Isn't She Powerful | Stop Food Noise & Sugar Cravings
Helping women quiet food noise, stop cravings, and build a healthy relationship with food.
If you feel like you’re always thinking about food, constantly battling cravings, or stuck in an exhausting cycle of overeating, guilt, and starting over, you’re not alone!
Maybe you’ve tried dieting before, but the real problem was never just the food. It was the food noise in your head, the constant mental tug-of-war around what you should or shouldn’t eat.
Isn’t She Powerful is the podcast that helps women quiet food noise, stop cravings, and build a healthy relationship with food so healthy living finally feels simple and sustainable.
Inside each episode, you’ll learn:
• Why cravings happen and how to stop intense sugar and carb cravings
• What causes food noise and constant thoughts about food
• How to stop overeating and emotional eating without relying on willpower
• How blood sugar balance impacts hunger, cravings, and energy
• The mindset shifts needed to heal your relationship with food
• How to build healthy habits that actually stick
• Simple nutrition and lifestyle strategies that help you feel in control around food
This podcast is for busy women who want to feel confident in their bodies, stop obsessing about food, and create a healthier lifestyle without extreme dieting.
Because when you address the real root causes of cravings and food noise, healthy choices become easier! And the results you want start happening naturally.
Each week, you’ll walk away with practical tools and powerful mindset shifts to help you feel calmer around food, more consistent with your habits, and more powerful in your health journey.
New episodes every week.
Topics covered on the podcast include:
food noise, cravings, emotional eating, binge eating, overeating, relationship with food, blood sugar balance, healthy habits, mindset around food, nutrition for energy, sustainable healthy living, and food freedom.
For more information on Laura Banks and how to work with her, visit www.bhealthyhabits.com
IG and TikTok: @laura.b.healthy
Isn't She Powerful | Stop Food Noise & Sugar Cravings
Making Health A Priority, Even When It Can't Be Your TOP Priority
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Have you ever felt like your healthy habits disappear the moment life gets hard?
In this short episode, I’m sharing what it looked like to care for my health during a week when my routine was completely off and my focus needed to be somewhere else.
Last week, I was in South Carolina helping family, and for those five days, my health was not my top priority... but it was still a priority.
Between stress, long days, and constant fast food meals, I ate out 10 times in just 5 days. And while those choices may not have looked “perfect,” I still made intentional decisions that helped me feel better physically and mentally.
In this episode, we talk about:
- how to stay healthy while traveling
- healthy fast food choices when eating out often
- making your health a priority as a caregiver
- letting go of the all-or-nothing mindset
- why consistency matters more than perfection
- how to care for yourself when you’re caring for everyone else
If you’ve ever struggled to maintain healthy habits while traveling, supporting family, or navigating a stressful season, this episode will remind you that your health does not have to be your number one focus to still matter.
Because sometimes the most powerful shift is learning that your health can remain important, even when life feels overwhelming.
Listen in and learn how to keep showing up for yourself, even in the hardest seasons.
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LEARN MORE ABOUT GROUP HEALTH COACHING: Seismic Shift
In this program, I help you heal your relationship with food & get rid of sugar cravings so you can finally be consistent with healthy habits.
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💌 Connect With Laura:
Hey, hey ladies, and welcome back to another Healthy Huddle episode where I give you quick ideas for fast action. Today I want to talk about how you can continue to make healthy choices and make your health a priority in your life, even whenever it's not your top priority. I was just spent the entirety of last week in South Carolina. My grandpa had a very serious major surgery. He is 81 years old and he has been dealing with esophageal cancer for quite some time now. And they did chemo, they did radiation, they did immunotherapy, and it would go away and then come back every single time. And so eventually they were like, the only thing that we can still do for you is surgery. And most of the time, surgeons would not approve this extensive of a surgery for someone of his age. But because he is overall in really good health, my papa's a really positive person, he has really uplifted spirits, and he's a very strong, like strong-willed person, and he still is very active overall, still does his garden, still gets outside, still works whenever he can. And so he they they were like, Okay, we'll do this surgery for you. So it was a 10-hour surgery, and it was a pretty um major surgery. They did what's called an esophageomy. I believe I'm saying that right, esophageomy, maybe. Now he is, as of today, as of the day I'm recording this, he is at home. Finally, he spent an entire week in the hospital recovering, and it was a challenging recovery, especially given the fact that you know he's 81 years old and he was already worn out from all of the previous treatments that he had done. But he is doing pretty good as of right now. So we are praising God for that and so so very thankful. But I, as I was there, I was there to stay at the house with my nanny, his wife, because they do a lot of like taking care of each other. She's not very mobile, really has to have help getting around and help doing things around the house, simple things like you know, making food and things like that. So I was there to stay with her, make her feel comfortable, and help her out while he was not able to be there. And so I spent the majority of last week sleeping on a couch and waking up multiple times during the night to help out my nanny and um just be there with family. And while I was my top priority was not the same as it might be while I'm at home. Like I was not focused on getting in my workout every day, I wasn't focused on having home-cooked meals, I wasn't focused on drinking all of my water, like I just that I did those things, but they weren't my top priority. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about this today because I know that so many people listening to this podcast, you guys also are caregivers for other people, whether that be family members, like maybe your parents or your children, or your siblings, maybe you're a caregiver for in-laws, your your your husband's parents or grandparents or you know, siblings or whatever that may be. So I know that many of us are caregivers, and I want to talk about what it looks like whenever we're not able to necessarily make health and wellness our number one top priority, but how we can still allow it to be something that is a part of our lives. It's okay for it not to be our top priority, and it still can be a priority, even among that, right? So I want to talk a little bit about how I navigated that this past week. So let's get into this conversation. So, as I mentioned, having home cooked meals was not like my number one top priority while I was at home this past week. In fact, in five days, I ate out ten times, and I didn't just eat at restaurants, I ate fast food ten times in five days. Some days on Thursday, I believe it was zero times, and on Monday it was three times. I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the hospital in fast food restaurants, and that was kind of my life for the entire week. So I want to go through and talk a little bit about what I had at each of those places because I feel like one, it can be valuable information for you to hear how I navigated just the simple fact of like I was out of control of what food choices we were having. I didn't get to make the decision at any point. The most control that I had over the food choices was what I ordered on the menus. And at the hospital, when there's a food court, I could choose between multiple different fast food restaurants, but regardless, it was still eating cafeteria and or fast food. And I wasn't the person who was saying, let's go here, let's do this. I was just along for the ride. I was just there to help because my personal health was not the reason I was there. I was there to support other people that I love and support my family members. So while I was there, I was just going with the flow and just rolling with the punches and doing my best to make choices that could align with my goals. So I'm gonna go through and talk about what I ate at these different restaurants because again, I just feel like it could be helpful for you to hear how I navigated that and that there are ways to still make health a priority. My ultimate goal was to choose at least one thing at each of these meals that aligned with my goals. And what I mean by that is like adding a slice of tomato to a sandwich. I counted that because I'm like, you know what? This one little slice of tomato, it's benefiting my body in some way. That is the mindset that I took into this week, is that my overall goal was to not convince myself that those little things didn't matter. Those little things do matter. Every single one of those things adds up, and I know that so many of us, especially if you haven't worked with me before, or you have a a mindset that's still stuck in that all or nothing place, you still have a negative relationship with food, then it's really easy for us to convince ourselves that these little efforts aren't worth it, and that making a choice to have a chocolate chip cookie is completely it goes against all of the healthy choices. There's no sense in trying to make a healthy choice because you're not gonna make all healthy choices. So, what's the point in making tiny healthy choices? That's what our minds can try to convince us to believe until we have a healthy relationship with food. And so my mindset going into it was that one little thing is better than nothing. Even if I don't eat a hundred percent healthy meals this entire week, I want to make sure that I'm making some little moves that are in alignment with my health goals. So the first thing I did, I was in the car on Sunday driving from Florida to South Carolina. I stopped at Zagsby's. There are very few restaurants between on our drive once we get off at 95, and so I really wanted to find something quick and easy. I was in the car by myself. I wasn't about to go sit down in a restaurant all by myself. So Zagsby's is where I landed, and I rolled up there and I was like, you know, I really don't want fried chicken, but I don't know if they have grilled chicken on the menu. And usually I will get a salad that they have because Zagsby's has pretty good salads. If you don't live somewhere where there's Zagsby's, it's like literally fried chicken and French fries. It's just a fast food restaurant with fried chicken. So uh I usually get one of their salads because they have really good salads, but again, I was driving and I'm not about to eat a salad while driving. The eating while driving is already dangerous enough. I was not about to be having a salad. So I looked at the menu and they actually have a grilled chicken sandwich. I'd never gotten it before, but I was like, you know what? This is something that in a small way is in alignment with my goals. It's not perfect. I'm still eating, I'm still gonna get the french fries and the zak sauce. And I know that that Zack sauce is pretty calorie dense, so I knew that it wasn't a choice that was a hundred percent perfect, but at the end of the day, grilled chicken with some vegetables on that sandwich is closer to my goals than if I would have just gotten chicken tenders and French fries, so that's where we're landing. So I got grilled chicken as my um, I guess we can call it a compromise towards my health goals whenever I was in the car on Sunday, and then whenever I got into town that night, we were rushing around trying to do things to set up for the following morning. My papa had to be at the hospital an hour away from where my family lives by 3 a.m. And so we had to get up and get going the next day. So we were trying to get some things done on Sunday night to prepare for our early day the next day, and so we didn't really have a lot of time for dinner, so we ended up going to Wendy's, which is again, of course, another fast food restaurant, and I chose an option there that's actually my eternal go-to at Wendy's. I really enjoy getting a de uh, what's it called? A day's double, and which is basically a burger with two patties, and I get it with no bun and extra veggies, and they never question it, they always give me exactly what I want. It comes in a little container, I just chop it all up, and it's basically a burger salad, and I absolutely love it. If you've never ordered a bunless burger with extra veggies, you've got to do that because I just feel like it is such a tasty meal. Usually I would get the chili on the side as my side because that is a little bit better calorie-wise, but I just decided this night I'm not really that hungry. So I ordered the fries and we all just kind of shared them and picked up my fries. Now on Monday morning, once we got my papa back taken in for surgery and all the things, and we were all just kind of sitting around in the waiting room. We decided to go down and get some breakfast. There was a Chick-fil-A downstairs, and so I ended up with the egg white grill. This was the first time uh on the trip so far that I needed to take a step back and remember my goals because I really wanted my first thought. I hadn't even considered getting anything else. What I wanted was the chicken biscuit. So it's a fried piece of chicken on a biscuit. That's what I would have would have naturally gotten, but then I remembered okay, there's gotta be something healthy. This is Chick-fil-A. Come on, now they know what they're doing, and so I looked at the menu that had the egg white grill, which is an English muffin. It has an egg, it has a grilled piece of chicken on it, and I think a slice of cheese. And so I ended up getting that with a side of fruit versus their little hash browns, and it was so tasty. It was such a good breakfast. I actually think that my mom got the little hash browns, and so I took a couple of hers. So I got a little bit of that like fried taste that I was looking for without having to make my entire meal revolve around it, and that really was a very nice compromise for me. So, this is kind of the of a mini lesson in this is sometimes you need to take a step back. Don't just naturally get what you've always gotten, take a step back, look at the menu, evaluate. There's a bound and determined to be something on that menu that could align with your goals, even if it's aligning with your goals in a very small way. Like, I wouldn't I would have been fine getting the egg white grill and the hash browns. I just knew like I was gonna be out of control of my food choices a lot, and so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna get the fruit uh because it was a easy thing for me to get in that moment that still could align with my goals, but getting the hash browns wouldn't have hurt me in any way, and I would have been perfectly proud of myself for choosing the healthier biscuit option and still getting something that I was really after and really wanted the taste of. For lunch, I actually went to Subway that day and I went got the protein power wrap. And if you haven't heard of those, they're like their new thing, they're like protein forward options at Subway. It was actually super good, so it's definitely something that I recommend. And I had the option to make it a combo and either get the chips or the cookie, and I was like, you know what? I would so much rather have the cookie than the chips. So I ended up getting the power wrap with a cookie at Chick-fil-A that night, which is where we went for dinner. So I had Chick-fil-A two times in one day, and that's okay. I got the nuggets and the kale salad, and I split it with my sister. We weren't starving, but we knew that we needed something, so this was a nice compromise. I got some veggies, I got some protein, and I got something that I wasn't gonna end up overeating on. Now the next day we went to two fast food restaurants. I went to Taco Bell and McDonald's, and I not necessarily made the greatest choices at either of those meals. We ate them only a couple hours apart, so the McDonald's was almost like a second dinner. Taco Bell was our dinner one and McDonald's was our dinner two, and so I wasn't super starving at the McDonald's, but I was slightly hungry. I made a choice though that I definitely it was so out of alignment with my goals, but I do not regret it in any way. At Taco Bell, I got the crunch wrap and I added lots of veggie veggies to it, and I added, I think I needed to add black beans. I don't think those were already in there. I can't remember, but I made sure that I had multiple ways of getting in protein and colorful veggies in that Taco Bell dinner, and then at McDonald's I just got a McFlurry. I know what you're gonna say, but that's the only thing that I got at McDonald's that night. And you know what? I didn't regret it a single bit because overall I had made choices that were in alignment with my goals for most of this trip. I had gone on a few walks, I had had my water and been really good about drinking my water for the entirety of the trip. So I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna enjoy this McFlurry with my sister, and we're all gonna be happy and content, and it's all good. The next day we went to chicken salad chick. I got chicken salad on a croissant. That was overall, I don't consider that a very unhealthy meal, but the number one thing that I did that I am proud of at that meal was that I stopped eating when I was full. That was one of the commitments that I made to myself a long time ago, is I do not need to finish everything on my plate. It is a okay to throw away a few bites of food. Nobody's gonna come arrest me. I'm not gonna be in any trouble. My stomach is going to feel better. I am emotionally and mentally going to feel better about myself and about my choices. I'm gonna prove to myself that I can be in control around food, that I don't have to eat every bite of food on my plate. So I made that choice sitting at this meal. There was about half of my sandwich left, half of uh half of a half, so a fourth of my sandwich left. And I was like, you know what? I'm completely full, I'm good, I don't need any more of this, and I just put it to the side, and that was that. I threw it away at the end of the meal. Now, on my way home from South Carolina back to Florida, I got I stopped at Chick-fil-A and I got their cool wrap. That's another really easy way to get in some pretty good nutrition. There's a lot of color in that, there's protein in that, there's a lot of fiber in it. It's a it's a good nutritionally well-balanced meal in itself. So I got the cool wrap, I did get it with French fries, and I ate that while driving down the road. So those were the choices that I made at these fast food restaurants. And what I want to remind you of, what I hope that you take away from this, is number one, you can choose just one tiny thing at each meal that aligns with your goals. Especially now, if you are in a season where, you know, this is your top priority, you are losing weight, you are being serious about your health and wellness, like you are taking this, this is what you're doing, then then this doesn't apply to you really, because I want you focused on it. I want you making those choices that truly everything aligns with your goals that for the most part, right? Like you can still have a McFlurry every once in a while, but I'm just saying, like, overall your goals are more so in alignment with the big goal that you have. However, if this is a time of your life, if you're in a season of life where your your personal health is not your top priority, maybe somebody in your life needs your attention a little bit more than your health and wellness does, but you still want to feel good. You still want to be making choices that are good for yourself, even though you are also taking care of other people, then what I'm inviting you to do is make at least one choice at each of those meals that aligns with your goals. Switch out your fried chicken for your grilled chicken, add a little extra veggie here and there, switch the soda for the water, make a small choice every once in a while that aligns more with your goals than the previous choices. The other things that I'd hope that you take away from this is overeating just isn't an option. Even whenever you are in a season of this isn't my top priority, that is an easy, easy, easy, easy way for you to stay in alignment with your health and wellness goals and to feel better about yourself and to feel better physically is if you stop eating when you're full. And then the final thing is that you have to stop convincing yourself that your little efforts aren't worth it. Heal that all or nothing mindset, heal your relationship with food, get rid of those things. That's what I do, that's how I help people. So if you're like, I'd love to do that, tell me more. I invite you to go down into the show notes and check out the information for my group coaching program, Seismic Shift. But regardless, when you can finally understand that doing small things like trading out the fried chicken for the grilled chicken, that those little things matter. Every little choice that you make matters when you can finally wrap your head around that and get comfortable with making small, little bitty choices each and every day rather than making it one of those things where every choice has to be perfect and in alignment. That is whenever true health and wellness begins to occur. So I hope that you enjoyed this healthy huddle episode. I look forward to seeing you again next week in our regularly scheduled episode. We just recently passed 200 episodes of the podcast and 50,000 downloads. Thank you so much for being here for all of these episodes. If you have not, if this is one of your very first episodes, my name is Laura Banks. I am a nutrition health coach specializing in helping women get rid of their food noise and their sugar cravings so that they can be consistent with healthy eating for the first time. And I take so much joy and pride in my work. Once again, I invite you to check out the information for my group coaching program, Seismic Shift. And if you would like to go back and listen to any of the previous episodes of the podcast, there are literally 200 of them. So you have plenty to choose from. And I I would be honored for you to go back and listen to many, many, many of them. Thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. And always remember the more you know, the more you grow.
