Jena: Renée, why are you so passionate about helping people lose weight?  

Renée: It stems from my own personal journey. I started having body image issues when I was 11 years old. I decided I was fat and went on my first diet. That lead to more diets and within a short period of time I became a binge eater, and struggled with that during my teens and early twenties.

It was miserable. I went on every diet I knew of to try to lose weight, and the more restrictive I became, the more I would binge, and the more out of control those episodes would be.

I didn’t tell anybody about it–it was my secret. I had so much shame around it, and of course that was part of the suffering involved–no one knew this horrible thing about me. It wasn’t until my twenties that I began speak out and get some help.

With help I was able to lose the weight, and I’ve kept it off for over 20 years, but it wasn’t until ten years ago, when I discovered some of the tools that I use today, that I was able to completely let go of the obsession with food and of binge eating.

I’ve come to understand that resolving the weight struggle, ending binge eating, and releasing that extra weight is not just about looking good for swimsuit season–it’s about releasing who you are, and who you can be to the rest of the world. 

Today I was talking with a client about what it would be like if she were to release her struggle with weight. She said she’d have more confidence in all areas of her life, she’d be more present in her work, her career would thrive, and her relationships would benefit.

It’s hard to think of any area of our lives that wouldn’t benefit by ending the struggle, by coming to peace with our bodies and ourselves, and really eating and caring for our bodies from a place of love, acceptance and nurturance, free from shame. That’s why I care.

Jena: I think of shame like a straight jacket. It locks us up from life. 

Renée: Exactly. Shame keeps us isolated, and one of the most important things to us as human beings is to feel connected with other human beings.

Jena: There’s a wide misconception that pleasure is the enemy of weight loss.  How do you perceive pleasure can stimulate healing and weight loss? 

Renée: Jena, I love your emphasis on pleasurable eating and I completely agree with you– pleasure is actually the key. It’s important to understand the reason we overeat in the first place is because we are getting something out of it. We are trying to get either pleasure or comfort from  overeating, and it kinda sorta works, because if it didn’t work we wouldn’t do it.

One of the first steps to recovering and becoming a naturally slender person is to forgive yourself by accepting the fact of what you do. This includes your most shameful behaviors. The behaviors you most dislike about yourself are actually serving a purpose. You are trying to get something for you that is good; comfort; pleasure; relief; distraction from pain, whatever it is.

Jena: So how does pleasure fit into being naturally slender?

This is really interesting because a naturally slender person will eat to maximize pleasure. If you are a naturally slender person, when you think about what and how much to eat, you will think “I want to maximize my pleasure over time. I want to feel the best for the longest and I know when I look at that piece of candy, that if I eat it right now, I am going to feel like crap for hours. So forget it. I don’t want to do it. It’s going to give me a sugar crash. It is going to feel artificial in my belly. Yuck!” So you think, “I really don’t want to eat that because it is going to make me feel pretty bad for a long time.” That is the way a naturally slender person actually makes choices based on maximizing pleasure–their time horizon has expanded from instant, short-term gratification, to include the entire affect of what they eat on their body.

Jena: You’re saying pleasure works for weight loss when we think about the big picture. 

Renée: Exactly.

Jena: How about discipline as a way of overcoming binging or overeating? 

Renée: Jena, I think discipline is way overrated. Control, discipline, I mean talk about no fun! It doesn’t really work for me. The closest concept I would recommend is structure.  I do think that there’s a lot of freedom in having regular meal times, but that’s very different.

Discipline to me is like control, and what it implies when we take it apart and unpack it, is that  discipline implies there’s something wild that wants to do certain things, and something else needs to come in and discipline it and control it.

We have set up, just in that simple term this struggle within ourselves. Well, struggle and maintaining something for the long term don’t go together.

We need to turn that whole equation on its head. We need to say, “let’s have eating well and taking great care of ourselves be our foundation of stability, that gives us comfort when life gets crazy.”

One of the steps for doing that is looking at maximizing our pleasure over time. Another really important piece, especially for women, is prioritizing self-care because so often we put everybody else in the world before ourselves.

We want to take care of everyone else and consider taking care of ourselves as selfish. It’s seen as indulgent, but the reality is by taking care of ourselves, just like on the airplane when they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first, prioritizing self-care allows us to have so much more to give and it really honors other people.

So forget about discipline, let’s simply take great care of ourselves.

Jena: The phrase that comes to mind is extreme self-care. 

Renée: Yes, I like it. I use a term called enlightened selfishness.

Jena: I love it.  A favorite topic of mine, Renée, is referring to what I call the animal instinct. This is the realization that our bodies are actually animals. And just as animals in nature know how to eat, the animal that is your body also knows what to eat to be healthy and in shape, or as you would say, naturally slender. How do you suggest we learn to trust our instincts when they appear to have led us down the dangerous path of binging one too many times? 

Renée: It is interesting because yes, we are animals and our bodies do work perfectly, however, when we are getting a lot out of overeating or being overweight as I was mentioning before, then it is really interesting how our whole mind body system will work together to create the outcome that we want. For example, a woman I spoke with yesterday said for her being slim, losing weight meant that she would feel more loneliness.  Food was a comfort to her. When she was bigger she felt less loneliness. So being overweight was really working for her, and losing weight wasn’t working for her, because the last time she lost weight she felt an incredible sense of loneliness. In a sense her body had conspired to numb her out so that she could escape the worst feeling, which is the feeling of loneliness.

What you need to do is understand what you are getting out of overeating or being overweight?What is it doing for you that is positive?  And once you do, you can forgive and accept yourself. All of a sudden, you’ll start to notice your body’s signals of hunger and satiety. Your body is giving you information–your job is to pay the respect and take the time to listen. You body wants foods that are going to feel the best for you over time.

Jena: How can we learn to trust these instincts?  

Renée: I recommend keeping a hunger journal. You want the focus to be on your body’s signals of hunger and satisfaction, so in this diary you are going to make a note of what you eat, but then you note how hungry you felt before eating it. You rate it on the scale of zero to ten, and how satisfied you felt when you finished. Then you make a note of how this food made you feel over time. The practice of keeping this journal actually allows you to reawaken, to reconnect with those signals that are already there in your animal body.

Jena: Do you find that by healing the habit of binging or overeating it’s enough to cause weight loss? 

Renée: Yes, I do. I have a formula for weight loss where I say that once you have unconditional self-acceptance as your foundation–accepting and forgiving yourself exactly as you are, imperfect eater, imperfect body and all= you have the rich fertile soil in which the seeds of behavior change can take root and grow.

We add to that our intent for weight loss and specific behavior change techniques. So for many people just eating when hungry and stopping when satisfied combined with an intent to release weight will be enough, and the pounds will start to disappear in a really beautiful and easy natural way.

Jena: I can see how self-acceptance is vital because I have seen examples where people seem to be eating very well but behind the scenes there is a lot of negative self talk, “not good enough here, not good enough there”. That sets up a stress response in the body boosting cortisol, which then boosts insulin and in term causes weight gain. 

Renée: Exactly. We don’t want that. We want our bodies to be relaxed and working well so our metabolism can be doing a great job of burning the calories we do take in, so absolutely.

Jena: Could you summarize the weight loss equation again? 

Renée:  Unconditional self-acceptance + intent to be slim & healthy

• behavior change techniques = easy, permanent weight loss

Jena: Fantastic. Renée, any parting words?

Renée: What I want people to know is that even though you may have tried many times in the past, don’t give up. Please, please know that it is absolutely possible for you and everyone to be – to re-become, because we are born this way – to re-become naturally slender.

If you come to this place of accepting yourselves and really honoring your body and get in touch with your body, your body will guide you to be naturally slender.

A former food addict, Renée Stephens is on a mission to end the weight struggle by teaching the world to be naturally and easily slim, from the inside out. She is the author of “Full-Filled”, and the host of iTunes top weight loss podcast. You can find her at insideoutweightloss.com and her book Full-Filled: The 6-Week Weight-Loss Plan for Changing Your Relationship with Food-and Your Life-from the Inside Out here.