Hello, I'm Kate Freeman, and this is The Daily Dollip. Transform your eating habits and achieve long-term wellbeing with ALA Health. ALA Health is a mobile app that combines micro-learning with meal planning into a seamless user experience that teaches you how to eat well for the rest of your life, one habit at a time. Download it now from the App Store, it's free!
On this episode of The Daily Dollip, I'm posting the episode with Kate Freeman because I have an idea to chat about The Last Supper. As we start the Easter Long Weekend in Australia, I felt that a chat around the concept of The Last Supper would help you into the season and beyond. It's Dollip Time. Hey, hey, my name's Kate.
I'm a registered nutritionist, and after 20 years in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start. And so, I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empower to maximize your health. Every weekday will dull up an episode into your feed, covering everything from busting nutrition myths, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics, and habits for a healthy life.
My promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free, and strictly no-woo. Only good science translated into easy, everyday advice. Let's do this. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
I'm Stephanie Leggis, Lead Dietitian at Ayla Health. And with me today is my co-host, Kate Freeman. Yes, the tables have turned. It's a public holiday cadence.
I don't know. Everything's gone a bit nuts here. So good, Steph. What are we talking about?
I'm excited. We're talking about this effect called The Last Supper. So for all of you that tuned in thinking this was going to be a bit biblical, it's kind of not, so my apologies if that's what you were going for. But there's this really interesting set of phenomena that we see in food psychology that have labels that are biblical.
And The Last Supper is one of them. And given we are on the verge of Easter here in Australia, it seems like a good time to unpack what this effect actually is. Now, Kate, have you heard of The Last Supper, or perhaps you've heard of this effect under a different name? Yeah, so, I mean, as a church-raised girl and a pastor's kid definitely know about The Last Supper from a biblical perspective.
But not from a dietary one, but as we were chatting about this topic, I had said, oh, I call it The Last Hurrah. The Last Hurrah Meal, which is where you eat everything in your house before you start your new fresh diet the next day. So you might, or you might plan all of your favorite foods. And I certainly used to do this back in my silly dieting days as a young woman.
Big pasta dish, garlic bread, wine, butter scotch pudding, and ice cream for dessert, like all the favorites would come out. And I would have my last hurrah. Yeah, yeah. And there's this really, I guess, tempting thing that pulls us to doing that, because we're about to get, and for those of you who listened to us earlier in the week, we're about to get in that dieting box.
And we can't just sneak out and have some butter scotch pudding or some garlic bread heaven for Pete. Kate, how can I break my goodness? She's loving this stuff. We're about to get into this solid box with reinforced corners, and so this effect is seen quite broadly in people that are about to do some dieting, where they feel the need to eat everything that they're not going to be eating.
Yeah. Or there's this idea that, well, if it's in the house, that's going to tempt the diet. So that can't happen. So I may as well eat it now.
Yes, eat it all now. It is absolutely acknowledging the fact that you're going to be miserable, which I feel is almost a key red flag right there, because the fact that you're like, I'm just enjoying myself now, because I know for the next six weeks or however long I plan to be on this diet for, I'm going to be miserable and I can't eat any of these yummy favorite things. So we somehow have managed to convince ourselves that what we're doing now is going to make up for the fact that we're going to be really sad and deprived for a little bit of time. Yeah, and it's not our fault that we put ourselves in that position, right?
It's something that's come from diet culture, that if you're going to be on a diet, you have to be restricted, and then that sort of dieting mentality kicks in, and so we can often end up doing a bit of binge eating at this time. And what I found in practice is that when we have our last supper, and we've cleared the house of all of the things, and we start dieting, there's not always the desire to stick to the terrible foods that might be on that dieting plan. And like I said earlier in the week, we're stuck in this rigid box, and often we end up breaking out of it. And so we think, oh, we better get back into that box again at some point, and so we have another last supper.
And for some people, their cycle between last stuff is, so to speak, and strict diets can be quite a short repeated cycle. And the thing with that is that I'm not going to talk about the physical health effects, because I think the thing that really gets me is the way that we end up feeling about ourselves when that happens. Yeah, is that feeling of I've failed this again. And that's the feeling that I really love to try and remove from my clients' lives.
Yeah, it's been actually a phenomenon that fascinated me throughout my career, because as you know, I spent a good chunk of my career in weight loss and weight management, and would see people continually do this cycle. And you know, until more recently, I just, it was just like, well, we just need a little bit more meal power, we just need to try really harder. And it wasn't that I wanted to be cruel to these people, but it was like, no, it's okay, like you can do it, it's going to be okay. You can stick to it if that person can, like you can too.
And I used to spend a lot of time thinking quite deeply about why is it that we do this for ourselves, because it certainly was something that I experienced myself as well. And one of the things that I sort of settled on was this idea of a conflict of values within ourselves. And we have this one value, which is this health value or this weight value that tells us if we're smaller, we'll be better, or healthier, or you know, et cetera, like there's more value in this size. And then this other value, which is like food makes me feel good, and I really enjoy eating it, and it's delicious, and social, et cetera.
And those two values at certain points are in conflict with each other, because when we're dieting, we can't eat all these yummy things. And so I kind of settled on this idea that we want to delay the restriction. So we are going to restrict tomorrow, which satisfies this value, the weight health value that I need to be smaller and I need to be on this diet to be a better person. I tell myself, I'm going to do the diet tomorrow, which satisfies this value.
So this part of my brain is like, all right, okay, good. And then this value that's like, oh, I really want to eat the carbon, iron, garlic, bread, and wine, and butter, so what do you know now because yummy? It satisfies that one, except for the fact that tomorrow never comes and I'm then maybe managing a restriction for a small period of time before I feel miserable or hungry or tired. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
That's kind of what I used to explain is this kind of conflict of value, and we just our brains figured out a way of how to satisfy both values, but then leads us around and around in this horrid circle. I'd love to do your thoughts on that. I think you're on the money there that we do end up in this horrid circle, for sure, and yeah, there's definitely a conflict. And it's just so tricky, right, because we are surrounded by delicious food, and for a lot of us, we are, thankfully, lucky enough to have food security.
And that means that we're in a position where we can access a lot of scotch pudding, et cetera. I like to move people away from this idea that they have to be good all the time, or that there has to be this sort of magical diet that's going to fix everything for them that has all of these restrictions, because if we take that away, we actually don't have a cycle. If we take away the act of dieting, there's no room for the last supper, or the last supper effect, I should say, because there just never is one. And for some people, this is ultra scary.
This is really, really scary that their foods that they have otherwise binged on before dieting can be around all the time and can be a part of a balanced diet. And that scariness comes from the lens that we get from being in that diet box, because that diet box does not have any flexibility. We go back to our beaded curtain. Our beaded curtain is totally fine with us having but as much pudding when we feel like it, and is also fine with us having a chicken salad for lunch when we feel like it.
And learning to be in that space where you are okay with trusting your body, trusting that it will tell you when it's feeling well, and it will tell you when it's not feeling well, trusting that it will tell you when it's feeling hungry and therefore requiring nourishment, and trust that it will tell you when it has had enough. And I'm not just talking about eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full, that is a diet in and of itself, another podcast for another day. But being able to actually feel all of the things that bodies feel and match that up with the knowledge that you may have around what food is available and what food you like and what you're capable of preparing. Some of the stuff we talked about earlier in the week with our holistic eating framework and getting the person to a point where they're okay to have the foods in the house that otherwise would trigger the last supper effect.
Because that means that you can have your cake and eat it too, as we all desire. And it also means we're not constantly on the verge of misery. Because as you said, everyone is gearing themselves up for this awful thing that's about to happen, this restriction that I'm going to have to put myself through so that I can have that body that is said to be more desirable by our diet culture. I actually read a paper many, many, many years ago, so I can't cite it, unfortunately.
But it talked about this idea of novelty is starting a new diet and that novelty sort of keeps us motivated and hooked on this new diet. When we first try it for the very first time and we're often the most successful, the first time we try it because of the novelty factor. And then of course it sort of breaks eventually, right? But each time we go and revisit, start the diet again, the novelty starts to wear away and all that our brain can remember is the restriction and the more it fights.
And I would say from my client experience, that that's actually true in practice. Like the more people attempt the diet, the fourth or fifth time round, the harder and harder it gets, the more their brain and their body is fighting back against it. And this frustration of this last supper because they're having lots of last suffers, but never really starting a diet means that they're genuinely really not eating in the way that they want to eat. And that's very frustrating for them.
Yeah, for sure. You're ending up undoing all the things that you want to do. And at the same time, mentally giving yourself a bit of a beating for why couldn't you do it. And that's just...
That's hard. That's really hard. It's super hard. So I...
No, what are you going to say? I'm going to throw it to you. I'm keen, Steph, for like some quick little thoughts to wrap up this episode on, I guess, how we ditched last supper thinking, you know, the idea of I've fallen off the wagon with the dieting. How do we not get on the wagon to begin with?
Yeah, I think we chuck out the wagon. We don't need wagons anymore. We might have a little period of almost like morning for ourselves. This is a chapter of our life that we're deciding to close that we're going to stop chasing the wagons.
And that can be tricky. And it's okay if that means that you need to take some time for yourself and do a bit of journaling and go, I've dieted for ages. And now I'm actually going to say what it's like if I don't. And if that's super scary, I would definitely recommend getting some assistance with switching that mentality.
And that is something that we can do at ALA Health, of course, with our one-on-one coaching. I would also start by getting a piece of paper or a note app or something like that and writing down, what do I actually want? What am I trying to achieve? And try to move beyond numbers on the scales, sizes of clothes, waist measurements, try to move beyond numbers.
And talk about what you want for yourself. I want to live a vibrant life. I want to have energy. I want to be around for my kids or grandkids.
I want to excise it, whatever it might be. Get those non-weight goals written down and start there. I love that. That's so good.
If you are interested in finding out more about our one-on-one coaching, you can book a free 30-minute strategy session with Stephanie and chat through what that might look like. We have also launched a brand new coaching subscription, which is a very cool, cool, high-quality coaching support for, yeah, just unlocking all of your potential with how to feed yourself long-term and working with us along with using the ALA Health app. So make sure you check that out. The link to that will be in the show notes.
But happy E-Star to those of you who celebrate E-Star. Have a great long weekend for those who are enjoying the long weekend and we will catch you next time. Bye, everybody. The Daily Doll Podcast is proudly brought to you by ALA Health.
Build food confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits that last. As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes. You can also join the conversation over in the ALA Health Community group on Facebook.
We'd love to see you there. If you've got a topic you'd love to hear us chat about on the Daily Dollop, please let us know. Email us at hello at alahhealth.com.au or you can send us a message on Instagram. Until next time.