00:00:00  What would your life look like if you stopped obsessing about food? If you stopped the constant battle with food and your body, what would things look like? By definition, intuitive eating is defined as a compassionate self-care eating framework that teaches you how to treat your body with dignity and respect no matter where it’s at, no matter where it shakes out to be. 

Hey there fellow rebels, welcome to #ActuallyICan, the podcast where we say a hearty hell yes to designing life on our own terms. I’m Katy Ripp, a lifestyle coach, business mentor, and serial entrepreneur here to guide you through the wild ride, defying what society expects of us and embracing our authenticity. On this show, we dive deep into taboo topics like death, money, spirituality, entrepreneurship, unapologetic self-care, and personal development, all while swearing and laughing along the way expect down and dirty conversations, plenty of humor, and a whole lot of exploration, leaving you feeling empowered to be your truest self. Whether you’re craving a good laugh, seeking unconventional self-care tips, or simply looking for some camaraderie.

 00:01:13  You’ve come to the right place. We only get this one short life, so buckle up and let’s design yours on our own terms. Ready to dive in? Let’s go. You have no idea how excited I am for this. So for the listeners out here, we have Emmy Bright from Real Good Nutrition. Hi, I’m Emmy and I met. Well, actually, I saw you talk at Shelby’s event by Maggie’s. And you changed my life with the sheet that you handed out. Yeah. Which for those of you that are in small business, like when you give people tangibles like real tangibles, not like little business cards and, you know, like tchotchkes or whatever, but this was like a tool that was laminated charts, and my friend Larissa and I were sitting next to each other and I was like, why have I never done this? And it was like listing your favorite carbs, your favorite proteins, your favorite fats, and then like all of the like non whatever. What was the fourth column like? Flavor sauce is like how you just want to combine that kind of thing.

 00:02:18  And I was like oh my god. And I went home. I remembered I think I said Instagram message. Like that week I went home and made some like rice bean taco thing for my family. And they were like, oh my God, this is amazing, I love it. Why have I never done that so easy? I think it’s like when we get rid of the like mentality that we need to go on Pinterest and find like perfect recipes and whatever. That’s kind of what keeps us in the like vein of doing nothing at all. So having something that’s just so simple that you can build from, but something that can always be there, it’s a good like foundation. I love that tool. Yeah. And well, the other thing that and we’re going to get into this I hope like the favorite things. Like I didn’t even know I liked some of these things. Right. Like I put down. Right. Like my family likes rice. I don’t like rice. So I put down rice because they like it.

 00:03:10  And then I was like, oh, like, I don’t have to eat this rice. I don’t even like it. Yeah. Which by the way, like, how do you not like white rice is my favorite food. I don’t I do not know how. You all right? Yeah, actually, you know what I shouldn’t say? I don’t like rice. I’ve always been taught not to like rice. That’s. Yep. There you go. Yeah. So it’s not that I don’t like it. It’s like always been on my don’t eat list. Yeah. So you’re definitely going to get into that. So part of the reason I reached out to you is basically my fucking button ran out. And what like what I mean when I say that is when I graduated high school, I was thin. I was always the thin girl. I mean, like, really kind of like dangerously thin when I got to be a senior in high school, I graduated high school £111. I was 580 muscle, zero fat, you know, like.

 00:04:03  But I didn’t really. I didn’t really realize it at the time. And then I started to gain weight from, you know, just lifestyle, right? Like I got older, I didn’t get my period until I was 16 years old. So like, hormones didn’t really catch up with me. Yep. You know, for lots of reasons. My parents got divorced. I mean, I have lots of reasons for this, right? Like freshman 15, freshman 20, you know, whatever. And I had never really been in the diet culture like my mom wasn’t. She wasn’t a calorie counter. She was always thin. She was not an exerciser. She wasn’t a calorie counter. She just stayed thin. So I just sort of thought I was going to stay thin forever. I just like, I ate whatever I wanted. I we never because my parents got divorced at 14. It wasn’t that my mom didn’t cook for us. It just like it changed our eating habits, right? We ate out a little bit more.

 00:04:54  I come from a family of casseroles and spaghetti and, you know, all the things that we were raised with. Tater casserole is still my family’s favorite. Yes, I just like that kind of thing. Yeah. So I was always thin, and then I sort of caught up with me, but it caught up with me really fast, and I have struggled and like, I’m going to put some air quotes up here, like struggled with my weight. Yeah, all my adult life. All of it. Like since I was I want to like go back to 20. I mean I was £111 and this is no joke. I’ve gained £100, like just right now. You guys know how much I weigh. Right now I weigh £207. Part of the reason I do this podcast is I kind of have gotten on this. I mean, it’s sort of a I don’t know what it is exactly like. I started bringing out all of this stuff out from underneath the bed, right? Like, yeah, I sobriety like the drinking.

 00:05:49  I felt really alone in that. But then I started talking about it and it just it was like all the shame and the guilt and the anxiety, just like, yes, yes, just like melted away for me. And so all my therapist talks about that all the time. All of a sudden I’m like, I mean, I used to cry when I would talk to my doctor about my weight. Like, I wouldn’t even, you know, like, we we just, like, didn’t talk about it. Yeah. But I was so shameful. And so, I mean, I had so much guilt around it. Yes. I had identified as a thin person for the last 25 years. Yeah, yeah. Like high school shit. And when I say I got sick, like I just got so sick of hitting the fucking button and by that I mean I would try, I would try 75 hard. I was never like an Atkins person or well, not the Mediterranean, but like I was never a South Beach diet gal.

 00:06:39  I went to Weight Watchers here or there, but it just like none of it ever felt natural to me. It was always, and I say this in a lot of for a lot of different reasons, but I have an analogy in my head about magnets. You know, like the round horseshoe looking magnets, when like when you push them together, one of them repels, flip it over, they stick. And so I basically, in my world, I’ve just been fighting against the grain for so long and beating myself up and killing myself over shit, and then hitting the fucking button and going balls to the wall for three months, and then I would start over again. So it’s and I, you know, I never identified as a yoyo Dieter, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly 100% right. Yeah. So I never really identified as a diet or. But I’m pretty sure that that’s like the exact definition. And so I was thin and then I was fat. And I know people are going to freak out when I say like I’m fat, right? Like, have this, like, oh my God, no, you’re not fat.

 00:07:45  Like, don’t say that about yourself, blah blah. Yeah, I am fat. I’m not hiding it. I’m not. It’s like it’s the weight of. No pun intended. It’s the weight word. And we all know language is powerful. Yes, yes, but after I went and saw you, I just, like I did some reading, I. And like everything. When I get on to something, I like go down main. Yeah. Yeah, right. Like I just glom onto it. That’s who I am. But it just like I know people are going to flip. They’re going to be like, oh no, you’re not fat. Don’t say that. It’s, you know, but I just I am who I am now. And I just have gotten to a point that I’m so fucking tired and exhausted about. Yes, worrying about like, just literally worrying about it. I’m just over it. If you don’t like me because I wear an extra £50 on my body, I don’t need you in my life.

 00:08:48  Right. Period. And that goes for me. Right. Like if I’m saying that about myself, I don’t like myself because I’m £50 overweight or 100 or 12 or 4 or 32, whatever that looks like. Yeah. I’m sick of not liking myself because of that. Right. I’m just like, I’m over it. And I got over it before I met you. And then I met you, and I was like, I need help. I cannot do this on my own. I’ve tried for 25 years, and I do this. I won’t lie, I came to you with the intention of losing weight. Yeah. I was like, she can help me, put me on some sort of diet that I have clearly missed in the 20 years of research. Yes, there is so common article. Oh, there’s one more. There’s one more there that you don’t know. One more thing that all the dietitians are hiding. Yeah. It’s just like, just to come and see me and clearly that.

 00:09:50  Well, I shouldn’t say that. It’s the most unkept secret out there. Which is? Be nice to yourself and eat to fuel your body. So yeah, that’s kind of my story. Now do I still go to a place of. I should start 75 hard tomorrow. Of course. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And I don’t think that goes away. Yeah. I don’t know that it does. But what is happening now is I know that doesn’t work for me. What it does is like fuel the cycle of I’m feeling really horrible about myself because for me, it’s unattainable. You know, my brother and sister both finished it with flying colors. That is amazing for them. I just I don’t like it. Well, and I would argue like to those who do like it.

 00:10:42  Or do.

 00:10:43  Like.

 00:10:43  Whatever the thing is that they’re doing. What do you like about it? Do you like the feeling of being in control or do you actually like it? And for most people, when they really think about it, it’s the former that they feel diligent.

 00:10:58  They feel like they’re following something they don’t actually love, how hard the workouts are all the time. Maybe they like it sometimes. They don’t actually like having to be super rigid about what they’re eating, but they’ll tell themselves they do until they believe it.

 00:11:12  Somebody else say there’s an alternative? Yeah, somebody else has told them that that’s what they should be doing. And in all of the, I would say last, well, I mean really last 25 years of all the knowledge and experts I’ve heard and all of the things I have learned a lot, I’ve also learned that most of it doesn’t align with me anymore.

 00:11:34  Right?

 00:11:35  It just doesn’t align with me. And one of the things that you gave me, which is such a gift, is to ask myself, do I really like this? Do I really want to go for a run. Like I don’t know maybe. But if it’s not today it’s fine. Yes. Okay. So that’s my story. I’m done with my part because I know I’m agreeing.

 00:11:58  I really want to take your brain on I mean quite a few things. There’s a lot of emotional stuff around this, too, right? Yeah. You know, there’s emotional eating. There’s, you know, and I’ve also grappled with that for sure. I’m menopausal, which means I haven’t you know, I haven’t stopped my period. But I’m getting there. So, you know, hormones change. I have felt like I’ve had a lack of energy, which according to social media, looks like I have no lack of energy. Yeah, yeah, I nap almost every day. Yeah. And I feel really tired in the afternoons. We’ve sort of addressed that which, like, I’m not eating enough. Guess when the last time I had a nap was the day before we met last time. Love it, love it. So I you know, I also. Yes, I recognize to that especially when you are working with experts and working with counselors or coaches or whatever. There’s this lovely little segue is like, look what a good job I’m doing.

 00:12:59  Like, I want to be the best patient. I want to know. I want you to know that I’m doing all the things you told me to do. And so that part is sort of funny. But in any case, I just want you to tell me your story. Now, you wrote down your story just a little while ago. I read through it and I was like, Holy shit, I would never guess some of that from really? Well, here’s the other thing is like, yeah, when we start talking about these taboo subjects, which wait, while it’s a what, I don’t know, 80 billion, $20 trillion business, nobody actually fucking talks about it, right? I mean, nobody really talks about it, right? Like nobody’s now when you are fat or overweight or whatever, that word feels good to you. Nobody talks to you about it. No, no, says a word, right? Like nobody says to your face, you’re fat. I’m worried about your health.

 00:13:55  You know, you’re eating too many sandwiches, but when you are thin, all of a sudden you’re like, fair game to eat a fucking sandwich. Like the opposite is true, that you’re too thin, you know, like that’s too much work for you. You’re working too hard. It’s just so fucked up.

 00:14:16  It is, it it is. And I think it goes both ways, too. Like. Right. We like we hear that side of it. And then we also hear, like so many of my clients, straight up to their face, have been told things like, your weight is making you sick, your weight gave you diabetes in their doctor’s offices. If you don’t lose weight, you will die. And then there’s a third layer of it too is those who live in larger bodies, who have eating disorders, clearly like diagnosable anorexia. But they’re praised for their behaviors because it brings on weight loss. It’s not seen as this is an eating disorder. It’s seen as a good job.

 00:14:48  You’re losing weight. And so there’s that whole other element to the fucked up ness of looking at someone’s body and weight and determining just with that, what that means. And that’s not right. And it’s not accurate. And we know that with research that when you really look like behind the curtain and stuff like weight does not equal health. And a lot of times this kind of like, I really just care about your health. I want you to, you know, eat better. I want you to lose weight. It doesn’t really have anything to do with your care of that person. It’s your bias around weight that’s really speaking there. And I think that’s like, I mean, we could talk for hours on that, but that’s like the crux of the health care industry a lot of the times too. Yeah, from my opinion, a.

 00:15:35  Big weight loss, right? Like big food, big pharma, big tobacco, big alcohol, right. Like there’s have to sort of look behind the curtain.

 00:15:44  Also, listeners, I want you to know that literally, I just said to I mean, I want her to come on every month. So there’s a really good chance that Abby’s going to be here because we could talk for hours. I, just, like you, will be coming back. I need it so many layers and so many things about this. Give me a little bit of your story. Yeah.

 00:16:05  So I feel really lucky that the relationship with food and my body that I had growing up was really stable, kind of like dieting wasn’t something that I saw, like firsthand with my parents or like the Almond mom or things like that. There was a lot of different foods that we ate in the house. I was never like my body was never talked about. It wasn’t something that I really considered. And I played sports, and it wasn’t still something at that point that I had any other thoughts in my mind. Like I said about it, other than like, I’m not fast enough.

 00:16:37  Like I suck at lacrosse because I can’t run fast. And I did Crewe and I was disappointed when they recruited all the water polo girls who were 50 times stronger than me, and they took my spot on the boat like things like that. That’s where my body, like, thoughts kind of came in. I never thought about food in any other way of like, oh, I’m hungry, I need to eat, or I need to fuel after a workout, which was like Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwiches. And still I was like, it was just neutral to me, food. And my body was just a neutral thing for the most part, until I got to college, which I think is a really common experience for a lot of people. A lot of the clients that I work with, a lot of my friends, too. I was in a dorm, I was in a sorority, so all of a sudden I was exposed to so many people like saying things about food and your body and stuff.

 00:17:22  So I started to experiment with diets and stuff because I was like, oh, well, if she’s saying this about her body, that looks just like mine. So I. Yeah.

 00:17:29  And. Right. Exactly.

 00:17:31  And I think there too, like being a millennial. I think there was something like on a pedestal about being on a diet. It was like, I don’t know how to describe it other than like it was kind of celebrated to drink a SlimFast to. And all of my friends will attest to the fact that I was so deep in the special K diet like to a point that it wasn’t really a diet for me anymore because I was having like boxes, a special K every day, like I wasn’t.

 00:17:56  I mean, there’s reasons for that too, right? Oh yeah.

 00:17:59  Yeah, yeah. And reasons. The same reason would be why I would binge when I was drunk at night, because the restriction breeds cravings, which breeds binging. And so I did this for a little. I got in and out of it, whatever.

 00:18:11  And then when I was 19, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. I knew nothing about nutrition. I was in school for social work. I decided, well, this must mean I’m, you know, everything’s off limits. And it wasn’t the same with gluten at that point. That was like 21. Was that like 2008? I think so things were really, really different. Like there weren’t options available and nothing was really good. That was gluten free. So I thought, you know what? Let me just not eat because I’m too afraid. And so obviously I started to lose weight. I got a lot of attention. I got a lot of praise from girls, from boys, from everything. And so I was like, okay, great. Like, let me just continue to restrict. I lost so much weight. I became so malnourished. So many micronutrient deficiencies, like very serious ones. So I saw a dietician. My doctor made me. I wasn’t thrilled to be there. It was very weird experience telling someone what I eat because it wasn’t something until that point I thought about.

 00:19:03  But I’m so glad that I was forced to go because she led me on this path now, like she showed me what I needed to do to get healthy again. She showed me a little bit about what a healthy relationship with food looks like, but not the image that I now think of it today. But she showed me that like, okay, there is this also this other career path where you can marry your love of working with other people, what you like about social work, but also what became this newly developed interest in nutrition? There’s a career path for you. So after college, I went back to school for nutrition and dietetics. After working a little bit for a as a physician practice manager, and that’s when things really started to ramp up a little bit more with food. They were already pretty bad with going gluten free and now being on this medically restrictive diet, which again, I’ll say again, restrictions breed cravings, which breeds binging or whatnot brings that restrictive mindset that was fueled more about the time when I was in school for nutrition, because just kind of like you said, like your thinness was your identity.

 00:20:07  That became my identity. What I ate, how I looked, I thought it was like a calling card, a business card. If I could be really perfect with my food, that meant that I was going to be a great dietitian. That meant people would trust me. And this is the message that we are also told in school. I mean, I can’t tell you the amount of times that I heard, like, no one trusts a fat dietitian in school from patients.

 00:20:26  Oh yeah.

 00:20:27  Which is like. But you we internally I know.

 00:20:30  It’s, it’s sort of this.

 00:20:31  Horrible like.

 00:20:32  Life coaching. Like you need to have your life absolutely perfect.

 00:20:35  Right, right.

 00:20:36  In order to coach somebody else. Just not true. Right. Like the whole time coaching is like I’m fucked up too.

 00:20:44  Well. And I think that’s what makes people in like these helping professions better at their job when they know what like a day to day realistic looks like. Like I say all the time, I’m absolutely not like that.

 00:20:55  Isn’t my relationship with food at all anymore? And that makes me better able to craft up these solutions like this meal planning guide? But in any case, yeah. So that’s kind of where my relationship with food went to its peak of disorder. I would say it was fully disordered at that point. I was exercising twice a day excessively. I had to have two hip surgeries because I tore all my cartilage, which was like.

 00:21:16  That was the part when I was reading it. I was like, oh my God, where have we gotten?

 00:21:21  Well, exactly like you’re not eating enough food. I was on this one specific diet plan. That was like my gateway really into all of this, called Tone It Up, which I could talk about for a while too. But in any case, it was a good thing that I ended up having all this pain related to tearing the cartilage because I found out I do have a degenerative hip condition. I’ve had dysplasia, so my hips were backwards, but I don’t know if I would have found that out if I didn’t tear all the cartilage.

 00:21:47  It was like a blessing in disguise, but not in the.

 00:21:49  I mean, I got drunk every day for ten years and I wouldn’t have known that. That my life could be so great if I didn’t do that. So. Exactly.

 00:21:57  It’s not our favorite way of getting married.

 00:22:00  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

 00:22:02  And I’m also thankful that it showed me, like, that’s not the relationship with exercise I want. I would have never before considered walking as exercise or stretching or yoga if it wasn’t hit. If it wasn’t like making myself cry. It was so hard. Yeah, it doesn’t count. It doesn’t count.

 00:22:19  If you couldn’t see, I didn’t spoil it. You can’t like that doesn’t count, right?

 00:22:23  Yeah. Like if I’m not crippled with pain the next day, like I didn’t work out. It doesn’t count. I would have never allowed myself to open up to all these other forms of movement that I love so much. Now, if I maintained the rules and restrictions I had around exercise and food and all of that, and I kind of mentioned this to you too.

 00:22:41  I don’t really know how I transitioned out of that part of my life without more help, because at that point is a dietician that I wasn’t the same dietitian I am now. I was starting to have thoughts around, like after that most disordered point like, this doesn’t feel good to prescribe weight loss. This doesn’t feel good to tell people to do something that I know in my heart, scientifically doesn’t work. I don’t feel good getting consults in the hospital from doctors for patients who are hundreds and hundreds of pounds for an acute reason. And now all of a sudden, you’re making me give them this in-depth consultation when they’re out the door on weight loss like that doesn’t feel right to me. I feel like I’m perpetuating a problem. And so at some point during all of that, my relationship with food just became more relaxed, more neutral. And I think it also has to do with, like me seeing the damage of all of this on me, but also with my patients, how that kind of really changed their lives in my life too.

 00:23:36  And I said this, you too, like my life, just became also so busy. It is, like you said, so exhausting to do all of this. The space it takes up in your mind, the money it takes to do all of this. Like I wasn’t working full time. I was doing my masters at night. I didn’t have time to do hours of workouts anymore and meal plan and like, go through this defined meal plan and pick what I want and cook it all ahead of time and blah blah blah, and do all the meditation, like, do everything every single day.

 00:24:02  Like the meditation and the yoga and the lifting and the and.

 00:24:05  Everything and like the journaling and everything. Like you have to pick what’s meaningful to you and what’s actually going to like in my mind, promote your health. And those things I was doing with food and exercise weren’t getting me there. I was also so just wrecked with GI issues. So much constipation, which you can talk about that too, because I wasn’t eating enough and because what I was eating.

 00:24:26  Was.

 00:24:26  All fiber.

 00:24:27  Yeah. Talk about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 00:24:30  Wasn’t eating enough and it was all roughage, all salads, all, you know, stuff that, like, too much of a good thing is going to block you up. And so that further ignites body image issues when you’re so, so bloated and full poop all the time, for lack of a better word. And the cycle continues. But again, I’m so grateful that for some reason I transitioned out of that. I don’t know where I would be today if it just continued on. I don’t know if it would have gotten worse or just stayed the same, but I’m so thankful that my relationship with food is free. Like I feel so neutral about food in my body. I can’t tell you how different it feels for me to be able to look in the mirror, like at this point in my life, and not pick apart everything, or not stand there and touch everything for literally like an hour at a time and buy clothes that were too small because I couldn’t.

 00:25:19  In my mind, I was like, oh, there must be something wrong with this piece of clothing, like or like, oh, I’m obviously. Yeah, like, oh, I’m just bloated today. Or like, this is fluid. It’s like, there’s no way I needed 2 or 3 sizes more than that. And then torturing myself, wearing those, being like, well, last week, this fit today. Like, I can’t tell you how freeing it is to not have those thoughts all the time, and then just to look at my body and be like, it’s a body. And I’m not saying that that’s how I feel every day. I’m not saying that’s how I would expect anyone to feel. I think it’s unrealistic in our society. Exactly like it is just impossible.

 00:25:51  Like you start looking around. I mean, I, I’ve read a couple of books that you suggested. Also listen to what you’ve said. And it’s sort of like when I quit drinking. Yeah. It was like, Holy shit, there’s so much big alcohol out here, right? Like, yes, yes.

 00:26:06  The way that they’re marketing, you know, it’s not that they didn’t see it before. It was just like mommy wine culture like baby. Yes, yes, mommy’s sippy cup. And I am not judging anybody. I totally did it right. Like I had t shirts I wore. The first marathon I ever ran, I wore Will run for wine. Oh, I mean, and I had that shirt.

 00:26:30  Lady.

 00:26:30  I had that too.

 00:26:31  I sure.

 00:26:32  Do. I mean, like, I wore it, like, not really loving it, but I was like, oh, like I’m acceptable to run with this. And now I’m like, oh my God.

 00:26:41  It’s the same thing with alcohol and weight or body image. Like, we’re not going to be able to escape the thin ideal as part of our society. It is. And so I would never expect someone to have this beautiful, positive relationship with their body every day and love it every day. My goal for clients I work with, and my goal for myself is to find like neutrality with it, where maybe some days are good, maybe some days are bad, but you still respect it and you still treat it with kindness versus treating with negativity or going on another diet or restricting it as a result.

 00:27:13  So yeah, we can get more into the things that.

 00:27:15  You said before that really caught me was and I have run my business, my coaching business over the last year or so, and I did a values assessment. Right. Like both of my businesses have their own values. They have their own. We did a values assessment for both businesses. They’re separate from mine. My coaching business has a separate, you know, values, but my values. Nowhere in my values does beating myself up for the boss. Yes, there is me around. Nowhere in there do my values align with that. Yes, that. When I started to really dig into that, I was like, what the fuck? Like kindness is one of my values. Like, no wonder I feel misaligned. No wonder my body doesn’t operate when I am beating it up over and over again. One of the things you said before was, you know, like when you felt, for lack of a better word, Misaligned about what you prescribing at the hospital.

 00:28:18  All of a sudden those like niggling thoughts get a little bit stronger and you’re like yeah. And those are important. Like those are intuitive thoughts. Yes. Yes this is misaligned. This doesn’t feel good to me. And right. One of the personal trainers at Harbor Athletic Club where I used to work, said this to me once that I, you know, how things just resonate with you and you can never stop hearing it. She said. Most people have no idea what it feels like to feel good. Yes, coming from a personal trainer who trains 25 or 30 clients a week, and she said that and I was like, oh my God. And at the time I was drinking, I was, you know, I was just like, not in a good place. I was eating, you know, I was still, like, functioning, sure, but like, not in a great place. And I just kept thinking to myself, like, I don’t feel good. I wonder what it’s going to be like to feel good.

 00:29:11  And now I feel good. And now I’m like, oh, it’s sort of like when you get sick and you’re like, I’m never going to feel good again. Yes. Right. Yeah. And then I’m going to appreciate every single day I feel good. Yes. It’s kind of like that. No, that values peace I think is so important. And, you know, listening. Now we’re going to talk about intuitive eating, which is a good segue.

 00:29:32  Well I was just going to say I think that in my opinion, like at least in my world with nutrition and stuff, I think that what a lot of people tend to think feeling good is, is one of two things. One, being in control. And when we feel like we’re in control, that feels good to us. And that kind of bypasses what we may truly think feels really good. And the other thing that goes along with that is that whole and this is what like my mantra was when I was a lot younger.

 00:30:01  And I think this goes directly with that, is that whole Kate Moss nothing feels better than skinny taste or skinny nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Yeah, it doesn’t taste. I don’t have.

 00:30:12  Any actual tastes going on, but I was like.

 00:30:15  and that’s the thing. It’s like we with when it comes to food and body. Like we tell ourselves, this feels really good, but does it feel really good or did it just feel really good to be in control? And I can tell you that when any of my clients, myself included, get to that point where we’ve reached what felt at one point, then enough, skinny enough, good enough, whatever. It’s not. There’s one more place that’s better. And so it’s not the fact that, like, I felt really good today. I felt physically good, mentally good. It’s that I did good today. I did a good job staying under my calorie limit. I did a good job getting, you know, X, Y or Z and or whatever.

 00:30:53  And so when we can shift that focus from like what I think feels really good to actually learning, like what feels good and to your point, like, what do I even like with food? What do I like with working out? We can begin to start that process of eating more intuitively and living more intuitively, intuitively with food because choices are coming from us versus something external that’s telling us what we should do and what we should feel. Yeah.

 00:31:19  One of the things that brought me to you was, and we’ve talked about this, and I hope we can sort of like go down this path if you of because I think, I think these feelings are very common of if I’m not working out for an hour I’m doing nothing. Right. Like there was no in-between for me it was black or white. I was either doing 75 hard or I was laying on my bed and doing nothing. I couldn’t walk every other day for 15 minutes, even though I know in my logical brain that makes sense and it would make me healthier.

 00:31:53  But if I was not doing it, balls to the wall. Yeah, I was doing nothing at all. What a great run. But it was like 0 or 60 for me. Like nothing in between. Same with my diet, same with what I was eating. And this is where the fucking button came in. This is the and I just what brought me to you is I just got so tired of it, I got so tired of like feeling horrible about like I’m never eating sugar again. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve gone sugarless.

 00:32:24  Oh yeah. Of course.

 00:32:25  Yeah. Right. And I’m never eating sugar again. And then people would be like well that’s not sustainable. And I’m like fuck it. Yes it is, it’s totally sustainable.

 00:32:34  Watch me.

 00:32:34  Yeah, yeah watch me. I told myself that. And I’ve told myself this a number of times about a number of things that no or yes is just easier for me than maybe, like I don’t moderate my life in anything.

 00:32:49  I don’t moderate anything, really. So why should I expect myself to moderate this thing? I’m just going to take out the entire food group. Yeah, of course that doesn’t work right? Like it doesn’t work. It’s never worked. I’ve tried it for 25 years. It’s never worked. Right. And so it was sort of the same thing. Again, I use this as a pretty parallel experience for me personally, which is like my sobriety, but that was a black and white thing. I could just give it up like, nope, I just don’t do it anymore. Yeah, for lots of reasons. But I just don’t do it. I don’t have to do it. I don’t depend on it to live. Yes. Did it disrupt my social life and yes did it disrupt a few things. But yeah pretty quickly I got over it.

 00:33:37  Yeah.

 00:33:37  But I also use that as if I can give up that one thing that I’m not sugar. Right. And that’s not, it’s really just like not sustainable.

 00:33:48  And that’s like what made me make the call is yeah, there’s got to be a better way to do this. There’s got to be a softer way to do this, a kinder way to do this. And when I say do this, it was weight loss for me. Yeah. And we’re kind of in the, in the last meeting we had, I basically am to the point. Not forever. Like, yeah, maybe forever, but not so easy every day, right? Like I still have like, oh, I should start 75 hard tomorrow, right? Yeah. But it’s not that I care that I’m fat, right? I can say it out loud without crying like I did to my doctor. Right? Like I used to cry every time I went into my doctor. Yeah. And like, if she would say anything about my weight, I would cry just like tears. Couldn’t, you know, couldn’t sell. I’ve come a long way since then where I’m actually like I’ve pulled it out from under the bed.

 00:34:40  I started talking to somebody about it without judgment. Right. Like you didn’t judge me. You didn’t say, well, you know, you should be eating this or you shouldn’t be eating this or. Right, like, just give me what you eat. I don’t give a shit. Yeah. Be a list. Yeah, yeah, but I sort of got, like, sick of tracking. I got sick weighing myself every fucking day. I got sick of, like, counting how many ounces of water I was getting. And here’s the other thing again. If I wasn’t drinking a gallon of water a day, I was drinking zero. None.

 00:35:14  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

 00:35:16  And in my head, that makes no sense. But somewhere in my heart, like, somewhere. It does make sense to me. Yeah. And it feels like that gray area, like that moderation area that I just have never really felt comfortable in. I just, I feel like I’ve never succeeded at moderation. Yeah.

 00:35:37  Because there really is no way to measure it.

 00:35:40  Exactly. It’s the harder choice to get rid of the guardrails than it is to stick to something super rigid. I always tell people that that so much easier to start a diet and be really good at a diet than to be good at eating without a diet. Yeah. even though no one’s still like a diet’s not sustainable. Exactly. I mean, ever, like.

 00:36:06  All diets have an end date. You know, whether they’re meant to or not, they all.

 00:36:11  Exactly, exactly.

 00:36:12  And people say it’s a lifestyle change. Like when I quit eating sugar. It was a lifestyle change for me. Right. It was a fucking lie. Exactly. So exactly. I just really what I want to do is I’m fine with the size I am really, like, we’ve talked about this. I don’t really care about my size. My interest in getting healthy is I want to live longer, and I want to find something that I like that I can do forever.

 00:36:43  I love to walk. I love to walk. I just like, I, I like it, I.

 00:36:48  Like listen.

 00:36:49  To shit, I like, you know, whatever. But it’s never been good enough. And I just decided that I was going to start walking. And sometimes it’s ten minutes, sometimes it’s 45, Sometimes I take the dog, sometimes I don’t like. I always needed the perfect shoes, and I needed the perfect sports bra. And I needed the perfect help. And I wanted to have. And I couldn’t go outside if it was raining. Snowing to sunny, to warm to cold.

 00:37:14  It’s too busy all that.

 00:37:16  I, you know, like I don’t have an hour, so I certainly don’t have five minutes, and five minutes is worth it. And like before we got on here, I have like a little walking pad right next to me. I was watching a video for something else and I was like, I’m just going to get on here for the love that.

 00:37:31  Yes, love that.

 00:37:32  Yes. And I have this, like, you know, obsession with my timers. Now I have a ten minute timer for everything. Yeah, everything. And I do it for walking too. Like, or lifting weights if I feel like I’m just gonna, like, back up. And between podcast interviews, I’m going to lift a few weights. Fine. I love it like so. But this has been extremely hard for me.

 00:37:53  Yes, like.

 00:37:55  To get on a treadmill for six minutes and get off is really hard to not feel like. I mean, a failure I don’t like. I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t know, it just it doesn’t feel like enough. Like somehow I’m again, not enough.

 00:38:11  this is the question that I always asked. That enough for.

 00:38:14  What?

 00:38:15  I know enough for what? And I think when we really get down to it, what those feelings are, if we just keep getting to enough for what its weight loss is what it always is, because six minutes on the treadmill, that’s not going to meet whatever goal you had in mind for what would help you lose weight, but it is enough for giving you a little mental break from work.

 00:38:38  It is enough to contribute to an overall pattern of organic movement in your day that has been well researched in terms of supporting better health outcomes, heart health, etc. it is good for leveling out your blood sugar response for whatever you had for breakfast. And so when we look at like what really is the like good enough? What? Is that enough? Or you know, what is the end goal? Why can’t I allow myself to do six minutes on the treadmill? Why does it have to be this nine times out of ten is because we’re talking about weight loss at the end of the day.

 00:39:10  So good at me. Okay, so obviously I came to no lie. I came to like, she’s going to be my ticket to a £75 weight loss.

 00:39:19  Yep.

 00:39:20  We sat in your office and I was so excited. And you’re like, well, you’re not coming here for weight loss, right? And I was like, oh no, no. So all of a sudden I’m a fucking liar too.

 00:39:30  Yeah, yeah.

 00:39:31  I, I also, you know, I spent good money. I was like, I’m going to go down this path. This might be hard because it’s like I always say, the things that we always roll our eyes at are the things that always work right, like the meditation, the yoga, the walking. Yeah. Even with money. Right. Like the paying attention, the things, the budgeting.

 00:39:50  Yeah.

 00:39:51  Yes. The things aren’t that these like extravagant, crazy things. It’s like things that we’ve rolled our eyes at all of our lives. The journal, you know, all of those. And when you gave me the couple of books to read, of course, like I walked into my car and ordered those immediately. That’s just what I do. And, you know, I got a new journal and I got, you know, all of this stuff. And then I started reading into Intuitive Eating. And I had never really heard of it. I’m not gonna lie, I googled intuitive eating for weight loss.

 00:40:25  Oh, yeah.

 00:40:26  Yeah, 100%.

 00:40:27  Well, first of all, there’s thousands of sites about it, right? Like. Oh, yeah, as an SEO tool. Yes. But then when I started reading into it and a lot of the book you gave me, I think it’s called Just Eat It. Is that right? Yeah, just eat it. I started reading into it and I thought to myself, fuck, this is like a this is my answer. This is what I’ve been looking for. This feels way more aligned with my values.

 00:40:57  Right.

 00:40:57  Than what I’ve been trying to do.

 00:40:59  Right?

 00:41:00  And because we can be two things at once. I was so scared.

 00:41:04  Of course. Yes.

 00:41:05  So scared of like, I have a lot of comfort in thinking that the 75 hards, the whole 30s, the cutting out food groups, even though I haven’t had quote unquote success from it. Yeah, there’s comfort in doing that. There’s comfort in starting over, quitting and starting over and quitting and starting over because I’ve done it.

 00:41:29  Yes, I was so terrified and I didn’t really understand it. And then I, you know, I kept going and we had a couple of meetings. So in your nutshell, yeah, we can get into this like on another day of like really diving into intuitive eating. But give me your elevator pitch. Tell. Oh gosh. Well, just like.

 00:41:50  Me.

 00:41:51  What it is now we’ve touched on quite a bit of it already. Yeah, but there are people just like me out there that have been killing themselves for 25 years, and now we’re hitting menopause, which is a whole nother, like, pool from the world. Yep. For us women. Tell me what it is.

 00:42:10  So I’ll tell you the questions that I think it answers, and then I’ll give you like the more specifics on what it actually is. And so to me, intuitive eating answers the question, what would your life look like if you stopped obsessing about food? If you stopped the constant battle with food and your body, what would things look like? And so, by definition, intuitive eating is defined as a compassionate self-care eating framework that teaches you how to treat your body with dignity and respect no matter where it’s at, no matter where it shakes out to be.

 00:42:46  It was created by two registered dietitians who I trained with to become a Certified Intuitive Eating counselor. It has a validated assessment tool now with over 140 studies that show its benefits. And so not only does it help us create. And I’ll tell you what it is, but not only does it help us create this healthier and more balanced relationship with food, it has actually very well documented health outcomes like better cholesterol, less insulin resistance. We see improved self-esteem, more positive affect, better dietary variety. So while we hear people say like, oh, intuitive eating is just saying you can eat whatever at any point, you know, with no regards to health. That’s a very broad statement that doesn’t really cover all the nuances of it, especially when we see that it actually improves the nutrient density of someone’s diet in the long term.

 00:43:38  Who says that? Everyone. Oh, big food. Like it’s it’s also.

 00:43:44  A lot of.

 00:43:45  You know, like big diet is.

 00:43:47  Saying they.

 00:43:47  Don’t want you to stop eating the diet stuff.

 00:43:51  Right? But I also think it’s people who are not ready to see a different way of eating other than dieting. And I get that, like when I first learned about intuitive eating, I was like, so you expect me as a dietitian to just tell people donuts and cake all day, every day, and good luck with that. And that’s yeah, that’s exactly what I tell people to do now, because I know that that’s not where it stays, because the goal is to get rid of the restrictive thoughts, the diet cycle, the food police, so that we can break down why you make choices that you do with food, why they come from something else, and how we can get those choices to come from you, and how food actually feels to you and what your goals are, and maintain balance and fun foods in your diet at the same time. So while it is at the start, like, yeah, go crazy, have whatever you want, that’s not where it ends. And you did.

 00:44:43  And that’s what I did too. And that’s what everyone does, is what you should do. But that’s you see, that’s not where it ends. It naturally gravitate towards so much more balanced. Because when we shift, this is part of it to when we shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset with food, meaning I can only have this amount or I can’t have any of those things. When we shift to I can have everything, then we don’t have such a sense of urgency around these off limits foods or behaviors. We instead say, that was good. I can have that any day this week. I can have that later on tonight. I don’t need to eat the whole cake just because it’s my only opportunity to do it. I can have a little bit now and see how I feel, and if I want more, I can have more because I’m giving myself unconditional permission to eat. And that’s what allows you to choose a salad when it sounds good and choose cake when it sounds good, and eat both.

 00:45:37  In the very unsexy term, moderation, which basically just means finding balance in your routine. By I care about nutrition, I incorporate nutrition, but it’s not everything to me. It doesn’t rule all of my food choices, and I recognize that that’s still healthy to include balance in my diet and still, you know, achieve what I want with my life in terms of long term health. And so that’s kind of like the overview. But then when we think about what actually is the process of intuitive eating, like what does it look like on the day to day? I mean, it’s very gray, as you know, there’s no set routine that we’re going through. But like I mentioned, one of the biggest things it does off the bat is gets you to understand why dieting doesn’t work, why the restrictive diet cycle has been going on, or even that you have had a restrictive diet cycle. What are the rules that you’ve been abiding by? What determines how you think about food and where did that come from? Like if you feel like you can’t have carbs, let’s get into it.

 00:46:40  Let’s get curious about where that came from, why it’s true. Is it true? Is it true in science? Is it true in your body? And really just non-judgmental, getting curious about the things that you’ve held true, that have shaped your food decisions, things that you say and think about your body, exercise, etc.? And so when we kind of get rid of these things, we’re able to tap back into what our body is telling us. That’s why when I work with so many people at the beginning of this, they’re only familiar with, like you said, like, oh, I don’t like rice or like, oh, I only know what it feels like to be starving or full. I don’t know what it feels like to be pleasantly hungry. It’s because someone else has been telling you when you’re hungry. It’s when you haven’t had enough calories. Someone’s telling you when you’re full. When you’re over calories, someone’s telling you you don’t like rice because it’s too high in carbs. You know, x, Y, or Z.

 00:47:25  And so when we strip all of that back, we can actually see, like what’s true for your body. And I know it sounds so vague, but that’s truly what the first aim of intuitive eating is getting to showing us. Like what our body is trying to say to us and that we can trust it. Right. So I think like one of the biggest things is that we lose trust with our bodies when we’re on diets. We say, and we talked about this, but this is like one of the most common things I hear is like, oh, I can’t have those in the house. I, I can’t trust myself around them. I’ll eat all of them at once. And there’s a reason why that is. And it’s not because you’re addicted to them, and it’s not because you can’t trust yourself around this food. And I want to be really clear before I go on with separating food from alcohol in terms of addiction here, because I think there are similarities with this, but I don’t ever think of alcohol or drugs or any other addiction in the same way that I think about food, and we can have a whole nother conversation on food.

 00:48:17  I mean.

 00:48:18  I yeah, there’s a whole nother like layer to that. I mean, I just like I could get real dramatic about that, but oh.

 00:48:24  You know, I can get real. I mean, I can cite all the studies that kind of.

 00:48:27  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 00:48:28  Like get rid of the thought of food addiction or just kind of keep it as a theory versus reality. But in any case, of course, if you don’t allow yourself to have something in the house, the minute it’s there, you’re going to go buck wild on it. I did that, I had my foods granola, ice cream. Those were the things I wasn’t allowed to have them until there was a moment of weakness, or there was something that I was trying to celebrate. But because I didn’t ever allow myself to, the minute they’re there, they’re gone in 60s. And yeah, it’s not because I can’t be trusted around it. It’s because we know that. And we can talk about the scientific process behind what’s called like a food memory and our memory around these foods and how when we don’t allow ourselves to have certain things, we have such a huge emotional response when we do encounter them again.

 00:49:11  And that response continues. If we don’t let ourselves have these certain things often, or without rules or limits with them. And so when we kind of force, for lack of a better word, us to kind of confront these things that we don’t let ourselves have, all of a sudden it becomes just like any other food. Maybe we love the taste of these cookies, but we don’t feel that huge draw to eat all of them at once because there’s no urgency. We can have them again tomorrow, and we can really maybe even see, like, I don’t even like these cookies, but for some reason, like I’ve developed this relationship with them where I can’t stop. They’re on a pedestal for me, and we want to take those foods off the pedestal. That doesn’t mean everything has the same nutritional density. And I think that’s something too, that I get. I hear wrong about intuitive eating all the time. I’m not equating a doughnut with a carrot in terms of nutrition. Clearly a carrot, you know what I mean? Like, the nutrition is different, but the morality around these two foods we need to establish as the same.

 00:50:04  You’re not bad for having a donut. You’re not a good person for having a carrot when what you really wanted was a donut, because that’s going to set you up to binge on 20 doughnuts in a week versus just having one.

 00:50:15  Now. You can have both.

 00:50:16  You can have both like you can have it because you just want both. You don’t have to be in a moment of weakness or earn that donut to eat it. And that’s something that we learn with intuitive eating. And then we plug in the learning and the skill related to honoring my comfortable fullness point and arriving to mealtimes at a comfortable hunger point so that I’m set up to finish when I’m done eating and not crave more afterwards because I created dinner that gave me satisfaction and I wasn’t too hungry going into it. So it’s all of that in terms of like what it looks like on the day to day, and then a big part of it too. This is like probably for a much longer conversation is uncoupling weight from health, uncoupling health promoting behaviors with weight loss promoting behaviors.

 00:51:04  And sometimes there’s overlap. But how can we shift the value system and the reasons behind certain choices when it comes to exercise, living food? All of the above. How can we shift it so that you’ve got this view and value on your health and your longevity and all of that versus weight loss. And that gets really vague and confusing sometimes when we have such a strong connection with weight and health. But again, I can go on and on about the studies that kind of show us that that’s a correlation. There’s no causation.

 00:51:36  I mean, the more you talk about this and the more I get further into it, like my own journey. Well, one of the things is you did tell me to go out to Costco and get all the shit that I’ve never gotten myself right. Yeah.

 00:51:47  And you looked at me.

 00:51:47  Like.

 00:51:48  I am.

 00:51:49  Annoyed that I paid.

 00:51:50  You some money to tell me that.

 00:51:52  I was. I was like, are I like, okay? Yes. But then I was like, oh, I’m going and I did.

 00:51:58  And like, there’s things for me there. The macadamia car. Yeah. Right. Like I got a container of them. The family took them down in like three days. I got another container because I was like, I just I don’t want to not trust myself. So I’m going to. I’m going to keep doing this. Basically, there was no joke. I was eating like 6 or 7 at a time and like, I, you know, I’d also feel like shit. And I kept eating them and whatever. And then the next time I was at Costco, I was like, oh, that kind of made me feel like shit, I’m not going. I’m not like, I’m just not going to get it. I don’t want them. Yeah. It’s kind of like that, you know, back in the 50s and 60s and maybe 80s, when some of us got caught smoking, and then your parents would make you smoke, like, 50 cigarettes.

 00:52:42  Yeah. Yeah.

 00:52:43  Right. Like or like here.

 00:52:45  You want to drink at 15 years old, take all the shots.

 00:52:49  Or like, the chocolate cake and Matilda or like the kid has it.

 00:52:53  The other thing that I’m thinking of, what you’re talking about this. And I think one of our next. Yeah. Session like this could be definitely something to talk about is the exercise. Like the movement. Like intuitive movement. Do what you want to do I don’t like certain things. I don’t like to do them. I’ve done them because someone told me to do them.

 00:53:16  Or you know it burns calories like it’s like.

 00:53:19  Don’t do that. It doesn’t burn enough calories like don’t do this. It doesn’t I mean like a game that you want to play. Well if you don’t do it for an hour it’s not going to like, you know, if you want to play racquetball, right. Racquetball has always been this, like, great calorie burner. Well, okay. If you’re, like, running around like a crazy person for an hour, I suppose it is a great challenge.

 00:53:41  Yeah.

 00:53:41  Yeah.

 00:53:42  My husband and I love to play it, but I just, like, wouldn’t give myself the permission to play it. It wasn’t doing its job, like it wasn’t enough for me. And instead of, like, replacing that with a 60 minute run, I would just do nothing. I mean.

 00:53:59  Yes, exactly.

 00:54:00  You sound very crazy. And I’m.

 00:54:02  No, no, Katy, I promise anyone listening to this is going to say I know that feeling because I think it is universal to know the feeling of, like, all or nothing, whether it’s with this stuff or anything else. And yes, it doesn’t make sense logically to us, but that doesn’t matter in the context of, to me, like weight loss, body image like that overrides everything. And something that I like to kind of say just as a little like teaser on exercise. And all of that is are you familiar with the Blue Zones? Yeah, yeah.

 00:54:32  So yeah.

 00:54:32  So for anyone.

 00:54:33  Who’s watching the whole thing, it’s fascinating.

 00:54:35  Yeah, yeah. He’s Dan Buettner, he’s a researcher. Or I think it is actually started as a journalist at University of Minnesota or just in Minnesota, where I did my nutrition degree. So I was always familiar with the concept of the blue zones. But I like to bring this up as if you’re not familiar with it. The blue zones are the areas in the world that have the highest amount of centenarians, people living above 100. And so he wanted to figure out why. What are these people doing to live that long? And I will tell you, none of the original blue zones, none of these populations were doing CrossFit hit bootcamps, whatever. Like they’re doing either organic movement because they live in Sardinia and they’re climbing all these rocky places to go get their food, or they are farming in Okinawa, or they’re enjoying just the type of movement that they like, something like racquetball that comes with a social aspect to it. And so exercise and moving truly, truly became something that’s just like, I’m moving my body and it doesn’t matter what that movement looks like, because the goal of moving my body is something to prolong my life and my strength and my flexibility.

 00:55:42  You know, whatever it is, versus lose weight. And again, like, we can have a longer conversation about like thoughts on weight loss. I’m not and type weight loss. I’m not you know do anti doing things to feel stronger too. But when weight loss is at the forefront of the choices that we’re making with exercise, it’s rare that it’s ever going to be something that you feel like you can just do naturally versus like either like it’s the black or whiteness around it. If I’m not running, I’m not doing anything. Well, if we took weight loss out of the equation, you would see that even doing chores around your house counts as movement in the same way that racquetball does. You know what I mean? And so if the goal is to just move my body because it’s health promoting, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what that looks like. But for weight loss, it’s quite different because only certain things burn a lot of calories. And so that keeps you very restricted in what you’re able to do.

 00:56:32  Versus the abundance of anything is movement. And when my goal is living longer, stronger, healthier, that opens up my options. And if weight loss happens as a result, then it happens. And yeah, you know, but that’s if that’s the forefront. You’re always going to be stuck in that cycle of doing everything or doing nothing. Yeah.

 00:56:53  Well, here’s the other question. Maybe we can end on this is who are we trying to lose weight for? Okay, that is.

 00:57:01  Such a good question. And man there’s so many thoughts on that I think who are we trying to lose weight for? I think a lot of times it’s myself. But if it’s really for yourself, do you enjoy the journey to get there? And the answer is no. Like, of course I don’t. There’s a whole conversation we can have too, about. Like, I’m not ignorant to the fact that it is so much easier to live in our society in a smaller body like that is just the truth.

 00:57:26  We have weight discrimination. We have size bias everywhere in my world, health care. But in hiring, like anywhere and like size bias like on an airplane, you have to buy two seats if you’re of a certain size. Like there’s so much to it. Size buys, like we have a whole different area of the store for plus sizes, and they’re more expensive. Like if that doesn’t tell you off the bat, like, yeah, if you can even find your size, a lot of brands, you might think that’s so cute. It might not have anything in your size. And so it is undoubtedly easier to live in this society in a smaller body. And so I can recognize that that to ask the question like who am I losing weight for? Yeah, might be for myself so I can survive in this society. I think that’s like a whole, you know, other conversation that we can talk about. But if we’re thinking like aesthetically, who am I trying to lose weight for? I think that’s a really, you know, that’s a deeper question.

 00:58:18  Like, is it for the approval of someone else? Is it for my own approval? If I get to that weight, am I going to actually approve myself? And the answer is no. There’s always a smaller size to get to, right?

 00:58:28  Like the things that you think are going to solve all your problems eventually. Like those kinds of goals don’t. More money isn’t going to solve your problem. Weight loss isn’t going to solve your problem. Quitting drinking sobriety is not going to solve your problem. Right. Like these are.

 00:58:47  Something.

 00:58:47  There are other solutions for the problems you have that have nothing to do with those. I mean, those are kind of like the three big things, right? Yeah, yeah. Wait, you know, some sort of, you know, addiction and or dependence.

 00:59:02  And what’s behind it, like what’s behind it. That’s the thing that needs to be addressed. Like, why do I feel being in a smaller size, I will be more accepted by my peers or I’ll love myself more? That’s the crux of it.

 00:59:14  It isn’t the number on the scale. It isn’t how you look, the size, whatever. It’s like, what am I trying to get to by drinking this much or trying to lose, you know, like, whatever it is, like what is actually behind it, like acting like a child and saying, why, why, why, why, why a million times? Yeah. That’s what we got to get to.

 00:59:31  Yeah. So good.

 00:59:33  I mean.

 00:59:34  It’s so good. I just.

 00:59:36  I could, you know, I could talk for.

 00:59:37  I know I just love the hours. I mean, I could literally talk for hours and hours about this because I think, like for me personally, I just the more I like, get this stuff out there, the more I’m like, Holy shit, there is so much here. And the more and more I talk about like these quote unquote taboo subjects. Yes. That money wait, sobriety like these like things that people are really feeling and I get reached out to quite a bit like the fact that you’re talking about this.

 01:00:12  Like I also feel this way. And I thought I was in everything. I thought I was the only one that felt that way. Yeah. And I’ve talked to other people and they’re like, shit, I thought I was the only one that thought.

 01:00:25  Yes, that is so beautiful. That’s so.

 01:00:27  Beautiful. Are like the only ones that feel that way. So yes, I think that and I think weight loss is such a funky place to be because it is. You know, there’s also like this toxic body positivity going around to.

 01:00:43  100%, 100%. And like same thing with intuitive eating.

 01:00:47  The way you are versus trying to be better or, you know, like, again, you could go down all of these rabbit holes of like, what does being better mean? Right? And like I get that like nobody wants to be fucking analyzed for their entire life. Yeah. But I also am done analyzing myself. Like I kind of gotten over it. I’m just like, oh.

 01:01:10  I just let me live.

 01:01:11  And my goal is to be happy.

 01:01:13  And like, play with my goats and alpacas and they don’t give a shit how big I am, right? They don’t. And very honestly, anybody that’s in my life anymore doesn’t either. If they do, they are very likely not in my life anymore. And I just don’t feel the need to lose weight for anyone else anymore. Like that sort of judgment. Like, I’m sure people come in to you because I’ve said it before, go into their doctors and say, well, why do you want to lose weight? Well, I want to get healthy. Well, y you know, like, well, I want to be healthier for my kids. I want to be able to run around with my kids. Can you run around with your kids right now? Yes. I can fucking run around with my kids. I can still do it. Does it make me a little bit more tired? Yep. But I can still do it. So the answer isn’t really the truth.

 01:02:06  So really getting down and dirty with what is the truth here? What are really talking about? Because this doesn’t make sense now, living in this world, I get it. But also we have the ability to make our own worlds.

 01:02:21  And there’s.

 01:02:22  To follow all of the shit. We can make our own world and be like, well, I refuse to listen to that particular thing or participate in that particular thing. So actually it doesn’t affect me.

 01:02:35  There was a study done that I think highlights what you were saying with like going to your doctor, saying, I want to lose weight for health or like I want to lose weight. There was a study done that looked at three groups of people and their mortality risk. So it was people who were in the normal BMI category. And we could talk about BMI is complete bullshit on another day. But just for purposes of this study, is.

 01:02:57  It called bullshit measurement?

 01:02:59  Literally.

 01:03:00  Yeah.

 01:03:01  Bullshit based on men’s bodies. Yeah.

 01:03:04  White bodies. Yeah, yeah.

 01:03:06  Instrument info. bullshit.

 01:03:09  Men’s instrument.

 01:03:10  I love it, but. Okay, so they took groups, people from the normal BMI category, overweight and obese category, and they looked at their relative mortality risk. And then they had instructed folks to follow one, two, 3 or 4 of these health promoting behaviors, one being eating five or more fruits and vegetables in a day, exercising regularly, stopping smoking and drinking less. And once we had people doing all four of these health promoting behaviors, regardless of their weight, their risk, their mortality risk came down to equal among all groups equal. So when we really think of like, I want to lose weight to be healthy, those aren’t always the same thing. Yeah, we can be healthy and achieve better health without losing a pound of weight. And I think that is such an interesting study to like, really bring up to people, to challenge the line of thinking like, I want to lose weight, to be healthier because that’s not necessarily going to get you there.

 01:04:11  It really depends on like your genetics, what you do to lose weight and whether or not you’re still doing these health promoting behaviors that we again unsexy but we know. So like decades of research on how they help promote health and longevity. And so I think that that’s a really interesting study to think about when we think about like, why am I trying to lose weight? Yeah. If a goal is health, that might not get me there.

 01:04:36  That has been one of the things that’s really crossed my mind since we’ve met. It’s like, why? Just like continuing to ask myself, like, why am I trying to restrict this? Why am I not going for a walk right now when I know that I could go for a walk? Why do I feel like I have to go for a half an hour and not just ten minutes? Why yeah, why why why.

 01:04:58  Why why yeah why why.

 01:04:59  Why why why why why there’s so much to this that I could just. I’m sure you do.

 01:05:04  Like, you can just go down this. Oh, yeah. Rabbit hole. I mean, like rabbit Warren of like, where does this come from? Like, what do you really want out of life if it’s really health. Also, what are you choosing to believe? Just because it’s on the TV doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true, right? Like they also have psychologists behind these marketing, you know.

 01:05:28  Tons. And they know what they’re doing.

 01:05:29  Yeah, they know what they’re doing. Right. So you kind of have to like not believe everything you hear. So, you know, you have to figure out a way to trust the source. And I would imagine that it’s going to be very challenging for some of the people listening to this. When you say everybody’s got the same mortality rate at £300, at £110, at £250 at £600, maybe 600. So, you know, stretch but whatever. Yeah. So the weight doesn’t matter. And I would imagine because it certainly crosses my mind.

 01:06:04  Is that really true. Yeah.

 01:06:05  Yeah.

 01:06:06  Of all the things I’ve learned for the last 25 years. Is it really true that I’ve been beating myself to a bloody fucking pulp for nothing. And there’s got to be a grieving process to that.

 01:06:22  Oh 100% there is. And I don’t want to discount that too. And I think like there’s a real distinction that needs to be made here about weight and health. And it I’ll put it this way. If the patterns that cause someone to be at a higher risk of, let’s say, diabetes, heart disease, whatever, also help them to gain weight, then is it the weight that caused the higher risk of diabetes, or is it the things that they did? So for example, if all of a sudden they stopped exercising, they were super stressed all the time, didn’t sleep, didn’t eat any vegetables or fruit, didn’t need any whole grains, fish, whatever it is. And they gained weight and now they have prediabetes. Is it just the fact that they gained weight? Or is it the fact that all of this other stuff were going on and it contributed to weight gain as well? And so there’s a lot.

 01:07:12  Of studies on my face right now because I’m like all of a sudden I’m like, oh my God, is it? I mean, so my mom just broke her hip. And the first thing the doctor asked her was do you think you broke your hip and then fell, or do you think you fell and broke your hip. And like that for some reason like because there’s kind of a difference here. Right.

 01:07:36  Like there is a huge difference for.

 01:07:37  Bone just like broke because she stood up. Yeah. That’s a different story than if she fucking fell down.

 01:07:43  We’re talking about the difference between correlation and causation. And there is not one study out there that shows that weight is a causative reason for any chronic disease or whatever it is. It’s correlated. But we also have plenty of studies that show that increased ice cream intake and sunburns are correlated. Now, did eating more ice cream increase your risk of sunburns, or are they correlated because intake of sun exposure and ice cream go up in the summer.

 01:08:12  Oh, it’s a lot.

 01:08:13  I love it.

 01:08:14  I mean, yes, yes.

 01:08:15  This is what I’m talking about is like we also really need to get into what are our values, what are we choosing to believe and what do we really fucking want? I just like I don’t know how else to say it is, just like it can be that simple.

 01:08:32  Well, I’ll give you another example of that too. There was a study that we know that weight cycling and diet cycling. So weight cycling being the gaining losing of weight etc. is an independent risk factor for all of these negative health outcomes, regardless of someone’s starting weight. So if they started at £100 and for five years, ten years, whatever they weight cycled, their risk for heart disease is the same as someone who was £200 weighed cycling the risk that comes from weight cycling in terms of health outcome, negative health outcomes is the same regardless of starting weight, and the studies that look at weight as a causative factor for poor health outcomes never take weight cycling into account.

 01:09:19  The point of this is that a lot of times, those in larger bodies have weight cycled more often than someone in a smaller body because of the pressures to be smaller in our society. But that point isn’t taken into consideration with these studies that look at BMI, weight and health outcomes. And so like to your point of really like questioning things and looking at like logic and truth behind things, like, we can’t do any of that if we don’t know that these things are like, these things exist, that we do have studies to show us this kind of stuff. And so once we are able to open our eyes and question things about like is weight equal to health, etc., now we can search a really evaluate pieces of information that we hear from the news or on social media about like, okay, that study showed me that people who were in the obese category had a higher risk of cancer. Did they take into consideration weight cycling in that study? Did they take into consideration other variables like where that person live, their safe water quality? I mean, access to health care?

 01:10:16  Probably not.

 01:10:17  Never never never. Yeah. Because it’s just.

 01:10:20  Yeah, well, it’s easier and probably somewhere it makes somebody more money.

 01:10:25  Yeah. You look at who funds a lot of these studies, and this isn’t always the case. I don’t want to get into, like, conspiracy land with this, too.

 01:10:30  But, like, we can go into that. You know.

 01:10:32  I like I love a conspiracy theory sometimes, but, like, the truth is with, like, with this stuff is, it’s like it is a low hanging fruit to be like. Yeah, being fat increases your risk of health conditions. And I see the opposite every day in my practice where someone who’s in a larger body has beautiful cholesterol, pristine, and then someone in an outwardly looking, healthy body. Worst cholesterol I’ve ever seen. And it doesn’t have to do with their size, but the person in the larger body will go to the doctor’s office and immediately look at them and say, you need to lose weight before even looking at how beautiful their metabolic profile is even.

 01:11:05  Look at the studies on the Biggest Loser. We call them the Biggest Loser. Studies that show that used to be on how people lost all that weight, gained the vast majority or more of it back. But the kicker was their metabolic profiles got so much worse after the show. And so it’s hard to going back to your original point of this is difficult to accept. There’s a grieving period with this. It is so much easier when you can give your mind some data and proof that, like, this stuff is real. There’s stuff that makes you question, and that’s all that I try to do with people. I used to try to change everyone’s mind, and that’s impossible and exhausting. When you learn something new, you just want to like, get it out there. And now my job is to share the information, share what happens in our bodies metabolically, and let people take that information and do what they want with it, and hopefully find a place where they can be a little bit more at peace with their body and learn things that actually promote health, that maybe result in weight loss? Maybe not.

 01:12:04  Yeah. I think one of the things that you said just here, as I’m my mind is full of so many things right now. But if the answer to why do you want to lose weight is health, I want to be healthier. Then are you willing to sit through seminars about cholesterol and metabolic snapshots. You know longevity and living longer and you know having more energy and like if is that really the answer then. Because if that was really the answer then this would be very interesting to you.

 01:12:42  Yeah exactly. Yeah. If health is really your outcome. Yeah. It’s not.

 01:12:47  The answer. If it’s not really the answer, this like everybody just sort of washes over that. I don’t care about people’s cholesterol. I don’t know anything about cholesterol. I don’t know what it does for me. But I do know is it doesn’t cause me to lose weight. Like it doesn’t matter. I can be £120 and full of muscle and still have high blood pressure, right? Like I know people.

 01:13:11  100%.

 01:13:12  Healthy and have high blood pressure. Just super frustrating for them. And I get it. And my blood pressure as £100 over like over them. My blood pressure is perfect. I mean according to numbers, right? So it’s all just so fucking confusing that if we just like, stay in our lane, let ourselves off the hook a little bit. Yeah. I mean, that’s part of it is like, there’s that toxic acceptance, right? Like we can get down. Yeah. Well too, but if you just let like I have sort of just let myself off the hook. I have other shit to do now. Just am like over it, I don’t care, I do care. Yeah. Just for different reasons now. Because I do want to be around for my kids. I do want to be around for my grandkids. I do want to do. But that has really nothing to do with my size. That has everything to do with walking on a treadmill for six minutes.

 01:14:04  Yes, and that’s on respecting your body like that.

 01:14:09  And that’s what that is. It’s done a lot for me.

 01:14:11  Yes, my.

 01:14:12  Body has worth two kids fed, two kids. I went through basic training. It took me over to Iraq and back.

 01:14:18  Right. Like my body. Yes, I.

 01:14:20  Fit in particularly. I did a meditation the other day about my feet and I was like, oh my God, I never think about my poor feet. I know I’m like looking at my right now. Another thing to feel bad about. But I was like, oh my God, if I just like, took care of my poor feet, right? I would probably be really happier. I mean, I’m happy already, but like, my feet don’t get a whole lot of attention. I think I should pay attention to my feet.

 01:14:44  Let’s get some pedicures together. But I think, I think this is an important point, and I think one of the coolest things that our body does for us is unless we’ve got like a full on, you know, Override of the system with something like anorexia.

 01:15:00  Let’s say our body is so good at having our back and helping us to bounce back from weight loss that isn’t designed for our body. Like we gain the weight back after diets because our body’s really good at compensating for what we’re doing to it. It doesn’t know that we’re doing this for aesthetic reasons. It’s trying to help us survive. So I think one of the coolest things that does is actually protect us against that and help us gain the weight back. We don’t like it because we’re like, oh, I want to lose weight. Like, why am I, like gaining the way back? It’s protecting us. And I think that is something that’s so cool, that can really help with the grieving process to to know, like, hey, my body had my back, like we were two ships passing the night with what our goals were. But I can understand like what my body was trying to do. And that’s so cool that it can do that for me. To your point about like, what is the end goal? There was a study or not a study, a survey that asked women, would they rather give up one year of their life, or would they give up one year of their life rather to have the body size.

 01:15:57  Answer I know what the answer is.

 01:16:00  It was a pretty good amount, but it wasn’t as high as I would think it was. 30% of women who answered it said that they would give up a year of their life to have the ideal body shape and size that they wanted. And I understand why, you know, of course I understand. But then that’s a question that you can really ask yourself, like, why do I if I’m trying to lose weight to be healthy? The answer would be I would never give up a year of my precious time to have this shape. But if you are so in weight loss city in weight loss mindset, of course you would give that year up because you’re probably going to be suffering through that year on another diet anyway. That’s a question that you can ask yourself to really get to the crux of like what is most meaningful to you? And I think it’s also really interesting that 50% of the people who answered yes to that survey said that they’ve also been bullied or ridiculed for their shape or weight before, too.

 01:16:47  So that’s like that’s a whole nother part of this as well. But I think that that’s a really good question that you can ask yourself. As you know, you’re listening to this to know like where? Like give yourself a little pulse. Check with what is most important to me.

 01:16:58  Yeah. Oh, I mean, it’s so good. It was so good. Oh, okay. So for those listening, we are definitely going to have me back. I could do this long every day. We didn’t even get into the business of real good nutrition. Right. Like I want to. Don’t worry.

 01:17:15  About me. I know.

 01:17:16  But I want to make sure that people can find you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If I wouldn’t have crossed paths with you, I would not have searched out a dietician.

 01:17:23  Yeah.

 01:17:24  Right. I wouldn’t have searched out a nutritionist. I would not have reached out. I wouldn’t have just, like, googled find me a nutritionist. Because just like I would be terrified to go.

 01:17:35  I’m terrified of the judgment here. Like, I don’t know what to expect. Part of it is like, they’re going to tell me weight loss isn’t the priority and I’m going to fuck you. Yes it is. Yep, yep. Right. Like all of those things. And I think you understand that on such a level that it was like easy for me to talk to you. And, I mean, it’s 100% of the reason I wanted you on here, because it just like it changed things for me. Yeah. I not still struggle. No. I also wanted it done immediately, like I wanted everything else. And, you know, process for me over. Yeah. I mean we started seeing each other in July and it’s, you know, almost October. So like this has been a process for me for sure. And it’s also forever going to be a process.

 01:18:20  Now that’s the thing.

 01:18:21  Yeah. So I want to give you a chance. We’ll we’ll definitely put all of this in the show notes too.

 01:18:26  Yeah.

 01:18:26  Oh sure.

 01:18:27  Yeah. You know if you have a consult and that kind of thing. So yeah give it to me okay.

 01:18:32  So you can find me at the Real Good nutrition.com. I’m on Instagram at real good underscore nutrition. And if intuitive eating is something that you’re more interested in learning about, I have a group intuitive eating course that I run a few times a year. I’ve been revamping it this last year, so it’s going to start up again at the very beginning of 2025 that’s available. Just information on that is available on my website as well, and I will Katy, also share with you links to like those studies I mentioned, and then also the books that I mentioned to you, but that I love people to to read as well. So some good resources for everyone. But yeah, I offer one on one counseling, nutrition therapy, counseling for obviously everything we talked about today, but certainly to my expertise is in chronic disease management, especially with GI stuff. And as I know all too well, there’s is such a crossover with body image and restrictive eating and GI conditions as well as like diabetes, heart disease, all of that.

 01:19:28  So I am taking on new clients at the moment, so you can always reach out to me through my website or Instagram or email me at the Real Good nutrition.com.

 01:19:37  Fantastic. We will put that all in the show notes. I mean, we will certainly be talking soon and have you here. This is just one of those conversations that because it hits so close to home for me, I think it’s it’s hard to talk about. It’s just.

 01:19:52  Yeah, of course.

 01:19:52  I mean, it’s not like I’m walking around with, like, some secret I wear, you know, like my body is my body. And one of the things that I started really doing is trying to stop separating my body from my mind. My body has done so much for me. My body is me. I’ve done so much for me, right? Like my body isn’t a separate entity that walks around by itself. It’s actually part of my essence.

 01:20:19  Yes, and.

 01:20:20  That has changed for me too, because I just stopped punishing myself.

 01:20:25  Yes, you stopped waiting for your body to catch up to what your mind wanted to do. You didn’t let this hope of like, well, when I’m X, Y or Z pounds, or when I look x, y or z size or whatever it is, I’ll let myself do you know the things that I want to do that’s a separation of body and mind is I want to go on that vacation, but I can’t until I’m £20 lighter, whatever it is like, that’s a real separation. So you’re totally right in seeing them as one. You can live a more full life.

 01:20:55  Yeah. Also, and just to touch on that, I know we’re so but just to touch on that like and I want people to understand that I put myself in front of a camera a lot right now. Right. Like I’m on stories, I’m on my Instagram, I’m on, you know, like I do speaking engagements. I’m, you know, creating a course. Right? Like I do zooms. I do a lot of that.

 01:21:18  There was a time in my late 30s that I wanted to do all of this, and the reason I didn’t is because I was fat. I didn’t start businesses because I didn’t think that people would buy from a fat person. Right? I mean, literally right. No true stories. And I didn’t go to Hawaii because I was fat, not because I didn’t think I could like hike, waterfalls, I’m strong enough or.

 01:21:45  Enjoy the beach.

 01:21:46  Or enjoy the beach, like I said. And so finally I said, fuck it. And we went to Hawaii and it was amazing. I mean, I put it a little bit on a pedestal and it was it was still beautiful and amazing, but like, I think I put it so far on a pedestal because I restricted it from myself for so long.

 01:22:01  Exactly, exactly.

 01:22:03  Just like when I got there, I was not disappointed. That’s not the right word, but I was like, why the fuck wouldn’t I come here? Nobody gave a shit.

 01:22:12  I loved it, I loved everything about it. I was in a swimsuit the entire time. I didn’t, you know, whatever. But I also want people to know that there are other people out there. Even though I’m in front of a camera now, it wasn’t always like that. Yeah. And I finally just got the balls up to say I don’t care. Like if somebody comes over and tells me I’m a fat ass, I’m going to be like.

 01:22:33  Okay, thanks for saying that. I haven’t already told my like, nothing you can say is different than what I’ve already told myself. So good luck trying to hurt me because I.

 01:22:42  I’ve already hurt myself for decades. It’s good. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

 01:22:48  Try your best.

 01:22:49  So I think that that’s like just one of those. I don’t know that it necessarily fits like, right at the end of this, but I do feel like there’s so many people out there too that like, are keeping themselves from doing things because of this 100%.

 01:23:04  I just want people to stop that, and I do to stop it. Right? Like I don’t do it all the time, you know, like I still have reservations about doing certain things. Yeah, like getting my professional photos taken. I like I pushed it twice because I was gonna wait. By that time, I finally just was like, nope. I’m the exact same way I was when I rescheduled it. Twice. Yeah, because I’ve been the exact same way for 20 years. That’s what probably going to be the same weight in 20 years and I. Yeah. Okay with that. Yeah.

 01:23:35  And why wait why wait. If my goal is to have a business that is separate from my body like that is separate from looking a certain way. Why wait to something that I may never achieve in terms of like the goal that I have myself for how I look? I may never achieve that. Would I be okay, never starting the business? Would I be okay never doing that because I’d be waiting for eternity for it to look a certain way.

 01:23:59  When you are 90, you know, older than like whatever. When you’re on your deathbed, are you going to remember that you looked so good or whatever? Or are you going to remember that you lived such a full life? And I think that’s an over said kind of sentiment, but it is such a powerful one when you’re in the moment and it feels really hard. These things feel really hard in the moment. If you’re going to look at the long term versus the near term, which is again, a weight loss goal, that can make it a little bit not easier, but gives you a little bit more to process that allows you to get going with those things that you really want in your life, that you don’t have to be held back by a certain size anymore. And I think just to your point about like being on camera, taking pictures and stuff, one of my favorite tips to give people is to do a social media cleanse and really seek out the accounts of people who look super different than how you look, and people who look the same as how you are in your current body, so that you can see people out there doing all different things.

 01:24:59  I love to tell people follow fashion bloggers who are your size or larger size, so you can kind of see like, okay, there are people out there that look like me who have the same thoughts as me, maybe deep inside, but aren’t letting it make their life smaller or aren’t letting it come in front of what they want to do. And so just even giving your mind alternatives for the possibility of what it’s like to live in this body or this size body, I think is a really important part of like this whole learning and healing and grieving process, as you said too. So definitely the social media cleanse, if you’re listening to this, get on that today because it’s really powerful. It’s really, really powerful.

 01:25:41  Yeah.

 01:25:41  There’s a reason why there’s psychologists working behind, like, meta and TikTok and all that.

 01:25:47  They’re paid very well, very well. Thank you so much, really for taking the time. And sorry that I was very respectful of your time.

 01:25:55  No, I blocked off extra time because I figured you and I.

 01:25:59  Yeah, we.

 01:25:59  Could go on forever and ever. Really. I do want to have you back and anytime. Yeah. This was amazing.

 01:26:06  Thanks so much, Katy. This was really fun. I really appreciate, like, being so vulnerable with me too. I just yeah, it’s really great.

 01:26:12  Yeah. It’s like my new sport is vulnerability.

 01:26:16  It is like you can practice it.

 01:26:18  It could be a sport. I would have a gold medal.

 01:26:21  I would be on your team. I’d be right there, I love.

 01:26:24  It. I’ll talk to you soon.

 01:26:26  All right. Take care. Katy.

 01:26:29  And that’s a wrap on today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed diving deep into the world of living authentically with me. Before you go, don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram. Shoot me a message at Katy Ripp. I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode and connect with you further. And remember, if you want more details on today’s episode or just want to explore more about designing your life unapologetically, head on over to my website at katyripp.com.

 01:26:54  There you’ll find all the juicy details and resources you need to keep the inspiration flowing. Lastly, if you’d like to join me on the show, whether it’s to tell about your experience of designing your own life, to share your expertise, or if you’d like to participate in lifestyle coaching live on air, don’t hesitate to reach out. Your story could inspire countless others on their own path to living authentically. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep living boldly designing your life. And remember #ActuallyICan.