Eat When Hungry: My Launch of a Signature Series with Dr. Doug Lisle
Dr. Lisle and I work together on this Transform Shadows signature series titled Eat When Hungry. More episodes will follow.
Eat When Hungry: My Journey Through a Complex Labyrinth
Three years ago, I started working in earnest on creating educational resources that reflected and felt like what I was experiencing in my personal transformation of losing half my weight. Transform Shadows is the result of that work, and it continues to evolve. Today marks another step.
My goal has been to create a bank of free educational resources. The 3:00 am resources. The resources that you seek when you look for a different way of living, a healthier way of living, a way of living that you know is best for you. A way of living built on truth, not gimmicks. I know how this works. I lived this life. For years. Change sometimes takes time.
Today, my bank of resources broadens with the launch of my first video interview. A very special guest, Dr. Doug Lisle, joins me for this signature series titled Eat When Hungry: My Epic Journey Through a Complex Labyrinth. Dr. Lisle is a well-known expert in the plant-based world, and his work has helped me in my own journey.
Flipping the script for an interview like this, Dr. Lisle actually interviews me about my journey to lose half my weight and transform my shadows. This approach gave me an opportunity to explain my story and resources in ways that may help someone else in their journey.
Our discussion provides a rich tapestry of ideas that weave together our distinct personal and professional experiences for the purpose of sharing real information that may help others in their own health, wellness, and weight loss journeys. In this first episode, we discuss the complexity of such a journey through an overview of my story and educational resources. Our discussion ends with some advice about the mindsets needed for such a journey and messages of personal agency and hope.
My Eat When Hungry Venn Diagram
This is a before and after picture that is part of the first Eat When Hungry episode. I have lost half my weight, which I did for health reasons and to reconcile the person I wanted to be with the person I am. I liked myself, but I did not like how I felt. I felt unhealthy. I knew what I should do, but I was not able to follow through on what I knew.
One of my mottos has been, “I was not broken, and I am not fixed.” This saying is a part of my self-talk that has helped me get through a lot of challenging situations. I still am the same person with the same strengths and the same struggles. I am still myself, with new ways of acting and living in a healthier version of myself.
Before I launched my story last November, I created a visual aid in which I laid out all the understandings, actions, and processes that I needed to do to lose half my weight and make the necessary lifestyle changes to improve my health and wellness.
When I saw all these understandings, actions, and processes of personal change laid out in a Venn diagram (see below), the results overwhelmed and validated my lifelong battles: no wonder this was so difficult. No wonder sustaining long-term weight loss has a 97% failure rate. No wonder I had failed and failed and failed, over and over and over again.
In this first episode, I share more of my story and overview my visual aid. This visual aid is both story and syllabus for what I want to do over time around personal change, obesity, plant-based eating, and creating resources in my spare time. In future episodes, Dr. Lisle and I will delve into other facets of my story and ideas from my Venn diagram as a starting point for similar discussions.
For those interested in my Venn diagram, I plan to turn this diagram into a broader educational tool that goes beyond my own story, so that others can use a similar chart as a possible educational resource in their own health, wellness, and weight loss journeys. For now, this is a visual aid of my story.
Dr. Lisle brings his wealth of experiences as a psychologist who has worked with thousands of people on their own weight loss journeys, particularly in the plant-based world. Dr. Lisle wrote the book The Pleasure Trap with his friend Dr. Alan Goldhamer, founder of True North Health Center. Dr. Lisle founded Esteem Dynamics where he works with Dr. Jen Howk, and the two of them are writing a book. Dr. Lisle is a regular guest on Chef AJ and shares his wisdom in myriad ways with others.
Here is my full Venn diagram.
I have placed Eat When Hungry in the center because that is the crux of the issue for losing weight. But, finding my hunger drive was difficult for most of my life because it was obscured by the foods I was eating. Personally, I have had to remove a whole list of trigger foods to find my hunger drive, including processed foods, salt, oil, and sugar.
The results have truly transformed my life in unimaginable ways. Finding my hunger drive was a multi-year, multifaceted, and multidimensional process. But, now that I “see” and understand my hunger drive, I can’t “unsee” it. And, this enduring understanding gives me the greatest hope for my long-term success. I understand the why of my weight for the first time in my life.
Astute readers and viewers will notice that I have added the concept of Transcend to my reflective processes for personal change since Dr. Lisle and I filmed this interview. This is what I term my Transform Shadows Framework, which encapsulates the reflective processes that I use to make my lifestyle changes. These processes include Name My Shadows, Face My Shadows, Understand My Shadows, Fight My Shadows, Reframe My Shadows, and Transcend My Shadows.
While I wish I stayed in a space of transcendence all the time, my reality is that I go in and out of that feeling. Some days are easy and effortless while other days require me to work through my shadows to maintain health, wellness, and weight loss. Who I am has not changed, so I have to engage in regular Shadow Boxing around familiar battles. But how I live, act and fight have changed. In short, I eat in color to live in color, and that state of living has been and is well worth the effort.
This is my overview of my Venn diagram. Some people may have an easier time following this one. In our Eat When Hungry episode, I explain this one first and then do a short summary of the different components in my full Venn diagram, pictured above.
Note: My work and video are not intended to take the place of medical advice. Consult your doctor before making changes in your own health, wellness, and weight loss journey.
