show notes as well, but when I get pitches with the title of weight loss, I’m often like, Nope, nope, nope, nope. I feel like it’s going to be some kind of deprivation, some kind of fad diet, some kind of something that I can’t get behind. And at the same time, so many of the clients, I would say 80 plus percent of the clients that I work with have weight loss as part of their goals. So it’s not the weight loss that I don’t like, it’s the approach that I don’t align with because I feel it’s not sustainable. And what stood out to you or stood out to me about you is that your approach is focused on not deprivation. You are a food lover at its core, so you’re not trying to white knuckle your way into just eating a leaf of kale every day. I’d love to just hear your thoughts on how you got there and what you think about deprivation and long-term sustainability.

Molly Zemek:

Well, I completely hear you on that. First of all, Megan, because I was in that exact same position when I described to you coming to this realization that my eating and drinking habits were holding me back. I felt so frustrated because for years I had tried dieting, I had tried detoxes, I had tried all of these quick fix approaches that temporarily put a bandaid on things. I mean, I could lose weight, I could get a reprieve from drinking except they ended the same way. And that was with me actually having even more desire to eat and more desire to drink. Sometimes I would start drinking even more. And it was just so frustrating. I felt so defeated. So I knew that wasn’t the solution, and it was actually being introduced to life coaching and listening to some different podcasts and hearing people describe changing your mindset and really uncovering reasons behind habits that you don’t like.

And for so long I really believed that my problem was just that I loved food so much and that I just loved wine so much and that I grew up in a family where both of those things were just part of the culture and that somebody like me would just never be able to figure this out. I could never really look the way I wanted to look, feel the way I wanted to look while still really loving food and alcohol. And so I thought that those things were the problem until it occurred to me that maybe that wasn’t the problem. Maybe I needed to consider why I just was using drinking and eating as a way to unwind at the end of the day why I considered that me time, and it was just a completely different approach to it. I wasn’t interested in another diet.

I knew that wasn’t going to work, so I thought maybe there’s something to this. I never thought of why I do these things. So I really started listening to my body too. I started really paying attention to the physical reaction I would have to eating and to drinking, and what my body was already telling me that I was often ignoring when I was eating and drinking. I started really just questioning, am I actually hungry right now? And if I wasn’t, the next question was, okay, what is it that I really need? Then if food is not the answer here because hunger is not the problem, then what is the problem? As you can imagine, it was a process. It took me about a year to lose the weight, but also to radically change my drinking, and it was just this excavating of all of the layers, the emotional layers of how I was feeling, my deeper meat needs, my deeper desires and figuring out new ways to answer those needs and practicing that and making sense of times when I would continue to overeat or over drink and learning from those situations. So there are a lot of layers to it, but that’s how I really just healed my relationship with food and alcohol and really just discovered how to just feel incredible in my body.

Megan Lyons:

So amazing. So you didn’t have to give up your love for food or wine. You just stopped using it or are in the process. I think none of us are ever perfect, so I don’t like to use hard and fast words, but you continue to work on not using that as a crutch to drown out other emotions or to soothe yourself or to whatever that emotional void you were trying to fill was. You’ve learned to practice other things instead of just turning to food instinctively. Is that correct?

Molly Zemek:

Yeah, so it was a process of going from complete mindlessness around eating and drinking in a spontaneous way to mindfulness and being conscious both in my body in terms of what my body was telling me, and also the process of eating itself. So I mean, one of the things that I teach and I talk about in my new book is how to bring full awareness to the habit of eating, especially when you’re having indulgent things that you’re just eating for the pure pleasure of it, which is something that I am a big fan of, but when you actually bring all five senses, eating with your eyes first and just really experiencing the pleasure of how food looks and then the texture and then the nuances and the flavor, and then of course the sound that food makes when you eat it and the smell that you actually can be so much more satisfied with less, and you really can appreciate food in a much richer way. That’s usually not the way we’re approaching food though. So it’s by kind of consciously eating these things and staying conscious in your body, so you notice, okay, when have I reached that ideal point where I still feel good and I’m not uncomfortably full?

So it’s really that awareness and that presence in the moment is the skill that I worked on cultivating for myself and that I really try and teach other food lovers to develop.

Megan Lyons:

That’s amazing. I am thinking about one client that I have right now, and she might listen to this, which is amazing. She’s been working on mindful eating for probably a year, and she knows, she asks herself the questions and she attempts to sit down at the table and mindfully eat, and every time automatically her hand just goes to her phone, even if we’ve put it in a drawer somewhere else or something like that. It’s still a challenge. So when it sounds simple, it actually can be difficult to change these habits. It doesn’t have to be a negative experience. We work on constantly, it’s okay, you grabbed your phone. Okay, what did you learn from that? Whatever. But I just want to emphasize to people, when it sounds simple, it doesn’t have to switch overnight. It can be a process. Okay. Habits are always hard to change

Molly Zemek:

Completely. It’s a totally different process than just eliminating foods or following somebody else’s rules. This is really more than anything else, a process of self-discovery and understanding all the layers of unconscious thinking, like you said, is not something that happens overnight. We sort of begin to illuminate our mind and we begin to pay attention to what’s happening, but we also need to give ourself enough time to go through the holidays or to go through special events or to be in situations where maybe we have the tendency to eat more or drink more, to uncover what’s actually happening. That’s motivating me, and it is not just a one and done process. It’s like, okay, let me give myself multiple experiences and plenty of grace to really understand what’s happening and then begin to kind of unlearn it and then also have an opportunity to build new beliefs and new skills in those same situations.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. I love that. Now, this one’s asking for a friend because it’s actually for me, but I think this is a hard thing that many people struggle with aside from just me, which is, let’s say I’ve been working on mindful eating. I am doing that in my meals. I don’t overeat or eat foods that I don’t feel comfortable with in my body in the moment of a mealtime, but then there’s this time when I have two minutes between calls or I’m staying up late to work on emails, and I know I’m fully aware right then that what I am feeling is an emotion. It’s overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, bored, lonely, guilty, scared, tired, whatever. I have all these things top of mind, and right then in two minutes, chocolate makes it feel better. Now, of course, I know it’s not solving the problem, but it does make it feel better in that moment. I have my own answer that I give myself and my clients, but I’d love to hear what you think in that moment when you’re recognizing what you’re doing and still it’s kind of beneficial in the moment even though it doesn’t do anything.

Molly Zemek:

Yeah. Well, one of the first things that I personally do when this happens to me and when it happens to my clients, because as you said, none of us are perfect. I mean, it’s human nature to desire food and to impulsively want things. We’re never trying to eliminate desire. We’re just trying to be more mindful and be consistent in ways that help us feel better 80% of the time. And so when this happens with me, the first thing that I do is I extend grace to myself, and I do that just by acknowledging, you know what? This is just food, and yes, this is something that you’re choosing to do and it’s not a big deal. I mean, really it’s we’re just talking about food here, and I think when we’re on a journey of wellness and let’s say it’s a weight loss journey or we’re so used to that diet mentality of thinking, we need to be perfect, and if we’re not, we failed and then throwing ourselves under the bus through a lot of negative.

And so a big part of this process is just cultivating. And so I think if nothing else, if you can just accept yourself in the moment and acknowledge like, yeah, I feel really overwhelmed, or, wow, I didn’t have any break today, I’m exhausted. And you know what? This is a simple pleasure. I know that it wasn’t something that I would normally do or really that I might have planned, but it’s fine. I mean, it is what it is, and I think acceptance of where you are emotionally actually stops kind of the emotional eating from going off the rails. It allows you to just kind of acknowledge where you are, stay present if possible, use your breathing as a way to just calm yourself down so that you can be fully present and enjoy what you’re eating and then be done with it. And I think that that’s essentially really a huge level of progress for most people, right?

Because yes, you pick up the chocolate and you eat it and you just acknowledge it, and then you also reconnect to your body and you recognize, you know what? This is great, but I’ve had enough and I’m ready to move on. And so it’s not reacting to the emotion, it’s just accepting your emotion in that moment, validating it, and then if you want to, you can certainly process it later and just kind of check in with yourself and see it as an opportunity to say, I wonder what was going on. That’s not something that I typically do. I’m just wondering how am I feeling? Is there something else that I need? Is there a way I want to address this tomorrow or just kind of rethink my schedule in the future? Because overeating or eating off of your plan or however you want to call it, mindless eating can really just be like a tap on the shoulder. It can just be an indication that something’s off or that you need some other kind of self-care and that you just want to tune in with yourself and see what’s going on.

Megan Lyons:

I love that so much. I want to record that little snippet and play it over and over for clients and myself as well. It’s very similar to what I say, which is if it’s one bite of chocolate or hey, if it’s half a bar of chocolate or whatever it is, it’s going to be okay. Like you said, it’s just food. You said it so simply so. Well, the problem is when I let that one square of chocolate turn into me emotionally beating myself up and saying, oh, you’re such a failure. I can’t believe you emotionally ate, and we all know where that spiral goes, so recognizing the uni importance of it and just saying it’s just chocolate, move on. Let’s address the emotions behind it later. That’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that.

Molly Zemek:

Yeah, absolutely.

Megan Lyons:

So I read that you have three C’s of success in changing your relationship with food, and I think you have brushed over some of them a little bit, but I’d love if you would go over the three C’s of success.

Molly Zemek:

Yes. So I developed these three Cs because in my opinion, this is where most diets fail us and why people like me for many years get stuck in this cycle of mindless eating and drinking and feeling defeated and feeling powerless and feeling like there’s no way out. And the first C is commitment. I think where many of us fall short is figuring out how to commit to ourselves on a regular basis, and it begins with just really understanding why it’s important to you to make this change. I mean, my reason for committing to this change was I really wanted to feel better physically and I wanted to show up better as a mom. When I think about changing my relationship with food and alcohol, those were the two big motivators for my commitment to making a change. But then aside from just having that belief and wanting to commit, it’s like how am I acting out my commitment every day and really being laser focused on those daily actions that are acting out, that commitment that will allow you to achieve your goal.

A lot of people try and figure that out on their own, and you and I both know because of the work that we do, it makes it so much easier when you have accountability and you have somebody guiding you. And so that was something that I felt like was really important to emphasize with people. The second C is consciousness, which I talked about a lot. This is a process of really becoming a lot more conscious. Your body listening to the natural language of your body. Your body is already hardwired to feel good. It knows what kind of food feels good, and that’s unique to everybody. It knows exactly how much food you need at your ideal size. It knows your whole language of emotions, the whole platter of emotions you feel that’s happening inside of your body. So bringing conscious awareness to that and to eating is what ends the habit of mindlessness around food and alcohol.

So learning how to do that, most people never really learn how to do that. And then the third C is consistency, because most of us have followed diets, been successful for a short period of time, and it’s not that we don’t know maybe what food to eat or how to change our diet, it’s just that we can’t consistently do it. So how do you develop consistency? One of the things that you and I just spoke about, Megan, is that a big roadblock to consistency is your relationship with yourself. So if you’re constantly beating yourself up or criticizing yourself or holding yourself to some sort of perfectionist standard, it’s really hard to be consistent. And it’s like you feel like you’re suffering the entire time. And so how can we develop a way of eating and a way of caring for ourselves that we can happily maintain? And I think that that’s where dieting falls short because dieting is usually so restrictive. We feel deprived, we feel hungry all the time, and we don’t enjoy it. So it makes it almost impossible to stay consistent. But the way that you, I think, feel, and look your best is by consistently doing the things not perfectly like we said, but consistently doing things that really honor your body and allow you to have the pleasure that you want in moderation.

Megan Lyons:

I love it. Let’s talk about some tips for consistency. For me, I am consistent almost to a fault. When I find something that feels good, there is nothing standing in my way of consistency. I think part of it is just who I am as a person, that it comes more naturally to me, but some people who are maybe more spontaneous or more creative than I am, consistency can feel like it bars your enjoyment of life, I guess. So how do you frame that in terms of consistency? Doesn’t have to be boring, consistency can be fun and can give you what you want. What tips would you give for those people?

Molly Zemek:

Well, first I would challenge this idea that being spontaneous is more fun. I think we often assume that that’s true. Oh, it’s just more fun to be spontaneous. But many of us who have struggled with spontaneous overeating and spontaneous drinking know that that’s just a lie, right? We’re spontaneous and we’re giving into the mindless habit over and over again. While it feels pleasurable momentarily, it’s offset by a lot of negative side effects. On the other end, we feel worse about ourselves emotionally, physically, we feel worse, we feel defeated. We feel like we’re out of control. And without the structure of being intentional and mindful, I think food and alcohol are less fun, even though in the moment your brain tricks you into thinking like, oh, come on, it’ll be fun. Just do it. Right? And so I really challenge that idea that it’s more fun to just be spontaneous.

So I think a big part of consistency is being intentional, knowing that actually, and this is what I’ve discovered, what’s more fun is having a little bit of the food that I love, a little bit of alcohol if that’s something that I want, but actually really feeling amazing in my body, doing all of these other things that are what it looks like to have fun in natural ways. What’s so fun is being really connected to my kids and to my family and having meaningful experiences when I’m not tipsy or I’m not drunk and just feeling so deeply satisfied. But you have to be thinking with your higher brain to remember that. You have to be thinking of, how do I want to feel at the end of tonight? Or how do I want to feel tomorrow? Because I’ll tell you what, it’s so fun to wake up feeling energized and to feel like you’ve got the day ahead of you, and to not have a hangover, to not have to feel bloated because you ate too much.

It’s so fun to achieve your goals and to fit into cute clothes. And one of the things my clients say, which I love, it comes up over and over again. I agree. It’s like it’s so fun. It seems like a simple thing. It’s so fun to easily get dressed. It’s a big deal, but we can’t have that fun if we’re having the fun with all the spontaneous eating. So with consistency, it’s about putting into place the practices, which requires some effort because it requires mindfulness that allow you to just be thinking intentionally about your choices and being more present in the moment so that you can have the delayed gratification of fun. Consistency is not just about, oh, perfectly following the habits. It’s like, okay, how am I consistently showing up for myself when I don’t follow my plan? Am I showing up with kindness? Am I actually learning from it? That’s huge progress for many of us because then it’s not just a wasted experience. It’s actually a really worthwhile experience to understand ourselves at a deeper level.

Megan Lyons:

I love it. That sounds great. Very much food for thought in there, so thank you. And I want to dive into your new book, which is all about decoding your emotional appetite. What a well chosen phrase. I love it. Can you tell us what this means and why it’s important to understand our emotional appetite?

Molly Zemek:

Yeah, 100%. I really think this is the secret to not only being able to lose weight about so much more than that, but it’s actually about really healing yourself and enjoying food along the way. And it comes back to this topic of consciousness. So I titled the book Decoding Your Emotional Appetite because many of us who are food lovers and who are wine lovers really spend a lot of time focusing on food and alcohol, but not focusing on our bodies. And so we’re not in the practice of really listening to the natural language of our body. What we’re doing is we’re responding to our emotional appetite. Your emotional appetite is anytime you’re motivated to eat or sometimes drink when you’re not physically hungry. And there are a variety of reasons, and I highlight four core reasons in the book, why many of us are motivated to eat in situations when our bodies are not asking for food.

And when you learn how to decode this and figure out, okay, what are my triggers? What are the situations when I tend to just eat more than I need to? You can really get to some of your deeper needs like, okay, maybe what I really need is a sense of connection, right? This is a human need. We want to connect with people. I’m using food as a way to do that, and I’m often eating a lot more when there are people around because I’m thinking eating as a way to connect me with other people, or maybe I’m eating when I’m lonely and I’m feeling disconnected from other people. Then how can I acknowledge that this is a need and figure out other ways to solve it? Because when we solve for those deeper needs like connection, or for some people it’s stress and overwhelm, and we use food to escape when we solve for that in ways that actually solve the problem, our desire to turn to food and our desire to turn to alcohol significantly lessen. And then there’s the byproduct of feeling so much better, feeling emotionally lighter because we’ve taken care of the core need. So that’s essentially what decoding your emotional appetite is all about, is figuring out what are the reasons why I am eating when I’m not hungry? How can I better understand myself through figuring this piece out?

Megan Lyons:

Love it. And you have a great quiz on your website, which is available for free. We’ll link to it. I took the quiz, it’s called the Eats score, emotional Appetite tendency score. And I was not shocked by my answers or my results, which was I scored highest in the escape tendency. In fact, I think of the four, I’m being maybe a little dramatic, but I had one, one in the other three very low scores, and then huge whatever the highest score was for escape tendency. And so you mentioned this one a little bit from you said, from feeling overwhelmed to curious about that. I wonder if you could share some of your tips for people who fall into that same escape tendency.

Molly Zemek:

Yeah, absolutely. People who often use food or alcohol as a way to escape are often, and this is a broad generalization, but often overachievers or busy professionals, or maybe you’re a parent and you have multiple responsibilities and you tend to go through your day almost in a constant state of busyness, and you are going from one thing to a next. You often feel overwhelmed because maybe you’re believing I don’t have enough time or have so much to do or have to get to everything. I’m sure some of your listeners can relate to this. I certainly relate to this one. And then at the end of the day, food is a way to feel better. It’s a way to escape. It’s a way to just decompress. And I think that many of us who fall into this category can almost feel entitled, and we want to protect this relationship with food because it’s like me time.

It’s like, well, no, this is my time for me. I am so overextended. This is the one thing just for me. And so the way that you move from overwhelmed or for some people entitled into curious is really just by being curious about what’s happening in your life that you’re getting to this place of feeling overwhelmed. What is it that I truly need that’s missing? Why do I feel like I need to decompress and I need to reward myself at the end of the day? How can I create more opportunities during the day to give myself exactly what I need? And often, this is a question of priorities. This is a question of putting yourself higher on the list of changing your expectations in terms of what you feel like you have to do versus what you truly want to do. So there are different facets to it depending on your unique situation, but I think when you can get curious about your need to just unwind and really pay attention to, okay, what is it that would really help me feel more energized or more relaxed in this moment, you can separate out the eating from processing your feelings because there’s nothing wrong with having a glass of wine if you want to or having some ice cream if you want to.

It’s just when you tie it to your emotional needs and you use it as a way to numb your experience. You miss this beautiful opportunity to just recognize like I’m constantly feeling overwhelmed, or I’m feeling I’m in this frenzied energy all day long and it’s exhausting. Is there a way that I can make some changes that actually allow me to feel better throughout the day and just affect my overall wellbeing?

Megan Lyons:

That’s fantastic. I would love to go through all of the tendencies, but in an effort to A, save time, and B, get people to buy your book, which I will do as soon as we hang up. Let’s not go through your solutions for all four, but could you say the names of the other two? So there’s connection, escape, and then what are the other two?

Molly Zemek:

Security. So turning to food for a sense of safety and security. And then the last one is for pleasure.

Megan Lyons:

Interesting. Okay. So I bet even just by hearing those titles, many members of the audience can isolate or not isolate, can place themselves into their dominant tendency. I would still encourage you to go take the quiz because even in taking the questions and reading through and considering my situation, I learned about myself. So definitely anyone listening head over and take that quiz, which will be in the show notes. Now, I’d love to go into alcohol. You have mentioned alcohol several times, and I think alcohol is such a trendy topic these days, but it really is coming in with people saying no alcohol or all the alcohol. And I think for many people there is an answer in the middle. You have a lot to say on mindful drinking habits, so I’d love to hear if someone knows they want to cut back on alcohol but they don’t think they want or need to give it up completely, what would you offer to them?

Molly Zemek:

Well, I’m glad you asked that because I think this is a real roadblock for people who have identified that their current drinking habits are really not serving them well, but really feeling powerless to change because they’re thinking that the only option is to completely give up alcohol. Now, giving up alcohol completely might be the right solution for some people, but there are other people like me who almost fail to start and make any kind of change because we have such a hard time visualizing ourselves not drinking. That was my story, and it was actually going through the process of changing my relationship with food, developing more conscious habits and in turn limiting how much I was drinking, that I became a lot more aware of the way that alcohol affected my body, not just my body, but also my psychological health, which was difficult to see when I was also mindlessly eating.

It was hard to really differentiate the two. And so one of the things that I actually help a lot of clients with who work with me just on drinking is this opportunity to just be a lot more thoughtful about how much they’re drinking. And this is such a great, I think, starting point because it feels more doable. It feels like, okay, I don’t have to give up drinking that seems too daunting, but I can just begin by making decisions about how much I’m going to drink. And one of the things that, and that actually often leads to drinking significantly less and sometimes giving it up completely, which is what happened to me, but that was never my goal starting out, it was like, I just want to drink more in alignment with feeling better. And so one of the things that comes out of this is that my clients often realize, they develop a lot of awareness around how much they’re drinking that wasn’t obvious to them to begin with.

They also start to notice more how their body is responding at just in a deeper way. And they also really are able to figure out, okay, how do different types of alcohol affect me differently? But they also get to contrast what the experience is like when they’re not drinking, if they take a couple of days off or if they’re drinking less, how do I feel differently then? And how am I learning how to solve some of the emotional reasons why I drink when I’m not drinking as much? And through that process, I actually don’t feel like I need to drink as much. Right? And of course there’s a lot more to it. It’s teaching people how to handle the social pressure, how to be an advocate for their own needs, how to stop the habit of people pleasing. There’s so much tied into the habit of drinking That again, is really a process of self-discovery and personal empowerment. But I think one of the really incredible things is that people realize like, oh, I actually can be fully in control when I make a commitment ahead of time, and I’m really staying present in the moment. It’s not that I’m powerless around alcohol, it’s just that I’m really not paying attention when I do it, or I’m doing it for emotional reasons. So it’s a similar process as I teach people with food. It’s slightly different, but that’s kind of the gist of how it works.

Megan Lyons:

That’s great. I love the phrases that you used, which is social pressure and people pleasing because I find so many people, they think it’s social pressure, but many of us, unless you’re 21 years old in college or something like that, it’s not actually social pressure. No one’s coming up to you and saying, Megan, you’re so not cool unless you have another drink. It’s really our perceived social pressure, which is, oh, I don’t want to make Sally feel guilty that she’s drinking or everyone else is doing it, and I don’t want to have to answer the question of why I am not, or something like that. That’s really just a closeted way of expressing people pleasing, and that’s hard to get to the root of just as social pressure would be. But sometimes that shift can be powerful for people. So once they realize, maybe it’s just my people pleasing tendency, what’s the next step for them?

Molly Zemek:

Well, the next step is giving themselves, first of all, being brave enough. And I think this is where coaching comes in, but I think being brave enough along with having a strategy in place when they’re thinking through their plan to step into the discomfort of changing how they respond to that situation. And in my experience, people often are pleasantly surprised by how easy it is. It’s just that we make things such a bigger deal in our own minds. We exaggerate how other people feel or our ability to let somebody down. Of course, we can’t control people’s emotions, but oftentimes we think we can stepping into the discomfort of doing that the first time and then developing the confidence to know, oh, nobody really cares, or it’s really not that big of a deal. Or even in some instances people are inspired by the fact that I’m not drinking. That’s oftentimes what happens, which is incredible. And so it’s sort of an approach of strategizing, coaching, having the courage to step into that situation and then building the confidence to know, oh, I can do this. It’s not that big of a deal.

Megan Lyons:

That’s great. I would love to hear from you personally, one of your favorite foods that you eat very mindfully and you enjoy, and maybe take us through what you would do to sit there and fully maximize the pleasure you get from that food.

Molly Zemek:

Yes. I’m just trying to think about which is my favorite food because that’s not something I can easily narrow down. But let me give you an example of something that I had recently, which was a double chocolate cupcake that I got from this great bakery around here. It was like a Devil’s food chocolate cupcake with a chocolate ganache. Very rich, but very high quality. And I really think through when I’m going to choose to have something indulgent that I’m going to have just for the fun of it, just for pleasure, I really think through what’s something that I will really enjoy. I don’t overthink it though, because at the end of the day, it’s just food, and I’m not looking for food to kind of deeply satisfy me. I just want the pleasure of eating it. And so I’ll pick some things that I know that I like, and this is a very pure rich chocolate dessert where I know there’s a lot of concentrated flavor.

It’s got great texture, and so I will think through, okay, what are some of my favorites? I’m going to plan a portion that I know I can have that will allow me to thoroughly enjoy the flavor and will not disrupt the pleasure that I’m feeling in my body. And I will decide exactly when I’m going to have it. When I was going through this process and I was trying to lose weight, I would make sure to plan it when there weren’t other distractions happening around me so that I could really just focus on that first bite. I would ask myself if it tasted good, if it didn’t, I really tried to just put it down and not eat it. I could just save the experience for something else that would be satisfying. The whole point is just the pleasure in it. So I’ll ask myself, is it as delicious as you imagined it to be?

And it’s really interesting because oftentimes it’s not right. The way we imagine things is usually more delicious than the reality. And if it’s not as delicious, I really try and cement that memory in my mind to tell myself the truth. This isn’t as good. Sometimes people, I’ve had some clients who are like, oh, I just can’t say no to M and mss, and I have a very clear memory in my mind of what m and ms tastes like. I used to think they were good, but then when I ate them consciously, I’m like, these are not that great. They’re not as good as the chocolate cupcake. So I solidify a memory in my mind. If a food is not as amazing as what I’m imagining, I want my brain to remember this is not that incredible. You don’t need to make time for this. But if it is incredible, which sometimes it is, I take the bite, I eat it slowly, I really notice how it tastes.

I just delight in it. I delight in how it looks, and then I’ll have another bite. I’ll ask myself, do you want more? Are you satisfied? Would you like another bite? And then I will eat it. Usually after a couple of bites, the flavors diminished. As I was really learning this for myself and I was trying to lose weight, I would also really begin to pay attention to my body. If my brain was saying if there was any restlessness or if my brain was saying, you need a little bit more, you need a little bit more. And I would expect that, right? It tastes good. It’s something that maybe I think is one of my favorites. So I’ll notice is there any restless energy? And if there is, I use my breathing as a way to calm myself down because if I’m restless and I’m anxious, I’m no longer fully paying attention to the flavor, and I don’t want to miss out on the flavor.

I’ll calm myself down. I’ll take a break, and then I’ll eat it and I’ll finish it. And then if my brain’s like, you want more, you want more? I’ll just say that was perfectly satisfying. In fact, it was more satisfying to have less. And that’s one of the things I tell my clients a lot. It’s actually more satisfying to have less because now you have the pleasure of the food and the pleasure of feeling good in your body, and it doesn’t do anything to upset your wellbeing. You feel great, and this was something that was planned. So that’s a little snapshot of what the process is like.

Megan Lyons:

That’s great. And I know people had visualized themselves in that same scenario. The 28th bite of whatever is never as good as the first one, even if it was something that was fantastic. So really learning to savor that and slow down and get yourself in a mindful state where you’re not distracted by other things that can maximize the pleasure. I like the way that you said it, so thank you for that. And thank you for all the tips you’ve shared. I know people are going to want more and by the book and all of that, but I’d love for you to close us out by just offering one more thought, anything that’s on your mind, and then tell the audience where they can learn more about you.

Molly Zemek:

Yes. My final thought, just based on what we were talking about is give yourself permission to have the food you love. Just do it in an intentional way. Do it in a way that’s in balance with your wellness goals, whether that’s to be at a certain size or feel a certain way or fit into your clothes a certain way, or however you want to think about it. Mobility is an issue for some people, so you can have both, but you have to just do it very thoughtfully, and it doesn’t take a lot of delicious food to be satisfying. It just requires consciousness. But I think one of the worst things you can do is to deny yourself the food and then eventually end up eating it behind your own back and overdoing it and feeling even worse. So trust that just by giving yourself permission, you can enjoy it even more. And then people can find me on my website, molly zeek.com, and they can learn more about the book there or on Instagram at Molly Zeek or my podcast, which is called Weight Loss for Food Lovers.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. We’ll include all of those links in the show notes. And one more time. Molly, thank you so much for coming on Wellness Your Way and sharing all these great insights.

Molly Zemek:

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to be here.

____

Want to hear about this topic in audio format? → Check out the podcast episode here!