How do Italians eat pasta every day and not gain weight? Why do they have the lowest obesity rate in Western Europe? Why they don’t gain weight as easily as Americans do?  In October, I was really fortunate to spend two weeks in northern Italy. I visited  Venice, Verona, Florence, and Tuscany, specifically the medieval walled hill towns of San Gimignano, Siena and Volterra. They were each wonderful in their own way. I had a fantastic time, and really loved it there.  While I was there, I talked to a few American expats. One American woman in Florence told me, “I’ve been living here for a year and have lost 10 pounds without doing anything. I eat pasta every day. Plus I can eat dairy and gluten here with no digestive problems. Back in the States, I couldn’t tolerate those foods.” I can’t tell you how many people have told me stories like this.  Americans who visited Italy told me that they drank wine with one or two meals a day, ate pasta, desserts, not to mention those breakfast croissants, and did not get the indigestion they normally got back home, and did not gain weight. The Italians are known for their fantastic cuisine. Italy was the EAT in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love.  And for good reason.  Have you ever wondered why Italian cuisine is so delicious? And how do they eat that carb-heavy diet filled with pasta, bread, croissants (see typical Italian breakfast to the right) and other delicious things, and not have the obesity problem that much of the rest of the world is experiencing?  Italy has approximately half the obesity rate as the United States.  Tune in below (or wherever you get your podcasts) and learn how you too can eat like an Italian. If you’re ready to learn to eat in a sustainable way that is in tune with your body’s hunger and fullness signals, to end emotional and drop down to your healthy weight, sign up for my online Weight Loss for Foodies program. In it, you’ll go beyond what I talk about in the podcast, and can download worksheets to practice what you’re learning and guided audio practices. The cost is less than half of the price of the coaching program.  Learn more and sign up HERE.  

How many times have you heard this saying? “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So many people get stuck and have difficulty reaching their weight goals (and any other goal for that matter) because they get caught in a repetitive pattern of doing the same thing that doesn’t work, or that makes things worse,, over and over again. Maybe you keep stopping at that bakery on your way to work, buying three pastries under the pretense that you’ll share them or save some for tomorrow, then eat them all.  Maybe you binge on chips after dinner while watching TV every night.  The Weight Loss for Foodies method is all about achieving permanent weight loss success by changing your habits and developing a peaceful relationship with food and eating.  Some people can dive right in and do all of the things that I recommend. But that doesn’t work for everyone.  For many people, what works the best is to take baby steps  to break patterns of overeating or emotional eating that you keep repeating to your own detriment.  Stay tuned to learn how you can get out of your rut and start making progress by taking baby steps to change your eating habits. And stay tuned for a very important announcement  at the end–and it isn’t a sales pitch! 

Do you eat foods you don’t like very much because they’re low in calories or carbs, then feel unsatisfied afterwards and still crave something tastier?  There’s a scientific reason behind that! I have something exciting and NEW to share with you about mindset and eating.  Surprising evidence supports the role of mindset in weight management in a totally unexpected way.  How you think about what you’re eating affects your weight! What that means is what you think about your food affects how your body responds to it physiologically. I mean how full or satisfied what you eat  makes you feel.  It’s totally consistent with the Weight Loss for Foodies approach to eat what you love when you’re hungry as a way to lose weight and experience a peaceful relationship with food and eating.  It’s backed by the research of Alia Crum, a psychologist and researcher in the field of mindset at Stanford University.  Dr. Crum  discovered that what people believed about what they were eating affected both their satisfaction with the food AND the levels of the hunger hormone their body made, which affected their appetite.  Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts to learn why this is so important and how you can make it work for you so you get to your comfortable weight. If you’re ready to learn to eat in a sustainable way that is in tune with your body’s hunger and fullness signals, to end emotional and drop down to your healthy weight, sign up for my online Weight Loss for Foodies program. In it, you’ll go beyond what I talk about in the podcast, and can download worksheets to practice what you’re learning and guided audio practices. The cost is less than half of the price of the coaching program.  Learn more and sign up at my website, ShariBroder.com.

Do you have family members who make comments about your weight, other people’s weight, their own weight, or what you should and shouldn’t eat? Do you have friends or family who are always talking about their latest diet? It’s summer vacation, which for many of us means eating meals with family members we don’t see all the time. For some of us, that’s a blessing. For others, it can be very difficult and stressful.  For many people, dealing with their extended family is wrought with all kinds of mixed emotions and potentially difficult interactions.  As a weight coach, one thing I hear repeatedly from my clients is that they have family members who make comments about how they look, their weight, or their food choices. Some people come from families where the significance of appearance, and weight in particular, carries undue importance.  Then there’s that person at the table, be it friend or family member, who has to tell everyone about their latest miracle diet.  Tune in and learn why their comments are NOT OK, not well-meaning, and how to deal with them gracefully.  I’ll give you some tips about how to deal with these situations.  You can download a free copy of my PDF entitled “Managing Comments About Weight And Eating” HERE.  If you’re ready to dive in and make peace with food and eating, sign up for my online Weight Loss for Foodies course. It will give you all the tools you need to make peace with food and eating, and lose the weight for good. Learn more and sign up HERE. Love Weight Loss for Foodies? Support it HERE.

When was the last time you felt physically hungry?  Do you eat in response to your body’s hunger signals? Or do you eat for all kinds of other reasons that have nothing to do with your body’s need for food? One of the most important tenets of the Weight Loss for Foodies approach is to only eat when you’re physically hungry, and stop eating when you’re lightly full.  The reason this is so important is that when you only feed your body when it’s hungry, and stop eating when you’re lightly full, you give your body the amount of food it needs to be your healthy weight.  Most people don’t pay attention to hunger and fullness, and eat for all kinds of other reasons, like you’re bored, tired, it’s noon, or whatever.  When you eat but aren’t hungry, your body stores that energy as fat. That’s why obesity is in epidemic proportions nowadays.  BUT once you start eating in tune with your hunger signals, miracles happen! You start dropping extra weight without giving up the foods you love! You feel lighter and have more energy. Food and eating become easier and less stressful.  The tool I use to decide when to start and stop eating is the Hunger Scale, and that’s what I’m talking about in this episode.  TUNE IN to this week’s episode below and learn how totally KEY eating only when you’re hungry is if you want to eat what you love, lose weight and keep it off. Download your free copy of the hunger scale HERE, and keep it near where you eat.  Weight Loss for Foodies is now available as an online, self-paced course without coaching. In it, you’ll go beyond what I talk about in the podcast, and can download worksheets to practice what you’re learning and guided audio practices. The cost is less than half of the price of the coaching program. Learn more and sign up HERE.

If you want to lose weight, how you THINK about food is even more important than what you eat. You see, your mindset about food and eating, especially if it’s a diet mindset, could be the single biggest thing standing between you and weight loss success.  The good news is all you have to do to change that is change how you think! And that’s one of the few things in life we can actually control.  The reason why diets don’t work for sustainable weight loss is because they teach you to think of food as scarce.  When you think of food as scarce, you set yourself up for a binge, or at least, to overeat. But when you have a mindset of abundance about food, you can be much more relaxed around it.  You know you can eat what you really want when you’re hungry, so there’s no need to eat food just because it’s there.  You can trust yourself around any food.   Listen to learn the many advantages of having an abundance mindset, how it frees you to lose weight relatively easily,  and how to change your mindset around food from one of scarcity and dieting to one of abundance so you can trust yourself around any food.  To get all the tools you need to make peace with food and eating and lose the weight for good, sign up for my online course, Weight Loss for Foodies HERE

Do you have a lot of rules about what you can and can’t eat?  Some people have lists of food rules that are almost as long as the United States tax code.  No sugar.  No carbs.  No refined flour.  Only eat fruit before noon.  No fried foods.  No dairy.  No gluten.  Eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day.  Drink apple cider vinegar before every meal. Only eat during an eight-hour window.  You get the idea.  Well guess what? These rules are probably keeping you from losing weight.  You can overeat healthy food. I know. I did it for decades.  And they’re stressful, right?  I don’t like rules. Especially ones that are counterproductive. So I want you to forget all of these rules that tell you what to eat and what not to eat and when to eat.  Toss ‘em all! Tune in to this week’s episode to learn the only four guidelines you need to be a healthy weight while enjoying the foods you love.  Weight Loss for Foodies is now available as an online, self-paced course without coaching. In it, you’ll go beyond what I talk about in the podcast, and can download worksheets to practice what you’re learning and guided audio practices. The cost is less than half of the price of the coaching program. Learn more and sign up HERE. Thanks to our sponsor, Betterhelp. Sign up today with this link and save 10% off your first month.  Support this podcast HERE

Eat what you love and increase your metabolism? That’s entirely possible,  and there’s even science to back it up. Eating mindfully and savoring food away from the distractions of your smartphone, the television or other distractions, can actually help you lose weight. I was surprised to learn this, too, but a study done a few years ago at North Carolina State University backs it up! I am not saying that simply eating what you love will help you lose weight. It’s more complicated than that. But there are lots of ways you will benefit from eating what you love and enjoying it without distractions. Food is a source of pleasure in our lives that we have to experience every single day, so why not enjoy it?  In this episode, I discuss the North Carolina State University research on the subject of eating foods we love, the benefits of listening to your body and eating without distractions.  Stay tuned to learn why and how that works, and how to do it! Do you eat to avoid difficult emotions? If so, check out my free video masterclass, Kick the Emotional Eating Habit for Good. Available on demand! Click HERE. If you’re enjoying this podcast, I would love it if you would show me by supporting it. Click HERE and leave me a tip in any amount. Or leave a review wherever you listen. Share it with a friend. Thanks for sharing the love.

Do you eat to avoid feeling shame? Do you feel shame because your body doesn’t conform to societal  ideas of what it should look like? Do you feel shame about your food choices or how much you eat? Were you ever told that you were somehow inadequate because of your body size?  Or because you chose to wear certain clothing that revealed too much of a body that someone thought was not worthy of being revealed? As a child or adult, did people make comments about your weight, including your parents, siblings or friends? Were you bullied in school, in sports or on the playground because of  your weight?  Did your parents use shame to get you to behave the way they wanted you to?  Any of these things can cause feelings of shame. What is shame anyway? How does it differ from guilt?  That’s a lot of questions!  Stay tuned to learn about shame and how it could be at the root of your issues with food and eating, and what you can do to manage or eliminate those feelings.

Do you eat because of stress, to comfort yourself or avoid uncomfortable feelings? Eating for emotional reasons may be the single greatest cause of overeating and weight gain.  It’s the reason why most dieters gain the weight back.  Emotional eating is instant gratification.  It’s a distraction from your pain. But at a high cost.  In reality, emotional eating is a mediocre coping mechanism that not only causes weight gain, but even more importantly, it negatively affects your life in other ways.  But here’s the good news: you can kick that habit, and once you do, the urge to eat for emotional reasons is GONE. Then, losing weight and keeping it off becomes so much easier.  Listen to learn how emotional eating negatively affects your life and what you can do about it.  If you want to learn more about how to end your emotional eating habit and feel the liberation of NOT desiring food every time things are difficult or upsetting, check out my free masterclass Kick the Emotional Eating Habit for Good. 

Do you feel frustrated in your weight loss efforts because it seems like you keep making the same mistakes over and over? Have you vowed a million times to stop doing certain things, like continuing to eat even though you’re full, or snacking after dinner or eating too many sweets, but you keep doing them anyway? Then, do you get upset and beat yourself up over it? If so, you’re not alone. But it doesn’t’ have to be that way. The problem is that you’re using the wrong approach to change your behavior. Vowing to stop doing something doesn’t work. You need to have a plan to change your behavior and establish a different habit. You need specific, doable strategies to overcome your obstacles. What if you reversed your approach? What if, instead of vowing never to snack after dinner, you assume that you will continue to snack after dinner unless you design and implement strategies to remember not to do that and to prevent you from doing it. Strategies to replace that habit with a different one. Listen to learn how to stop sabotaging your efforts, and devise strategies for success with weight loss and every other area of your life!  

Does this sound familiar? You start off Monday morning determined to eat better. You’re going to finally lose those extra pounds. You’re going to listen to your body. You’re not going to overeat. By the end of the day, however, things didn’t go as planned. It’s not that you decided to give up or just not bother. You just weren’t paying attention. Despite the best of intentions, the next thing you knew, you ate too much of that overstuffed hummus and veggie sandwich, then grabbed a handful from the candy bowl of peanut m&ms each time you went to the kitchen to refill your water bottle or to get a cup of coffee. You really wanted to do better. What went wrong? You didn’t focus on being mindful. Mindful eating is the single most effective way to lose weight and keep it off, or to maintain a healthy weight throughout your life. You don’t need to give up carbs, count calories or follow a restrictive diet. Why do you distract yourself from that delicious food you love? Learning how to eat mindfully is the single most important skill for losing weight and keeping it off. Listen to learn how and why you should do it.

It seems that most women I know say they really want to lose some weight. That’s not just because I’m a weight coach, either. I’ve noticed it for a long time. Maybe they want to lose just a few pounds, or the “last 10.” Or maybe 50 or 100 pounds or more. But thinking you want to lose weight and actually being ready to make it a priority in your life are two totally different things. Not everyone who wants to be lighter and healthier is ready to do the work and make the commitment to themselves. And that’s okay. We all get there in our own time. Are you ready to lose the weight and your issues with food and eating for good? Really ready? I created this podcast to lead you on what I hope will be your last weight loss journey.  You see, I want to help you fix the problem that caused you to gain weight in the first place, not just lose weight. Fixing the cause is what you need to do to keep it off. You can end your struggle with food and eating, and slim down to your naturally healthy weight. But learning how to do this is never a quick fix and it doesn’t work unless you’re ready. Ready for what? Listen to this week’s podcast for the six things you need to be ready to do. 

If you’re a foodie, eating delicious food is a pretty important source of pleasure in your life. Food should be delicious, right? No food should be totally off limits. You don’t need a snake in the Garden of Eden to tempt you when you tell yourself you “can’t” or “shouldn’t” eat certain foods. That just makes you want it more. You want to both live to eat AND eat to live. The road to making peace with food and being able to enjoy it without overeating requires us to acknowledge that food is both fuel for our bodies and a source of pleasure. How do we find the right balance between eating healthy foods that fuel our bodies and eating those foods that may not have much, if any, nutritional value, but taste so darn good? In Episode #5, you’ll learn about the four different ways we eat, and how you can use that knowledge to find a perfect balance in your eating. You CAN lose weight without feeling deprived.

Do you ever think things like: There’s nothing to do. Let’s see what’s in the kitchen. OR I feel lonely. Some cookies will help me feel better. Last week, when I discussed the Hunger Scale in Episode 3, I was talking about physical hunger. But what do those thoughts have to do with that? So many people confuse their thoughts about wanting to eat with their body’s true hunger signals. But here’s the thing. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, it is really important to learn the different kinds of hungers. For example, let’s say you just ate lunch, and are feeling full, but walk past a bakery. Delicious smells come wafting out. You look in the window and see all kinds of pastries. You want one! What you are experiencing is “head hunger.” Do you sometimes want to eat when you’re sad or bored? That’s another form of head hunger. How can you tell the difference? Listen to Episode #4 to learn how to distinguish between the different kinds of hunger, and the difference between wanting to eat and needing to eat. LINKS: Get a free copy of the Weight Loss for Foodies Credo, and start incorporating some of these ideas into your life.

I have a great tool to share with you use to determine when to start and stop eating.  It’s called the Hunger Scale.   The hunger scale is about your body’s hunger levels. When your brain tells you it wants food but your body isn’t hungry, that’s what I call “head hunger.” We’ll talk more about head hunger and how to deal with it in Episode 4.   The hunger scale starts at number 1 which is ravenously hungry, and goes to number 10, which is really stuffed.   Learn how to use the Hunger Scale In this episode, you’ll learn how to use the hunger scale to achieve your goal of losing weight and keeping it off.   So download a copy of the hunger scale below, and place it near where you eat. And listen to this episode so you can start using it and losing it! LINKS:  HUNGER SCALE  14-day Freedom from Emotional Eating Challenge: http://bit.ly/FreeEmoEating

When I was 50 pounds heavier, I believed that I didn’t eat that much. I didn’t think I ate more than the slim people I knew and I thought it was unfair that they were slim and I wasn’t. Do you ever think that way? One of the things I will do in this podcast is give you the facts. No BS. Just straight talk. Even when it is stuff you might not like to hear or believe. So you may think the next thing I have to tell you is bad news. It really isn’t. The simple answer to the topic I’m discussing today is because they are overeating. If you are overweight, it is because you are eating more food than your body needs for fuel. But it isn’t that simple. Learn about the two ways that people overeat. Learn why people overeat. And learn what you can do to instead. LINKS: http://sharibroder.com/freedom-from-emotional-eating-challenge/

WELCOME! I’m so thrilled that you’ve joined me for the Weight Loss for Foodies podcast! This podcast is for you if you love good food, but you also care about your health and you want to look and feel good. Diets Don’t Work, But This Does! You’ve probably tried a bunch of diets, but you haven’t lost the weight you want to lose and kept it off. Maybe you feel like you’ve tried every diet there is! Maybe you feel like you simply can’t lose weight. But you absolutely can! The reason you haven’t succeeded is not your fault. It is because you have tried to lose weight by dieting. And diets don’t work. You can’t succeed when you’re using the wrong tools. So I’m not going to teach you any diets. But what I will teach you DOES work. You’ll discover what’s causing you to be overweight, and you’ll learn great tools and strategies to fix the problem. You’ll learn how to become one of those naturally slim people who goes to parties and restaurants, eats what she loves, but doesn’t overeat and gain weight. You’ll lose weight using a sane approach that you can live with and that produces results that will last you for life! The Weight Loss for Foodies Approach: Stop by every week, you’ll learn a new skill or strategy to help you change your habits so that you lose weight without resorting to willpower. And over time, your extra weight will disappear and you will become one of those naturally thin people! Because you live a busy life, the podcasts will be fairly short and easy to digest, about 10-15 minutes. We’ll work on changing your eating habits so eventually, losing weight and keeping it off will be easy. I’ll give you resources you can use to practice what you learn. I’ll show you how to approach life with an outlook and mindset of abundance and joy! So join me on this journey. Because losing weight is a journey. The path is winding, and no one does it perfectly, but you can make it to your goal! What Do I Know? I struggled with my weight for decades, since I was 13 years old. I’ve been down the diet road many times, too.  On the rare occasion that I actually got near my goal, I ended up gaining all of the weight back. And then some. Until I discovered that losing weight wasn’t so much about what I was eating, it was HOW and WHY I was eating. When I started changing how and why I ate, I lost weight relatively easily and have kept it off for years. I was so thrilled when I learned how I could eat what I love, not overeat and not over-desire food, that I wanted to tell the world! I wanted to share it with every woman who has struggled like I did and help them get to this peaceful place where you can enjoy food but not be obsessed with it and use it to fix things it can’t fix.  So I decided to become a Weight Loss coach, and I work mostly with people who consider themselves foodies. THIS REALLY DOES WORK! Give it a try and subscribe to this podcast in iTunes now.  What have you got to lose? And there should be a link to the podcast so people can play it on the webpage. LINKS: Free 14-Day Freedom From Emotional Eating Challenge: http://sharibroder.com/freedom-from-emotional-eating-challenge/ Ditch the Diet Tribe Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ditchthediettribe/