S03|22 - The Path to Change: Self-Acceptance and Food with Dani Spies
Jan 24, 2022Dani Spies is a mind-body health and weight loss coach and holistic nutritionist who is passionate about helping you feel better, eat better and create a healthy relationship with your food and body so you can reach your health and weight loss goals in a kind, sustainable way (without dieting). She is the founder and host of Clean & Delicious a weekly cooking show and blog that features hundreds of simple, nutritious everyday recipes and cooking tips to help you make healthy eating easy.
She is also the founder of The Don't Diet - a 6-week mind+body weight loss course with live weekly coaching that teaches women how to STOP dieting and reach their weight loss goals in a kind, SANE, sustainable way.
In our conversation today:
- Dani’s personal journey with weight loss and food
- Dropping the need to change and loving us where we’re at
- Tips for small and sustainable growth
Connect with Dani:
Website: CleanAndDelicious.com
WATCH Clean & Delicious TV on YouTube
IG: @clean_and_delicious
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I would be honored to be your coach and help you get the changes you want to see in your life. The tools that I talk about in my podcast and use in my coaching have completely turned around my life and my relationships with my children. I know what it takes and how to make it happen. You can use the links below to get more of my content and to learn what we do in my program By Design. I love helping women tap into their inner expert and build radical connection in their relationships with their children.
Link to membership: By Design
Find me on the ‘gram: The.Parenting.Coach
My website: coachcrystal.ca
Work with me 1:1 right HERE
Episode Transcript
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.
Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate this podcast on Apple, and check out my transformative monthly membership for moms in the show notes.
Dani's background, what she does, and how she got started
Hi, and welcome to the podcast this morning, The Path to Change: Self-Acceptance and Food with Dani Spies.
Dani is a mind-body & health weight loss coach and holistic nutritionist who is passionate about helping you feel better, eat better and create a healthy relationship with your food and body so you can reach your health and weight loss goals in a kind, sustainable way (without dieting).
Hello, Dani. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
Dani Spies: Hi. Thanks so much for having me. So excited to be here.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, me too. So, Dani and I have, I don't even really remember how we connected, but we've been connecting for a while; and I went on her YouTube channel, and we did an awesome conversation over there.
And I love everything that she posts on YouTube and on Instagram, and I thought that she would be such a fun interview to have on here today. So, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about you and what you do?
Dani Spies: I am a Health Wellness & Weight Coach, and I have a cooking show on YouTube where we basically show up every week and share really easy, simple, every-day healthy recipes for the healthy home cook – so, really basic stuff. And then, I also have a course called The Don’t Diet where I work with women who want to reach health & weight loss goals without traditional dieting strategies.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay, I love that. How did you get into this? Like, What happened that made you feel like, This is what I want to do, I want to share beautiful pictures of food on Instagram – and recipes?
Dani Spies: Honestly, I always had this, kind of, this dichotomy in my own life, which was; I loved food and I always, I struggled with my weight and my body. So, it was-- It was kind of-- They kind of went hand-in-hand for me. And, I actually--Years ago, I signed up to go to like a culinary institute, and I ended up not going because of my fear of food – because I struggled with weight.
So, this is just that it was like kind of my life story coming to fruition. The two things that were both passions of mine; delicious whole beautiful foods and cooking & trying to untangle my own struggles with weight and body.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, I love that. I love that combination. And that's definitely what I want to dig into today is kind of that intersection between the two of them. Because on the one hand, we struggle with maybe our mindset around our body or around our weight or trying to love ourselves no matter what. And then, on the other hand, we might struggle with our relationship with food.
But before we dig into that, I want to talk a little bit about your recipes. If you have-- If you don't follow her on Instagram, you definitely need to – and YouTube. They all look so beautiful. Do you take your own photos, by the way? They all look so cute all the time.
Dani Spies: I do not. And it's funny that you say that because for years I did, and it was always a part of my business that I loathed like. I don't know if you've ever had any piece of your business where no matter how much time you spent on it, it just was not my strength nor did I enjoy it.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah.
Dani Spies: So, I was very happy to get to the point where I could hire a few amazing photographers who work with us.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Oh, I love it. I love it.
Dani Spies: I do not take my own photos.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: If you go follow her on Instagram, you will see what I'm talking about. Every time she posts something I'm like, 'Oh, I need to make that' – 'Oh, I need to make that too', because it looks not only beautiful, but also super delicious and delicious in like the healthiest way. It's just such a great combination. How do you even come up with the ideas for recipes or the different things that you post there?
Dani Spies: So, food has always been super easy for me in the sense that I'm very inspired by what I see in a magazine, what I eat at a restaurant, what's local and in season at the grocery store; that's just something I've always enjoyed.
And so, it's almost like my brain can't stop coming up with ideas and recipes. So, that's just kind of a, I think, a never-ending space for my mind. Like, I just love it. So, to me, there's no end to how many recipes one can make.
Dani’s source of inspiration for what she does
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love that. It's like you're totally fulfilling your purpose, right? Like, there's so many people that would be like, 'That is not my forte at all.' And your brain is just like feeding you tons of recipe ideas that, I mean, look amazing and taste amazing. How do you get the energy to do all of that; to create the recipes, and then make all these beautiful videos and photos for them?
Dani Spies: Yeah, so I think it's like anything, right? It's just-- It's a passion, and it's something I'm really – not only do I enjoy it, but I really do, I'm really passionate about helping to inspire people to get back in the kitchen and take control of their food and their ingredients, because I think, ultimately, that's one of the most accessible ways to take control of our health.
What I have seen is that in many ways, cooking has become a lost art. People just don't do it anymore, or they really don't have an understanding of it. And back in the day when we first started this channel, I was coaching people one-on-one.
And I was going to people's houses, and teaching them how to use certain ingredients because what I found was so many people truly wanted to eat better and they wanted to make changes with their food, but they just didn't know how to use the ingredients.
They were intimidated by, you know, a lot of the whole foods that you find in the produce department simply because they weren't familiar with them. And so, that is a huge part of my inspiration is just helping people feel confident and capable of getting in the kitchen and making really simple, delicious, nutritious foods.
Tips for picky eaters
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, I love that. I love how I feel when I eat whole foods. I just love it. And whenever I think about like, what fuels me and what makes me feel so good, it's always those whole delicious foods.
But like you said, I exactly feel that way. I'm just like, 'Well, now what?' I got all these things that looked great at the grocery store, but like, how do I actually make this into a meal for my family? Also, how do I get my children to eat it? Do you have any tips for picky eaters? Or how do you get your kids to eat all the lovely foods you make?
Dani Spies: Yeah, well, you know, it's ebb-- It has ebbed and flowed throughout the years. When my children were younger, it was very easy to get them to eat well because I do find at the end of the day, and it's so cliché--
But I do feel with kids, the name of the game is, it's less about trying to get them to eat, and it's more about you eating and enjoying in front of them so that they're like, 'Ooh, what is that? Ooh, I want to bite of that, Ooh, that looks good.'
You know, if you're just eating a salad and enjoying every bite of it, they're intrigued. Right? So, that, I have found to be like a big part of the puzzle. But I will say as my children have got older – more, my daughter, she's 12 now – and been exposed to a lot of other foods and things that her friends eat and going to parties, her palate has shifted because--
This is what happens with anybody's palate, when you begin to eat a lot of highly processed foods – high sugar, high salt, high low-quality fats – an apple does not compare, right? So, like natural whole foods when you're having, when your taste buds are being like inundated with highly processed and highly thought-out ingredients, meaning these food companies--
I mean, they have people that are like, what is the decimal of the crunch of the chip in your ear that hits those dopamine receptors off to make you want more? Right? They know exactly how to excite your tongue and hit off those chemical reactions in your brain so that you're looking for more.
My point is that for like my daughter; who she does tend to get a little pickier as she gets older because she eats a lot more of those foods, I really find like now I just get to a point where I'm like, 'Okay, this is now your journey, and I'm going to keep creating our example at home – there's foods I'll buy, there's foods I won't buy.'
But I've learned, or I am learning, let's say this because I have a desire to control it all. I'm learning to just say, 'Okay, at some point I have to pass the torch, right? And this is now going to become her journey.'
But I will say for any adults who struggle with that, the key is to reset the palate, right? If you find that you have a hard time enjoying real whole foods, you really have to slowly start to pull back from the highly processed foods; and it gives your palate an opportunity to reset so that you can actually begin to taste these foods again.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love both of those ideas. I love the idea of resetting your palate because I totally agree. I remember deciding like, 'You know what, I want to really eat a lot of salads this month or a lot of whole foods this month.' And as soon as I started to do that, it was easier.
And I remember even sitting down at a restaurant and my friend's ordering all this like, delicious looking food and I didn't even desire it. I was like, 'I just really want a salad.'
Dani Spies: Yeah.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: And it was like natural, it wasn't like I was like forcing myself to just eat that way. So, I definitely feel the possibility of that, and being able to do that permanently.
And I also want to circle back to what you said about being the one that kind of is the example for your kids, because that's literally what I talk about on my podcast every single day, is like, we model the behaviors we want to see in our kids, right?
And it never once occurred to me until you said that, that doing that with food also works. Like I don't-- I mean, I enjoy the food that I'm eating, but I definitely don't think I've thought of like, what behavior am I modeling when it comes to my food?
Do I really kind of nourish it and relish that, and I'm like, 'Oh, this is really good, do you want some?' I think that really would help with my younger picky eaters. So, I think I'm definitely going to start doing that, so thank you for pointing that out.
Dani Spies: Absolutely. Yeah, it does. It helps a lot.
How to drop the mindset that unhealthy foods are more delicious
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, let's dig into the mindset then. So, there's healthy and nutritious and delicious food, but also our brain doesn't always want that – maybe because of this palate issue. But how do you help people through that, through the mindset part of it?
Dani Spies: You know, it's different; depends on, obviously, the person and what angle we're coming from. But I think, generally speaking, what I really try to focus on with the women that I work with is giving them the opportunity (A) to be where they are, right?
So, that they can shift from this idea of, 'I have to make a change, you know, I need to do this' – to really, kind of, take a deep breath and realizing if they want to do it; making that shift from I have to do this, I need to do this to I would like to do this, I would really-- this is something I want to do for myself.
Because that small shift actually creates a very different approach, right? It creates a different strategy to what you're doing. One makes you feel like you're a little kid that has to do something that you don't want to do, and it almost puts you into a victim mentality.
And the other is much more empowering. You recognize that you have the choice and you don't have to do anything, but it's actually something you want to do and it's something you're trying to work with yourself to do.
And it kind of opens up the pathway to giving yourself permission to give yourself some space to learn, right? Not to just think, 'I have to do this and now I should just start doing it tomorrow. And the minute I don't do it perfectly well, it's not working. And so, what's the point of doing it?'
So, I think that's a big-- I mean, it's a one piece of the puzzle, but I do think it's a big mental shift for a lot of people who are trying to make a change with their eating or their health or their weight. Really understanding what you want and why you want it, and then meeting yourself in that space so that you can understand what you need to begin to shift that versus trying to push yourself into it. Go ahead.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that because I-- Even as you were talking about it, I felt that energy shift. I was like thinking about my own food journey, and I was thinking, 'Yeah, I think that has made a big difference in my food journey too,' versus like, 'This is something that I should do because it's the healthier way or the better way to live'.
And I think that we all have a lot of those ideas of what's better and what's good. You know, skinny is better and eating healthy is better, and all these things are better. And when we think that way, we get stuck into this like really fixed mindset mode and then feel all this shame about when we don't make the choices that we want to.
Versus like, 'What do I really want? And maybe I don't want that, and that's fine.' Like, just accepting where we're at. And I think from that acceptance, then that's where the growth comes. Like, 'Okay, maybe I do want to eat a little bit differently, maybe I'm interested in changing my health.'
How Dani helps clients who are ready to start eating healthy, but struggle to follow through
Crystal The Parenting Coach: How do you help somebody who feels like when they come in, they're kind of moving to that 'I want to' space, but still struggle with actually following through.
Dani Spies: So, you know-- I think, again, it's, you got to zoom out, right? Like, I always teach, like our relationship with food, it really is a microcosm of our relationship with life, right? The way you eat--
You know, we put so much responsibility on the plate, on the food. Is it the salad? Is it the broccoli? Is it the fish or the chicken, right? But what I spend a lot of time working with people on is like, how are you showing up as the eater, right?
What are you doing in this relationship with food? 'Are you eating in a hurry? Are you eating behind your own back? Are you shaming yourself and guilting yourself when you eat?' Right? It's a big part of it is recognizing what we want and that-- Like, there's no magic pill out there, right?
There's no exact plan, there's no expert, there's no food that's going to be the magic bullet; that so much of that comes from ourselves. So, if somebody is showing up and they're feeling like really reluctant or stuck to move forward, to me, I'm saying, "Well, let's not move forward right now – let's observe for a little bit, right? Let's turn up awareness right now – let's be with ourselves exactly where we are," right?
Because I'm always kind of emphasizing the idea that change happens in each decision that we make, right? It's not something that-- It's not something that we get to, we don't, all of a sudden, arrive at transformation or weight loss or change; it's something that we make a decision about day in and day out, moment after moment after moment.
But when you're feeling reluctant, you can't move forward without understanding, right? Like, what's happening first. So, if somebody is feeling reluctant, my advice would be stop, let's stop trying to create change and let's start trying to understand where we are – and why. Like, why not do-- Why do we not want to take forward motion right now?
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, it's not so much like we have to do it, it's like figuring out why we don't want to do it.
Dani Spies: Understanding exactly where we are and what's holding us back, because weight loss is such a big conversation in my opinion; it's not just this black-and-white – calories in, calories out. Extra weight can represent a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
And you know, for everybody, the concept to me; extra weight, it's stored energy, right? It's, is there somewhere in your life where you need to express something? Is there something in a relationship that you need to express? Is there creative energy that's not being expressed? Is there somewhere where you feel fear and you're holding extra weight to protect yourself? Right?
There's so many conversations to be had around extra weight. And I think when we own-- When we minimize it to this, 'Well, let's just get into action to get the weight off,' we kind of miss the bigger life message that weight has to offer us. And so, to me, the pause is, 'Okay, how can I think about this differently? What could this weight want to communicate with me? What is the message?'
And, unfortunately for like modern day, it's not like – it's not an overnight fix, right? But it's a beautiful doorway to really create like a deeper, more intimate understanding relationship with yourself and your body and your food. And then, they all tend to just work together.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. I love that idea of them all working together because a lot of what I talk about in parenting is, you know, we think that we want our kids to change and we want to change all these little behaviors that we see every day – like that micro thing that you were talking about.
But really when we zoom out, it's really just our relationship; our relationship with us most of the time, that's really at play in our relationship with our kids. And I love the idea of that's also what's going on with our relationship with our body and with our food.
Dani’s personal journey with weight loss and food
Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, tell me more about maybe your journey when you felt like you were a little bit stuck with this, your relationship with your body or with yourself or with your food – how that shift, how accepting where you were at changed things for you.
Dani Spies: Yeah, so it's interesting because I was-- I struggled with weight and body for a long time, and I was a dieter; I did every diet, I was always on and off diets, on and off diets. And it was that struggle that led me to study Nutrition, and Integrative Nutrition & Health, and Eating Psychology, and all these different components.
And at the time – this was years ago – I was a personal trainer and I had unlocked a lot of the weight issue, but I still struggled mentally with food and body, right? So, I wasn't necessarily overweight – but mentally, I still carried that load.
And even though I was kind of learning a lot of the concepts that I teach now; about awareness, and, you know, tapping into how we feel, and taking care of our bodies rather than trying to change every, you know, trying to get ourselves somewhere. But the thing that really put the nail in the coffin or – it's that an expression?
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes.
Dani Spies: Okay. The thing that really was the biggest shift for me is when I got pregnant with my first child, who is now 12 – because what happened was, it was really the first time in my life that I was not trying to change the way I looked, right?
So, even though I was learning all of these tools – and I was practicing more self-love and being kinder to myself and, you know, eating real whole foods, I was still always like not letting myself be okay. I was still always trying to change the way I looked.
And so, when I got pregnant, it was really the first time in my life that the shift went from manipulate food and/or exercise to create a certain look to show up fully in this present moment and like, connect to what you need to nourish yourself most right now.
And that was-- That was the shift for me. I mean, and that meant-- You know, that comes with not-- It's not-- I think this is, again, the conversation that I enjoyed the most, which is it's not just food, right? It's how you show up for yourself and how you're feeling, and what you're thinking.
And you know, it's not using food to escape your emotions; and it's also not using food to manipulate your body, right? It's truly a, 'Okay, what am I feeling right now? What am I needing? What would nourish me? What sounds the best? What gives me the most energy without an agenda except for feeling good?' Right?
Like, 'I just want-- What's going to help me feel good right now?' And so, I think that is the fine line when people are trying to lose weight. And honestly, it's something I'm always trying to restructure in my mind, how to teach it better in the sense that it's tricky to want to change – and to say, "I'm going to show up for myself exactly the way I am right now without needing to change," right?
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes.
Dani Spies: It's like a little bit of a mind trick.
Dropping the need to change and loving us where we’re at
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. That's interesting because we're doing this work – whatever work it is that we're doing, our own inner work – so that we can change, but the only path to change is to accept where we are first and that the change then happens naturally.
But sometimes we're really trying to manipulate that outcome of like, 'No, but I want to look a certain way or I want to lose weight.' Instead of like, let's just love ourselves where we're at and accept where we're at, and that that growth will just happen naturally. And I love your explanation of what happened to you in the shift that changed for you; I think that that is super powerful.
Dani Spies: Yeah. It really was. And, the thing too is it's that what happens is when you really start to focus on like; showing up and nourishing yourself, slowing down, creating more awareness, slowing down with food, slowing down when we're eating because all of these, again, invite more space for awareness – ultimately, slowing down and having more awareness, it's the only possible avenue to access the ability to change, right?
Because I think so often, we have this false belief system that happy lives on the other side of [name the goal], right? And, for my audience, it's weight loss. And, the truth is, is that you can't hate yourself thin. You can't bully yourself to a confident finish line, right? You can't-- Your journey informs the destination.
And so, it's so much weight-- You know, to me weight loss and really any goal – but food and weight goals, it's really about developing and forming a kind, loving, present, aware, compassionate relationship with yourself in the present moment exactly the way you are.
And yeah, you want to lose some weight, I get that. And yeah, we want to drop a few pounds, okay. Like, okay, and we're working on that, right? But can it be okay for right now? Can we be okay for right now as we're trying to develop a more intimate relationship with ourself as the main goal, right?
Because we all want to lose weight because we think it's going to make us feel better, right? That's the irony. We believe that the weight loss is going to make us feel better. But as you know--
Crystal The Parenting Coach: It doesn't.
Dani Spies: Weight loss is not a-- Feeling better is not just a reward for weight loss; it doesn't work that way. I know plenty of people who have struggled their way all the way down and are unable to maintain it, and certainly not any happier when they arrive. We all have friends like that, or we've all known people like that.
And so, you know, it's a big conversation especially, you know, in the culture we live in where it is rewarded, right? So, there's a lot of cultural programming, there's a lot of collective consciousness; and it takes conscious work to detach from that and to choose a different path.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Wow. I feel like we could talk about this for hours, all of this; especially digging into that cultural programming, and what society tells us is good and beautiful and all of those things – but that will be for another day.
Dani Spies: Yeah, I know. It's a big-- It's a big conversation.
Tips for small and sustainable growth
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah, it definitely is. So, what I'd love to end with is if there's, you know, a mom who's maybe listening to this and struggling with this herself and she's like, 'But weight loss will help me feel better' or like, 'I really do need to, or I have to, or I should,' or all of those, kind of, thoughts.
And kind of listening to this and understanding it in a little bit of a different way, but still really struggling, what would you say is like one tip or one step, I guess, in the direction that you got to the journey that you went through that might help them too?
Dani Spies: Yeah. So, my brain goes two ways. The first, I'm going to give two tips. So, the first tip would be, to get into a 30-day practice, of every day at the end of the day, consciously looking for three wins from the day. Consciously seeking out what's going well, what you're doing that you feel good about, right?
Just as a practice of redirecting your mind, because so often, we think-- Especially when it comes to weight loss, we're so good at beating ourselves up and making ourselves wrong for everything.
So really, just starting with the practice of like, 'Okay, can I just step back without needing to change right this second and acknowledge things that I'm already doing?' Because most of us, especially if we're trying to lose weight, there are things that we're already doing and we're just not noticing them, right? And then, we're building up the things we aren't.
But for someone who really wants to get into action, and is like, 'Okay, that's great, but I really want a forward step, I would ask oneself, 'What do I believe is one thing that I feel pretty confident would move me towards my health an/ or weight loss goals?' And whatever that answer is, commit to doing that until it becomes an habitual practice, right?
So often we try to do so many things at the same time, especially when it comes to weight loss. So, whether it's drinking water, eating a salad a day, adding more vegetables, moving your body in a certain way, sitting down when you eat, slowing down when you eat, whatever the thing is that you identify.
And I really encourage people to ask themselves because when it comes to weight loss, we are such stuck in this paradigm of like, somebody else is going to save me and there's some expert out there that has the answers, when we know so much more than we give ourselves credit for.
So, asking yourself, and then committing to the practice of making it a habit. And then once it's a habit, then you can move on to the next thing. And I always tell my clients to be careful if you find yourself rushing. Like if you're trying to lose weight and you're in a hurry, it's usually being fueled by negative emotion. So, just a little, little tidbits to keep in your back pocket.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Just slow down and be accepting of where you're at. And I love just the one step, because I believe this in parenting; like we are our own parenting expert – it's just the slowing down and tapping into that intuition and just, you know, making that slow change.
Because so much of us we're just like, 'But we want to change right now – like, we want whatever we want and we want it right now.' And that's kind of the society that we live in, right? Is that instant gratification.
And so, slowing down and realizing like, 'It's okay to not get exactly what we want right now, let's just accept where we're at and just pick one step.' And as you were speaking, I was thinking, 'Okay, my one step is water.' Like, as soon as you said that, I was like, 'Oh, I know mine is water.'
So, that's interesting that it's like it really doesn't take long to just kind of pause and reflect and really ask yourself, what's my step right now? And it doesn't have to be big.
Dani Spies: No, and that's actually a great point. It's like, let it be enough, right? Like let that thing be enough because that really is I think part of what keeps us from meeting our goals, is thinking that we need to do it all and do it all at one time; and that's not the way we work.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. Okay. This has been so enlightening. I love all the parallels to parenting. I'm like, 'Oh yes, yep, yep, those all,' because it's just our brain. Our brain works the same way no matter if it's business or parenting or our body or food or whatever.
Dani Spies: So true.
How to connect with Dani Spies
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Thank you for sharing everything for us, and just tell people where they can find you and connect with you.
Dani Spies: Yeah. So, you can find me at, CleanAndDelicious.com is probably the best place to reach me or on Instagram. I mean, when it comes to chatting back and forth, definitely Instagram – again, it's @clean_and_delicious. So, I would say those would be the two best places.
Dani Spies: Awesome.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: I will have a link down below, so you guys can just easily click on that and go and find her on her website. And I'll also add your YouTube channel and your Instagram.
Dani Spies: Awesome.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: And thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us today.
Dani Spies: Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Crystal The Parenting Coach: I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.
