Embracing Real Change: Health and Wellness After Menopause

Shelly 00:00:00

Hey friends, and welcome back to another episode of empower her wellness. I am Shelly, your host, and I am super glad you've joined me today for my episode with Doctor Jenny Treweiler. Before we get started, I want to remind you you can support this podcast. This podcast is free to everyone who listens and if you find benefit in this episode or any other episode, I ask that you consider making a donation to this podcast. The link to do that is down below in the show notes. Support the podcast Doctor Ginny is the author of the forthcoming book Slender for good after 50, eat more, stress less, and never diet again. She is a psychologist and certified health coach who scoured the research to find evidence based answers to her own eating and weight issues. Doctor Jenny loves to help others discover their slender, healthy body within just by learning how to establish truly healthy eating and drinking habits. These habits can become so natural and effortless, making it possible to escape stress and worries about our eating, drinking and our weight, and instead focusing our energy on living our best life. I just love this conversation with Doctor Jenny. I had several aha moments. She opens up about her personal journey with her body image issues, health issues, and the challenges of managing weight during menopause. And after a decade of frustration with traditional diet advice, which I think most of us can relate to, Doctor Jenny began to rethink everything she had thought she knew about food, health and lifestyles. She's going to share her experience, both personal and professional, that transformed her views on diets and its connection to chronic disease, especially in the processed, food heavy culture that we live in. We talk about the tough realities of breaking free from addictive food, how we can navigate social settings, and why making small but meaningful changes like meatless Mondays can have a lasting impact. Doctor Jenny also touches on the emotional and psychological aspects of food, questioning traditional dieting methods and sharing her skepticism about intuitive eating for weight loss. So if you're struggling with food addiction, feeling stuck in old habits, or seeking a healthier relationship with food, my episode today with Doctor Jenny is packed with practical insights and personal wisdom. I think you're really going to get a lot out of it. Okay, friends, on to my conversation with Doctor Jenny. Hey friends, welcome back to the podcast. Empower her wellness. I am so happy to have with me today. Doctor Jenny Trierweiler.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:02:32

Yes. Is that right?

Shelly 00:02:33

Yes. I practiced it before and I thought, I'm gonna get on here and I'm gonna mess it up. You are a psychologist and a certified health coach?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:02:45

Yes.

Shelly 00:02:45

And I, before we got started, I was telling Jenny that I've been listening to some of your YouTube episodes and just really love what you had to say about eating principles, but also your story, which I relate to. And I know my listeners, who are mostly women over 50, are really going to relate to your story, and I know it will set the context for what we're going to talk about. So if you're okay with that, let's just start with at the beginning. Let's start with your story of where you were and how you got here to where you are today.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:03:20

Yeah. Well, I'm a person who stayed slender in my teens, in my twenties and my thirties. And I used to have donuts and coffee for breakfast. And as life went on, I told.

Shelly 00:03:34

People, same thing in high school, I would try to gain weight. Yeah. So then I was drinking Mountain Dew and eating through musketeers bars four or five times a day. Yeah, I felt like it was working.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:03:49

Okay for me, as far as I could tell. Until menopause hit, I had kind of a sudden drop into menopause after doing fertility treatments. So in my forties, I started gaining weight. Now I had this arrogance that I totally know what I'm doing. I don't know how those overweight people are getting so overweight. I just can't even imagine what they're doing. They should do what I do. Donuts and coffee for breakfast, you know, etcetera. And then it all changed. And everything about my body seemed to be betraying me. I was having all kinds of symptoms. I felt like I was aging. I felt like I was weird. I felt like I wasn't myself. And I started putting on weight. And what I had learned my whole life is what most of us learned, which is I should just eat less and exercise more. And in my twenties and thirties, yeah, that would seem to work. If I started, my clothes started getting tight, but it wasn't working anymore. And if I watched over time, I was just gaining more and more weight with that approach. And I would go to the research and I would go to doctors and they would say, eat less and exercise more and I would try harder. And so I did that for over ten years and ended up 60 pounds overweight, in love with the way I was eating, like I was spending more and more money on food and wine, going out to dinner all the time. And I felt kind of sophisticated about how I was doing it. And I felt like I ate pretty healthy. Healthy. And I spent a lot of money on it. I spend a lot of time in the health food aisle and looking at the ingredients, lists, et cetera. And things were just getting worse and worse. And, you know, I'm trying to study these things. What happened then is I had this big wake up call moment, which is, as I started this coaching business, I also started working in nursing homes and as a psychologist. And my patients kept coming to me and saying, you have got to get me out of here, doctor. I don't belong here. My kids are taking my house, they're taking my car, they're taking all my stuff. I need to get out of here. So I started studying how can I help them get out of here? And they had conditions like diabetes and the things that go with that and heart disease and stroke and cancer and dementia. And when I studied all this stuff, I found this is all more related to our eating and drinking than anything else. And then I got diagnosed with prediabetes and I freaked out. I thought, you know what, Ginny? The truth is, you're not doing well. You're headed for the nursing home. I also could barely walk anymore because I had so much pain and inflammation in my feet.

Shelly 00:06:23

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:06:24

Like, I couldn't even go for a ten minute walk anymore. And it was making me, like, feel like my life is ending here. And the nursing home patients, here's the other thing that was freaky about that, is I thought they were going to be in their eighties and nineties. A lot of them were in their sixties and seventies.

Shelly 00:06:40

Oh, my goodness.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:06:41

It was very, very disturbing to me.

Shelly 00:06:44

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:06:44

So I had this, like, you have to figure out how to change your eating and drinking. Yeah, I love my eating and drinking, but you're going to end up in the nursing home. But I don't want to be miserable. You know, I just was going through that. So I first had to figure out how to deal with my drinking because it had become an everyday thing. It felt very important to me and it felt difficult to cut back. It's embarrassing. It feels embarrassing to say that, but I think.

Shelly 00:07:10

Same girl, same.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:07:11

Yeah. A lot of people end up in that situation. I was never going to be someone who drank every night. Then I was drinking every night. Well, I'll have half a bottle. I'll have a glass or two of wine. No, it's a whole bottle. Then it's a whole bottle plus a little more. And that's what alcohol does to our brains and our lives with time. So I decided I need to figure out what to do. But eat less and exercise more is not working. The good thing is I was trained in evidence based practices. So as I heard myself say, this doesn't work. I started looking at the research. Actually, this isn't working for people. And it hasn't been for a long time, for like, a hundred years.

Shelly 00:07:50

But everyone, it's an old paradigm. Yeah. That needs to change.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:07:54

Yeah.

Shelly 00:07:55

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:07:56

So anyway, my training in evidence based practices made me realize, you don't actually know how healthy eating works. You keep saying you do pretty healthy eating, but you don't actually know how it works. And so I decided I can't find any truth in the marketplace. I have to go look at the research myself. And little by little, like, four guiding principles surfaced that I founded hundreds and hundreds of studies because that's how I knew to look at the research. I wanted a way of eating that I could enjoy, that would give me the weight loss that would last, which is almost no weight loss lasts. And I wanted it to give me improvements in the prediabetes and the insomnia and hot flashes, all the symptoms, inability to walk, if possible. And as I started implementing those principles, all those things started to reverse in a very natural, easy way. And I quit crying about, poor me, I have to do this. I started going, you know what? This is pretty cool. I actually really like this. Yeah.

Shelly 00:08:59

So you had a mindset shift there?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:09:02

A big mindset shift, yeah. In fact, I just presented to american psychologists at the convention in Seattle this year about how psychologists can help their clients with embarking on a healthy eating journey, because that's what I found. It's really principles for healthy eating that add up to results. We're just very confused what that means.

Shelly 00:09:22

Oh, my gosh. Yes. So there's keto, there's carnivore, there's vegetarian, there's vegan, there's south beach, there's, you know, cabbage soup. There's three musketeers and Mountain Dew every day. Whatever.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:09:36

Right.

Shelly 00:09:37

So let me ask you this. So I'm super curious. Is your thoughts on this. Back in the days when we were younger and super thin and we were able to eat whatever we wanted, at that time, we did not realize that, because when you eat a donut, you don't gain five pounds.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:09:56

Right.

Shelly 00:09:56

You know what I'm saying? It's a gradual process. So does. Does this not really healthy way of eating when we're younger? Like, I had Doritos and coke for breakfast till I was, like, 40.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:10:12

Yeah.

Shelly 00:10:13

I didn't gain a pound. My friends and I would joke and be like, I can skip now. We joke. Like, I could skip a meal and lose five pounds. And now I look at a salad and I gain five pounds.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:10:22

Right.

Shelly 00:10:22

You know, so what I. My question is, how does that attribute the weight gain and the physical, perhaps illnesses and aches and pains of women as they go through menopause? Or do all women experience this when they go through menopause? So did my eating habits back in my younger days really contribute when I started going through menopause?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:10:51

Yes.

Shelly 00:10:53

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:10:53

I'm pretty sure they did.

Shelly 00:10:55

I knew that was probably the answer because I know some women who sail through menopause who have really pretty good eating habits.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:11:01

Yeah.

Shelly 00:11:02

Not sail through it, but, you know, don't put on the obligatory 30, 40 pounds. Some of us seem to do.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:11:09

So when you study. So I'm not a biologist or medical doctor or any of those things, but when I discovered what works is so different from what people have been telling us works, I wanted to understand why. So you find there's like eight cellular metabolic processes that are affected by what we eat. So when we're eating processed foods, we're damaging our cells in at least eight ways.

Shelly 00:11:35

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:11:35

And that is contributing to the decline of our health, and it's contributing to metabolic conditions. Whether you develop high blood pressure and heart disease or diabetes, whether you develop overweight and obesity or that's still ahead for you, it's going to show up somewhere. And for the majority of Americans now, it's showing up like, not only are 80% of us overweight or obese, but most of us can expect to live our last ten years in decline with one of these chronic diseases of aging that are part of our metabolic systems.

Shelly 00:12:13

Yeah. Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:12:15

And it doesn't have to be this way. It wasn't this way even 100 years ago. It's the way we have been eating, the way we all grew up eating. That seems totally normal. Like, we're swimming in this, like fish. We don't see the water. It just seems normal, like I do. Healthier than the person next to me. Well, that may not be that healthy.

Shelly 00:12:36

Yeah. And I, you know, I know that when I was listening to you, some of your. Oh, you froze up on me. You there?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:12:45

Yeah, you froze on me, too.

Shelly 00:12:49

Okay. We are we. Are we good?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:12:55

Yes.

Shelly 00:12:56

Oh, it says my Internet connection is unstable. We had problems with our Internet yesterday, so hopefully it's not going to go out on me.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:13:04

So does it help you if you restart?

Shelly 00:13:08

No, we will carry on. And if all of a sudden, I disappear. Our Internet was out for quite a while yesterday, so I was listening to some of your videos and you were talking about how when you were younger, your mom, like, listened to doc read doctor Spock, and you were eating these certain ways. And I grew up that way, too, because we lived on a farm. We had a lot of vegetables and stuff. And then once I got on my own devices in high school, is when I really started eating, you know, pretty crappy stuff. Yeah. And I really, you know, as, as I grow older, I sort of. Not sort of, but I wish for those days back then that I could go back and do that stuff. But. So why, why do, why does exercise in diets? And why do exercising more and eating less, why do they not work?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:14:01

Yeah. My understanding of it is it sort of flips a switch in our body. So we, our body goes into a mode of, we're not getting enough nutrition. We need to now fight to store excess fat. We need to make the animal hungry. We need to make the animal anxious and sleepless, and we need to slow the metabolism so it burns less energy, even when it's resting. So it's not going to add up to results. I think about that, how we kind of all learned to do that. Like, we're not eating enough nutrition. We're eating way too much processed food that's causing damage to our whole metabolic system and making us hungry. And then when we don't like the weight gain, we eat less. Our body is going to freak out. It's going to. It's going to set. I shouldn't say it that way. It's going to set a whole bunch of processes in action to protect us from starving.

Shelly 00:14:59

Okay?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:15:00

So we're gaining that fat because our body thinks we're not getting nutrition. We're not getting nutrition because our environment is mostly full of processed foods that aren't nutritious.

Shelly 00:15:11

Yeah, yeah. And I think people are really confused about that because you can look at something and it says, you know, heart healthy, cholesterol free, and it's on a package of processed cereal.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:15:24

Yes.

Shelly 00:15:25

You know, as opposed to steel cut oats, where you won't find, you know.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:15:28

Well, those foods, those processed foods that have that kind of packaging on them, which totally worked on me, by the way, I'd like to say it totally did. Those things are the most profitable for the food industry. And the food industry has infiltrated the medical schools and what the doctors are told and the nutrition schools and the government standards, et cetera. So we are now eating 73% of what we're eating is processed foods. And our bodies don't know what to do with that. Except make us store excess fat so we don't starve.

Shelly 00:16:02

Yeah, yeah. Because they're void of the good stuff you need, like you find in bell peppers and cabbage and beans and things like that. So, yeah, so that's a large systemic problem that we're not gonna solve in an hour long podcast. But it's so true. We've been sold this bill of goods about this food that it's good for us, that we're supposed to be eating it, and then the only people profiting off of it are like, the seven major corporations that handle all of our food products. So diet and exercise don't work in the tricky language. Well, I mean, eat what I meant to say. I didn't mean to say that. I meant to say eating less, exercising more, does not work. That's what I meant to say.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:16:57

I'd say weight loss diets, dieting doesn't work. The idea of I'm going to have to eat less and starve myself.

Shelly 00:17:04

Yeah, yeah, I misspoke on that. I mean, so what did you do? What were your guiding principles in your eating that helped you?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:17:15

Well, I'll tell you, two of them, two of the four that I found, there are things that we feel like we already know, but we don't because we're so misled and misinformed. So the first one is, I found you have to eat abundant, highly nutritious foods. Real, whole, highly nutritious foods. That is now, on average, 27% of our diet. Until we really increase the amount of highly nutritious foods we're doing, all the other stuff we do doesn't matter. Oh, I'm gonna make sure I don't eat any candy this week. I'm not going to have any wine this week. But did you put something in there that was nutritious? Otherwise you're going to feel like, no, I'm hungry, I'm 30, I need stuff. I need stuff. Yeah. So that is really the first thing. If people hear nothing else from me, that's what I would say. We should have plates full of fruits and vegetables and some protein and some fats, and we should have some whole grain every day, too. People have gotten really weird messages about grains. The bottom of the food pyramid used to be processed grains, bread, crackers, those kinds of things. That was terrible for us. That was the beginning of the end of our health, really, that food pyramid. So people ended up lately saying, well, we should be grain free. That's actually not helping our health either. We need grains, but they need to be whole so that first principle is really eat abundant, highly nutritious foods, like whole, real, unequivocally. Your great grandmother would recognize that as food.

Shelly 00:18:52

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:18:53

And the second principle is we need to reduce or eliminate things that are not food, that are packaged and processed. So, theoretically, I believe, and actually, a lot of us in practice, are moving from 27% real, whole food to closer to 100% because I think that's how people are healthy. So the people who are moving from 27% to 50% of my food is pretty good. They're not close enough to getting to eating, how people need to eat to get good results. So they're trying pretty hard to do that 50%, and they're getting lousy results.

Shelly 00:19:36

But it's. People will say, oh, but it's too hard because I'm too busy and I have to go to work, and I've got all these kids to take care of. How.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:19:55

It'S that. Choose your hard thing.

Shelly 00:19:57

Well, I was just going to say, how do we, how do, how do we get this whole mindset shift.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:20:02

Yeah.

Shelly 00:20:02

Of, you know. Yeah, it's. It's hard. It's hard to go to work and not because I used to do this back when I was at the office. I'd be like, oh, I brought my lunch today, which is healthy leftovers from the night before. And then my friend would be like, hey, you want to go do Chinese? Yes, I do. And then I would shove that back in the fridge at work and never eat it. So. It's so true. It's like, you know, you have to make that choice and set those boundaries for yourself. When your friend says, hey, you want to go do Chinese? You're like, well, I can't today because I have stuffed peppers that I brought in from home. So how do we, how do we, like, change that whole mindset shift, that way of thinking? I mean, how do we even.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:20:47

Yeah.

Shelly 00:20:47

That notion of our head that we're too busy, we don't have time.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:20:51

Right. I had that. I was, I was telling, I was saying, it's got to be like, I've got to be able to get it together in a minute. I got to be able to eat it while I'm driving. Like, I started, I went to a coach for a while, and she was good. She said, you can't carve out 30 minutes in your day to eat healthy. Then you're going to pay the consequences. That's all I can tell you. I always tell people, you can eat whatever you want. The lie is, you can eat whatever you want and not get any consequences for it. That's just not true. You're going to get consequences for your whole metabolic system and probably for your liver and for your weight. So the way that I approached it is just eat this, just do this for a while and see if you love it. The hard part is pretty short, actually. So especially. So what I found is if I had where I had addictive things in my diet, like, I just want to have one glass of wine on the weekend, I couldn't do that. Yeah, it's too addictive. As soon as I had one, I wanted another one, and I wanted it the next day. I wanted it every day. And similar with sugar for me. So when I found things that provoked that kind of, I can't do this, I can't moderate this. And you can find research showing these things are truly addictive, probably even more addictive than the drugs out there, because our brains from tens of thousands of years ago were primed to be excited about food and calories and sugar. For me, actually just deciding, well, what if you just take 100% break from these, quit trying to moderate them for a while, just take them off the table and see if the cravings go away. And they went away so fast now I've gotten to see that with so many people that I work with. They will tell me all the time, this is not hard. I know. It's. It has this sort of difficult moment where you're scared. Yeah. You've been so. You've fallen so in love with bad things, start getting a little mad about that and saying, I'm just going to eat good things for a period of time. I invite people into a year, like, let's do a year of just eating so much nutritious food and just putting those other things. Like, it's not actually food. So I'm taking it off the table for now. At the end of the year, if it's completely transform your life. Like, I can walk again. I don't have prediabetes anymore. I sleep really well. I feel better at 65 than I felt throughout my forties.

Shelly 00:23:24

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:23:25

When you get those kinds of results and you feel good about yourself and you can do stuff again, like, I can date again, it doesn't feel so important anymore.

Shelly 00:23:37

Yeah. It's like, why would you want to go back to.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:23:39

Yeah.

Shelly 00:23:40

Especially since you're so far removed, you know, after a year, that's. That's a long time.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:23:45

Yeah.

Shelly 00:23:45

To do those things. So. Yeah, but, you know, I. I love my wine and cheese Jenny, I love. I love those. And why are we so afraid to let go of those? Is it. Are they comfort? Is it. Do we feel like it's a societal pressure? I mean, why do I not want to let go of my wine and cheese?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:24:05

All of those things? Yeah. So one thing is our primitive brain wants us to keep the habits we have. It sort of like, I always tell this story of if I've been sitting on the couch eating bonbons and crying and drinking wine every day because I lost my job and I don't know what to do next, and I'm scared. My brain at the end of the day goes, how was today? Nobody died. Let's do this. Every day. And that part of the brain freaks out when we try to change our habits.

Shelly 00:24:36

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:24:37

So in the sense of, like, when people lived around saber toothed tigers, if you have to think too hard about what you're going to eat, something's going to come over the ridge and kill you. Like, quit thinking. Just do what you always do.

Shelly 00:24:48

Yeah. Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:24:49

So it is actually like a fear survival kind of response, and then there's all those emotional attachments. I love this. This is so good. I. I deserve this. I was only saying that about things that were bad for me.

Shelly 00:25:05

Oh, you didn't say, oh, I deserve to have that stuffed bell pepper today.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:25:09

Right.

Shelly 00:25:10

Or that hummus.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:25:11

And I always said I deserve this about things that were bad for me.

Shelly 00:25:14

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:25:15

And frankly, when I started paying attention to that, that hurt my heart and my soul.

Shelly 00:25:20

Oh.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:25:21

Like, I don't want to say that anymore. I don't want to say, I love this thing. I deserve this thing that's bad for me. I want to be wiser than that.

Shelly 00:25:31

I love that. Oh, man, that's. That is brilliant. Because I have said before, I don't do it as much now because a year ago, I became a caregiver for my partner. So our, like, life has changed drastically. I would be so stressed out. I would come home from work and be like, I deserve this glass of wine.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:25:51

Yes.

Shelly 00:25:52

And. And I had a friend, she said, you know, she would drink a glass and just be like, I'm just going to have one glass of wine. And then her brain would be like, get a little fuzzy. And she'd say, well, if one glass is good, two. And then you go down, and then you've got a whole bottle. So. But I love what you said about, I deserve this, because really what you're saying is, I deserve this bad thing. I deserve to put this bad thing in my body, yes. Oh, my gosh. That's just really, that will just stop you for a moment to.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:26:26

It's a valuable thing.

Shelly 00:26:27

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:26:28

It's one reason I love working with women in their fifties, sixties, seventies, because they're ready to do something wiser than what they've been doing.

Shelly 00:26:36

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So how do we handle going out? I mean, you know, being social is a big part of women's lives. You know, how do we, how do we handle, you know, my friend who wants me to go to Chinese with her, you know, how do, how do we handle those kind of things if.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:26:59

We really believe this matters? Which is an advantage I had because I had studied it so deeply. My clients have the advantage of having a coach with all this confidence and all this experience. It's hard to do on your own. But getting the right supports, it's actually not that hard to just say what I really care about. Being with my friends is the social aspect, the love, the companionship, etcetera. And I can keep eating in this healthy way because I know it really makes a big difference. So I just problem solve it before I go. How am I going to eat in my healthy way and have a great experience with my friends? For me, potlucks were this big challenge. Like, I would have to have a conversation with myself in the car. I would have to bring salad with me. It was like, at first it was this big challenge for me, but I love going around eating all the things and drinking all the things and just be super casual about it. Yeah, I can do that if I want. I just can't do it without consequences. I could barely walk. I was pre diabetic. I was headed for the nursing home.

Shelly 00:28:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so I'm sitting here thinking as you're talking, everything you say is so right, but there's a part of my brain that's going, yeah, why would I want, why would I. How can I articulate this, Jenny?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:28:23

Yeah, go for it.

Shelly 00:28:24

I think it's because maybe brainwashed isn't the right word, but we've just been so ingrained, so entrenched.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:28:34

Yes.

Shelly 00:28:34

The last decades, and just bombarded with, well, it's wine o'clock somewhere. Mommy needs her wine. You know, this whole culture of that number one and then.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:28:48

Well. And billions of dollars that industry puts into that advertising.

Shelly 00:28:53

Yeah. So it's stuck in my head that I hear what you're saying. Yeah, but my brain, I don't know how to articulate this. My brain is going, no, I don't, I don't want to hear that.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:29:08

I don't want that to be hard. It's why I was crying at the beginning of my, well, you're going to.

Shelly 00:29:13

Make me cry now.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:29:14

Yeah, I do think people underestimate. So I think people sometimes like to come to me and say, well, you just give me the answers and I am writing my book. But I have learned so many times, it's not a matter of just knowing the answers, it's how do I make that mental inhabitant?

Shelly 00:29:34

I think that's the biggest thing is that I'm having, like, just listening to you, I'm having thinking, I know what Doctor Jenny is saying is right and I researched it because I'm very evidence based myself. I researched it, but I just can't, like, oh, like, yeah, you think it's.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:29:52

Going to be suffering, and one of the reasons people think it's going to be suffering is we've tried dieting and then it didn't work. We suffered and it didn't work. It's, it's a bad approach. And similarly, if there's something we feel like, oh, I can't give that up, I just absolutely need to keep that. That's a sign we're an addiction state with that.

Shelly 00:30:14

Oh, that was harsh. That was harsh, right?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:30:18

Well, that's what I was saying to myself. I suspect that.

Shelly 00:30:24

We need to hear those things. Yeah, that was hard.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:30:27

Started thinking, you know what, you're gonna have to break addiction states to get your health back. And I thought it was gonna be really painful. It wasn't painful for very long at all. Yeah, but the thing is, if you try to moderate something that's addictive and you're like, oh, but I can't have it today, you just keep that addiction state really flared up where if you say, you know what, this is off the table for a period of time, I'm absolutely committed to that. I don't care what my brain tells me, I don't care how beautiful it looks and how special it sounds. The whole beautiful and special and exciting that is dopamine. We're going for a dopamine state. And a dopamine state is a kind of pleasure that feels very special and drives us to want more, more, more, more, more, more, more. Give me more. It's a never satisfied kind of feeling.

Shelly 00:31:19

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:31:20

And when you get out of that, you can get this kind of tranquil enjoyment of food and drink that it feels very different. It's a whole different chemistry.

Shelly 00:31:30

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I when I say to myself, I'm not going to do this today, I'll wait till the weekend. That's all I think about.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:31:41

Yes.

Shelly 00:31:41

Like, it starts this loop, like when people say, don't look for the yellow cars, you're going to look for the yellow cars. So it just starts this loop in my brain of. And then I give in and think, oh, I know it's not the weekend, but it's Thursday. It's close enough, right?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:31:55

I know.

Shelly 00:31:56

Waited two days. You know, I'm going to.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:31:58

This is a totally different psychology and a totally different experience.

Shelly 00:32:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:32:04

You can kind of hear that, right?

Shelly 00:32:06

I. Oh, yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:32:07

Definitely taking it off the table for a period of time and really focusing on how can I eat more of the good things that my body actually needs. And how can I check how that's feeling? Like, you're not. We're not just focusing on what we're cutting out. In fact, that's not where we start. We start with, I need to eat enough of the real stuff that my body goes, thank you.

Shelly 00:32:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're going to do just what I said. If you think, well, I'll just wait till the weekend, then you're, you know, working for the weekend to. To get to that spot and. And just saying, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to give myself six months and I'm not going to do it. You have that time limit and you're not constantly thinking, oh, gonna. Still working for the weekend.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:32:53

Yeah.

Shelly 00:32:53

So that makes a lot of breaks.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:32:56

It's like we talk about duck mode. It's like, if you take. I take my nephew to the grocery store and he's like, thea, will you get me candy? And I say, no, I will. I will not get you candy. Come on, please. And he might escalate his behavior and make it really stressful for me. But what I say to him is, there is not one thing you could say to me. And I don't care if you throw yourself on the floor crying, I'm not buying you candy. I don't. I love you too much to buy you candy. He stops. And our brain is exactly the same way. Like, no, there's no candy coming. There's no wine coming. It's off the table for now. It's going to be okay. Here's the other thing is, I didn't yell at myself or scold myself. It was. Nothing terrible is happening. We're just eating healthy.

Shelly 00:33:39

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:33:40

Nothing scary is happening. No saber toothed tigers coming over the ridge to get us while we go through this process that feels a little bit like it really takes attention. We really want to make those good habits habitual. That's where they get really, really easy. My clients start telling me this within a matter of weeks. This is easy.

Shelly 00:34:02

Yeah. You know, there's one. There's one train of thoughts with one chain of thoughts with. One mode of thinking with habits is to start small.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:34:13

Yes, I've heard that.

Shelly 00:34:15

So, you know, start switching out Mondays, meatless Mondays, and then doing.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:34:26

That's an interesting example because, like, trying to switch to more plant based is a great thing to do on a gradual level. Trying to cut out something addictive can be easier if you cold turkey for a while.

Shelly 00:34:42

Okay. Okay. That makes sense.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:34:45

Doesn't it make sense? Because otherwise it's just driving you to like, okay, I said no to myself today, but it really doesn't feel very comfortable. And I can't wait till I can have some more.

Shelly 00:34:55

Okay, that makes. That makes sense. So starting small in some incidents is good for us.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:35:02

Yeah.

Shelly 00:35:03

And then cutting out the addictive stuff. Sugar. Well, yeah. Candy bars, sodas.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:35:11

Yeah. Right.

Shelly 00:35:13

Wine is something we need to think more long term.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:35:16

Yeah.

Shelly 00:35:17

In terms of more of a break.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:35:19

To see how the cravings stop. Because you don't know how easy it is until you do that. It doesn't get easy until you do that.

Shelly 00:35:27

Yeah. And it's the opposite. You know, I talked about earlier, you pop a donut in your mouth, you're not going to gain five pounds. You know, you don't gain five pounds. It's a gradual process. Same for, you know, taking those things off the table. You have to, like, just get that out of your body, get that out of your mind, get that out of your whole system in order. It's not going to be immediate. And.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:35:50

Yeah. It's interesting, though, when people quit sugar and alcohol at the same time, it's pretty fast.

Shelly 00:35:57

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:35:57

They feel better. A lot of people, if they, like, put drinking down for a while, but are going to increase their sugar, a lot of people start having more sugar and so they keep the cravings. Right.

Shelly 00:36:13

Well, that would make sense.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:36:14

Yeah.

Shelly 00:36:14

Because you're just substituting one thing for another.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:36:17

Basically, it's the same system in your brain. Yeah.

Shelly 00:36:21

Oh, my gosh. What an informative conversation. That makes a lot of sense in my brain where I'm trying to articulate what I'm thinking and I'm not doing it.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:36:30

I sure appreciate how aware you are and how open you are.

Shelly 00:36:34

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:36:35

Struggles are everybody's struggles.

Shelly 00:36:38

I'm an open book with these sort of things. So I was on your website and I saw where you talked about intuitive eating and I actually bought that book several years ago and I was really interested. I didn't listen to the video, I just read the little board that she written below. But what are your thoughts on? I already know what they are because I read the blurb, but that seems to be in vogue a lot.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:37:08

Intuitive eating, very in vogue, yeah. At least for what my clients come to me for, which is I want to lose weight and I want to strengthen my health for the future in these metabolic areas. It's not a good approach, intuitive eating. So the trouble with it is our environment is so full and has trained us so much to highly value the non nutritious stuff that checking with your body, what do I, what do I want to eat? Your body wants calories and it wants to store fat. So until you start feeding it enough of the nutritious foods, its answer is not going to be helpful to you.

Shelly 00:37:49

I want a cookie.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:37:50

Its a wishful thinking kind of idea. Well, I got really, really mindful and I decided, yeah, I want a cookie. Okay, all I'm going to say is your results are not going to be what you might want. You can do whatever you want. And I like the idea of tuning into my intuition, but our body actually wants us to be fat in this environment. So asking the body what it wants, it wants calories. It wants cheap calories, it wants fast calories. It doesn't, it's going for survival. It's not going for being able to live the richest, healthiest life you can until you're 100.

Shelly 00:38:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I thought that was interesting because I have read so much about that lately and I thought, oh, and I hear someone who isn't into intuitive eating, so I'm going to have to ask her about that. Yeah, I way that the book lays out, like, what does your body want? Well, my body wants, well, I want a cookie.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:38:45

Right.

Shelly 00:38:47

And that's going to be okay.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:38:48

There's probably some benefit to this approach, like being more mindful and that I, I follow a group of people who have eating disorders and they feel like it has saved their lives in some cases to just give yourself permission. Like be mindful about it, but give yourself permission. My clients want to lose the weight and get healthier. That's their priority.

Shelly 00:39:11

I can see if you have an eating disorder, that's a whole other animal, though.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:39:15

It's a different thing. Yeah. I've had quite a few people who have had eating disorders who find the eating approach that I teach, like, changes it. Like, I don't have to live in that place anymore. It's just totally different to focus on body. How do I give you what you need every single meal?

Shelly 00:39:32

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:39:33

And then how do I enjoy it? Because we do care about enjoying our food.

Shelly 00:39:37

Yeah. But I think my favorite things is rice and beans. Like, I love rice and beans.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:39:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Shelly 00:39:47

You know, I enjoy that as much as I would, because I don't really like to eat, like, fried chicken or anything like that. But, you know, I. I enjoy rice and beans. So you can enjoy these.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:40:00

Absolutely can enjoy. But as I say, it's a different kind of pleasure. So there's the dopamine pleasure. That is a never satisfied kind of feeling, like, I just want more. This is so exciting. And there's a serotonin kind of pleasure, which is very calming. So one thing my clients who eat this way say pretty quickly is I just feel calmer. I'm just coping with things better. I'm better. I'm getting along with people better. Like, I just have so much less stress in my life.

Shelly 00:40:31

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have noticed that I was in the emergency room a couple times in July with really high blood pressure. Oh, I mean, like, scary high blood pressure.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:40:44

Yeah.

Shelly 00:40:45

Racing pulse. I think it's anxiety. But my cardiologist is like, well, let's run you through all these tests just to make sure. I would. I feel comfortable just telling you. It's that.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:40:54

Yeah.

Shelly 00:40:54

So I did an echocardiogram, and the tech was really funny. She's like, you've got such a beautiful heart.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:40:59

Oh, nice.

Shelly 00:41:00

My heart's fine. Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:41:02

Okay.

Shelly 00:41:02

And the cardiologist confirmed I have a beautiful heart. So, um. Um.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:41:08

But.

Shelly 00:41:08

But I had been not eating out. I had not been drinking. I had been, like, I was starting to feel better. And then all of a sudden, I had this spike of anxiety. And I'm in the emergency room, and we're trying to figure out, you know, I've had, you know, not really horrible high blood pressure. That's really the only thing that's wrong with me. I'm not pre diabetic. I'm not, you know, I don't have any other. I've had every test run lately. It's just the. The semi high blood pressure I have. But I found when I was. So I was starting to eat better, Jenny. I quit drinking as much. I was moving a lot more. I had lost about probably about 20 pounds that year. And then this anxiety spiked, and I find myself eating those protein bars.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:41:59

Oh, I used to love those.

Shelly 00:42:01

Yeah. You know, eating an apple with, like, a bunch of store bought peanut butter on it or reaching for things that are sweet to sort of quell my anxiety, which I think it does. And so I put on a few more pounds, and now I feel like crap.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:42:19

Yeah.

Shelly 00:42:19

So I can, you know, as you're talking to me, I'm running this whole, like, past two or three months in my head.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:42:26

Yeah.

Shelly 00:42:27

Thinking, that is so true. I felt so good.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:42:30

Yeah.

Shelly 00:42:31

And once I tried to quell my anxiety with food and more wine, I feel like, pardon my french, shit.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:42:38

It's good to notice that. Right.

Shelly 00:42:40

But I. But as I'm talking to you, I'm playing that movie in my head thinking, yeah, come on, Shelly.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:42:49

Yeah. Well, our whole environment has trained us to eat that way, and we developed that emotional eating kind of habit. When you're talking about caregiving, I think about one of my clients, Elaine, who's a daughter, has some kind of chronic condition. She has to be in the hospital pretty often. And after Elaine had been eating this way for a while, they had to go in the hospital and she said, you know, it's a stressful time. I always gave myself permission to eat whatever I felt like eating during that time. But this time I went to the hospital cafeteria, and I noticed that direction is what we call craving for highly processed, non nutritious food like substances. And this direction is highly nutritious food. And I'm going to choose to go this way every day, every meal, because I want to stay well, and my daughter will be better if I stay well.

Shelly 00:43:35

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:43:36

So it's super easy to have rationales for doing things that are harmful to us when our whole society has told us our whole lives that stuff isn't that bad.

Shelly 00:43:45

I. And that's. That's rationalizing it. So instead of saying, I deserve this glass of wine because I had a really stressful day at work, yeah, I deserve this nutritious snack of just an apple because that I deserve that goodness in my body, and I can take care of other people. I can take care of myself. I feel better.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:44:08

Yeah.

Shelly 00:44:09

You know, just a different way of talking to yourself.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:44:12

Now, you just got me into the third principle, which is I found that eating three meals and no snacks is far better. And eating a lot of food, like a. At a meal, means I can go four, five, 6 hours.

Shelly 00:44:28

I know, but see, I'm like a toddler sometimes, and I say this, but, you know, if I take a nap, I wake up and I'm like. I'm like a toddler. I have to have my snack. But that's not true. It's just this habit I've gotten into.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:44:41

It's a habit, and it has served the food industry well, that we all feel like we need snacks.

Shelly 00:44:46

It is three squares and two snacks a day.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:44:48

I had to get this kind of animating emotion of anger about this. Like, so many things, so many of the ways I feel attached to eating came from an environment that doesn't care. If I'm developing prediabetes and I can't walk and I'm 60 pounds overweight, I'm paying them for food five times a day. I had to get mad about this.

Shelly 00:45:11

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:45:12

That is not how humans, even when we were little, assuming we're similar age, I think I'm 62. Okay. I'm 65.

Shelly 00:45:21

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:45:21

So even when we were little, people did not snack day in and day out. This has been a major coup of the food of the processed food industry.

Shelly 00:45:30

Oh, my gosh. You get in the refrigerator in the middle of the day, my mother would be like, what are you doing in there? Get out of there.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:45:34

I know. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's not healthy for us. It's not healthy for our insulin, it's not healthy for our weight. But we all feel like that's the way to eat now.

Shelly 00:45:46

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's because we've been told that's the way to eat.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:45:49

Yeah.

Shelly 00:45:50

So before we wrap up our conversation, how do you work with people? How do you work with your clients? What does that process look like?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:45:57

Yeah. So when I said about figuring out, okay, now, how do I take this to other people? Like, I joined a couple of other programs to see how they did it, I felt. I felt like people need, like, a year changing these habits, changing the mindsets, developing the skills. Like, okay, I'm doing great with this at home, but how do I do it in restaurants where 95% of what's on offer is not food? Right. How do I do it when I'm meeting with other people? How do I do it when I go on a trip to Europe? So we just kept finding all these circumstances. So also, there's this big transition phase when people get all the way to their goal weight. Now, what people tend to do in our culture is go back to eating their own weight.

Shelly 00:46:40

Yeah. Ding, ding. I've got. I've met my goal. Yes.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:46:43

I'm going to celebrate by having all the things I haven't been having. And pretty soon you've gained the weight back. Research shows that we're the best predictor of weight gain is going on a diet. So part of it is that dieting is unsustainable, but part of it is that we're just used to. I don't know what to do now, except I've been missing certain foods. I'm going to go back to them. So that transition phase to changing your eating but keeping the fundamental principles the same is a really important phase. And then my message is, I wanted to get slender for good and never have to ever focus on this again.

Shelly 00:47:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:47:19

And so I want people to get their habits rolling. This is something, as a psychologist, I have expertise in. How do I make this so habitual and so automatic? It's just not hard. Effortless. I love it. This is how I eat.

Shelly 00:47:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:47:34

So it's a year long program. I provide a lot. I see my clients almost every week, either one on one or in small groups. They're all over the world, so the small groups are at different times of the day, and we find that the having a community of people that eats this way is supportive of us going into all those other social situations where people are going, well, you can make an exception today. Yeah, I can, but not without consequence.

Shelly 00:48:00

Yeah, but I'm not going to. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, what a great conversation.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:48:05

I'm so glad you're a great conversation partner.

Shelly 00:48:09

That was so good. And I just have so many thoughts in my. In my head now about all the things that you said and the shift, you know, mind shift and. But I think, you know, Jenny, what really hit home was when you talked about putting in your body what you deserve. Like, I'm putting this crap in my body because I think I deserve that. That just, like, was.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:48:34

I'm so glad that one does hit home.

Shelly 00:48:36

Oh, my gosh. That really hit hard.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:48:38

You know, I encourage people, sit down and write out a list of what you actually desire and deserve in life. And when I did that, it was all things I couldn't have if I kept eating that way. Mm hmm.

Shelly 00:48:50

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:48:51

And then I started hearing that phrase every time it would go through my head, but I deserve it. Wait, what did I say? Am I saying it about something good for me or something bad for me? And I, like I say, early on, there were a lot of tears, like, wow, I've been hurting myself without really realizing it.

Shelly 00:49:08

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Amazing. Well, hey, before we wrap up, the. Before we wrap up the episode here. Do you have any parting words of wisdom for my listeners?

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:49:21

Can I invite people to check out my website@slenderforgood.com?

Shelly 00:49:26

And we'll put all that information down below in the show notes as well.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:49:30

And I'm really inviting people to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now. One of my recent videos, 2000 people have seen it so far, the last time I checked, and they're finding it really valuable. Why dieting doesn't work and you should stop it.

Shelly 00:49:46

Stop it. Well, I can attest you do have good YouTube videos. I think I've seen a few of your videos before.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:49:52

Thank you. It really gives a sense. I've had people let me know. I watched all your videos and I decided to follow what you're saying. And I lost that last 30 pounds that I've been struggling with. It makes me so happy.

Shelly 00:50:07

Well, that's how great.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:50:08

People are going to need more support than that.

Shelly 00:50:10

Yeah.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:50:11

But, yeah.

Shelly 00:50:13

Well, thank you so much. This has just been a great conversation and I appreciate you taking time.

Doctor Jenny Treweiler 00:50:17

Yeah. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Bye.