Learn How What’s in Your Mind Effects What You Put in Your Mouth

How What’s in Your Mind Effects What You Put in Your Mouth

Welcome to The Determined Mom Show, on this episode, we have Adrian Delgado and she is the owner of Body Metrics Health and Wellness Services. She’s a registered dietician business owner and mom of five.

What we’re gonna talk about today is super important, especially like we were talking about before we started recording for our children and for that legacy that we are going to leave them with as far as food and dealing with foods.

How did you get started as a dietician and what made you really wanna kind of go into this?

I actually started out my education in the pre-med field. I always knew I liked to help people and I loved science and biology and math and all, those great subjects. So I just assumed that I should just be a doctor because that would be the best way to integrate my passions.

And then one time we were in a, I wasn’t part of a, it was called a Future Health Professionals Club, and it was basically a club for the pre-med major. But one day I just decided, I used to kind of surprise myself. I shot my hand up in the air and it was a pediatrician. 

A lot of times I’m on call and I realized this wasn’t in alignment. With some of my personal goals, I knew I always wanted to be a mom, and so the next day I signed myself out of the pre-med program, and then I started looking through the course selection guide because I was like, I don’t wanna lose all my anatomy classes and my calculus and physics classes.

What can I take that still allows me to stay in the science field, but may have? A better work-life balance. I came across nutrition and fell in love with it from day one. So that’s kind of my story of how I, I fell into the career path and I am so thankful every day that, that, that happened. 

I started my path out in clinical nutrition. So I worked in some hospitals. I worked on the I C U floor doing tube feeds and figuring out nutrition for people on ventilators and realized as much as I loved that part of it, I wasn’t able to create relationships with people and see them through their care.

It was, you know, maybe meeting with somebody five minutes before they’re discharged as they got their bags packed. They wanna leave. , they have to have a dietary consult before they’re allowed to go. I knew I needed a more captive audience where I could make a difference, and so that’s when I transitioned into outpatient care.

I think it’s very impressive, and also I think it’s impressive that you have your own business. In that way, you can really make your schedule around your kids. Having five kids is not, an easy thing in itself, but you took the path of most fulfillment, I admire that.

 I think it was, for me, I knew I needed that balance. I knew I wanted to make an impact on our community, but I also knew that my family is always gonna come first. And I will say I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday, actually seeing clients. Tuesday, Thursday is when I work on the. But that’s when also I run around like a crazy person doing the grocery shopping, the laundry, everything to keep the household running.

I think in terms of going to school, you know, we do a lot of medical nutrition therapy. So we’re looking at what’s your health history, your family history. 

We’re also looking at the medical side of it, but I will say that probably 70% of the people that walk into our office are looking for weight management.  It used to be that I would see people come in and we would just tell them what to do and how many fruits some vegetables they need and how to get them in and how much protein do you need, you know, for your goals.

And we would figure all that out. And it was great when it was working. But what a lot of diets are missing is the mindset.

We can create a healthy diet, but if we don’t address the mindset piece around it, all that gets thrown out the window as soon as life happened or as soon as we feel frustrated or overwhelmed, or exhausted. And so I realized there’s got to be a second piece to this.

I’m either doing everything and following the rules or killing. Or I’m not and I’m failing and screwing it all. I’m just gonna do what I wanna do and I’ll deal with the consequences later. 

I would also say that, you know, especially at night time, because that seems to be everybody’s downfall, is that evening, I think for a couple of reasons. Number one, we’re mentally, physically, and emotionally. There’s no more willpower in the tank. We’ve given it all to the people that we live with and the people that we serve.

I will just interject a tip here if I can, rather than just talk about the why behind it is, Yeah. One of the things that I’m very passionate about, is actually from the book Atomic Habit. I know a lot of people have read that book already, but they talk about one space.

It is not a strength of mine. And it’s the whole premise of being mindful, and paying attention to what you’re doing versus having your hand in too many things. And a lot of times that happens with food. So you know, I always say, if you’re gonna have a snack at night, do it at the kitchen table away from the tv.

Number one, that’ll tell you real quick how hungry you are if you can’t eat it in front of the tv. If you have to get up, remove yourself from your family, from your favorite TV show to go eat something, all of a sudden, that’s a little bit of a game changer. 

When you eat, like have a designated eating spot so that your brain doesn’t confuse the activities. You’re at your desk all day long doing work, and so if you constantly eat at your desk, then your brain, you’ll be working at your desk for another reason and your brain will be. 

I don’t we usually eat when we sit here and you will eat in the absence of hunger just makes, because it’s an association that even though it feels like, a challenge or it feels like I won’t be able to get as much done, you actually will be able to get more done. I mean, I cannot even tell you how many studies have been done on this right here, where when people get up and get away from their desks and eat lunch in a separate room and then come back to theirs.

It’s a whole lesson on mindfulness, which I’m sure you guys have talked about lots of times. Staying present, but we need those pause points to let the front part of our brain catch up with the back part of our brain, which I can speak to if you’re interested, cuz I think the whole thing is fascinating.

We have many parts to our brain, but the two I’m gonna talk about, the first one is called the prefrontal cortex, that’s right in the front of your brain. And the prefrontal cortex is responsible for forward thinking.

Logic consequences, making sure that you’re working in alignment with your goals. You know, as I said, consequences with, interestingly enough in boys, the prefrontal cortex is the last part to develop. So this is why 18-year-old boys don’t make great decisions. makes total sense. Their prefrontal cortex is not completely developed yet.

They’re not thinking of the consequences of drag racing with their friend on the road. And they might ask, be a cop-up. So the prefrontal cortex is obviously when it comes to nutrition, the part of the brain we want to engage most often because it’s the one that has our best interest at heart.

Then we have this thing called the mid-brain, which is in the back of the brain. It’s also termed the toddler’s brain, and the reason it’s termed the toddler’s brain is that every decision it makes is through the lens of pain. Avoid. and immediate gratification, right? It’s like a toddler, but I want it. I want chocolate for 

So what we need to do is actually slow things down and allow the prefrontal cortex to get involved in the conversation. And so by slowing things down, where in the middle of an emotional time does not feel like it’s on your side like I have to take care. Uncomfortable emotion as quickly as possible because it’s gonna overtake me.

You need to let the prefrontal cortex join the party and say, yeah, I know you want chocolate, but you’ve also been working really hard at your goals. Can we substitute fruit? Because what we. Just all we want right now is something sweet or it’s allowing the prefrontal cortex to join the party and say, you know what?

We need that tell ourselves, we do, we need so much oxygen to the prefrontal cortex. So just even telling yourself, you know, if I still want this five minutes from now, then I’m gonna go grab it. I’ll get in the car. But when you have things immediately at your disposal, you know, chances are you’re gonna give it, you may grab them more often.

What’s interesting is in that moment, your brain naturally shuts down the prefrontal cortex as a way to protect you. It’s a survival mechanism because, well, you know, when it comes to making a decision, you wanna make the fastest decision and just go with it. You don’t wanna be like, well, you know, I could, you know, increase my pace.

I think for it’s for so many of us that, want to understand why we do what we do because we have so much shame and guilt. Not following through, you know, for so many of us, we’re killing it in our businesses and you know, we’re raising amazing children, but yet this nutrition thing is like our thorn in our side.

And when I say diet, I mean an eating style, not an actual, you know, eat a half a cup of cottage cheese diet and so part of it is it should not be if you can’t start at the next immediate meal, that is not the plan for you. Like there is no giant fridge Cleanout Day. Create 400 spreadsheets of your workouts.

It’s too hard. It’s not realistic. The other part is, as much as you restrict will be as much as you binge. So, how it was taught to me, or, I just love this illustration so much is if you think of a bow and arrow, okay? So we all know that the further you pull back on the bow, the further the arrow will launch forward.

Don’t pull back the arrow will only go a couple of inches, pull back and, you know, really cock your arm back, and the arrow will fly. I don’t know, 70, 80. Right. It, it’s the same way with diet and our food. So a lot of times when it comes to wanting to lose weight, we make a bunch of rules. And so I want you to imagine picking up a bow and starting to pull back, okay?

Don’t eat carbs, and don’t eat after eight o’clock. Don’t eat anything with fat in it. Make sure you are, uh, not eating any sugar. Don’t eat this, don’t eat this, don’t eat that. And every time you make a rule, you’re pulling further and further back on yours. Now you’re in position, you’re locked and loaded. And the rules around dieting are how long can you hold this position and not screw up?

But sometimes we just need to hear it in a different way. Yeah. We have so much knowledge, we just don’t know how to make it work. And. Our own way so we can be successful, but not only for ourselves, so we can pass that legacy on to our kids so they don’t have the same struggles and challenges we have.

How can people work with you? 

Our website is Body metrics health.com. Body Metrics is the company that I own. And, if you go under programs, uh, with a tab on the website, there’s a program called Diet Rehab and so this is actually, a 30-day mindset program that we offer to help you kind of help introduce you to some of these thoughts around food.

Most of the things that we talked about today, I integrate into the 30-day mindset program. So you watch like a two to four-minute video, and then there’s some journal work, and I know people sometimes roll their eyes. 

Then for more information, we’re on Instagram, and Facebook at Body Metrics Health, and then I also have a podcast called Nourish Eat Repeat, and you’ll find me there every week talking about it.

Nutrition and mindset and all things health. And then if you want one more thing, I actually wrote a book called Nu Nourish Sheet. Repeat, A Busy Woman’s Guide to a Healthier Mind, body, and Life. and that’s on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all, all the platforms. Um, but what I did was I took stories and when you have five kids, you have a lot of stories.

I took the humorous stories of our family life that all moms can relate to. And I, you know, you may not have the exact situation, but you’ve had similar ones. And, um, and I connect them to nutrition lessons. And then at the end of each chapter are what I call two five-star recipes.

Well, thank you so much for sharing. I can’t even count how many knowledge bombs you dropped on us today, but I loved every single one of them. And I also wanna ask you, I know you said you’re on Instagram and you also have your website, but is there anywhere else that you hang out online where you love to interact with people?

Probably Facebook’s an easier way to get in touch with me too. And again, that’s at Body Metrics. I’ll be honest with you, I’m in that generation where I’m like, oh, I do not know my social media as well as I need to.

Cause yeah, I feel like I’m too old for that, so I am learning. But, but I would say Facebook, and Instagram, I will always directly respond to anything awesome if somebody asks me a question.

Thank you so much and I know that you are going to get probably a lot of inquiries out of this episode because it was just amazing.