Find Your Food Voice

When trapped in binge eating cycles, we can focus so much on food or ways to avoid food that we miss out on relationships, experiences, and life's joy. How can you break the cycle and get to being you?  Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: Thank you for your letters to Food. They blow me away! Food is one of the basic human needs to stay alive (with oxygen, water, sleep, and warmth) yet designed to be thought about only when not getting enough. Even when you feel like the only person experiencing food like this, those in binge eating cycles are NOT alone! Research has some solutions warranting experimentation. In order for these to be possible solutions, you must practice personal kindness, compassion, and patience. Without these, no one can recover from binge eating experiences. Practice using a calm and compassionate adult voice as navigating recovery. Mistakes will pave your way to recovery rather than keep you from it. Look for them and welcome them. They will help you understand HOW to move forward. We have circadian rhythms with eating just like with sleep. It will take time for your body to get used to not bingeing because of these. When a person experiences diet-restrict to binge cycles, the brain feels the threat of deprivation and acts accordingly. It sends more obsessions. They way out? Stop pursuing weight loss. You CAN rewire our brain to not obsess about food except for when we need it. Julie describes using check in times to begin this process. The proof is in the pudding: keep track of your rewiring process to show the ED that you are making important baby steps away from ED's grip. Make an investment in you: do one year in personal psychotherapy. It's a gift that keeps on giving! Show Notes: When eating when hungry is too scary blog post where Julie outlines these check in times more and how to make them work for you. Overcoming Binge Eating by Christopher Fairborn (this week's Food Peace Syllabus addition) Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog 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. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I've learned to respect my body yet nobody gets it. Help! What if you've worked for years to heal your relationship with food and your body yet some people in your life are just not there themselves? And may never be? To stay in recovery, do you have to defend abstaining from diets? Do you need to censure all bad body talk? Julie calls dietitian and eating disorder specialist Pam Kelle to discuss ways to navigate this complicated and common experience. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: Growing up, Julie loved alternative and punk rock. (Secretly still does!) Those affected by eating disorders are the canaries in the coal mine: they let us know when the world has become too toxic with diets and self hate. Working toward and maintaining eating disorder recovery can be exhausting because of the impulse to defend non diet ways of experiencing food. Pam Kelle RD, CEDRD teaches us to recognize the struggle with toxic diet and body hate talk and lean into it. She says observe with compassion rather than putting your dukes up. While leaning in, meditate on the gratitude that you're not currently in the throes of the diet trap like family or friends. Remember how we connect with family and friends (safety, security, love, friendship, etc) and let it well up inside us. Next time we see those who diet, connect with this meditation rather than worry or be defensive. Meditate, focus on the positive connections, and react with compassion rather than defensiveness. When we have the urge to be defensive, its a mirror to what we want to be away from in our own life. Stay grounded in your own journey. We all have a right to stand up and speak our truth yet try and predict the outcomes. If you want to speak up about diet conversations, decide what you would like to happen and consider if worth it. Diet talk may be the gum on the bottom of your shoe: always there and sticky and triggering. No one can rock your world if you don't want them to! Show Notes: Pam Kelle RD, CEDRD She does virtual sessions y'all so connect with her to navigate your path to recovery. Food Peace Syllabus additions: Daring Greatly and Rising Strong by Brene Brown PhD and The Mindful Path to Self Compassion by Chris Germer BirdHouse in Your Soul by the *amazing* They Might Be Giants. Listen now! Julie Dillon RD blog Eating Disorder Dietitians 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. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Talking about a diet is just as normal as talking about the weather or the crazy that is Donald Trump. I can handle the weather yet diets, detoxes, and Donald need to go!  Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: Thank you for your feedback! It feeds me like a bowl of fresh french fries. Win a Body Activism Kit by HAES Kits. Subscribe and leave a rating and review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of this and email it to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. First person who does this after this show airs will win this awesome Body Activism kit. Someone with an eating disorder history going on a diet is just as deadly as someone with a peanut allergy eating a peanut butter sandwich. Diets, detoxes, cleanses, and exercise boot camps are indeed bullshit. Essential ingredients for an eating disorder: altered eating habits (diets!), negative body image, and genetics. Because cannot tell a person’s genetics by sight, we must use universal precautions: diets can potentially hurt anyone. Diets and disordered eating is considered normal eating—Boo! We are helping people recover from an eating disorder in a world that has yet to recover from its own eating disorder. Going against diet culture will feel like going against one’s biology. It’s hard work! 4 ideas to help stay on the path of recovery: Keep quarterly meetings with your eating disorder team even when in recovery; Find those normal eaters. Check out Episode 7 for more on Normal Eating. Take a social media detox especially during stressful times. Stay attuned. Your body has the wisdom so work to stay connected. Meditation practice gives your body a chance to flex its attunement muscle. When feeling vulnerable, our body can show its white surrender flag and that it needs something via the craving to diet. When crave a diet/eating disorder behavior try this instead: What was going on right before the temptation? What were you experiencing/feeling/hearing via brain messages? Examine what you find and give yourself what you NEED during those times. Craving diet and over exercise may be your body’s way of letting you know you have an unmet needs. Show Notes: Julie's favorite meditation app (oh, the irony!): Insight Timer. Be sure to check out their inspiring Instagram page @insight...it is Julie's favorite for pictorial words of wisdom. Win a Body Activism Kit by HAES Kits. Subscribe and leave a rating and review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of this and email it to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. First person who does this after this show airs will win this awesome Body Activism kit Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog 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. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I had to tape a bonus episode after some brand spanking new content became available for Episode 10's Guilty Clean Eater. If you identified with Episode 10's letter writer, know that we clinicians now have more to go on to help you feel more at peace with food. Key Points: Julie and Jennifer met up at the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals Symposium. They felt privileged to hear Dr. Steven Bratman speak on Orthorexia Nervosa with dietitians Amanda Mellowspring and Jessica Setnick. Dr. Bratman was the first person to describe the eating disorder obsessed with healthy eating. Yet, until now, it wasn't officially considered an eating disorder. The presentation included the first official unveiling of the diagnostic criteria for Orthorexia Nervosa. Why does this matter? Julie and Jennifer discuss how this helps clinicians better treat this experience, promotes insurance coverage, and increases research funding. Julie and Jennifer had a tough time getting technology to cooperate to make this bonus episode happen PLUS Julie knocked over a bottle of water on her chair just as taping started...so she had to sit in it the whole time. Gotta listen after all that! Show Notes: Update on Orthorexia via Jennifer McGurk RD, CDE, CEDRD On orthorexia nervosa: A review of the literature and proposed diagnostic criteria by Dr. Steven Bratman and Dr. Thomas Dunn in April 2016 Eating Behaviors (pages 11-17)...but you heard it here first! The very first article Dr. Bratman wrote on Orthorexia Nervosa in Yoga Journal in 1997 Julie Dillon RD blog My colleague and friend Jennifer McGurk RD, CDE, CEDRD. If you are a dietitian or therapist with the entrepreneur bug, check out her book to help you make the next steps to start building your business. Her book is Pursuing Private Practice: 10 Steps to Start Your Own Business Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO THE LOVE, FOOD SERIES. GIVE ME FEEDBACK VIA TWITTER @EATINGPERMITRD OR LEAVE ME A REVIEW IN ITUNES AND SUBSCRIBE.THIS TYPE OF KINDNESS HELPS THE SHOW CONTINUE!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Has healthy eating gone too far for you? A woman writes to food about the stress, exhaustion, confusion, and shame she experiences when she choses something not clean. Can you relate? Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: Are you a clean eater? If you ask me, I say "Nope. I am dirty." Sanitary? Yes. Judge food choices or throw morals into what's consumed? No way. "The fondest memories are made gathered around the table." This is the mantra we at BirdHouse Nutrition Therapy see before we meet with every client because it's the basis of our work. Relationships connect us with joy and the meaning of life and when food gets too much power it will negatively impact this. Healthy eating advice is everywhere we look so not surprising this letter writer is experiencing this struggle with how much power to give food. Orthorexia nervosa, coined by Steven Bratman, is not classified as an official eating disorder yet it will feel just as paralyzing and crappy as a diagnosed eating disorder. It affects their mental health. First steps to heal from orthorexia nervosa: Make a pro and con list of this eating style You decide if the feelings of control outweigh the impact on relationships, life, career Appreciate recovery will take time Get proper nutrition education from a reputable dietitian Appreciate that healthy eating includes pleasure Carbs, although demonized right now, are a necessary part of each culture around the world. You can't name a single culture around the world without a carb staple. People are healthy; food is nutritious. Label food their actual names rather than categorize to be mindful and in the present rather than running on anxiety. Clean eating is washing food and cooking it to the right temperature. Healthy eating is not being black and white about food choices no matter how you categorize them. The journey to food peace is always worth the stress and anxiety. Take those first few steps, they will be worth it! Show Notes: No food is healthy. Not even kale. Washington Post article by Michael Ruhlman How to take back your power from food this holiday. Recovery Warriors blog post by Julie Duffy Dillon Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog My colleague and friend Jennifer McGurk RD, CDE, CEDRD. If you are a dietitian or therapist with the entrepreneur bug, check out her book to help you make the next steps to start building your business. Her book is Pursuing Private Practice: 10 Steps to Start Your Own Business Food Peace Syllabus Additions: Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa-The Health Food Eating Disorder by Steven Bratman MD ← The physician who coined the term orthorexia and wrote first about it. Normal Eating by Karen Koenig LCSW 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. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Long term food fights and body dissatisfaction cause friction, anger, and longing. The letter writer describes her start with body hate and dieting as a child only leading to disordered eating and weight gain. Is her experience rare? Nope. Millions experience the same. This episode debunks calories in calories out especially as it relates to certain health conditions. Knowing this, pursuing health without focusing on weight loss is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread. *Rejoicing with the food pun!* Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: Anger and rage is uncomfortable yet can project us toward change. Stay with it! Your f*ed up relationship with food is not your fault. Not. Your. Fault. No matter your size and no matter how your body got to be the size is today--you deserve respect and equality. Many years of self hate, diets, and cultural weight/size oppression may have promoted your body to be larger than what your DNA was originally programed to be. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is a genetic/environmental hormonal dysregulation leading to infertility, high insulin levels, mood disorders, eating disorders and negative body image. Most PCOS research uses weight focused therapies which sucks; women told to "just lose weight" when diagnosed. High insulin levels make this impossible long term. Julie recommends healing the hormones with medical interventions then work on healthy behaviors to promote health and avoid eating disorders. Cutting calories too low causes more problematic inflammation and cravings to binge when affected by PCOS. Health at every size (HAES®) is not: encouraging bingeing yet does not demonize food choices glorifying obesity yet does honor every body and think every body deserves equal rights healthy at every size *the extra Y is huge!* Experience health today not once at a certain weight. All sizes deserve equal health care and respect. HAES® includes attuned eating, pleasurable movement (check out Episode 4 on the Love, Food podcast for more on this), social justice for all sizes. Everyone deserves to experience health in their body today. You too! Let's rage against the machine together. Show Notes: My Big Fat Fabulous Life with Whitney Thore (Julie was Whitney's dietitian in Season 2) Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Overview Women with PCOS: Don't touch diets with a 10 foot pole ←why don't work with PCOS PCOS and Eating Disorders Weight cycling hurts PCOS How to eating with PCOS without dieting Food Peace with PCOS Weight stigma and PCOS HAES® approach overview Healthcare providing like a fat babe does ← reading this will turn your anger into a slingshot and project your self respect and body image onto a bed of the softest pillows welcoming you home. Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD or leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. A nutrition student writes to food because she feels ashamed of her fat body. Although she knows diets are harmful she is tempted because of the fear of rejection: from her peers, potential employers, future clients, and herself. Julie calls Glenys Oyston RD to discuss possible solutions for this student. Key Points: This student is not experiencing a nutrition problem yet a lack of exposure to size diversity messages. Could nutrition students be given more opportunities for personal health and well-being by exposure to more unconventional nutrition education such as attuned eating, pleasurable movement, and health at every size approaches? Not everyone wants to work with a slim dietitian. Glenys Oyston describes her transition from a body disparaging to weight neutral nutrition student which began after listening to Linda Bacon speak in a class. This helped her improve her body image while promoting healthy eating experiences. It also helped her appreciate she is much more than her body: she has thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc that mean much more to her. Is there size discrimination in the dietetics profession? We say yes. Advocating for size acceptance can improve job satisfaction yet it is up to the individual on whether to speak up or not. Find allies on-line and unite! Consider personal psychotherapy to proactively help your relationship with food and body image. Hang in there Fat Nutrition Student! Things get better as you get more exposure to the profession and the diversity of body types. Show Notes: Dietitian's and Their Weight Struggles from Today's Dietitian May 2014. (How Julie found Glenys!) Glenys Oyston: Dare To Not Diet blog and Dietitians Unplugged podcast. Linda Bacon: The professor and researcher that positively altered Glenys's nutrition education and affirmed her ability for health at her natural size. She also significantly affected Julie's shift to a weight neutral and non diet approach. Food Peace Syllabus Additions: Ragen Chastain's blog Dances with Fat. Warning: will change your life. Glenys's list of inspiring fat fashion bloggers: Gabi Fresh Curvy Canadian Garner Style Le Blog De Big Beauty Flaws Couture The Curvy Fashionista The Curvy Girl Chic Life and Style of Jessica Nicolette Mason Clothes And Shit Big Hips Red Lips Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD or leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

There's no such thing as a perfect eater so making mistakes is a part of normal eating. What if you were raised to believe larger bodies are disgusting or eating is to be controlled? Then what? When the mind and society expect eating perfection, how can someone become a normal eater? This week's letter writer asks food to help direct her to the path toward healing. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: The longest relationship we will have on earth is the relationship with ourselves. How we feed ourselves is important to our health and quality of life. Therefore our relationship with food is important to heal. Nutrition science is a fluid science. Another shout out to Ellyn Satter and her awesomeness. This time, we hear her definition of Normal Eating. Hear how Julie defines Eating Disorder recovery and why she believes you can 100% recover! Our family of origin's belief on size and food behavior can get in the way of normal eating. Normal eating includes mistakes and trusting our body. Teaching size discrimination will keep us from trusting our hunger and fullness cues. It teaches us to rely on dieting and disordered eating. Disordered eating is society's normal eating *Julie pouts*. Picking out 1 or 2 new foods to try each week will help your brain and taste buds get more comfortable with normal eating. The only FDA approved medications for eating disorders are foods. Looking to become a normal eater? Find other normal eaters! And, it may impact your family and friends to also become normal eaters. Patience and acceptance will help you move forward to healthy normal eating. Show Notes: Normal Eating by Ellyn Satter RD, LCSW Find your eating disorder team in Central North Carolina or nationwide. Meeting with an eating disorder dietitian for the first time Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog 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. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Do you feel addicted to carbs, sugar, or any foods? Hear the latest research on food addiction and what dietitians in the trenches have to say about the experience. Can food addiction explain your problematic eating? Or is it something else? Key Points: Eating is just like peeing. Yup, it is although don't mix the two. Stop judging your food choices unless you also judge your urination habits. Food can have too much power and if it does in your life you are not alone! Don't believe the hype! The food addiction theory model has many limitations including: Food addiction is poorly and vaguely defined. Too catch all. Most research done on animals and can't translate directly to humans. Fails to consider alternative explanations for neurobiological pathways seen in food addiction research. When food restricted, pleasure centers of brain light up stronger than when not restricted. This means diets will make you feel addicted to food rather than food causing the addiction. Marci says, "Food is meant to be rewarding" {My new favorite quote!} We can be addicted to food just like we can be addicted to music and laughter. Tug and pull with food can promote the food addiction experience when other underlying experiences promoting the experience. Do you know of any food addiction research that is controlling for dieting, restriction, avoidance? Let us know!! Dieting gets us in the way of primal evolutionary systems. When food feels addicting and a person is not a failure! The body is being a successful human. What are the steps to recover from what feels like food addiction? You are not alone! Let's redefine the word healthy eating. Is your eating satisfying and pleasurable. Be sure eating includes these! Ponder this: what's happening in my body rather than what's happening in my brain? Move the judgement and moralistic thinking away from food and the body will find balance to find health. Show Notes: My colleague and friend Marci Evans RD, CEDRD and ways to connect with her wisdom via twitter: @MarciRD. If you're training to become a dietitian or want to work with those affected by eating disorders, be SURE to check out her online training launching very soon. Check her blog regularly for food addiction information. Marci's food addiction blog posts: here and here. Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Food Peace Syllabus Additions: Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole RD and Elyse Resch RD Eat what you love and love what you eat by Michelle May MD Starting Monday by Karen Koenig LCSW 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. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you parent a fat child? This letter comes from a large woman raising a child who is now teased at school because of her size. Should she put her child on a diet? Take her to the gym? Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Key Points: 12 in 100,000 children have Type 2 Diabetes* yet 2900 in 100,000 children experience an eating disorder**. Statistically, worry more about eating disorders than increased adiposity. Teach kids how to have a healthy body image and a healthy relationship with food. Is fat a bad word? Let's neutralize it. Just may be the key to positive body image and respecting others. The Division of Food Responsibility by Ellyn Satter What to do about junk foods? Stop calling them junk and refer to them as fun foods because they are fun! Offer them a few times a week at a snack or as part of a meal. Do you make your child go to the gym? No pain no gain = more body hate. Encourage movement that feels pleasurable. As a parent, our job is to help children to connect to the movement their body prefers. Show Notes: *Writings Group et al., "Incidence of Diabetes" **K.R. Merikangas et al. "Lifetime Prevalence of Mental Disorders in US Adolescents: Results from the National Co-morbitity Survey Replication-Adolescent Supplement." Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 49, no. 10 (2010): 980-9. Helping Your Large Child in a Fat Phobic World Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Food Peace Syllabus Additions: Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming by Ellyn Satter Your Dieting Daughter: Antidotes Parents can Provide for Body Dissatisfaction, Excessive Dieting, and Disordered Eating by Carolyn Costin Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD or leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy