502. Practical Ways to Improve Relationship With Food

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Are your eating habits helping or hurting your lifestyle? In this episode, Lesley Logan sits down with Lisa Salisbury, a health and weight loss coach, to discuss how we can redefine our relationship with food. Lisa shares insights into disordered eating, the history of the "clean plate club," and how to listen to your body's hunger signals without obsessing over diets. Tune in for practical, mindset-shifting strategies to enjoy food while making choices that truly serve you.


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In this episode you will learn about:

  • Lisa’s own journey from chronic dieting to mindful eating.
  • Dieting for weight loss versus having a healthy relationship with food.
  • How food connects people and why eating should be about enjoyment.
  • The surprising history behind the "clean plate club" and its lasting effects.
  • The signs of disordered eating and how to shift towards intuitive eating.
  • How to identify hunger cues and stop eating before feeling overfull.
  • The two-bite challenge: recognizing fullness without food guilt.


Episode References/Links:


Guest Bio:

Lisa Salisbury is a former chronic dieter on a mission to help women stop obsessing about everything they eat and feel confident in their ability to lose weight without a diet app. She teaches them to stop counting and calculating all their food and check in with their body. Most of all, she helps women make their lives amazing so food doesn't have the job of comforter, compensator and celebrator. She hosts the top 100 podcast Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well. She is a certified Health, Life and Weight Loss Coach, with a BS in Health and Human Performance.

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Episode Transcript:

Lisa Salisbury 0:00  

Food has always brought people together, because you cook in big batches, and it's just kind of the way humans evolved to eat together. And so there is connection with food. And if we try to pretend that there isn't, I think it's just a losing battle.


Lesley Logan 0:16  

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. 


Lesley Logan 0:59  

All right, loves, I'm gonna tell you right now that I am pleasantly surprised, amazed, like, excited for this episode that you're about to listen to. I'm gonna let you in a little secret. I do my very best not to have, like, a weight loss as a topic for being it till you see it, because there's just a lot around that, and it's complicated. And also, I don't want anyone out there thinking that weight loss or their weight is actually the thing that's keeping them from being it till they see it. But there are things around our health and wellness and how we eat that can be. And so today's episode, I really hope that you do listen to it and you're not turned off by if their weight loss was in the title, or anything like that, that you actually take a listen because, especially if you are around my age or a little bit older, our relationship with food and how food was used can be complicated, even if we think we have a great one. And today's guest is Lisa Salisbury, and she's an incredible podcast host. I was able to be on her podcast, and the thing that I really love the most about this is it's not about weight loss at all. She actually, multiple times encourage people to eat more, and I think her story will resonate with a lot of you as well. What this is is about how we can and it's not also about like thinking food is just this boring cardboard. It's about how we choose to eat and how we eat, and how we can really make our lives more full in a good way, and not through, like over full through food. So I'm just gonna stop talking, because her words are so beautiful, and she's so thoughtful, and she's incredibly well researched in what she is doing, and I got a whole history lesson in here, so I'm just gonna say freaking great, super awesome, super informative. And I hope this gives you the permission that you might need when it comes to, hey, sit down with your meals, or if you sit down with your meals, or if you needed to be reminded to eat more, or if you just needed permission, like my husband gave me, to just leave some food on the plate. So here is Lisa Salisbury. 


Lesley Logan 2:59  

All right, Be It babe, I'm so excited to have this conversation. It's one we haven't had on the podcast before, and I think it's a really important one as a child from the 80s who was told to clean her plate because there's people starving in other places. It's interesting how that can affect how you how your whole life ends up being. And so I have Lisa Salisbury here. She is the host of Eat Well, Think Well, Be Well. And, nope, it's Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well. Let's get it right, Lesley. Anyways, we'll make sure that link is in the notes so it's just easy for you to find her amazing podcast. I was a guest on it, and I'm and so you can always start off with that episode. Lisa, thank you so much for being here. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you rock at? 


Lisa Salisbury 3:39  

Yeah, great. Thanks for having me, Lesley. I, like you said, my name is Lisa Salisbury. I'm a health coach and weight loss coach and podcaster. I was a chronic dieter, as many, many of you, and like you said, people from the 80s. So, started dieting in high school, started having babies, then in my 20s, and so my weight was just on an absolute roller coaster. And it's really quite a long story, as it is, for a lot of people, of how they get into the health and fitness space, health world, any kind of that sort of influence, and it's just usually through your own experiences, which was the same for me. So I just realized, hey, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to diet anymore. And I got my health coaching certification. And even through that, I thought I wasn't dieting. I thought that my last ditch effort to quote-unquote lose all of that baby weight was macro counting. And so I thought I wasn't dieting because I thought, oh, this is okay, because I can eat whatever I want as long as it fits your macros. That's like their tagline, right?


Lesley Logan 4:41  

It's kind of the same thing with Weight Watchers. It's kind of like you can eat whatever you want as long as it's in your points. So it's kind of like that, yeah.


Lisa Salisbury 4:46  

Right. Yeah, totally. And so my acute study partner that I had during that health coaching course, she gently, so gently, during the eating disorder, we said, oh, is there anything that you're noticing about yourself here? When we were talking about orthorexia, and she was really sweet, and really just opened my eyes to the fact that I was so anxious about meeting my macros that it was really affecting the way I showed up in the world. And so the first time that I sat down and ate lunch without weighing my portions was kind of like mind blowing for me to be like, oh, I'll just let my body decide when I've had enough. There was actually a big increase in anxiety. But then over time, of course, as I let that go, I saw, you know, just a change in my health as far as mental health around food. And then I went on to start coaching, and realized that most of my clients needed help around not so much about what to eat, you know, give them a food plan, but why they were eating when they didn't really want to be eating. Why they were eating when they were bored, frustrated, sad, confused. Why they were eating when they weren't hungry. And so that's when I went and got my life coaching certification, and I really helped them figure out that emotional eating piece which can or cannot have anything to do with weight loss. I have several clients come to me that are just like, I just want to be healthier around my relationship with food. And so whether they lose weight or not is neither here nor there, because they just want to feel like they're the ones making the decisions, and not the food making the decisions for them. 


Lesley Logan 4:46  

I love that you shared that last part about it's not necessarily about the weight loss for most people, it's like the relationship with food. My grandmother was a chronic dieter. Like, up 100 pounds down 100 pounds up, 100 pounds down. She was so pissed when they took Fin-Phen away from her. Like, she was like, this is the thing that worked. And I'm like, so it's killing people. They and they know it. 


Lisa Salisbury 6:29  

Small detail.


Lesley Logan 6:47  

Yeah. And so, like, I grew up around that, that is what the word diet actually means. When it's, what diet actually means, it's like, how you eat, not just like that you're on a diet, we're, every any which way you eat is a diet, guys, it's just that it's like some but we are trained that that word means, you're on a diet, you're trying to lose weight. And so then, there's people who are like, well, I just want to love the body that I'm in, and you can but if food is dictating how you are doing your life, and when you do things in your life, that can be a problem in allowing you to live the best life that you want to live. I want to just go back to something really quickly, and then I have, okay, orthorexia for the people who don't know what that word is, can you share what that is? 


Lisa Salisbury 7:29  

Yeah, that's kind of the obsession with eating healthy. So it's a fairly new eating disorder. In fact, I have to say, I'm not even sure if it's in the DSM yet, but it is being recognized as a real issue. So a lot of times, this is what we call just disordered eating. When you look at someone's nutrition, when they're like, here's what I ate today, and it's clearly, you know, from a list of 10 foods that are approved in their brains. That's orthorexia, having a lot of anxiety around, for example, I called a restaurant, I remember this particular time, they were a small restaurant, so they didn't have their nutritional information available to me, wasn't like a big chain, you know? And they're like, oh, if you email us, we can send it to you. And they didn't, and I called them several times to get it. That's orthorexia, right, to be so anxious that I need to put my macros in and hit it plus or minus five every single day. And some people think that's a great game. Some people are like, that's my favorite game with Tetris to play. Great. That's fine. You can absolutely count off macros and not have orthorexia, totally. That didn't work for me. My brain, I was like, I have to do this. And if I didn't, what was weird is I went to a lot of times, I would be like, well, I can't. And so now it's a cheat day. Now it's a eat whatever I want sort of day which is also disordered. 


Lesley Logan 8:56  

Yeah, I feel like there's more people with disordered eating than maybe they recognize. You mentioned a few signs of orthorexia, and some of those equal disordered eating. Is there any other signs of disordered eating? And mostly because what I'm hoping for today is I've always tried to make sure that everyone feels super loved on this show, that every listener knows even if I'm a Pilates instructor, I'm not here to make anyone change their body. I'm here about moving people, because I know movement heals and it's mental health and it's all this stuff, but I also know that there are things that we do out of habits and especially around food, that can be affecting us, having an amazing mental health life, or having fun in our life, or actually focusing on other things in our life. So if you can talk about like, some of the signs of disordered eating that people might not necessarily recognize.


Lisa Salisbury 9:42  

I think having just a really small list of foods that you are able to consume. So if you're like, I only eat chicken and these two kinds of fish or so if your list is really small, if you're excluding foods that are considered whole foods. So if you're excluding things, especially entire groups of food, like all carbohydrates, or if you're like a potato, which is grown in the ground, is somehow bad for you, obviously barring allergy or, you know, insensitivity, that kind of thing. But if you've excluded several whole foods, that would be concerning. If you're excluding ultra-processed foods, that's great. Let's do that. 


Lesley Logan 9:58  

You're fine, everyone. 


Lisa Salisbury 10:33  

Yeah. But if we're like, hey, we're going to exclude all kinds of different whole foods, then that would be kind of a hallmark if you are eating on the clock. So if you are like, I cannot, should not, not supposed to those types of words, eat before my alarm goes off at 1 pm there's a difference between intermittent fasting and being starving and gritting your teeth until 1 pm until 2 pm, until that moment, right? So you have to really look and check in with yourself is, am I doing this because I really, actually feel amazing, or am I doing this because if I don't, anxiety will skyrocket, because if I don't, I will have somehow lost control. Or if I, does that make sense?


Lesley Logan 11:19  

It totally makes sense. Also, it makes sense because I've been listening to Mindy Pelz on her fast like a girl thing, which is, yeah. And I would listen to her thing in the way she describes how you should feel on the fast. And then she's also very careful to qualify, like, if you have somewhat disordered eating, you should be doing this as a professional, and not on your own. And what's interesting is, as I was doing the fast like a girl thing, I was very consciously aware, like, okay, how am I going to do this? So I don't have control issues around it, because having grown up with the history of my grandma being on a diet, off the diet, so then, of course, I was, I'm the girl who was pulling out the magazine articles on all the exercises and putting them in a binder to do all of them, and then totally eliminating whole food groups most of high school and college. So I'm just really aware that it's easy for me to go, oh, this is like, something like, it's healthy to do it, so I'm gonna do it like this, and then get controlled about it. So, like, okay, I'm just gonna interestingly pretend to do it and see how I feel. And she had these tools. If you do get hungry, but you're not famished and you just need, you can do a cup of coffee. And so I was trying it out, and I could tell the difference between being like, I am really, actually hungry right now and I need to eat something, versus I'm actually just bored right now because I normally eat at eight. 


Lisa Salisbury 11:19  

Right, right, yeah. 


Lesley Logan 11:29  

Which is a really fascinating thing, because it's like, okay, well, I could do other I could do other things, then, why am I choosing to eat at eight o'clock, versus like, so it's just a really interesting thing, because you can't, I can see how someone could over control the healthy intermittent fasting process and make it an unhealthy thing for them. So thank you for sharing that. I want to just like, pick your brain a little bit, because you have so much information around this. You know, so many people are raised where food is a reward for, like, getting good grades or you're feeling bad. So then there's food, and then we have to eat. Can we talk a little bit about relationship with food? And like, are we supposed to just be agnostic? How do we what are we supposed to feel with food? Because I think it's really interesting, right? It's like a fun thing. Like, I want to get some ice cream right now. Like, how are we supposed to think about food in our lives? 


Lisa Salisbury 13:21  

It's such an interesting topic, because you'll find you know coaches who have trained at the same exact schools that I have will give you wildly different answers. Some people are like, food is fuel. That is it. You only eat it for fuel. And I have never, I tried that for a little while, and I never could get on board. I never could get on board with food as fuel, because the truth is, food is connection, and it always has been. Even in hunter-gatherer days, they ate together, right? I mean, I don't know, maybe the documentaries are incorrect. I wasn't there, but I think most tribal groups still ate together. Food has always brought people together, because you cook in big batches, and it's just kind of the way humans evolved to eat together. And so there is connection with food. And if we try to pretend that there isn't, I think it's just a losing battle. And so I have decided every time I eat I want it to be delicious, and when I think about food being fuel, that sounds like cardboard to me, right? Like, just hook me up to an IV, there's like. 


Lesley Logan 14:28  

No one's ever been excited to go get filled. I mean, like, no one is excited to fill up their gas tank, right? If you think about it, how many of us are waiting until, like, I've got one mile left, I better go, You know what I mean? So it's not exciting, and not the food has to be exciting. But I do love that you brought up connection because I think so many of us lack that in our daily lives. So much stuff is like, I mean, we're here on Zoom, right? So much stuff is digital and virtual, and so there's not that space. But I also think how much we've lost the connection around the eating as well. People eat alone at work, they eat at their desk, you know what I mean, or they're at home, working remote. They're by themselves. And so that would be an interesting maybe goal. It's like, how many meals can you actually have sitting down with someone that you love or care about or want to spend time with?


Lisa Salisbury 15:12  

It's actually a huge point that I make with my clients, because when we're talking about waiting until we're hungry to eat, because that's the nicest time to eat, by the way, is when you're hungry, when you're just mildly hungry, that's the nicest time to start eating. And so we talk about, okay, what does your lifestyle look like? What time do you eat with a family? Do you eat with a spouse? And what time is that? And we adjust the rest of their day and the rest of their eating if need be around that piece, because the relationships come first. And so I think that's kind of another thing about food, is that we want to focus on, I actually want to have dinner with my family regardless of what we're eating. The important piece is that we, and I still insist on this, because I'm neurotic. We set the table placements and everything. And like my kids know how, every one of them knows how to set a proper table, like where the fork goes and the cup and everything, because we sit and have dinner as a family. And so because that is important to me, it's far more important than what we're eating. And so I want food to be enjoyable, but it's not just about the food and when you're eating, and it's only about the food, and it's only about how good the food tastes. That's when you overeat, that's when you take in too much, that's when you feel yuck afterwards. That's when you're like, because the truth is, it doesn't matter if you're trying to lose weight or if you're not trying to lose weight, even if you're trying to gain weight, like, if you're trying to gain muscle or whatever, overeating actually feels terrible. We pretend that it doesn't. We pretend that it's so fun. We pretend like, oh, this was like, amazing, and, oh, I'm stuffed. And we pretend to have a happy face. But inside, let's think about how your body feels. It's not good. 


Lesley Logan 16:15  

It's not good. You don't even feel great the next morning, sometimes. Everyone loves Thanksgiving. I have to be so honest, I'm so grateful that my family is like, there's only four of us. It's not worth buying anything. Let's go to a restaurant. We have no leftovers. I love that, because there's a whole pressure around some of those holiday meals, like overeat. But it's true, and maybe we get this a good time to ask you, I don't actually people know when full is. Do you know what I mean? Like, I was listening to something about how, in Japan, they teach kids from the age of five how to eat until they're 80% full, how to know what that feels like. They, also, they take a bite of one thing, and they take a bite of a different thing and take a bite of a different thing, and so they're putting their fork down. They're enjoying the bite. They're enjoying the food. I don't eat, like that, I'm gonna eat all the salad, and then I'm gonna eat all the meat. I think that it has taken me, as a 41-year-old, oh, I'm full now, and to, like, stop eating no matter how delicious it is. And I think that's a really difficult thing. Like, where does that come from? Are we just so lacking and delicious food that we just keep going? Or, like, is it a learned behavior that we have?


Lisa Salisbury 17:59  

I definitely think it's learned behavior because if you watch a toddler eat, first of all, they're usually far too busy playing to eat. And then if you're like, Hey, come on, come on, you could drill them to the table when they're done, they're done, you cannot get that last bite of macaroni and cheese in them if they do not want to eat it. That's just it. When you're two, you actually are really good at hunger and fullness cues. I mean, really, babies, they don't stop nursing because the milk is out. They, the milk runs out because they've stopped nursing and trained, they train the mother, right? You, if you have been a nursing mother, or been associated or seen your sister, or whatever, their milk supply adjusts not immediately. I mean, I could have nursed triplets when I first had a baby, but eventually, it adjusts based on the child. And so we teach our children that you should eat past full a couple of ways. Number one, we offer them food and snacks to cure boredom and as rewards and to fix their owies, right? So we teach them that food is the answer to a lot of their emotional problems. I did this, too. I have four kids. I did it. I, no judgment, no shame. This is just what you do as a parent, because it works. It's fine, it's normal. 


Lesley Logan 18:00  

Yeah, I have no judgment, because I have seen a crying kid sometimes, like on an airplane, like, how do we stop? Yeah.


Lisa Salisbury 19:27  

Yeah. Like, please give that kid some goldfish. So I think that's the first thing that we do as parents. And then the other thing that we do to keep our kids from paying attention and letting them go by their own physical fullness cues is the clean your plate. You've got to clean your plate. You have to eat this if you want dessert. No more potatoes, if you don't eat the broccoli and that sort of thing. And so it really kind of messes with because they're like, well, I want the ice cream. And so they force down whatever is on their plate. And then, put ice cream on top of that. And so they're like, well, the right thing is to feel this way, because this is how it feels when I get to eat what I want to eat, the ice cream. And so the, you know, cleaning your plate is, well, it's a tricky topic. Do you want me to get into that as well? 


Lesley Logan 20:17  

I want because here's why, and this is for anyone listening, I think if you raised your kids this way, you shouldn't shame yourself about it, but I think it's good information, because it does, I swear it's ugly how when you're an adult, my husband, when we were first dating, I was like, I'm so full, and I would like, take another bite. And he's like, what are you doing? And I was like, well, I don't wanna waste the food. And he goes, you can just put it in a Tupperware. And I just started laughing. I was like, oh my God, I hear my parents, and my mom listens to this, so please don't get mad, but like, children are starving in Africa. You better eat your food. The young me didn't understand that the food on my plate is not going to any starving child. So like, it doesn't actually it's not being wasted at all. And so as an adult, I had to learn that because I was getting sick every night trying to finish the plate, and it really did affect my moods at night, my sleep at night. And those are the things, you guys, that if your sleep is affected, if your digestion system is not going well, that affects you from reaching the goals you have, because it becomes, your life starts to revolve around how you're feeling out of that one heavy or two heavy meals. And again, this is not a weight loss thing. This is a just a getting you, getting us a relationship around food that can allow us to live the life we want to live. So, I love to get into details of it. 


Lisa Salisbury 21:26  

Yeah. The thing about your mom saying that, is that, isn't it crazy how many people just nodded their heads, and I just already know this, because we all use the same phrase. Why? This is what I was like. Why do we all use this phrase? Where did this come from? So I started to just like Google a little bit, and right at the very top of Google, you can Google it yourself. The Clean Plate Club was an actual club in World War One. It was a government program and was started up again in World War Two, and the reason for this, so Clean Plate Clubs were established in elementary schools. So your grandmother was likely exposed to that phrase as a government program as an elementary school student, because that's back when her eyes are like, getting so big.


Lesley Logan 22:17  

This is like that. I'm sure, I'm sure there's a reason that had to do with the war, but keep going. 


Lisa Salisbury 22:22  

Yes, so okay, that's when, like, lunch ladies were actual, like making lunch back there, right? In actual kitchens. They weren't just serving up packaged foods like we get today. So they're making actual lunch. They're dishing up actual food. It's not that kids today don't get actual food, but I just mean, like dishing up a portion of meatloaf, right? And the idea was, the child would say, this is how much I want. And then when they would finish their plate and be part of the Clean Plate Club that indicated, I took the right amount for me. And there were rations. We were trying to conserve food, because for them, there were starving children in Europe. There was war-torn countries that we were trying to help, and we were shipping food to Europe. So the less that we could waste here really did help the European nations at that time, but as time went on, we weren't sending food to those nations, and we have more abundance in this country. And we do have the ability to send food in the 80s to Africa or to the other, you know, China, I got that one a lot, too, and still, we can waste a few bites of our food without that affecting it, because we're not on rations anymore. There were true rations in World War Two. Like, my grandma told me, they came around and asked, how much do you have of this and that and the other? And it's a story that sticks in my head, because she said, when they came around and they asked me how much sugar I had, I said I didn't have any, because I took all the sugar on my shelf, and I made sugar syrup, and I canned it so that I would have sugar syrup to can my peaches when it was time. And then I got my full ration of sugar so I could also make a jam. Poor woman, she was trying to, like, conserve food and do all her canning, and try and do that with, on sugar rations. But that's why I know they came around and asked, because. So there really were rations at that time. 


Lesley Logan 24:21  

So they were trying to keep, make sure that you're not, like, saying, I need a cup, and you only used a quarter. And it's like, well, we're in a, you don't need another because you're not using your.


Lisa Salisbury 24:21  

Right. 


Lesley Logan 24:29  

So this is very fascinating. This is interesting because they were actually like, kind of teaching people, I want this much meatloaf, and then I ate that much meatloaf. So I didn't waste anything, but I didn't ask for more than I needed, which is very different than how it you know, just like everything, it's like the game of telephone. How it translated to, which is, we aren't on rations anymore, but you should still clean your plate, because I always clean my plate, and we are not teaching kids how to pick a portion that they can then eat. 


Lisa Salisbury 25:00  

Well, portions, too, are such a mess, which I want to get into in a second, but I will say we do a lot of these things. This is one of my favorite jokes. I'm pretty sure I read it in the Reader's Digest when I was a kid. They're having a big family dinner, and the granddaughter is the one who's hosting. She's an adult, and she had cut off the edges of the ham, and her mom said, Why'd you cut off the edges of the ham? And she goes, I don't know, because you always did it. And the mom goes, well, I did it because my mom did it. And Grandma was, like, I only did it because it didn't fit in the pan, right? Like, we need to stop doing things because the ham didn't fit in the pan for our grandmothers, right? The problem is, in the 80s, a bagel was about three inches across. And in 2016 there was a big study done, and they called this portion distortion. So, in 2016, bagels averaged six inches across. We still consider that a portion. A bagel is a portion, right? So when you're like, well, we've got to teach kids what portions are. They don't even know what portions are appropriate for their bodies, because they go to a fast food restaurant and they're like, here is a portion of fries. But if you look at the nutrition label for what they are serving you as a portion of fries, it might be considered two or even three servings, right? So a serving size is much different than what we consider a portion. If you ever looked at the serving size of cold cereal, no, no teenage boy eats a serving size for cereal. 


Lesley Logan 26:26  

And here's why, here's what I noticed, guys, because in my 20s, trying to lose the Freshman 25 that I gained. I was like, I was doing the portion control situation. And I was like, let's say, a three-fourths of a cup. That was like, that's mostly what it is for cereal. And I'm like, how do you even measure that? You have a cup, a half a cup, a quarter. I do two measuring cups, and then I get this little itty-bitty, like, you couldn't fill up on that if you wanted to. 


Lisa Salisbury 26:52  

No, no. So we have all this portion distortion. And so we go to restaurants, and they're like, here's a portion. They never once asked how hungry I was. And if my husband and I ordered the same thing, our plates look exactly the same, even though he's six-five and, you know, 215, I am not that size. I do not need the same size portion, serving size that he does. And also, if I haven't eaten all day and he just ate lunch, maybe I am going to eat more than him. So there's just so many factors about what you're going to eat at that meal, and the restaurant never asks you. They just bring out the portion, right? So we have to learn to, like your husband said, put it in a Tupperware, put it in a to-go box. Or if it's a salad and it's dressed, or it's salmon, or it's not going to keep we have to be okay with leaving it behind. And it wasn't our job, wasn't our fault. If you asked for a half portion, would the restaurant even do it? I don't know. Maybe. You're still going to pay the same. It's not about the money you're paying for the experience, which goes back to food being as a positive part of relationship and connection. My husband and I went out to dinner last Friday for a date night. It didn't matter that we ate two different things. It didn't matter that I didn't finish mine and brought some home and he didn't finish his, but he decided not to bring it home. That's not what we were paying for. We were paying to not do the dishes. I was paying to not have the mental work of thinking of what to make and then making it and then cleaning it up. I'm the primary cook and cleaner in our house. Like it's fine, that's, he does other things. I'm not mad about it, but that's mental load. You're paying for all of that when you go out, you're not paying for three or four or 10 ounces of French fries? 


Lesley Logan 28:45  

Yeah, I am obsessed with this conversation, because I love the permission that you're giving every single person here. And this is like, it's an interesting way. It's just such an interesting way to think about all the different things that we do, and why do we do it. And I feel like that's like, kind of your way that you work with your clients. It's like, it's not about the diet and it's not about the weight loss, it's about understanding the choices that you're making and why you're making them, so that they're your choices and you're not being controlled by your choices. Am I correct? 


Lisa Salisbury 29:14  

Totally. Yeah. 


Lesley Logan 29:14  

Yeah. I guess the next question I have is, and maybe this is something you just work with people on is, how do we understand, in a sense it's going to sound so stupid, but only because I feel like someone's listening like, going, okay, that's me. What is the before feeling full feel like? Do you know what I mean? Because if we know that it takes forever, many minutes, to get from my mouth to my stomach, what are those signs? Because my friends used to make fun of me, because in college, I would pull out my napkin and put the death blanket on the meal, because I was trying to teach myself I'm getting full, and so I'm going to put the death blanket on. Maybe people are wondering what those signs are, what's their body telling them so that they can start to think about, do I need this other bite? Or can I take this home? Or can I just leave it here? 


Lisa Salisbury 29:54  

Yeah, totally. So I teach this as what I call a hunger scale. If you were to Google that you'll see lots of different versions of them. Most go from one to 10. I use a hunger scale that goes from negative 10 through zero to positive 10. And the reason is because negative 10 is very, very hungry and positive 10 is very, very full. They are equal distant from zero, which is neutral, because they're equally uncomfortable, right? Like I said before, positive 10, being super full seems like it's fun. It seems like it's fun to be like, roll me out of this restaurant. But it's uncomfortable when we're focusing just on how we feel in our bodies and not how we're beating ourselves up in our brains about it. That's a whole nother thing. But when we just focus on our bodies, they're equally uncomfortable. And then as we get closer to that neutral, that zero, where we're neither full nor hungry, we don't feel food in the stomach. We're not feeling like pressure, but we're also not hungry at all. That's zero. We want to spend most of the time at that point, right? So you want to wait until you're at a, what I call negative three to eat. So this is true signs of physical hunger. We're like, oh, feeling really light. Very first startings of your stomach, like turning a little bit, oh, I'm empty here. The reason this is the nicest time to start eating is because if you wait and get really hungry, when you wait and you're like, at a negative seven or eight, and you're cramped up. You put food in that cramped up stomach, and it cramps worse. And then it's, do you know what I'm talking about? 


Lesley Logan 31:25  

I do know, sorry about when you're like, yes, and also, then you're more uncomfortable, because you're almost like, you're eating faster, I don't know, like, it's like, oh my God, I just need to get this in me because I'm so famished. And then you, you don't even really, you don't even feel zero happen. You just get past it real quick. And then you're uncomfortable the other way. That's how, that's my experience.


Lisa Salisbury 31:45  

Totally. And so if we can catch it at just a negative three, and then we want to eat until we're at a positive three. So this is really not technical. I call this a meal. The reason I make a joke of that is because in every diet community out there, they're like, here's what to do if you're hungry, and they suggest this 100 calorie snack, 100 calorie snack packs. I mean, you get on Pinterest and you're like, snacks for weight loss. It's like, why? Why do we need a snack? If you're hungry, then we want to sit down and eat a meal. If you, if you get to the end of the day and you're like, gosh, I just was hungry all day. Look back. Did you just snack all day or did you ever wait for hunger, sit down, get out a place mat, get out a napkin, actually eat a meal until you are comfortable, and then get up and move on with your day. I guarantee, the solution for hunger and for being hungry all day is to eat a meal. Okay.


Lesley Logan 32:46  

Yeah, I love, I love this. I also love, I love it's like, like, not pomp and circumstance, but I really love that you're like, put a placement down, sit down, have a meal. My husband and I have lunch at not always together, but we eat our lunch at the dining room table in our house. We work from home, and we don't eat it at our desks. We eat it as much as possible at the table, with like the placemat and with the things, because it is, it's an event, and it's a pause, and it's a time to focus on that. And the next goal would be to put the phone down. That'd be great. But you know, like we're getting there, we're getting there, and I think that's an important thing. But I love that you're bringing up those, those snacks, because also, you guys, just eating a meal, or eating like half a sandwich, like making half the sandwich, you are gonna give your body exactly what it needs. It's not a distraction. Again, we're being it till we see it. If we're feeling hungry all day long, that is taking up space in your brain from other things.


Lisa Salisbury 33:42  

Totally. Yeah. So when you get to that positive three, here's some of the ways you're going to know it. Number one, you're going to feel like kind of a there's called a sigh. You're going to feel your body take a breath. Watch for that. That's often the time where things are shifting around. You're getting too satisfied. When you're at a positive three. You're not using the words full, stuffed. You're not feeling pressure, a lot of discomfort. You don't have to unbutton your pants. You're not wishing for stretchy pants. Okay, it's before that. So if you get to that point, you're like, oh, okay, this is, this is not a positive three. I'll try again tomorrow. It's no big deal. Experiment with this. When I assign this to my clients, when I give them the hunger scale, and I'm like, I want to see hunger scale numbers on your food journal, where they just like, write it down, you know, I was at a negative two and positive five or whatever, if they come back to me and every single meal says negative three, positive three. I'm like, I'm sorry you did not do the assignment, because the assignment is to experiment with it, which means you're going to take two bites less. You're going to leave two bites on your plate and see how that feels, and then in an hour, if you're like, yeah, actually, I really am still hungry. That wasn't quite enough. Fine. Eat more. But you can't know what your positive three is if you've been over-eating consistently, you can't really know what it is until you gradually get down to it. Yeah, the first couple days, you might overshoot, and then you might undershoot, and that's okay, because we live in a world where there is food on every corner. Right. There's no more scarcity. We don't live in caves and tribes anymore, but our brains, unfortunately, have not caught up with that and so we have to teach them that food's always available. 


Lesley Logan 35:30  

I love your permission to experiment and be curious, because I do think it is going to require, it's part of just being curious in our bodies, and that's something I'm like, really big, and that's why I love my Pilates because it's a way for me to be curious in my body. This is about being curious, not being perfect. This is about kind of understanding, and especially if you've never figured out what portions of food are going to put you in that positive three when you come at a negative three, versus what portions of food are you going to need if you're coming to negative five, these are good information to know, because then when you go out and you pick the meal, you can actually make that decision for yourself, and you can enjoy the company you're with, as opposed to being so focused on how many bites you're having or the macros like, my God, I could never. I couldn't. My friend is a macro coach, and I try, I literally try. I lasted one day, and I'm spending more time thinking about my food than I am anything else. And no offense to people who love their macros. Again, if it's working for you, that's great. But I think that what I truly love about what you're saying here and what your mission is is really to help people go back to food being part of the connection that they're trying to make in this world, and also really understanding what their needs are and meeting their body's needs.


Lisa Salisbury 36:38  

Yeah, totally. And when we appreciate food for what it is and for the relationships that we're forming when we eat together, we just don't require the need of food to be our comforter, compensator, celebrator, all the things that we use food for, we can drop all of that and still enjoy food at mealtime. Still be like this food is delicious, and still, sometimes, you know, we can eat the cookie or the breads or whatever you've previously said is off limits when we are eating these things in the right portions for our body. So most of the time, you feel gross when you eat those chocolate chip cookies, not because you had one, because you had four or five.


Lesley Logan 37:24  

Yeah, on a full stomach, because you finished your plate. 


Lisa Salisbury 37:27  

Yeah, yeah. Right? So we're like, oh yeah, sweets, they make me feel sick. Do they? Or did you just not leave room in your hunger scale for them? Like, if you stop, if you're like, oh hey, it's a dessert night, because, for whatever reason, you know, you made dessert or, I mean, I had fresh plums coming out my ears. We have this tree that reaches across our yard, and I swear, we get more plums than the neighbor does that actually grows the tree. And so, you know, I make a plum, a plum cobbler, so it's a dessert night. I keep that in mind when I'm eating dinner, because I'm like, I want to enjoy the plum cobbler, and so I include it as part of my hunger scale with that whole meal. 


Lesley Logan 38:07  

Lisa, thank you for opening our eyes up, because there's a lot that we have all learned here today. It's been permission-giving and also fun and a way to be curious. And I love your hunger scale. So you've given us so much, we'll take a brief break and then find out how people can find you, follow you and work with you. 


Lesley Logan 38:24  

All right, Lisa, where do you hang out? Where can people connect with you more?


Lisa Salisbury 38:27  

So mostly, I'm on Instagram that's Well_With_Lisa, well with Lisa with those spaces in there and a lot of Instagram links you back to my podcast. I share a lot of the podcast content on Instagram, and that's Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well on any of your favorite podcast platforms. 


Lesley Logan 38:46  

Awesome. Okay, you've given us a lot. Actually, you've given us some amazing stuff. I know my overachiever perfectionists are already writing down the hunger scale, but bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted steps people can take to be it till they see it, what are some of those that you have for us? 


Lisa Salisbury 39:01  

Okay, so I'm just all about eating the amount that's right for your body, paying no attention to food scales, paying no attention, like, to your the scale in your kitchen. So I think you can do this by just experimenting with bites. Leave two bites behind at every meal this week, and experiment with being the person who is allowed to waste food, because that's very tricky sometimes, and so one or two bites is not going to make a difference much on your hunger, but it's kind of like being it till you see it, meaning you're like, not quite using the hunger scale, but you're experimenting with it. And so that's one of my favorite challenges for my clients, is the two bite challenge. We leave two bites at dinner, every meal if you want, primarily just dinner and see how you feel, looking at that food on your plate, and then also checking in with your hunger. Maybe next week you're going to dish up two bites less. I don't know. Maybe you actually needed more food, so next week you're going to dish up two bites more. But just experiment with it and allow yourself to leave food behind and just really check in and see how that feels. 


Lesley Logan 40:16  

I love this. I really do. I think the easy, wonderful challenge that's not going to be easy for some people, but it's going to be possible. I should say, that's going to be possible for people, it's not enough to go buy out, to go buy anything. It's something that you're already doing. And I also think how cool that once you start to figure out what you need, and each day may be different, like you might need more, might need less. It's not like you're wasting food forever. You're actually going to start to learn what you need, and so you're giving people so much permission and power and putting it back in their hands. So thank you so much, Lisa, for being here. Thank you for all of your tips. I think this is going to be really helpful. Also, I think, for parents who have kids, what a wonderful way to help them understand, you know, their own figuring out, like, how hungry are you? I had a girlfriend whose kids would come and go, hey, I'm hungry. Can I have a snack? And she's like, okay, dinner is going to be in two hours. So whatever snack you choose, make sure it's going to sustain you for two hours. Shouldn't say ruin dinner. She always would say, like, let's make sure it's going to sustain you for two hours, so we're not going to need another snack before then. And she really helped them learn, like, which choice should I have? Should I have the grapes or should I have the beef jerky? She helped them figure that out. So I think that this is really fun information that people can use in their own lives first and then also with the people around them. So thank you, Lisa. 


Lesley Logan 41:26  

You guys, how are you going to use these tips in your life? Make sure you let Lisa know. Let the Be It Pod know. Share this with a friend who needs to have, you know that friend who, like, is annoying to go to restaurants with, that one that will only go to one restaurant because that's one that she can eat at. You can share this with her, and she won't find out till right now why you did that. So, all right, loves, until next time, Be It Till You See It. 


Lesley Logan 41:50  

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.


Brad Crowell 42:31  

It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.


Lesley Logan 42:37  

It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.


Brad Crowell 42:42  

Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.


Lesley Logan 42:48  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.


Brad Crowell 42:52  

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.



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