 Aloha and welcome to Lillian's Vegan World. I'm your host Lillian Cumick with Think Tech Hawaii. Today's show is 30 Days Dairy Free Challenge, Breaking Bad Eating Habits in 30 Days. My awesome guest is a fellow Aussie, Debbie Motley from Las Vegas. Welcome to the show Debbie. Hi Lillian, great to be with you. Debbie is a school teacher and business owner and recently you've moved from Australia to the US. Is that correct? I came in December with 35 people on a jumbo jet to Los Angeles because Australia was in lockdown. Nobody was allowed to leave the country but I was getting out. Well you know what they say, where there's a will, there's a way. Exactly, that's right and I had a will. Yeah, there's a really nice guy waiting for me in America. We will get into how and why you did find your way to the States but first of all Deb, you are on a 30-day, you've just started a 30-day dairy free challenge. First question, are you vegan? No, no, not at all. Do you eat dairy? Do you consume dairy? Yes, I love cheese, I love milk in my coffee, my decaf coffee, yes and ice cream has been a little bit of a treat at the moment so that's a good idea to go on the challenge. What's the reason for you doing this 30-day challenge? Meaning you have to really stop consuming any dairy whatsoever including milk, ice cream, yogurt, butter, sour cream, all the things that really make up a very you know sort of the American diet and the biggest I think challenge for everyone is ditching the cheese so why is it that you decided to do this 30-day dairy free challenge? I've been on a health kick now for the last a couple of years but my weight has yo-yoed up and down and in May last year I decided that I really needed to look at where I was going with my diet and this came along after I've been juicing and eliminating other things out of my diet and I thought well I'll give this a try and see if I have more energy, see if I look better, see if you know the skin improves and just you know caring about my health, caring about yeah I'm getting older and I need to enjoy my life. So you're on day four of the 30-day dairy free challenge, how are you feeling today? Oh great, yes really good. I've changed my milk is to oat milk or almond milk, I'm not missing the cheese at all I just have avocado on toast without the cheese and it's fine and the ice cream can sit in the freezer. Well the good news is there is a vegan substitute for anything that you crave these days whether it's ice cream just go to your local supermarket I'm sure you're going to find a huge array of plant-based ice cream anything from oat based to cashew based almond based coconut based the same goes for plant-based milk so really there is a substitute for anything the only thing is whether you are going to have an open mind and be willing to change your eating habits so our relationship with food is actually a reflection of our relationship with life absolutely yes no surprise there many of us struggle with you know weight loss body images poor eating habits that affect our health the good news is eating habits can be broken and newer ones can be made that is the the bottom line you have all the power in your body in your in your will in you know everything that you stand for whether you want to take control of your health or not all of that is possible if you just give it a go so I am going to go through ways we can break eating habits and I do want to talk today about the four eating habits that pretty much make up how us as humans do do follow do look at food so the first eating there are four so the first one is fuel fuel eating fuel eating is something that is mindful you are aware of the food you're putting into your body it's clean eating whole foods plant-based if possible at least primarily plant-based so fuel eating is something I I do recommend you consider trying to do 80% of when it comes to the way that you eat so the second eating pattern is fog so fog is eating without awareness thank you that's like you know how people sit down to watch a tv show or something on on you know on the on the news or mean something on tv a movie the first thing we do is get snacks but when you think about it you're so engaged in what you're watching you really don't need to be doing that mindless eating and that can get you into trouble because more than often it is not food that is going to you know be beneficial in regards to your health so fog eating something you really don't want to do any more than you know five to 10% of on a daily basis the other one is fun eating so fun eating obviously is exactly what it's what it symbolizes fun junk food all that comfort food that we all get used to and we all love and that the fun eating is going to be the hardest to let go of in my opinion because it's food that you just you know you're going to enjoy it's going to make you feel better for a short for a short period of time but then more than often after fun eating some people tend to feel guilty and start feeling bad about having scoffed down that pint of ice cream so fun eating definitely again five to 10% only of um one type of eating pattern that you follow and then the last one would be storm eating so this is out of control binge eating I think as women we can all attest to having our little binge eating when we're feeling bad and down if we're you know having trouble in a relationship or something we can turn to food and that box of chocolates is going to disappear very very quickly if you're in the moment of binge eating so they're basically the four eating patterns I think people need to work on and if you do want to change the way you consider doing the fuel eating and be mindful of what you're eating 80% of the food that you're eating should be fuel eating so Debbie what what has been your experience with food growing up in a place like Australia and then what is the difference with your relationship with food since moving to the US okay so I think Australia and America have similar ideas on food it's huge quantities it's um Australia especially is big steaks big red meter eaters big alcohol consumption you know lots of alcohol at functions snacky foods lots of potatoes either as chips or mashed potato fewer vegetables um and lots of snack eating and lots of processed food so um growing up I was probably 135 pounds you know in high school and then once I started to have children went to university actually and started eating all the snack foods while I was doing assignments that was my big downfall put on a lot of weight then just mindless eating just having I need to get this assignment finished I just need some fuel I need some sugar yeah just to get through the task so if we go back to the four primary types of eating patterns you were probably concentrating more on the fog eating the mindless eating which is yeah another eating pattern that's that's going to be hard to break so it does take some awareness of when you are eating and what you're putting on your plate Debbie let's have a look at the first slide of when you were at I guess one of your your your most weight how much did you weigh in this photo approximately approximately 200 pound okay that was five years ago it is a lot now can I ask about what you weigh now if you feel comfortable 135 pound that's amazing it is great you must feel how do you feel after dropping off so much weight I am fitter now than when I was 19 that's right I'm fitter than I've ever been in my life isn't that incredible amazing mm-hmm yeah well I see you have a very active lifestyle now with your partner one let's take a look at a photo of you yes tell us about this and and where you where you were okay that was the 29th of June this year that is angels landing at Zion National Park now if anyone's familiar with Zion that is a really steep climb up to 21 switchbacks you get to a landing spot Scott's landing and then it is chains all the way to the top it's dangerous it's exhilarating it's amazing and yeah it was easy stop it I shouldn't say that yeah yeah compared to what I was like before that was a great climb yeah isn't that incredible yeah because I guess when you you know looking back at the photo of when you were a lot heavier could you ever imagine that you'd be doing something like that no here you are living life to the fullest exactly I was the one that was sitting in the car reading a book letting everybody else have fun yeah I won't show anybody my body I won't show anybody that I can't get there even though I was a full-time school teacher I would work flat out with my class but sit down in the staff room and grab something snacky to eat lots of bad habits with it well in a sense now you're leading by example because people are looking at you are interested to know how you did it actually Debbie we have a question from one of our viewers and the question was what do I have to do in order to change my eating pattern from one to another is it hard in your experience when you how did you change your eating patterns what did you start eliminating and start adding to your daily diet um originally my daughter got married in March 2019 so I started going to the gym and started changing my habits I need to go back my husband died in his sleep in 2017 so that was a huge wake-up call for me after a 30 year marriage that I now could choose how I wanted to live my life so I got down to probably 160 pounds for the wedding in um March 2019 by exercising by watching what I was eating then in May 2020 I met a guy on a online zoom course that I was doing because COVID everyone was in lockdown and he had different ways of um thinking about food and I must admit I fell in love and lost 15 pounds in three weeks um so the life was suddenly exciting again and the emotional eating and the drinking alcohol um I could control then because I had a goal I had he didn't weigh as much as I did so I wasn't going to let him see me heavy so that was a good incentive to keep losing weight um so he introduced me to juicing so I went to juicing celery juice for breakfast and then juicing vegetables for lunch and then having a small meal before six o'clock at night and not snacking that was the main changes that were made yeah that's uh that's so inspirational I mean and and doable yes I can imagine it is challenging but so is everything else in life I mean you have to accept that in order for change to happen in your in your lifestyle you have to take responsibility and show up the way you know you have to no excuses you know depending on which studies you look at a lot of a lot of doctors are coming out and saying stop the excuses with the gene thing you know it's in my genes I have this because my mother had this my dad had this um really lifestyle is going to be the biggest um impact that that that your health will you know gain from your lifestyle changes and of course what you're putting into your body so um really just go for it if you're looking to to chain to lose weight if you're looking to change your eating patterns and another thing that everyone needs to think about is starting your kids on healthy eating patterns because one of the other questions I'm going to get to after the break is about how you know what what importance did our parents have on our diets and I think the clear answer is an incredible influence because they taught you from a young age what you should be eating and that's all that you knew and that's what you grow up grew up with and therefore you have all of these comfort foods that you know back in the day 30 40 50 60 years ago people thought were healthy for you but now we know that most of the food that we have been eating in fact is not that good for us after all so more on uh more on how we can regain regain our health change our eating habits after this short break please stay tuned and we'll see you in one minute aloha i'm kili akina the host of hawaii together on the think tech hawaii broadcast network hawaii together deals with the problems we face in paradise and looks for solutions whether it's with the economy the government or society we're streamed live on think tech biweekly at 2 p.m on mondays i want to thank you so much for watching we look forward to seeing you again i'm kili akina aloha welcome back to lilians vegan world i'm your host lilian cumick i'm a vegan chef cooking instructor and cookbook author of the newly released hawaii a vegan paradise my book is available in stores all around hawaii you can also order a copy on amazon barns and noble free shipping for members and it's a fabulous book with over 120 plant-based recipes inspired by the islands so definitely do check it out i i recently had the absolute honor of dining with actually cooking for one of my huge fans chef alan wong he is one of the best chefs in the world and happened to end up at my dining table recently so sam choy another another chef in hawaii was recently dining at one of my seven course plant-based dinners so it just goes to show plant-based food is not what it used to be it's not like a bowl of alfalfa sprouts and lettuce there's so much going on with plant-based food now so i hope that you do you know look into it delve into you know ways you can make your your diet a little bit cleaner and plant-based is definitely the way to go i would like to welcome back my guest debbie motley from los vegas originally from australia the accent yes i think everybody noticed the accent you are actually my first ozzy guest oh dear i'm back to your ozzy roots lillian i know it's such a pleasure to have you on debbie you are such an inspiration um your journey how you lost all that weight the then your newfound love um how you're embracing life working on self-development all of this growth is just so beautiful and i think anyone who listens to your story will be inspired so i do want to ask you deb the goals in regards to your overall health and well-being when you start setting goals you know before you start a diet let's say with the 30 day dairy free challenge can you give the viewers an idea of how you set your goals in regards to your health or weight the weight loss that you want to achieve um i'm very strategic um and i don't set goals that are unattainable so when i arrived in america i was probably 180 pounds um you know probably 160 pounds by apologies and i wanted to get down further i wanted to be fitter so i started walking daily and started off with a short goal of 30 minutes a day yeah now i walk for an hour every day for four miles um and then i had a weight loss goal of a pound a week yeah that's it's achievable by anybody okay um and just eliminating things that don't support my health so i tried to have a good relationship with tequila in america and found that i don't have a good relationship with it and now i can't drink any alcohol at all i find it doesn't agree with me anymore yeah because i have gone to basically plant-based um with small servings of meat and and mainly fish um that my body just doesn't like having lots of sugar put in it anymore so once we go to juicing we have a recipe of 12 vegetables that we put in a juice machine and we drink that for either lunch or dinner depending on how our lifestyle is and then we'll have a salad for you know for the other meal and breakfast is fruit by the time you eat all that um and take the actual processed sugar out of your diet you are not hungry you don't need to eat anything and if I feel like i'm hungry and it's not when it's time to eat then i will drink water because usually it's your brain telling you that it needs water it needs hydration you're not actually hungry if you stop and look at how much fuel you do need in your body it is not that much fuel i have a japanese daughter-in-law and then the small meals that she always eat you know used to astound me when i lived in australia but now i understand why yeah those small meals fill you up i i talk all the time on the show about how i personally personally think and believe people eat way too much it's like it's like an automatic reaction whenever you know that's why emotional eating is a dangerous thing whether you're emotional because you're stressed out what do you do a lot of people grab that you know candy bar or that chocolate or something um when you you're having trouble in your relationship straight to the alcohol you know when you're drinking alcohol you do actually rev up an appetite in my case i do when i start drinking i know that i need to have something um to eat with it and again that's just an eating habit i have created no one told you told me that i need to have you know crackers and processed crackers and vegan cheese and you know um salted salted nuts and and chips and dips and stuff it's all just everything that you know you put on your plate you have created that which means you can also create a different looking plate with all the colors of the rainbow whole foods you know concentrating on food that is going to fuel your body make you feel better and especially i always like to tell people about doing it now everything you everything that is going to happen in your future you're creating it now not only with food in life you know with life in general we are taught that in self-development classes to think is to create and what you create create now really is going to make the difference for you and your body in the future so take care of your body that's all i can say and again it's not only food so thank you for pointing that out debbie because it's also about um overall well-being you know emotionally emotionally you know other think about all the aspects in your life that make up your whole being and try to get all of the aspects in balance working on food is a great start but know that it relates to your emotions so whenever you're feeling bad don't immediately reach for food you're just giving yourself you know the you're giving yourself permission to eat more and more often it's mindless eating because when you're feeling very very emotional um you should just step away walk away otherwise you're gonna you're gonna end up overeating debbie i do want to talk about um a really great website that i love it's web md and they have amazing they have really great information about health um and web md talks about the choices and lifestyles and how that is really what makes a different in food so i did find this little um this little snippet that i'd like to tell you about that i found from web md type two diabetes is partly about gene is partly about genes but more to do with lifestyle exercise weight loss and and all of those things the healthy diet will improve your blood pressure and lower cholesterol levels it's not only about the genes so no excuses it's about the lifestyle even if a condition like heart disease runs in your family you can break that pattern by developing better eating habits and you know exercising more maintaining a healthy weight etc etc so definitely don't blame the health issues you have too much on your genes because you're just letting yourself get away with you know continuing on an unhealthy path so do keep that in mind so i have another question debbie from our viewer what is the best eating pattern and in regards to health what is the best eating pattern health wise what how would you answer that okay i found that mindless eating after dinner at night was the biggest cause of my weight gain so i've now gone to a fasting program so i don't eat before eight o'clock in the morning and and sometimes on the weekend not until 11 o'clock in the morning you know the body doesn't need it when you first wake up and that's another one of the fallacies that we were given as children that you had to have three meals a day and you had to have morning tea and you had to have afternoon tea and you had to have supper uh as well so that's six meals a day you had to have often we will eat at 11 o'clock in the morning a big bowl of fruit and then we will have a big meal at say three or four o'clock in the afternoon and we're done that's it but um our goal is not to eat after six o'clock at night because you don't need food late at night you know i don't need it for digesting don't sleep well if i've got a heavy belly of food um and water you know just not drinking any sugary drinks you know all the the coax and the sodas and that are just not needed there are just um a sugar fix that makes you thirsty so just drinking water yeah um sorry i apologize my decaf coffee i do have in the morning but it's decaf yeah i've gone off the caffeine so it's a decaf coffee that we have yeah that's it you may you may have gone off the caffeine but you're definitely not lacking in energy because judging from what you're eating all that juicing all the plant-based um food that you're incorporating into your diet i can i can see how energetic you are because i did spend one week with you recently and the unfortunate thing about the week that we spent together was that the food that we were served was probably not the best food and i have to be honest um i think when you're a caterer and you're catering for you know 50 60 people it doesn't really matter but i i urge caterers chefs cooks to take into into consideration the plant-based people that are attending whatever function it is that you're cooking for because one of the days my lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread and i was absolutely not impressed that was the fourth day i was tired i was hungry i was missing my veggies um and i had a chat to the to the chef actually and i spoke to him very kindly and just asked if he could you know serve some more whole food whole foods like fresh vegetables tofu so the next day i noticed he had made a tofu stir fry with lots of veggies in it and uh rice although not brown rice but still a good start so that disappeared very quickly um yeah i think there's the biggest challenge when you're eating healthy and very clean is when you're forced to eat out we're not forced to eat out when you decide or have to eat out or when you're traveling when you're outside of your comfort zone where you know you can control your eating habits this is going to be the biggest challenge by far so there's something to work work on and think about and even when you go to restaurants i always tell tell people on my social media i go to non-vegan restaurants on purpose not because i i've forgotten about the vegan establishments not not at all i do that because i want to educate the chefs that are going to cook for me that i'm not going to order anything on the menu um that's on the menu i ask for dishes that are not on the menu because i want them to start thinking outside of the box because you know that the amount of people that are going plant-based it just increases year by year there's got to be you know some kind of um education in in the restaurant system as well food and beverage system whereby people like you and i can still dine out and enjoy good healthy food so if anyone in that business is watching please start educating your your cooks and your chefs about how they can serve more healthy dishes so what are um before we start wrapping things up debbie i do want to ask about how you stay healthy with in in the mind sense what are you doing for self-development growth in that area well um at the conference that we were at um at the previous conference we talked about the mine square and this that talks about your spirituality your emotions your mental and your physical so setting goals in all those areas so you have a balanced life um so yes i walk every day i have an exercise regime i was almost osteoporosis because of um medication that i was on and um i have to watch what i'm i'm doing and i want to stay fit and healthy so i do my walking for an hour a day um and i race around and i do what i want to do so spirituality i'm always um doing my courses and looking at you know the universe has my back you know we we are here for a reason we need to find our purpose in life mental i just read non-stop i'm a teacher i'm an educator um and even though i'm semi-retired at the moment um my family come home and look at my table that is just covered in books because you know we're always improving ourselves and finding something that we don't know and then um the emotional well that's you know developing love for people you know people my friends in Australia were panicking with me being in America and walking the streets of Vegas every day and i said i have my friends that i meet and we talk and we say hello every morning and everybody is so polite and so kind um that i have met in America i am just blown away by the generosity yes i couldn't agree more um i i'm also a new guest to this awesome country and so happy to be here debbie it's been wonderful and you are such a gracious guest thank you so much for sharing your journey i wish you all the best in the future and know that you're gonna just smash it um and i look forward to many many more healthy years with you to everyone and the viewers watching thank you again for joining us for another another another um episode on millions vegan world i'll see you in a couple of weeks stay safe stay healthy and eat well hello