Tanya Hale 00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this is episode number 138, "Intentional Eating with Wendy Lee Johnson." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

Tanya Hale 00:21 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Glad to have you here today. Hey, I've got a special treat. I have a really great friend. She is a fellow life coach with me, and she focuses specifically on intuitive eating. Now, she started off as a weight loss coach and she has since moved into intuitive eating, which is something very different than weight loss. And if weight has ever kind of been your thing, I think you're going to find this fascinating. And even if weight has never been your thing, I think you're still going to find this fascinating because there are so many places that overlap in the mind work and the thought work that we do in learning to understand ourselves and come to appreciate ourselves more, and really act from a place of integrity with who we are, and with what we believe, and how we want to live. So I'm going to just go ahead and put this recording on that we did, and I think you're going to love it and I think you're going to love Wendy. So I guess that's going to do it. Enjoy the interview. 

Tanya Hale 01:29 

OK, so I am here today with my very dear friend, Wendy Lee Johnson, and she is an intuitive eating coach. And I wanted to introduce you to her because I think you're going to love what she has to share. I love the discussions that we have. So Wendy, introduce yourself. Will you please? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 01:48 

OK, so yes, Wendy Johnson and I'm an intuitive eating coach and I love love talking about this because it represents this huge change and shift that came along in my life. Intuitive eating just kind of marks a high level way that we take care of ourselves. Some of us have gotten a little off track with our eating and trusting our bodies. My story is I literally dieted for decades in hopes of reaching the skinny ideal body and staying there. And I reached it many times, but of course it didn't last. And intuitive eating is how to tune into your body and start enjoying food. And not so much obsession about weight, not so much obsession about the number on the scale, whether this food is good food or bad food. So this really kind of got me shifted into a new mode and believing all kinds of different things about food and my body. And sounds kind of woo-woo, but I'm telling you there's a lot of truth to this. So yeah. 

Tanya Hale 02:52 

So how did you start getting into intuitive eating? I know that when we've talked before, you just were like "diet, diet, diet, diet, exercise" your whole life. What made you decide that, "you know what, enough is enough. I am looking for something else." So how did that look for you? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 03:09 

Well, embarrassingly enough about, oh, a number of years ago, I was doing a no sugar, no flour protocol and having, of course, "amazing success." And I put that in loose air quotes because success for me meant lose the weight, and then of course gain it back. But I considered that success when it really wasn't. And one of my daughters said, "mom, have you heard about intuitive eating?" And she kind of offered up these ideas. And I, of course, told her how amazing my dieting was going and I was absolutely not interested. I thought about it after a while, still didn't interest me because I was like, you know, "having success." So once the weight started coming back on, again, it always did, I thought about that intuitive eating thing and looked into it. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 04:01 

Well, it turns out this concept has been around for 25 years. It used to be just research-inspired, but now it's research supported as a fantastic way to loosen up your ideas about what's right and wrong. So I thought about this and I thought, "you know, I'm gonna read the book, I'm gonna do the workshop and the workbooks and all the things." And I just started to really change my mind in my 50s about what it means to look inside myself for the answers about eating, trust my body, rather than going on the next diet, maybe doing a half marathon, what's paleo got for me, and stopping this outward type obsession with exercise and food. 

Tanya Hale 04:52 

So when you say that, like, everything else that you've done, you just said was the right thing, like an outward obsession. So this seems to be more of an inward-focused, I mean, when we talk about intuitive, that makes sense. But explain that process for us a little bit more because I think that's fascinating. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 05:08 

It is to me as well. So it means you are more in tune with your body. So when I get up in the morning now, I used to have a time set that I would eat my breakfast. I already knew what it was. I had my lunch all lined out, that kind of thing. But now I say to myself, actually, "how hungry am I right now?" Maybe it's not even hungry for breakfast. Maybe it's in a little while after that, I'll say, "well, how hungry am I now? And what do I feel like?" What would really satisfy right now? People say, "well, if I did intuitive eating, all I would eat is cake around the clock and ice cream," and all this. And there is a time for that, like right in the very beginning when you convert over, because usually you've restricted for so long and things have been off the menu, maybe entire food groups, carbs or whatever, that's all your body is craving at that point. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 06:03 

But there comes this equalizing phase, it happens probably five, six months in where then you really check in with your body and say, "hey, what are you really hungry for? What would feel pleasant right now?" Generally, it's not a whole cake at lunch, it's not these different things, but I do find that I'm actually listening to say, oh, you know what, actually that sounds great. And maybe I'm halfway into it and I finish up, I'm just done and just don't need the whole thing. And I've never done that before. When I've been counting points, when I've been on a certain regime, I always ate the full amount. I would of course swing and have overeats and a little bit of binge eating. And that has completely left my repertoire. I don't overeat, binge eat, all that stuff kind of just dissipates away because of this natural checking in with myself. 

Tanya Hale 07:00 

I love that. So walk us through your process of when you started doing it. I remember you saying once when we were chatting that you went to KFC, like, three or four days in a row. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 07:13 

I have to tell the KFC story. 

Tanya Hale 07:13 

Tell all the story. I love it all. I just want to hear kind of like your process because you said about four or five months in, you had the shift. And so what was going on before that? And then like, how did that all occur for you? I think it's very interesting. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 07:31 

So I was coming off the no sugar, no flour. And I was teeny. I was in a very small body at that time. But very thinking about food and thinking about Crumbl cookies, one of my obsessions, Coldstone is another thing I keep tucked in my car all the time. And so when I started this, the idea is that you take a number of foods that feel very novel to you, very much like you really have wanted it, but haven't allowed yourself. The first thing I did was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now I was raised on Kentucky Fried Chicken. My mother loved it and I haven't had it for literally years. And I thought to myself, "that sounds amazing, but Kentucky Fried Chicken, come on." So I went to lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken on Monday. On Tuesday, I went right back there again. On Wednesday, drove my car right back to Kentucky Fried Chicken. And on Thursday as well. Now come Friday, I was thinking, "it's okay, I kind of like it. But not as novel as it's always been." I drove back Friday and do you know what? I have not been back to Kentucky Fried Chicken since then. And I'm just flabbergasted. Every time I think about it, it's with fond memories. But it just doesn't feel like it would satisfy today. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 08:54 

So I did the same thing with Crumbl cookies. I would go to Crumbl, I would get a couple boxes of cookies and have them on my counter. First couple days, I just ate a bunch of cookies and then it only took like three days. And then I did Colstone. Now, Coldstone was something I used to eat in my car. There was some urgency around it and would be after a hard day's work. But what I did, I didn't even know they built Coldstone by the quart. You can buy it by the quart and I just put it in my freezer. And it turned out for a while, I would just like have five or six tablespoons of it after dinner. I didn't really want the big serving. It was just the smaller serving. I didn't use it as a meal replacement anymore. And so then eventually I looked in, this is after about the third quart that I had bought and it had ice crystals on it. And I'm like, "listen, I have arrived." I couldn't believe these changes were actually happening. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 09:50 

So at first I call it a "food rodeo." It feels like you're riding a bucking bronco right across the arena. But eventually it starts to settle out like a nice little walk and you're like, "wait, what?" And you don't have to do that with every food in the alphabet. You just, your body has to almost just get the philosophy. "Listen, you can have what you want. Don't worry, I'm not gonna pull the restriction card again." And then it's able to really relax and you can hear what you really want. So you kind of have that little hurdle to begin with. It's a really fun hurdle, but it is a little bit of rodeo. 

Tanya Hale 10:28 

So it sounds like we almost have these fantasies about food. Like this fantasy about Kentucky Fried Chicken, this fantasy about Crumbl cookies for you, of how amazing it was and how good it was and how probably some nostalgia for me. I know Kentucky Fried Chicken was my mom's big go-to as well. So a lot of nostalgia around that for me. But it's almost like then once you get into it, then you go..."Yeah, it's not what I had fantasized about it in my brain." Is that, am I kind of hearing you correctly on that? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 10:59 

You are spot on. There's something about when something is a little forbidden, it's novel, all these things, it keeps it heightened. You can never habituate to food if you keep it at this heightened level. Maybe it's a bad food, like some carb or some cookie or something and you have it in your mind as bad. That also heightens the novelty of it so that when you're having a moment or when you are just done restricting and you go to binge, those foods always show up as top of the list because of this novelty. And you say, "well, in my lifetime, I've eaten enough of those cookies to habituate to it," but truly this key is to stop restricting. That's the only way to take the novelty out of carbs, out of sugar, out of all those things. So yeah, you're right, totally about the novelty piece. 

Tanya Hale 11:54 

Okay, so there's a lot of retraining of your brain here, it sounds like, is what you're really kind of doing. Talk about that a little bit more because I think that's interesting. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 12:04 

Yes, this is almost a complete transformation in your belief system around food, around weight, and around health. Most people think it's, "oh, it's just eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full," but that's a very tiny part of it. The basis of this work is our belief system. We've been kind of, in our culture, taught that weight equals health, which is not the case. What they've done studies is to show that we have thin people that do not have good health, and on the same spectrum, we have women in larger bodies that have great health. And if you believe that dieting is effective and it's important, then this is another area that you would have to shift. If you believe you have ultimate control over your body size, then this is something you have to work on, changing that idea before you can really be an intuitive eater. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 13:08 

So intuitive eating, as you look at these norms that you've always believed and really consider changing your mind on a lot of this. And I have women come to me all the time in middle age that say, "I've never even heard of this. I never have heard of this concept." I mean, it was the same for me until my daughter had mentioned it. I had never considered it. But if we go back, technically we are relearning intuitive eating. This is something we knew as a child. When you step up, your mom says, "hey, time for lunch, come in," but "I'm not a hungry mom." Or you eat half your sandwich and six bites of the cookie and jump off the table and away you go. That's back to intuitive eating. Am I really hungry for this? What sounds good right now? So it's actually relearning something we've known long ago. 

Tanya Hale 14:02 

Is that fascinating? The recollection that just came into my mind was having a young child eating a piece of cake or something and they only ate part of it. And then as the mom, I was like, "I can't waste this. I have to eat the rest of this yummy cake because it's so good," right? And by then I had already stepped out of my intuitive eating, right? My child was into his intuitive eating saying, "I'm done with this. I'm gonna leave this luscious piece of cake sitting right here." And my brain was saying, "no, we don't ever leave the luscious cake." 

Wendy Lee Johnson 14:35 

Exactly, exactly. Of course we're training our kids all the time. I remember it was a few short years. After that, I started gymnastics and while I was taller than most, I wasn't necessarily a larger body or needed to diet, but my mom was dieting at the time. And it looked so amazing. She always got to have these different foods at supper. She ate a meal replacement. And I just begged her to go on this diet with her. And she thought about it for a while and she finally said, "oh, sure, sure, let's do this." And so when I started dieting at 12, that changed everything. So by the time I was in high school, I wasn't listening to my body at all. I was just desiring to be smaller and I wasn't even large. And the unfortunate thing is the most predictable reason for weight gain is dieting. So I look at my high school and I think, "golly, what if I had stayed an intuitive eater throughout all of that?" I wouldn't have had this constant diet cycling, which would be on and off. Weight goes up and down. And I rode that cycle for absolutely decades after that. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 15:47 

I would never really consider that there was any other option. I didn't know of any other option. So this is kind of that option that means you have to set that whole culture aside. But many of us by this point in our lives, we're ready, enough of thinking about food all day, enough of thinking about "is this food bad or good" and listening to everybody else talk about what they're eating? What if we just relaxed and food was easy? What if we checked into our body and let it run the show for a while? 

Tanya Hale 16:17 

I love that idea because I think that for me, so I've never been a weight prone kind of person, but I start looking at like my thoughts about food. And like even that story, I just told like, you don't leave the half a piece of cake, right? And these ideas that you always finish your plate. And I think that I grew up with an idea in my home. My parents had eight children. My dad was a schoolteacher. We always seemed to be pretty poor and there was always this thing like there was never enough of the really good food, right? There was always enough of just the yucky stuff that I didn't want to eat but the good stuff, there just always was this this panicky, not enough feeling for me. And I think I've carried that into my adulthood where I still sometimes, if something is good or yummy or I just I kind of get this, "I have to eat more I have to eat more" even though I'm not even I know darn well I'm not hungry, right? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 17:11 

Exactly. That's where, yeah, re-looking at your beliefs even coaching helps so much with this as we deal with scarcity beliefs that we bring forward because it's really hard to get normal and regular with food if we still have this scarcity belief. I think restricting food reinforces that scarcity. It tells your brain "listen, we got to get this now, why would we leave the luscious cake, we just don't leave luscious cake." So it's retraining and rethinking, "well wait, could I have luscious cake whenever I wanted? Absolutely, I can buy myself a whole cake." And we think, "oh I'd never do that." But the idea is just to really decide to believe something different, that I need to grab this piece of cake, I need to eat the whole thing. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 18:01 

Or like when we go to a Christmas buffet table or a work party and there's, you know, everybody wants to visit but all I can see is that buffet table with all those things that I don't usually fix for myself. And then a big scarcity or novelty thing comes up around that. But once you really relax on restricting, you realize I can have anything whenever I want. There's nothing special about this moment or that food. So yeah, I love the freedom that it gives, the freedom from the obsession. 

Tanya Hale 18:34 

So the work that we do as life coaches, because Wendy's certified at the Life Coach School as I am, that's how we met. But a lot, everything in our lives comes down to what we're creating in our brain, how we think thoughts that are no longer serving us. And so it sounds like this process is really just tapping into all of the thoughts that we have about food that no longer service, that do not exemplify who we are and who we want to be and what we want to create in our lives, right? And just making adjustments there. Am I on track with all that? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 19:14 

You are. And the interesting thing about dieting and exercise and that whole culture, it provided for me certain things that I loved. The smaller body was only one of the things. It also gave me a lot of structure, like as if I could control certain things in my life. Interestingly enough, of course, I wasn't controlling my weight because my weight would come right back up. But raising a large family, those are all things that involve so much randomness and chaos, I almost use dieting and exercise as this militant regime that I could make myself do and I could feel like I was in control of some piece of my life. So we also have to even approach the thought of, "well, why am I dieting? Why do I spend so much time thinking about my food, their food, talking about diets? And what would happen in my life if I actually set that to the side?" If I just put that away and didn't worry about that anymore, it opens up this whole realm. Because I have a lot of gals come to me and they say, "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to eat when I'm not eating on a plan." So it's almost like starting over, starting from scratch, but it's this very, very awesome talent of starting to look inside yourself for the answers for you. No longer looking in a magazine. Listening to your coworkers or friends or the new diet your sister's on, that doesn't matter anymore. And that's like a shift, a huge shift for me, is stepping out of that cultural thing and what I was using dieting for. 

Tanya Hale 20:57 

So I love that because you've taken a lot of the work that we do, this mind work, like learning to really manage our thoughts. And you narrow it down into the work you do, right, into this intuitive eating. But if we could even start talking about like intuitive living, this is kind of the piece where it starts overlapping into the work I do. And I know that you do like all of this with your clients, all the work that you do with your clients is not necessarily eating because there's a lot of mind work that goes into really creating the life that we want. But I know that when you and I talk on a regular basis, we talk a lot about like a concept that I would call "intuitive living," really learning to pay attention to our thoughts, our desires. Talk to me a little bit more about all of that and how it transfers over into everyday, everything else in life that's not around food. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 21:49 

Very good question. So I have, even with myself, I noticed as I started to get into thought work, I realized I didn't know myself all that well. And so what this involved was, I'm a huge consumer of self-help books, all these kinds of things, always looking for the answers outside of me. Not to say that there isn't a worthy place for research and all this, but we know that inside of us is the divine. And if we're so busy and so preoccupied with what's going on in the world, we can't tap into the messages that are coming for us from us. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 22:36 

So when I started to make this change with intuitive eating, I realized I could barely hear my body's voice. I could barely hear the voices inside me. So being able to slow down and really kind of take my temperature. There's one exercise you do in intuitive eating where you, instead of listening to your breath, you actually find the pulse in your body, not with your fingers or anything, but you listen for your own pulse. And I've thought about this a lot of times when, metaphorically speaking, when we listen to our own pulse, it's about how am I doing? Do I feel weary? Am I rested? Wonder what I should do today that would be very significant? You know, when we pray, we ask for answers, but this is really about listening, tuning in and hearing the answers that are coming to us. Intuitive eating is one way of doing it for our bodies. But if you think about intuitive living, This is checking in on a regular basis making a way for you to quiet down and settle up and listen and be able to hear the hear the messages that are coming. 

Tanya Hale 23:52 

I just think that's so brilliant because I know that for me, as a young mom, as a middle-aged mom, I mean all this stuff, it was just about the the do -do -do -do -do, right? Like check it off on the list check it off on the list, you know it was just felt like it was constant constant constant just coming and going, I've got to do this. And I love this piece of slowing down and, rather than doing more, like being more, becoming, right, like more of what I really want to do. I love that it fits right in with coaching we always talk about how as a coach we don't give our clients advice because the basic tenet of coaching is that the answer is always within our client, right? The answer is always within the person and it's our job as a coach to just help them discover that and figure that out. And so I love that idea that the answers are within me. I just have to learn to be quiet enough to listen and trust myself enough to follow that, right? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 24:58 

Yeah, it's that trust, I think. It's that trust to be able to hear your own answers, to know that they're there. Here's when I know I'm not doing it. I'll find myself thinking about a decision and then I'll call my sister or I'll ask one of my kids, "Hey, what do you think?" And I'm just running this little survey or something. I'm polling everybody I know about it! When really if the answer is in me, I just have to stop polling and start listening. Really checking in. Sometimes even we try on a certain answer, we study it out in our minds, and then we try on a certain answer and that's how we find out it's not right for us. We can just feel it. So it's about tuning into, you know, what you're feeling. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 25:46 

I like this saying I have on my wall. It says "faithful, not determined." Meaning, oftentimes in the past, I would be so determined about a decision that I wouldn't check in. But faithful means actually believing that I could have the answers. If I always listen, I'll know. Faithful means really being understanding about yourself and knowing you. It sounds a little like it's self-centered, but really the outcome of this is that you're able, once we know ourselves and really care for ourselves at the  highest level and can hear these decisions, we are so much more able to care for others and to love up on others. So it's really the gateway to having this ability to serve and to know what's right for my life. 

Tanya Hale 26:40 

I love that because I think one reason why in middle-age we often get stuck. We feel like, you know, we don't know how to move forward. I think it's because we've hit that exact place that you've just talked about. We've spent so much time doing things for other people and we've never learned to listen to that voice inside of us. But when we listen to that voice inside of us, we become our greater selves. We really step into who we were created to be, the talents, the abilities, the strengths that we have. And then we actually have a greater ability to do what we've always wanted to do, which is serve others and bless others and contribute to the world in really meaningful ways. But I feel like what you're saying is that we really hold ourselves back from that fullest level of contribution because we don't really ever tap into ourselves that opens the door to everything that we could contribute. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 27:35 

That's totally it. I like how you said that. It just reminds me of how good it feels. We catch glimpses of us at our highest self and how good it feels to be connected with that. And I feel like a lot of this is about just reconnecting with myself and you say, "well, that kind of sounds weird." But if you think about the opposite is this disconnect from ourselves. Many times I would disconnect from myself so I could get the job done, so I could do all the things, so I could serve everybody. But I wasn't realizing how weary I was. I wasn't realizing how I was being more determined rather than faithful. And I wasn't really allowing I was forcing. So this is really a change me shifting into my higher self. And I like her so much better. I was just thinking about Valentine's Day and really having an open heart about myself, really saying "this year I accept myself, no exceptions. This year I love myself." So it's kind of stepping back into that a little bit as well. 

Tanya Hale 28:50 

Oh, love this discussion. I love it so much, because I just think as we step out of the expectations that the world has placed on us, that we've placed on ourselves, and really like hone in to ourselves, I think our whole life start to change. And this is one thing I love about coaching. I feel like I'm learning how to do this as well, and it's fun. And I think you're a couple of steps ahead of me. So I love that we always get to chat and you help me go, "oh, I see it, I see it." 

Tanya Hale 29:18 

Okay, so we're gonna finish up, but any last things about intuitive eating, intuitive living, that you just feel you wanna put out there? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 29:26 

Well, just remember, this is a complete change of your whole belief system probably, but it's worth it. Dip a toe in, take a peek. Find out a little bit more. If you're curious, find out a little bit more I think you'll be very intrigued at the changes it'll make in your life. Just so so worth it .That's what I would say. Do it, 

Tanya Hale 29:50 

You are the intuitive eating go-to for all my girls. So Wendy, tell everybody how they can find you if they want to talk to you more about Intuitive eating or probably even just intuitive living as well, right? 

Wendy Lee Johnson 30:05 

It's easy. Check my website out wendyleejohnson.com and you can see there you can make an appointment to even have a chat with me, see if your goals align with coaching see if it's something you're considering, or we can just have a chat. I also do a weekly email that you might like, you can sign up for that on my website as well. I'm excited to talk with you and meet with you. This has been enjoyable, Tanya. Thank you so much. 

Tanya Hale 30:30 

You're welcome. I've loved having you and I have to tell you I am signed up to Wendy's email and every week I'm like "I love it so much." I'm always sending her these notes saying "Wendy! Such a good email. I love it," because you just you have such a way of explaining things and talking about things and I'm sure that everybody felt that today, because you did just explain things so well. So thank you, Wendy. I love you desperately, darling. So glad that you were here. Okay, alright. Have a great day. Bye. 

Wendy Lee Johnson 31:01 

Bye. 

Tanya Hale 31:01 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.