The Nude Nutritionist, Lyndi Cohen, on How to Farewell Binging Food & Booze

Today we talk to Lyndi Cohen, AKA The Nude Nutritionist, about making peace with food and booze. Lyndi helps people to farewell binge and emotional eating and to find a healthier and more balanced way to think about and approach food, based on self-compassion, acceptance and kindness. Lyndi also happens to be an alcohol-free woman. Lyndi opens up about the surprising benefits she discovered, such as reduced anxiety and enhanced well-being, and dives into the mindset shifts and challenges she faced along the way. We talk about How to control sugar binges, why alcohol makes us look bloated, how to cope with emotional eating and drinking and why self-compassion is key to attaining a balanced approach to eating and drinking. Get ready to explore the broader implications of alcohol consumption on mental health and the pivotal role of self-awareness in reshaping one's relationship with alcohol and food.

LEARN MORE ABOUT LYNDI

• Website - https://lyndicohen.com/
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nude_nutritionist/?hl=en
•  Booze Break - https://myboozebreak.com

MEG

Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
Unwined Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
Sober Socialising workshop at Seadrift Distillery: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/confident-and-cozy-alcohol-free-socialising-for-winter-tickets-934198341387?aff=oddtdtcreator

BELLA

Isabella Ferguson: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Instagram: @alcoholandstresswithisabella
Free 5-Day DO I HAVE A DRINKING PROBLEM? Clarify and focus series: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/doIhaveadrinkingproblemwithisabellaferguson
Alcohol Freedom Small Group Challenge - Register here: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/alcoholfreedomchallenge
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:33

Today I'm really excited because I get to welcome Lindy Cohen, who's also known as the nude nutritionist. So Lindy is well nutritionist, also a dietician who has ditched diets herself and is known for calling out nutrition nonsense, promoting real health and body acceptance. Lindy is also the host of no Wellness Wankery podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:59

Welcome, thank you for having me. What a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I'm just really excited that you are here, because alcohol is a big topic but it often goes hand in hand with conversations around nutrition. I don't think we've really dug deep enough in the Not Drinking Today podcast and explored this enough, so I'm just so excited to have you on here to answer a lot of our questions. Do you mind if I just ask with us or open up with a question that I know lots of people want to know upfront? You know they want to know who am I dealing with here. What is your relationship like with alcohol personally?

Speaker 2: 2:43

Oh, my goodness, my relationship with alcohol. We've been through some things together recently. I was always the default drinker. If you asked me if I wanted a glass of rosé, the answer was yes. The answer was always yes. It didn't matter what you were offering me. If everyone else was drinking, I was drinking too.

Speaker 2: 3:00

I didn't take a moment to stop and think how alcohol was affecting me. In fact, I kind of thought that not drinking alcohol would make me boring, and I didn't want to be boring. However, I also had pretty crippling anxiety from the age of 21, when I was first diagnosed, up until well a few years ago when I fell pregnant with my first child and poof, what do you know? My anxiety disappeared. Now the thinking was either it was going to be hormones or it was going to be alcohol. So once I'd had my baby, I resumed drinking alcohol. In fact, I remember celebrating in the hospital bed with a glass of red wine, which now kind of boggles my mind. But there I was, I was drinking again and my anxiety did come back. So after, when I felt pregnant with my second child, I thought oh, you know what I've, I've really got it. I owe it to myself to give it a go and just become curious about how not drinking alcohol is going to make me feel. And what I noticed is that even after I had my baby, my anxiety still has not come back. I'm not drinking alcohol because I feel too good. I feel too good. I don't want to sacrifice this.

Speaker 2: 4:15

I also noticed a cumulative benefit of not drinking alcohol that surprised me. I think we often talk a lot about well going 30 days. You're going to notice benefits and you most certainly will. What I noticed is each month I continued not drinking. I felt better and better. So I kind of feel like I don't want to trade a handful of feel-good, tipsy moments for this kind of feel-good high that doesn't wear off when I'm not drinking alcohol. And so my relationship with alcohol these days is I've come to have a bit of indifference to it and the fact that it doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't control me. I don't think about it overly too much, apart from maybe having a few of those alcohol-free options ready to go. So I don't feel like I'm missing out and otherwise I say we're in a really good place. Alcohol and I.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Yeah, and for listeners out there, Lindy, you just are glowing with health, the skin, the skin, the hair, so it's like it's working for you in every way, shape and form. Now you touched on just not having well having an indifference towards alcohol. I mean, that is the juicy spot where so many people want to end up. There's no feelings of deprivation or desire there, so you can't really think of any underlying reasons there to drink it. How did you get to that place?

Speaker 2: 5:42

Well, I certainly wouldn't say this was an overnight situation. I've done a lot of work to get to this point. I certainly remember feeling as though my life was quite boring when I wasn't drinking alcohol. I remember feeling like my life used to be fun and exciting, and then I realized that all the things I was doing when I was drinking alcohol were dead boring. If I needed to escape my life by drinking alcohol to make the thing fun, then maybe I just didn't like doing all those things, and so that was a bit of a big change.

Speaker 2: 6:07

I had to change how I lived my life and, of course, having kids made it, of course, a little bit more convenient, because suddenly I wasn't doing as many wild Saturday nights out.

Speaker 2: 6:18

But my friends were still drinking, my family's still all drink, and so I really kind of had to get curious about why I was drinking and, to be honest, proved to myself again and again and again that I could have fun without alcohol. So it required me being in some uncomfortable situations where I did feel like I would love to have a glass to help me soothe myself, but then going through it and coming out on the other side and going. I had a really good time and I don't have the following morning self-loathing that I was so used to. I thought was just a normal part of my personality, to be honest, and it was kind of mind blowing to me as well that I had gone so many years with such overwhelming anxiety, had seen so many mental health care professionals, so many doctors, without anyone going. Hey, have you thought that maybe drinking less alcohol is going to make a big difference? And that's why I just want everyone to know that, hey, it's possible, you can get huge changes from even drinking less.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Yeah, I often say it's calm, contentedness and the confidence that you can often just receive on the other side, which often aren't the benefits that other people kind of associate being alcohol-free with.

Speaker 2: 7:38

Yeah, I also feel like I cope better.

Speaker 2: 7:41

I don't know how I would manage my life without it. I feel I see a lot of women talking about the overwhelm of working and having kids and it's, and it is so intense and it's so wild. And then there's also the mummy drinking culture of kind of going I'm going to drink alcohol so I can kind of get through the day, but all I feel like that makes dealing with everything so much more tricky, and so it's kind of like just that little curiosity go like could you maybe do a little experiment and just become curious?

Speaker 1: 8:10

but maybe it would be easier not to drink yeah, and you beautifully said it was putting yourself in some uncomfortable positions, but then it's almost then providing you with evidence that slowly filters down, that slowly informs that sort of belief system that, oh my God, I can do it and feel much better in the process, and that kind of you build that over time. Lindy, I've just got so many questions so I'm just going to start firing off them. When you're going alcohol-free, particularly if you've been a drinker that's relied on well, have been drinking a lot of sugary drinks like wine I imagine that when you then stop drinking, your blood sugar balances can be quite all over the place and lacking stability. Are there any hot nutrition tips, I guess, about how to sort of stabilize your sugars, keep those cravings down, to sort of help that process in the early few weeks?

Speaker 2: 9:15

And I guess a precursor question is well, why is it the case that our blood sugars are going up and down when we stop alcohol. Okay, well, first things to note is that if you are going from an alcohol option which does include sugars and it also includes alcohol, it is going to be higher in calories than going for a non-alcoholic but high sugar version. Plus, much better for you to have that full sugar version and I know we hear all about these in the media, everyone's going. Soft drinks are the worst thing you could possibly ever have. But when we're looking at the two, we're comparing an alcoholic drink versus a soft drink Any healthcare professional is going to agree with you that going for that non-alcoholic version is going to be healthier. So, just if we're looking at the two options, just to be clear, that is how it is.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Now, why would we be getting those sugar spikes? Well, naturally, when we're having something that is high in sugar that doesn't have any fiber or any protein or fat to help us slowly absorb it into our bloodstream, it hits our bloodstream really quickly, causing this massive spike and then a really quick come down that can leave us with increased cravings and feeling a little bit edgy and lacking in energy, and so we don't really want these things. Now, what I often recommend people do is they'll go. Well, I still want the chocolate, and I personally think a life without chocolate and the things you love is not one. I want to live, and potentially, we can all cut out sugar for a temporary amount of time, but if we want to enjoy the benefits of eating less sugar, we need to be able to do it for the rest of our lives, and so any change we do has to be so much more sustainable than I think current practice tells us it should be. So instead, what I like to do is not put sugar on a pedestal, which is only going to increase our cravings for it.

Speaker 2: 11:03

I think a lot of people do this when they cut out alcohol and they stress out I'm eating more sugar. Oh, my goodness, I have to try and get on top of my sugar cravings. I have to stop them. I have to control sugar, and all we do is make this forbidden fruit so much more tempting, and all we do is make this forbidden fruit so much more tempting. I also have experience with binge eating disorder. It is my specialty. I help people who feel out of control with food feel relaxed around food.

Speaker 2: 11:25

So this is another real expertise area of mine, and so what I don't want you to do is to try and eliminate sugar to try and make up for eating too much sugar. Instead, do an add, not restrict, approach. So what this might look like is you're going okay, oh damn, I really have a craving at the moment, maybe for alcohol. I'm going to go for something sugary instead, instead of going, oh, I'm going to try and limit how much I'm eating. Why don't you take the piece of let's say it's chocolate, pop it onto a plate? Firstly, out of control, eating doesn't really happen on plates.

Speaker 1: 11:57

It doesn't.

Speaker 2: 11:58

It happens when we're crouched in the pantry like a crazed rabbit, it does it. Does you feel like a squirrel getting caught in the headlights when someone comes home and we go?

Speaker 1: 12:10

you caught me, I'm doing it again Eating my cherry ripes in the car when I'm hiding from the kids. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:16

There is never a plate involved. So this sounds I know you're going to go this sounds too simple, it's dumb, it's that simple. But if you pop it on a plate, you automatically transform the out of controlness you feel around sugar. Now, if you just ate a few squares of chocolate, it's going to satisfy you emotionally but it's not going to satisfy you physically. And you know that feeling where you feel like you noticed the off switch, where your body goes oh, we've had enough.

Speaker 2: 12:43

If you notice you don't have an off switch, it's probably because you're not ticking off both emotional hunger and physical hunger, right? So the chocolate's going to take that emotional hunger. Now let's go in with our physical hunger. So if we want to add, not subtract we've got our plate with a bit of chocolate. We can add in a handful of nuts, add in maybe some crackers and maybe some hummus. Or maybe you're a salty, fatty, craving kind of person and you want some chips, and that's your thing. Have your chips. But what else can we add to this equation so that you now have a plate that's maybe got some carrots on it as well? Maybe you've got a couple of dried dates and some peanut butter and suddenly you have a really nice lush snack that is truly satisfying you.

Speaker 2: 13:29

What you're going to avoid at this point is those blood sugar peaks, because we're adding in fiber, we're adding in protein, we're adding in fat, so you're going to feel better, which means you're not going to get a cascade of cravings and you're not going to end up in what I call avalanche eating, which is when one snack turns into 507 snacks and next thing you look around, you're not even hungry for dinner anymore because you ate the entire pantry. So this is a really easy solution for that, and I always think about it like this If you have to add in 200 calories but you save yourself from eating 2000 calories, you win. You always win. So always think about I always think of them as sacrificial calories. You will feel more satisfied and you probably will do less out of control eating as a result.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Oh, such wonderful tips. I've been taking a lot of notes and I imagine that stress is a common factor when it comes to both binge eating but also binge drinking. So it kind of I know that a lot of people sort of there tends to be a bit of a connecting thread with some people that I find that there's a bit of a loop with alcohol binge eating or suddenly doing an alcohol-free health kick, going really clean eating and lots of exercise, the motivation ends. Then you start the whole big eating, big drinking regime. Have you seen this as well in your practice and is there any words of advice there? I guess it's a mindset as well as some practical tips that are related to probably what you just mentioned as well.

Speaker 2: 15:14

Absolutely. Now this is the all or nothing approach to eating and drinking alcohol, and it's incredibly common. In fact, I think it's kind of the norm. And when you live in a society that the wellness culture tells us we have to look like Gwyneth Paltrow and spend as much money to sell a kidney in order to be able to afford the superfoods that someone like her eats, it can make you feel like you're either on or you're off. Now one thought is really important to realize is that emotional eating is a coping strategy and emotional drinking is a coping strategy too. Now, when they are our go-to coping strategies, that is when it becomes a problem. So think about emotional eating. If you're occasionally going, oh, I had a really tough day, I'm going to have a brownie, I'm going to sit here, I'm going to enjoy it, and you move on with your day, and that happens occasionally, there's no problem with that. In fact, that's well within the realm of normal. Now, when that starts to become your go-to strategy when I've had a hard day, this is how I cope that is problematic.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Or perhaps you were raised in a family where you were told to finish everything on your plate, or anytime something good happened, your parents rewarded you with food. You can also do emotional eating on the flip side. When something good happens to you, you go. I celebrate with alcohol, I celebrate with a glass of champagne, I celebrate by eating food, and so it is. Firstly, the most important thing is to notice the fact that when you were having an emotional reaction, your default is to come towards alcohol and food, if you can become mindful of how often that's happening, even if you make no changes yet. But you're going. Okay, I've noticed this link. You have already made a huge impact in your emotional drinking and your emotional eating. So that's step one, and then we can start to interrupt it.

Speaker 2: 16:56

One option I like to introduce is the piggyback method. Now, piggyback method is kind of like if you've ever been told that anytime you have a sugar craving you should meditate on a rock or like go for a walk, and you're just thinking like cool, but never going to happen, like who is doing that? So if that feels as outlandish to you as it does to me, we know that going for a walk is probably a really good way of coping with stress, or meditating or journaling and you know all that kind of cliche advice but like it's a huge step to go from emotional drinking, emotional eating, to doing that journaling in a crop top, right, yeah, so instead, what I recommend you do is piggyback it. So we're going to go right with the emotional eating as an example. I want you to kind of like you mindfully, recognize that you have this craving. With the emotional eating. You might actually go all right, I am going to do a degree of emotional eating, but I'm going to do it mindfully. And then I'm going to piggyback on a new coping strategy. So I'm going to go all right, I'm going to go for a walk after I do my emotional eating, or I'm going to go and call a friend, or, you know, just write notes in my phone ferociously until the feeling starts to subside. And then what we do is we start to introduce this new, better coping strategy and soon it can become our default. It's almost like a transitionary period.

Speaker 2: 18:11

That is very contrary to the all or nothing approach. I will say as well in this all or nothing approach, we have this idea of perfect eating that in order to be healthy, we need to eat perfectly. And perhaps you've tried to lose weight in the past and if you didn't stick to anything religiously, you didn't get the results that you wanted to get. When I recovered from becoming a binge eater, I lost 20 kilograms in my recovery process. It took me four years to lose 20 kilograms. Now, if you look at that, that's 100 grams a week, and if I'd hopped on the scale and thought I'm only losing 100 grams a week, I absolutely would have given up. But I didn't have a perfect eating approach. I had a healthy enough approach.

Speaker 2: 18:53

So if we can start to adopt a healthy enough approach to our eating habits, where we go, you know what? I just have to be healthy enough. I don't need to aim for perfect. It means that we don't see a blowout as a failure. We don't think we need to start from scratch. We don't swing the health pendulum all the way to the other extreme, which only sets us up for more binge eating, more binge drinking. We kind of go. You know what? Maybe I had a glass of alcohol on the weekend. It didn't make me feel good. Instead of beating yourself up over it, we just go. Okay, listen, I'm curious about that. I wonder why it happened, and maybe on Monday. I don't need to try and counteract it, I just need to keep going back to what I was doing before.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Yeah, I almost wanted just to really breathe out when you were talking through that, because it's like, oh, just take the pressure off. You know, because we're so culturally influenced by what we're meant to do, how we're meant to look so many rules and we create these lists and we think, okay, tomorrow I'm going to do X, how we're meant to look so many rules and we create these lists and we think, okay, tomorrow I'm going to do X, y, z, and it's going to make me this sort of person and it's that setting yourself up for failure which has you seemingly feeling so bad. But I love your approach because it's a very gentle, compassionate approach to you. Know, something we have to do to survive we have to eat, we have to drink. We're making so many choices about it every day. Just take the foot off the pedal and relax about it. I love it. It does feel better, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 20:24

It does. I also just want to say I think we have this idea that if we are hard on ourselves, that we're going have this idea that if we're we are hard on ourselves, that we're going through better. And then if we, if we are like we talk so badly to ourselves oh you're such a pig, I can't believe you ate that. You messed up again. You're pathetic. You have no willpower. Oh, how come everyone else can stick to their diet, but you can't? There's something wrong with you. We say these things to ourselves and we think that it's going to motivate us. In fact, it has the exact opposite impact.

Speaker 2: 20:50

And think about a car that you love, a new, brand new car that you take such good care of. You want to wash it, you're really proud of it, you naturally take really good care of it compared to, like a car, an old, beat up car it's got tears, it's got stains, you kind of, oh whatever, who cares about this old, this old thing? And so it's just an analogy of going. We actually take much better care of things, naturally, that we love, and we show love too. So if you are giving your body love, I think it's a good way to be. I think this idea that learning to like your body with its imperfections will make you, you know, be okay with just being a bit blur and looking a bit average, but I actually think it actually helps you take much better care of your body, exercise more consistently, drink less alcohol, eat healthier foods, and it's way more enjoyable too.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Yeah, well said and it's something that is very much a central conversation piece with lots of my clients as well that particularly driven personalities that do fall into that extreme trap with food and alcohol and I'm not a food specialist by any means, we touch on the subjects but I defer to you most certainly, but that you get caught in that black and white cognitive distortion.

Speaker 1: 22:10

That you get caught in that black and white cognitive distortion, that style of thinking and that may have served a purpose or seemingly served your purpose in your career to have motivated you, like you said, or achieve certain things.

Speaker 1: 22:23

But yeah, one of the steps we often do is when you hear those voices, that internal monologue, to pause, ask why is it there, what's its purpose, and just sort of embrace it and say I don't need you anymore, those voices, that internal monologue, to pause, ask why is it there, what's its purpose, and just sort of embrace it and say I don't need you anymore to be that kind of person because it does end up damaging your self-esteem and can really hamper the motivation. I digress, lindy, look, another question that I really wanted to ask you and when you do give up alcohol and often it can be a real driver for giving up alcohol is when you look in the mirror and you just go oh my God, I'm so bloated. This face, your skin is a bit wan. You actually look a bit puffy in the cheeks and it really just takes seven to 10 days of a nice bit of an exercise regime drinking lots of water and stopping alcohol to look dramatically better. Why is that?

Speaker 2: 23:23

So many reasons. I really put this down to probably a reduction in inflammation, and we know that alcohol can cause inflammation in the body. This is what the research points to, and so there is going to be that degree. You're probably going to notice that your sleep quality improves. Your motivation to move your body is also increased.

Speaker 2: 23:41

You're probably not as dehydrated and we know that there's a real correlation between hydration levels and better skin quality and there's also lots of research around getting antioxidants in the foods that we eat and the glowiness and the attractiveness that you have through your skin, and I think that alcohol is one of those foods or things that we consume that actually prevents us from absorbing as many nutrients. So there's also that You're probably getting an increase in nutrient levels as well, and there are just so many things that are contributing to you quite instantly feeling a whole lot better and looking a whole lot better. You're going to notice people make compliments and they don't know what you're doing, but they want in on that. It's true, your little secret or not? Please do share with other people. It's true, it's your little secret or not? Please do share with other people.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Now you've got a wonderful program, don't you that? It's a podcast and it's really designed to help people break free from the booze. Would you mind telling us a bit about that?

Speaker 2: 24:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:47

So Booze Break is an audio guide, rather, and it is the idea that people learn really effectively by being on the go.

Speaker 2: 24:55

We're really busy and it's kind of like popping into your ear hole, giving you a very nonjudgmental and very practical way to think about alcohol in a different way reframe it, help you feel, get that high feeling a lot quicker and realize that you don't need to sacrifice your life.

Speaker 2: 25:15

It's in conjunction with Maz Compton, who has been booze-free for many, many years, and she was a problem drinker at one point, drinking two to three bottles a night, and so between her and I we bring our expertise to kind of talk about the nutrition aspects. Between her and I, we bring our expertise to kind of talk about the nutrition aspects, the health benefits. But more than that, how can we actually be booze free and for it not just to be a blip on the radar and to lead to more mindless drinking. In fact, I kind of don't mind if all that it accomplishes is a new, reframed approach to how you think about alcohol, so you go from becoming a default drinker to a mindful drinker, or if you want to choose to never drink again, then that is also an option. So that is kind of just creating that better relationship with alcohol.

Speaker 1: 25:59

Fabulous. Look. More programs like this out there the better, and I mean it sounds fabulous. A wonderful combination of two expertise there. I love it, and we'll place a lot of two expertise there. I love it and we'll place a lot of well, most certainly a link to this wonderful program in our show notes. Before I just ask you what else you might have on the horizon and anything else you might want to say to listeners out there that are struggling with alcohol, that want to take some steps to take a break, and just would love a bit of guidance from your perspective about where they should go. Yeah, I'd love to know. Well, two things that listeners often ask. First of all, what is your favorite go-to alcohol-free drink? So just something quite light and easy to answer. But also, what do you now say? So when you're out and about socially, you might be in a bit of a high-pressure function event, a bit glamorous or I don't know. Just there's lots of people, there's lots of people drinking and you're asked that question red, white or bubbles, what are you having?

Speaker 2: 27:07

Ah, good question. I love it and and I do go on TV quite a bit and I end up in media events, and media events are boozy, oh my goodness, they are boozy and glamorous. And sparkling water is a big default. But you know what else is? A really nice, easy one that I can often get is a tonic water, just plain tonic water. It still just tricks my brain into thinking I'm having a gin and tonic. No one else knows, no one questions me. It tastes fun as well and I don't feel like I can just keep drinking it and drinking it as well. Yeah, it's got that bitter feeling. Yeah, it's bitter. So I find that a really nice default that you can find almost anywhere, even if they don't have alcohol-free options. But if I had to choose my own best favorite alcohol-free option, I love a bottle of non-alcoholic.

Speaker 1: 27:54

So do I. Why not?

Speaker 2: 27:55

Yeah, I feel like there's an art to cracking open the bottle that feels reminiscent of opening up a bottle of wine. My friends don't even realize that it's not alcoholic. I don't have to go into the whole explainer Not that I mind going into the explainer but I just feel like it's a non-issue with my non.

Speaker 1: 28:13

And so I really enjoy having that. Non is my top three because it doesn't try and mimic alcohol. It's got quite a sophisticated taste as well.

Speaker 2: 28:23

And I feel like more non-alcoholic options go down this route of not trying to be alcohol but giving us something that's got a complex flavour profile like none does.

Speaker 1: 28:31

And it has that beautiful ritual and look about it much like putting food on the plate. You've got the alcohol in the glass and you're feeling part of the ritual, yeah, and then I guess finally, well, God, there's still what's on the horizon. And what would you say to somebody that wants to take those steps to break up with alcohol?

Speaker 2: 28:56

There are so many steps that we could be taking, but I think one of the things to break out of that all or nothing thinking is not to set a crazy hectic deadline for yourself. I think sometimes it's like we're running a marathon and we set ourselves a target and then we hold our breath the whole time and we're like running and we have to exercise the whole time while we're doing it and we have to make all these changes all at once, and then we come out of that period of not drinking alcohol and we binge drink, and that's just not what I would like people to do. Instead, I want you just to become curious about what living without alcohol might be like for you and be okay with a degree of discomfort. We talked about this before that in order to grow and change, we need to be able to sit with discomfort. I know with myself, I was constantly running from discomfort.

Speaker 2: 29:43

I couldn't just let things be uncomfortable, and the truth of life is you can't avoid discomfort. You can just choose how you get the discomfort. So you're either going to sit with the discomfort of going oh I'd like a drink, but it's a little bit uncomfortable not having one or you can have the discomfort of waking up the next day after you did drink and feeling that discomfort. So choose your discomfort and that's all we're going to do here is just reallocate that discomfort to earlier in the piece. It's a bit of a delayed gratification kind of thing, and I think if you're using too much willpower trying to adopt all these other healthy habits, you're using up your willpower resources and you might find that you are less able to be more consistent. So stop relying on willpower, be gentler with yourself and just go on a little experiment and set yourself up with success with a fridge full of options that are going to be enjoyable for you. So you have that ritual there. I find that also a really handy thing to do.

Speaker 1: 30:42

Yeah, and it actually teaches you that you are stronger than what you actually thought. If you can sit through that discomfort, you get that sort of the return investment is your self-respect, self-confidence and empowerment that you oh, it wasn't as hard as I thought. The swagger, I can actually do it.

Speaker 2: 31:02

The swagger, the swagger, the mojo. Find your spark again. Yeah, that's what you're going to find by sitting with the discomfort. I know it doesn't feel like it, but that is the end result.

Speaker 1: 31:14

That's beautiful. Where would you like listeners to go to find you and what will they find? You know what have you got there to engage people in all things? Nutrition and, yeah, the services?

Speaker 2: 31:29

Well, you mentioned I'm the nude nutritionist. I promise you, if you go to my website, there are no nude photos, not even one. That's disappointing to anyone. I specialize in helping people create a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, and my specialty is helping anyone who is a dieter, who has spent their entire life trying different things, who feels like they have failed at absolutely everything they do.

Speaker 2: 31:54

I had experience with binge eating disorder. I think most of us do a degree of emotional eating, which is my kind of core focus. I help people feel normal, in control around food, so food can just be food and you can live your life without obsessing over how many calories you've eaten or how much weight you need to lose. I just help food become a non-issue in your life. So you can find me at lindycohencom, or just search the Nerd Nutritionist. You'll find me on Instagram, icohencom. Or just search the nutritionist you'll find me on instagram. I share lots and lots of free recipes, lots of free tips, lots of advice, and so, even if you're not willing to to make an investment at the moment, you can just go along, get a lot of free tips and because why not?

Speaker 1: 32:34

yeah, I I'm a follower on your instagram and I do love when your posts pop up in my feed. It it is inspiring. It's not that hard to cook healthily. Why can't I just work it out? Well, I'm here to help. Thank you, I think I need to jump onto that website. I'm moving house at the moment and states and my stress levels are high and you know that Nutella jar has crept out of the cupboard and there might be a tablespoon in it at the moment on my bench, I need a plate.

Speaker 2: 33:07

You need a plate. I'm not even kidding, I was just about to say I'm so glad you realized, throw in some strawberries. Now, this is a ritual, just like opening your bottle of naan it's going to transform it it's going to transform it.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Thank you so much. What a great guest, so just energetic. I got so much out of this conversation. Lindy Cohen, thank you for being a guest on Not Drinking Today podcast. What a pleasure, thank you.