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Summary
On episode 599 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Kim Shapira, a celebrity dietitian with a degree in exercise kinesiology from Tulane and a master’s in human metabolism and clinical nutrition from Boston University, who has spent 25 years helping people lose weight and keep it off in her private Los Angeles practice.
Kim’s argument: diets fail because they never deal with what triggers people to go off track. Her book, This Is What You’re Really Hungry For, lays out six simple rules meant to change your relationship with food rather than hand you another restriction list.
The conversation covers the four real reasons we eat, a mindfulness exercise she calls “the banana test,” her wellness wheel for checking in with yourself, and a walkthrough of all six rules, from eating when hungry to getting 10,000 steps and seven hours of sleep.
Links
- https://kimshapiramethod.com
Key Takeaways
- Diets fail because people never deal with what triggers them. Kim spent early years putting clients on diets full of foods they didn’t actually want, which primed a rebound toward the foods they were restricted from. Changing the relationship with food, not the food itself, is what sticks.
- There are only four reasons we eat, and just one of them is legitimate. Emotional reasons, food simply being in front of us, cravings, and physical hunger. Kim wants people eating only for the fourth reason: real, physical hunger.
- Eat what you love, but make sure the food loves you back. Telling people to avoid foods they love backfires. Instead, Kim has clients experiment and pay attention to how a food actually makes their body feel (headaches, bloating, joint pain) rather than labeling it good or bad.
- Rule one: eat when hungry, cut your normal portion in half, and wait 15 minutes. It takes about 15 minutes for your stomach’s fullness signal to reach your brain, so most people who eat fast never give their body the chance to say “that was enough.”
- The banana test reframes food as neutral. Kim’s exercise: imagine every food is a banana. Handed a banana out of nowhere, most people pause before eating it. That pause, the space between the thought to eat and the action of eating, is what most people skip with every other food.
- The wellness wheel has seven spokes. Adventure, spiritual, physical, financial, relationships, career, and environment. Being disconnected from any one of them stalls progress, so Kim recommends a regular check-in on where you stand across all seven rather than fixating only on weight.
- Rules three through six round out the framework. Eat without distractions, get 10,000 steps a day (average Americans get 2,500 to 3,000), drink at least eight cups of water, and get seven hours of sleep, since inadequate sleep undermines hormones, digestion, and stress levels.
- Sugar can behave like an addiction, but the pull fades with a short break. Kim cut sugar for five days as an experiment and found the craving physically vanished by day five. She still eats sugar today, just not two days in a row, so she stays aware of when a craving is really addiction talking.
- Kim’s three strategies to get and stay well: routine (a non-negotiable structure for taking care of your body), consistency (progress over perfection, since you always have the next day to try again), and confidence (believing you can actually do this).
“Food is fuel and it only takes up one important place in our life.”
Kim Shapira
Another Episode You May Enjoy
Episode 73 – Dr. Ludwig – Always Hungry
Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 599
Published: 2023-07-18
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): Kim Shapira, a celebrity dietitian with a BS in exercise kinesiology from Tulane and an MS in human metabolism and clinical nutrition from Boston University, This Is What You’re Really Hungry For
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