- Is diet and exercise enough for weight loss.
No!
I'll tell you why today.
(upbeat music)
Hey, welcome to the series.
I'm Alyssia, and I'm so excited you're here.
This is the first official episode
of this series, "Food Freedom."
The entire month of January, Monday through Friday,
we've got videos coming.
Before we get started, I wanna remind you
to subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss anything.
And remember that this is a video course
that is hosted via email.
Even though the videos are up on YouTube, obviously,
all of the additional downloads and materials
that go along with this stuff is gonna be
in the email every single day.
It is a free course.
You can sign up mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom
to get the downloads associated with this video.
So today we're gonna talk about a foundational concept
that you need to understand for the rest of this series,
for the rest of this course.
So the course really builds on each other.
So you kinda have to follow along every single day,
or you're gonna get lost.
And what we're talking about today is a concept
that I call inner and outer wisdom.
And this has completely changed the way I think about food
and my relationship to health.
So inner and outer wisdom
is a mindfulness framework and tool.
But it's really valuable
to shifting our perspective around health.
So what are inner and outer wisdom?
We really need to see this clearly here to move forward.
So if this is you, most of what we get caught up in tends
to be outer wisdom related, okay?
So information about food, nutrition, exercise,
knowledge about what foods we should or shouldn't be eating,
things like calories, nutrients, different diets,
pretty much external tools and information.
Inner wisdom, so, inner,
you know, now it looks like a cross,
but inner wisdom is something that we have
to tune into individually.
And most often these things are overlooked.
So things like how hungry we are, how full we are,
how flavorful a food is,
how we use food to comfort, relax, celebrate,
knowing our eating triggers, our emotions, our thoughts.
I mean, I was very much not connected to my inner wisdom,
and now I look back and I see how much
that got in the way of my goals and health,
and especially with weight loss.
So with inner wisdom, pretty much only you,
only you can know that inner wisdom.
It's like knowing if you like the taste of a food.
Do you like cilantro?
Some people love it, some people hate it.
No one else can tell you if you like it.
Or knowing if you walk into a room and it's 72 degrees.
To you it might be hot, to me it might be cold.
Only you know, that's your inner wisdom.
So when we say or hear, "Listen to our body,"
we say that all the time, but most of us don't really know
what that means or how to do it.
- [Inner Voice] Alyssia, do you hear me?
(dramatic music)
- That's because listening to our body requires
a connection to that inner wisdom.
And most of the time we're caught up in outer wisdom.
We're caught up in the details of the diets
and the food and all of the information,
all of the stuff the experts tell us to do,
rather than what's inside.
So I'm gonna talk about this a lot this month,
and I'm gonna give you tools and tips
for how to connect more deeply to this inner wisdom.
And not everyone believes this to be true,
but what I have found on my journey, and what I believe,
is that we need both inner and outer wisdom.
So we can't depend on the external information.
We can't just depend on diets, and nutrition information,
and exercise routines.
We can't depend on experts.
But we also don't need to solely rely on inner wisdom.
They can support one another.
And the key is getting connected
with our inner wisdom as a foundation.
So we have to have this first
before we can take advantage of the outer wisdom tools
from that space of clarity and intention.
This is really what it means
to take responsibility for our health.
Right now, we turn to doctors and experts, we're told to,
but we really need to turn to ourselves.
We can learn from doctors, and experts,
and external sources.
We can hear what they have to say,
but no one can be an expert of you more than you.
So you have to get to know you to find the confidence
to listen to your body, to tune in,
to learn how to do it, and how to trust yourself.
Then if you can do that, you won't feel you need
to blindly listen to anyone else,
or have anyone else to give you an eating plan.
"Mind Over Munch" until this last year, 2020,
really had focused primarily on the outer wisdom.
Most of the videos were about recipes,
ways of eating, diets, nutrition.
And again, there's use in that,
but I didn't personally make progress
on healing my relationship with food
until I stopped looking outside for all of the answers
and I turned to myself.
And that's when I strengthened my connection
to my inner wisdom.
Once we have that foundation of the inner wisdom,
we can learn about our options of outer wisdom.
We can be flexible and considerate
of how we implement the outer wisdom if we so choose.
It really helped me become less stressed out,
more patient and adaptive.
And my experience with food and health
became a lot more peaceful and easy,
and even with health and weight loss.
So it's sort of like, I've been trying to come up
with an analogy for inner and outer wisdom for months,
and I have one that sort of works.
It's still not perfect, and maybe you guys can help me.
But what I've come down to is,
well, let's see if you can see what this is.
(gentle music)
(marker squeaking)
(gentle music)
(marker squeaking)
Think anyone will believe I went to art school? (laughs)
- [Christian] I wish we got, I wish her mic was gonna pick.
Hey, there it is.
- It's a cake but it's not just a cake,
it's cake with frosting.
Okay, bear with me.
So inner and, (laughing) this is the best analogy
I can come up with.
Inner and outer wisdom.
Inner wisdom is the cake.
Outer wisdom is the frosting on the cake.
So the cake itself is what makes a cake, a cake?
You know, the foundation of the cake
is all you really need to enjoy the cake.
Now, most people are gonna say
that cake tastes better with frosting.
I actually, I'm not a huge frosting fan
but I know like Christian prefers frosting, for instance.
So outer wisdom is the frosting.
You wouldn't, for instance,
eat frosting, usually, on its own.
Some of you might.
But you're not usually going to go to the store
and buy a tub of frosting and just eat it.
Maybe if you have the tub of frosting there already
from frosting a cake, right?
But usually the outer wisdom, the frosting on its own,
it doesn't do much without the foundation of the cake.
What's really important for the integrity
is the cake structure itself.
So the cake is the inner wisdom.
The frosting is the outer wisdom.
Now, when is it best?
When they're together, right?
A cake with frosting is gonna be the best option,
inner and outer wisdom together
are gonna be your best source for support.
But we have to have the inner wisdom,
we have to have the cake foundation,
before we can really benefit from the frosting,
or else you're just spreading frosting around on nothing.
All right, does that work?
I don't know.
The only other analogy I could come up
with was like chips and dip.
So like, you know, you eat chips
and you can eat them on their own,
but that would be the inner wisdom.
And then you could dip it in like guacamole, or salsa,
that would be like the outer wisdom,
but you probably wouldn't eat guacamole
and salsa on their own.
I don't know if you have any other analogy ideas
for this inner outer wisdom framework,
put them in the comments and let me know.
Because I've been trying to crack it,
but that's the best I can do for now.
Okay, so ultimately this comes down to what I touched on
in the first video last week.
Which is be, do, have.
And we have to, you know, we get caught up
in being human doings these days.
We're trying to get what we want to have by doing.
But it's be, do, have, we have to be human beings,
and then do from that place of being to have.
So if our have the goal we want is to heal our relationships
with food, or to achieve weight loss, or whatever it may be,
we can't just do we have to be.
The be is the inner wisdom.
So just think like order of operations, just like it's.
(crowd crying)
Order of operations like a math thing, isn't it, PEMDAS?
I have the worst handwriting.
This is gonna be a nightmare all month, but okay.
So you have a be, do, have.
You need inner then you need outer,
and then you become whole.
Jill can make that better.
Pretty much what I want you to take away from this
is we have to heal from the inside out.
So if you're someone who thinks you need a specific diet,
or a way of eating, if you love to try all the diets,
or if you think this worked for a while,
but now it's not working, I totally hear you, I was there.
And it means, probably, there's an imbalance, you know,
and a higher focus on outer wisdom than inner.
This month I'm gonna help you zoom out,
so that you can tune into your inner wisdom,
and get to know yourself a little bit better,
and hopefully find that confidence.
And ultimately, I hope it can bring you more peace.
That's the goal, but this is a process.
None of this is gonna happen overnight,
or even in a week, or a month.
I mean, it's a journey.
And for me, it's been years and I'm still learning,
but I hope I can share what I've learned so that you can,
you know, cut through some of the crap
that took me awhile to figure out.
So what I ask is that you go through this journey,
or at least during this month, you know,
is that you just notice.
Notice any attachments to outer wisdom.
So that might look like food rules.
Are you attached to rules about when you're supposed to eat,
how much you're supposed to eat?
What kinds of foods are allowed or not?
Are you attached to dieting?
Are you attached to other people's opinions on health?
I'm not asking you to change anything,
or do anything, just notice.
And then when you notice it, just ask,
what would it mean to let go of that?
What would it mean, you know,
to go out to dinner and look at a menu
without your food rules?
What would it mean to say to yourself,
"Okay, I want to lose a few pounds after the holidays."
And what would it mean to not do
that through restrictive dieting or overexercise?
Just get curious about it, that's the first step.
I'm gonna talk so much more about the next steps.
Don't worry, for now just take this in.
Share this video.
I ask, for this whole whole series,
I really want to help people heal their relationships
with food because it's brought me so much peace.
So if you know someone struggling with this,
it would mean so much to me if you would share it with them,
and then we can really create this community
that can go through this together.
And, you know, I hope that you'll use the comments
as a space to kindly communicate, you know, share.
Share, today, a piece of inner wisdom
that you've learned about yourself.
Just as a reminder, I touched on this last week,
but my new course, which is "Mind Over Meal Prep"
is open this week for enrollment.
It's teaching meal prep through the lens of mindfulness.
And you know, this series on YouTube and email is free.
And if you want to support this series,
and you're interested in mindfulness and meal prep,
then, you know, enrolling in that course
is a great way to support this free series.
So that's it for now.
This month, we were getting so serious
about how really, for the first time, I am seeing
that it's all a matter of "Mind Over Munch."
(upbeat music)