Find Your Food Voice

Is Food Peace™ and intuitive eating your goal, but you're finding that being in a larger body is holding you back from that healing work? Listen now to get my tips on how to approach this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period in April, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode is also brought to you by my new Fat-Positive Dietitian t-shirt and mug! All proceeds go to funding this labor of love to keep it as a free resource for you. Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. The transcribed episode can be found here. Episode's Key Points: Food brings us health and connection, BUT it doesn't deserve the amount of power that we give it in diet culture. Food can't really cure us OR kill us! Thin privilege is very, very real! Our ability to heal our relationship around food IS impacted by our size and how the world treats us based on that size. You aren't "bad" based on your food choices! Food deprivation in our past can translate into our present in the form of dieting. Boys and men are often given permission to take up more space in the world and consume more food without negative associations. But growing girls need nourishment too! Intuitive eating is essential for Food Peace™, but it's important not to turn it into yet another diet rule. It isn't the eat-when-you're-hungry-stop-when-you're-full diet! It's about listening to your body and being curious about how certain foods make you feel. Intuitive eating is NOT a weight loss plan!! The desire to be in a smaller body is often about the need to be accepted, rather than the need to actually be physically smaller. Remember, you can still want to lose weight but not pursue it! The pursuit of weight loss is harmful for our health, but it can be hard to let go of that desire completely because we live in a fatphobic society. So put weight loss on the back-burner, otherwise Food Peace™ will continue to be out of reach. We can't listen to our fullness and hunger cues and honor them if we're worried about weight gain! Historical deprivation gets in the way of our intuition around food, so it's important to unpack that with an intuitive-eating professional. Intuitive eating work takes time, it's not linear, and it's messy. And the work is never really over because we live in diet culture! You're not doing it wrong. You're just in the process like everyone else. Too much of morality is wrapped up in our food choices, and it's time to reject that! If we don't eat enough during the day, our body pushes us to eat more at the end of the day. This is the restrict-binge cycle, and to stop it, you need to eat more! Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Evelyn Tribole Intuitive Eating, 3rd ed. by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch Taste the Sweet Rebellion: Rebel Against Dieting Workbook by Dana Magee, Kaitlynn Fortunato Greenberg, and Rebecca Bitzer ---> This week's Food Peace™ Syllabus addition Reach out to Dana via email Summer Innanen and her Love, Food Episode Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you having success with healing your relationship with food, but are worried that going back into a toxic environment will jeopardize your newfound peace? Listen now to get my tips on how to approach this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period in April, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode is also brought to you by my new Fat-Positive Dietitian t-shirt and mug! All proceeds go to funding this labor of love to keep it as a free resource for you. Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: Our relationship with food is a window into our unmet needs! Instead of trying to avoid vulnerability, try sticking with it. It will help you tap into your own innate wisdom, and help guide you towards what you need to do next. It's time to investigate our unmet need. Food can help distract us when we're going through challenging times, but figuring out the unmet need can provide some lasting relief. This strategy is called the Food Decoding Method! Chronic illness is a tough experience on everyone, not just the person struggling with the pain. Remember that, and give yourself some compassion. Hardship and health conditions are difficult, but they are NOT caused by being in a larger body. There's a relationship between body size and illness, but there's no research out there to prove that being in a larger body leads to ill health. In fact, there are lots of factors, like weight stigma, that aren't even considered in classic weight research. Ending a relationship with your therapist is hard, but even going to a few sessions is worth it. Explore the option of online therapy providers! Some of my colleagues doing virtual work include Christy Harrison, Erica Leon, and Paige Smathers. You don't have to have your shit together. Transitions are messy, and adjustments take time! Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Dr. Barbara Birsinger's work Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you struggling to accept your body size, even though you've made peace with food? Is past trauma still affecting our ability to find true and lasting recovery? Julie Church and Kara Bozzi join me to break down this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period in April, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: Working with a dietitian and therapist TEAM is so important for full recovery! Julie Church, RD, and Kara Bozzi, therapist, from Opal: Food + Body Wisdom Center join us to talk about this week's letter. Our eating behaviors are coping mechanisms, and sometimes we have to engage in some disordered behaviors to protect ourselves. Shifting our relationship with our body is SO hard, especially when body hatred has plagued us for so long. Seeking healing means there's HOPE to find further growth and peace! Our world is so, SO fatphobic, and it wrongly connects our weight to our health and our self-worth. Part of the work is disconnecting weight from these other factors. Making peace with food and acting in self-care through nourishing ourselves does NOT mean you will lose weight, and it does NOT mean you'll be in a smaller body! Food peace doesn't equate to thinness. Support yourself through this weight bias we experience by finding community. Advocate for yourself, and demand respect for your body! You deserve safe relationships. Interrogate what's behind the body hatred! Trauma, weight bias... these things can contribute to us not feeling safe in our bodies and disrupt our body image. Part of the process is striving for a more relational relationship with our bodies. Investigate some somatic work, and dig deep. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Opal: Food + Body Wisdom Lynn Hurdle-Price's TEDx Talk ---> This week'sFood Peace™ Syllabus addition #1 "Intro to Body Image Work" by Isabel Foxen Duke ---> This week'sFood Peace™ Syllabus addition #2 Isabel Foxen Duke's Love, Food Podcast episode The Appetite Podcast Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Have you struggled with yo-yo dieting, weight cycling, and weight gain? Are you trying to embrace your body, but finding it difficult in this moment? Listen now to hear Haley Goodrich and I tackle this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period in April, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: Sometimes we may struggle with a disconnection from our body. Instead of listening to our internal cues, we focus on external measures like calories and other numbers. But we have to move away from this to find authentic health! The world is still really stuck in diet culture, and so we have to guard ourselves against the messaging around us! Support is ESSENTIAL to this process, especially from clinicians that understand Health at Every Size. We have to be sure that we're getting ENOUGH food every day, and that we're finding satisfaction from our food experiences in order to feel truly satiated. In this diet culture world, we actually might be UNDER eating! This can make our bodies think we're starving, which leads to bingeing. Make sure you're eating enough and eating a VARIETY of foods! It's also important to make sure that we've fully made peace with ALL foods! This is a part of intuitive eating, and will help you to balance your eating behaviors. Having true permission to eat can transform your relationship with food and can even help you to honor your body overall, which can help support body acceptance and body respect. Common aches and pains happen to people in ALL body sizes! If someone blames your knee pain on your size, they're being fatphobic, PERIOD!! By allowing your body to be where it wants to be, you're actually giving yourself the best opportunity to heal. All of diet culture is about MONEY! Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Vaishya, Raju, et al. “Is total knee replacement justified in the morbidly obese? A systematic review.” Cureus 8.9 (2016) and the accompanying Instagram meme "What to Say at the Doctor's Office" by Ragen Chastain ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1 Providing Sensitive Care for People of All Sizes by Linda Bacon ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2 Find Haley's work on her website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook Page Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you ready to let go of the food rules and embrace body acceptance, no matter your size? Is it time to cast aside the myths we've learned through diet culture about what we eat and what we look like? Listen now as I respond to a letter from someone ready to take those next steps. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period in April, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: You CAN have a normal relationship with food! How do you do that? By placing the blame where it belongs: with society. We live in a world where people judge body size, and where people make assumptions about what we eat based on our size... but this isn't a true representation of the various experiences that people in ALL bodies have! Most people of size are actually some of the MOST disciplined people out there due to years and years of trying to diet. Weight Watchers just announced a special, free summer program for teens. This is a problem!! Dieting is the number one precursor for eating disorders, and the summer is a particularly vulnerable time. The food we eat doesn't dictate our moral value! Losing weight and maintaining a smaller body size is about trying to find acceptance from the culture around us... but in reality, diets don't provide long-term, true acceptance! Diets give us the hope that we'll be finally treated with respect and be able to participate in our lives to the fullest extent, in ways that we couldn't before the weight loss. But this is a fantasy! First, losing weight doesn't grant us these things automatically. And second, diets fail. Long-term intentional weight loss is virtually IMPOSSIBLE! And the diet industry knows it. They COUNT on repeat customers. The blame is not on you. It's on our world's fatphobia. But there's no simple cure for eradicating weight bias! So what have we got to do? We as individuals have to join together and take a stand, and that starts with acknowledging our own internalized fatphobia and rejecting it. Practice respect and compassion with yourself, continue to place the blame on our society, continue to deconstruct your own bias, and eventually you'll come to a place where you can call out the fatphobia around us. This is how we change the world for generations to come! Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. My recent blog post, "Wake Up Weight Watchers"---> This week's Food Peace™ Syllabus addition Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you struggling with binge eating? Listen now for my tips to overcome shame and break out of this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period in April, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: People who binge are often overcome with shame, but shame doesn't promote real and effective change! But there are ways to find Food Peace™ if you're struggling with binge eating. YOU don't need to be fixed. The WORLD needs to be fixed! Our eating choices aren't largely about personal responsibility... it's bigger than that. Shame contributes to the compulsive feelings we may have around food. If we can cast aside that shame, we can move closer to health. But how do we take away our shame? It starts with embracing ourselves for exactly who we are, and giving ourselves permission. What would happen if you gave yourself permission to binge eat or compulsively eat? Permission and respect will help strip away the shame associated with the behavior. We don't have to love where we are right now in our body size or our behavior, but we can make room to accept these things and embrace body respect. Your weight doesn't matter! You can't tell anything about someone's health by looking at their body weight. Internalized fatphobia is likely contributing to this shame you're experiencing with binge eating. That means you need to break down this fatphobia, rather than pursue weight loss for health. Weight loss is not a behavior. We have no long-term control over our weight. The more we try to lose weight, the more disconnected we become from our internal wisdom, the more shame we feel, and the farther from health we get. Our body is WAY more complex than calories-in-calories-out! Food is so much more complex than good food and bad food. Until you feel like you have unconditional permission to eat, ANY nutritional adjustments to our diet won't stick! Plus, unconditional permission to eat will likely result is a more varied diet, which is more highly correlated with good health. As parents, there are some things we can do to promote healthy eating: Provide a variety of foods. Have consistent meal and snack times to help with predictability. Teach kids the pleasurable side of food. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you wondering how you can balance pursuing joyful movement with finding Food Peace™? Listen now as my guest for this week, Charlotte Caperton-Kilburn, and give our suggestions. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: Bodies change, and we have to let the body be where it needs to be! Following through with certain health behaviors might result in weight loss, but it might not... you never know, and so the goal can't be weight loss. Let's talk about metabolism: when you normalize your eating habits, your metabolism is in a better place, and your body can get to exactly where it wants to be. We have to honor our hunger and our fullness! This allows our body to regulate itself. If you want to incorporate movement into your life, that's great! Just make sure it's something you actually enjoy, and make sure you're doing it as a form of self-care rather than as a form of compensation or punishment. And make sure you're eating enough to fuel these forms of movement! Chronic dieting really messes up our metabolism and equilibrium! But when we establish a sense of consistency with our food and movement, we help our bodies find a nice balance. Don't worry, moving away from the weight-loss paradigm won't mess up your business in the long term! Clients can see that their health improves over time without the weight loss, and you can help keep them on track with a Health at Every Size approach. Get off the fence! Make your anti-diet approach clear to your clients from the get-go. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. FNCE Winning the War Within by Charlotte Kilburn and Eileen Myers ---> This week's Food Peace™ Syllabus addition Reach Charlotte at (901) 409-4411 Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What happens when the "simple" diet you were on starts to feel super complicated? Have you started struggling with a food plan that you were told would be easy? Listen now as my guest for this week, Robyn Goldberg, and I talk about how to manage this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: At the end of the day, diets are MESSY! Robyn Goldberg joins us to break down this week's letter. Pregnancy can make our food rules escalate... our fitness regime might increase, and we might start getting super restrictive with our food choices. Eating disorders are the silent dilemma in sports injuries! Carbohydrates are our #1 fuel! Cutting them out takes a HUGE toll on our bodies. We need to re-educate ourselves on nutritional needs in way that aren't influenced by diet culture, and learn how to nourish ourselves both through food and by other means. Find a nutritionist trained in eating disorders to guide you through this relearning process. You need the support! Our brains are inundated with diet culture and disordered ideas, and we need resources and support to help you on this journey. No one should have to recover on their own! Healthy eating includes pleasure, connection, and feeling at home in your own skin no matter your size. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. The Tao of Eating by Linda Harper ---> This week's Food Peace™ Syllabus addition #1 Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat? by Claire Mysko and Magali Amadeï ---> This week's Food Peace™ Syllabus addition #2 The Ultimate Sports Nutrition by Ellen Coleman ---> This week's Food Peace™ Syllabus addition #3 Jessica Setnick's Love, Food Podcast episode National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Find Robyn's work on her website and her Instagram Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you know dieting doesn't work, and yet you're finding yourself feeling drawn to dieting during times of stress? Are certain necessary food restrictions pushing you towards a deprivation mindset? Listen now while I discuss some strategies with Laura Thomas on how to manage this part of the Food Peace™ journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Enrollment open until January 31st 2018. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: You're not the failure... the DIET is the failure! During stressful times, we may find ourselves drawn back to dieting, even though we know that it doesn't work long-term. Laura Thomas joins us to break down this letter and to help the writer find some solutions! Honor how far you've come! All progress is good progress, so be compassionate about how much work you've already done. Do your best not to be hard on yourself if you're not exactly where you want to be in this moment. Remember, there's no way to do intuitive eating perfectly, and in fact, intuitive eating is about moving away from perfection around eating altogether. Diet culture is deeper than food! Kristin Neff's work around self-compassion might be really helpful in being kind to yourself in this process. We can't eat mindfully at all times!! We can only be mindful of so many things at once, and we're busy people. We have lots to think about, so don't get down on yourself if some of your eating occurs when you're distracted. Stress happens, and sometimes we have to make eating choices that don't add to our stress. Sometimes that means you might be grabbing convenience foods, and they might not make your body feel at 100%, but you have to prioritize things! You're doing the best you can. Take a multivitamin if you're concerned that you aren't going to get your nutrients through your current food choices. In the long-term, work on the self-judgment and perfectionistic tendencies. In the short-term, go out and get convenient and filling snacks that fit in your budget (think peanut butter, granola, or hummus!). Processed, frozen food is a tool in your food arsenal! Work on the judgment around those foods, and embrace them as an option in your life. The most important thing to remember is that there's no such thing as a perfect intuitive eater! Having flexibility in your eating behavior will protect you against diet mentality, so embrace it. Take care of yourself the best you can. Online community is important! In-person folks might not be on board with the anti-diet movement, but Instagram, podcasts, and other social media platforms can act as valuable support. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Evelyn Tribole's work Elyse Resch's work Kristin Neff's work around self-compassion ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1 Laura's podcast, Don't Salt My Game ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2 Find Lauren's work on her website and on Instagram Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you or is someone you know affected by PCOS? I have some bonus episodes for you! Listen now for the third bonus episode all about how to self-advocate for your health and find support while struggling with PCOS. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period TOMORROW, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. Episode's Key Points: Be sure to check out the first and second PCOS bonus Love, Food episodes! You shouldn't have to advocate for yourself, but unfortunately you'll probably have to... so I have some tips to share! PCOS is a women's disease, and so there's not a lot of research about it out there, and people don't really want to talk about it. Plus, weight gain is a part of PCOS, which makes it even harder to find support because we live in a fatphobia world. BUT, increased support actually helps improve our health! It can lower your blood pressure, help with insulin sensitivity, and so much more. So support is a big deal! Weight bias in the healthcare community is a moral issue!! We have to combat it, and it starts with us. First off, what's weight stigma? It's negative attitudes towards a person due to their body size. This leads to prejudice and discrimination, and results in lower quality of care. Stigma also activates a hormone response that ultimately leads to increased insulin resistance, and so much more. AND PCOS is tied closely to weight gain, which means that weight stigma is a BIG deal for those struggling with PCOS! But doesn't shame help us lose weight and watch what we eat? NO! Shame does NOT promote weight loss, and can in fact lead to more weight gain and avoidance of medical care. The research also shows us that bias within the healthcare community is rampant. That means that as someone with PCOS, you need to walk into the doctor's office armed with information, and ready to advocate for yourself and protect yourself from weight stigma. Here's some ways how: Decline to be weighed. You DON'T have to be weighed! It's NOT a medical necessity, and it can be super triggering. Assert that you don't need to talk about dieting. Protect your recovery by letting them know that you aren't interested in talking about weight loss, and that talking about dieting could actually put you at risk for weight gain. Let the doctor know that diets just don't work. Let them know that diets have never benefitted your health, and demand a different intervention strategy. Ask your doctor what they recommend to patients that are in smaller bodies. There are ZERO conditions that only affect people in larger bodies, and so there are weight-neutral ways to improve your health. Ask for the research! Ask for the data that shows long-term success (sustained weight loss with improved health for five years or more)... it doesn't exist! It sucks that you even have to do this extra work, but there ARE people out there in the fat activist community who are ready to help you. The last thing we need to talk about is how to find support. Be open with your friends and family about your struggle, join our PCOS and Food Peace Support Group on Facebook, find support on social media, try to meet up with folks in person, and head to the PCOS Awareness Symposium! Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Glenys Oyston Ragen Chastain's Dances with Fat blog The PCOS and Food Peace Support Group Ashley Levinson's Instagram Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy