Can you not remember the last time you ate without being on some kind of diet? Do you feel anxious and preoccupied about your food choices? Do you feel like you use food to escape your life, and avoid intense emotions? Are you consumed by feelings of loneliness, and find yourself trying to use food to fill that hole? Listen now to get some insight on these issues.

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Key Points:

• Dieting harms us and disconnects us from our own innate wisdom about our health.
• We associate the word "skinny" with positive attributes, and the word "fat" with negative attributes, but these are FALSE TRUTHS fed to us via toxic diet culture.
• Erica Leon joins to talk about our cultural ideas around "skinny" and "fat," and diet culture overall.
• We often diet to feel in control, but inevitably it does the opposite and makes us feel out of control instead!
• This pain is so VALID, and our pain surrounding food and our bodies is so, so common.
• Perfection is not reality!!
• Using food to cope is an understandable reaction to trauma... but this means that we must tackle the emotional underbelly of our relationship with food.
• We must let go of dieting, begin to trust our inner wisdom, and understand that all foods fit! This process can cause a lot of uncomfortable emotions to arise, and so having additional mental health support is very important during this process.
• Dieting, disordered eating, and eating disorders have a function! They allow us to get through trauma, and we cannot discount how important these behaviors are in the context of our journeys.
• Therapy is such an important adjunctive piece of healing a client's relationship with food and their bodies, especially when working with a nutrition therapist who may not be able to support clients in that mental health capacity.
• Our relationship with food is about so much MORE than the food!
• Discomfort means you're GROWING!! Keep going...
• The first step of intuitive eating is to let go of the diet mentality. This can trigger the feeling of being out of control, and having the support of a dietitian in this phase can be super important! This is when we start to tune into our hunger and fullness, explore food in a new way, and observe everything with non-judgmental awareness.
• Feeling out of control with diets might be the first step away from diets... but this feeling does NOT last forever!
• Part of this process is rediscovering foods you may have not liked in the past, things you thought you loved that you don't like anymore, and just feeling it all out by asking yourself questions and reconnecting to your wisdom.
• You are not alone!!!

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Intuitive Eating, 3rd ed. by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
• Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat by Michelle May --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1
• The Diet Survivor's Handbook by Ellen Frankel and Judith Matz --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2
• Erica's website, intuitive eating workshops, Facebook page, and FREE webinar!
• 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.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:
Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for their Binge & Emotional Eating Weekend Intensive (January 20-22, 2017). Participants will explore personal barriers and how to counter them with evidence-based strategies to prevent eating in response to stress and emotions. For more information or to register, please visit https://www.fitwoman.com/therapy-services-eating-disorder/offerings/binge-eating-intensive-weekend/.

Immerse yourself in a practice of mindfulness. Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for "Mindfulness for Women Who Struggle With Food and Body - A Meditative Retreat", designed to help you reduce stress, eat well, move joyfully, and guide the way toward ending eating and food struggles. For dates and registration information, please visit

www.fitwoman.com/weight-loss-program-reinvented/2017-mindfulness-weekend/.

The Women’s Center for Binge and Emotional Eating at Green Mountain at Fox Run is the only clinical program in the nation solely for women suffering with binge & emotional eating. Their insurance-eligible program is backed by over 40 years of experience and is staffed by licensed clinicians. Their program has created life-altering changes by helping women to manage emotional overeating through the practice of mindfulness. For more information, visit www.fitwoman.com/binge.

Are you trying to reconnect to your own innate wisdom with your body and food? Do you feel obsessed with food, especially during the holiday season? Has "clean-eating" become the focal point of your life, and does the idea of eating non "clean" foods make you anxious? Listen now for some ways to combat the holiday diet stress, and to free yourself from the guilt around food.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• Food is something that connects us to our family and our culture, but diet culture makes food WAY too important and obsessive, and that preoccupation removes the connecting and pleasurable components of food.
• Use the hashtag #foodpeace to join in my discussion about alternatives to diets throughout the next few weeks, which are bound to be full of diet talk (January is national dieting month!).
• Finding pleasure in food contributes to your overall quality of life and health!!
• Food provides a connection to people around us, and when we get in the way of that, EVERYTHING suffers.
• Orthorexia: a condition in which a person relates to food in a moralized way (think "good" and "bad" foods) that becomes overwhelming and creates a negative relationship to food.
• Jennifer McGurk joins for some more insight on food peace!
• Our culture places so much emphasis on health, and conflates weight loss and clean eating with being healthy.
• WE GIVE FOOD WAY TOO MUCH POWER!!!
• How do we change our relationship with food and find food peace? How do we take back our power and control in our lives without trying to exercise power and control over our food?
• The ways in which we relate to food can be a metaphor for other things that we are struggling with in our lives!
• Orthorexia may not be a full-blown eating disorder, but it IS a form of disordered eating... we don't know enough about it yet to really have a full grasp of its impact on mental health.
• First step to healing: make a list of pros and cons of eating in this "clean," controlled way.
  • Pros: control
  • Cons: guilt, disconnection from family and friends around food because you can't join them in certain meals, thoughts and emotions are obsessive about food and make you feel out of control, sacrificing parts of your life!
  • So do the cons outweigh the pros??
• Recovery from orthorexia takes time! Working with an eating disorder dietitian can help, as well as proper nutrition education (we need "healthy" foods just as much as we need "unhealthy" foods!).
• Increased moodiness and decreased sleep is a big sign of disordered eating.
• Carbohydrates are IMPORTANT!!!
• Taking the focus off the food and focusing more on individual positive health may be a helpful mindset shift.
• Let's label food not as "healthy" or "unhealthy," but just as what it is. An apple is an apple, plain and simple. Bring food back to the present, rather than interacting with food in an anxiety-driven, future focused, "Is this food going to kill me????" kind of way.
• ALL FOODS FIT!
• "Clean eating is washing your food and making sure that it's cooked to the right temperature. There is no such thing as dirty eating unless your food literally comes from the ground and has dirt on it." - Jennifer
• Orthorexia carries implications for those around us... if some of us are eating "clean," then are the rest of us eating dirty??? NO!
• Eating "well" doesn't have to be black and white... we can eat our ice pops and also go to the farmers market.
• "Our relationships are more important than our food choices." - Julie
• Nutritional health has a lot more to do with our mental health and our emotional health than we've ever realized before... let's cross our fingers for some more research!!
• Let's give ourselves permission to have fun with food and our family... Just remember, how would it feel to be at peace with food?
• The importance of mental health as it impacts our physical health cannot be ignored." - Julie
• Having such rigid rules around food may actually result in negative consequences to our health.
• Food is just not as black and white as we want it to be... apples won't cure all ills and cheeseburgers won't kill us!
• You don't need forgiveness for the food choices you make!!

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Dr. Steven Bratman's Essay on Orthorexia
• "How to Take Back Your Power From Food this Holiday Season" by Julie Duffy Dillon
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
• Pamela Kelle, RD
• "No food is healthy. Not even kale." by Michael Ruhlman
• The Rules of "Normal" Eating by Karen Koenig --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition
• Jennifer's book on private practice, Pursuing Private Practice
• Jennifer's Nutrition Counseling and Consulting, Eat With Knowledge 
• 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.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:

Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for their Binge & Emotional Eating Weekend Intensive (January 20-22, 2017). Participants will explore personal barriers and how to counter them with evidence-based strategies to prevent eating in response to stress and emotions. For more information or to register, please visit https://www.fitwoman.com/therapy-services-eating-disorder/offerings/binge-eating-intensive-weekend/.

Immerse yourself in a practice of mindfulness. Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for "Mindfulness for Women Who Struggle With Food and Body - A Meditative Retreat", designed to help you reduce stress, eat well, move joyfully, and guide the way toward ending eating and food struggles. For dates and registration information, please visit www.fitwoman.com/weight-loss-program-reinvented/2017-mindfulness-weekend/.

The Women’s Center for Binge and Emotional Eating at Green Mountain at Fox Run is the only clinical program in the nation solely for women suffering with binge & emotional eating. Their insurance-eligible program is backed by over 40 years of experience and is staffed by licensed clinicians. Their program has created life-altering changes by helping women to manage emotional overeating through the practice of mindfulness. For more information, visit www.fitwoman.com/binge.

Do you feel like your preoccupation and shame around food and your body end up making you miss out on parts of your life? Do you feel embarrassed and judged by your size, and often find other peoples' comments about your weight triggering? Are you a person of size trying to navigate the professional world of health and nutrition while still feeling comfortable in your own skin? Listen now for some solutions on overcoming the shame and judgment around your body size.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• The importance of size diversity in the nutrition and dietetics profession.
• Diets and kids: So often, kids are put on diets at a young age because they are considered "overweight." This often does more harm than good, and ends up creating a breeding ground for a disordered relationships with food to grow.
• Lauren Anton joins to answer the writer's letter!
• The unfair expectations placed on people in the health and wellness professions to look and act a certain way.
• Surround yourself with like-minded folks who subscribe to an all-foods-fit, HAES mentality rather than people who are obsessed with food, calories, over-exercising, and dieting in order to avoid being around people who might be entrenched in weight stigma.
• Some schools are adding advocacy and size diversity to their nutrition curriculum!
• Weight loss is not the goal!!! Let's be advocates of size diversity, rather than forcing everyone into one specific body type.
• Would you say an English bulldog should look like a pit bull???? AKA, our bodies are the size and shape they are meant to be, and we should never try to force them to be something different.
• "The body's gonna do what it will." - Lauren
• How we relate to food mirrors how we relate to others and ourselves.
• If we let judgment control our food choices, it only leads to weight cycling and a tumultuous relationship with food.
• We must learn to love, respect, and accept ourselves!
• Being in a larger body is not the bad thing. The way we treat and perceive the larger body is the bad thing.
• Mindful eating and hunger/fullness techniques are not another diet!
• Part of engaging with food is allowing joy.
• You are worthy of nourishment no matter your size!!!

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• I am a Fat Nutrition Student...Can I still be a dietitian? HELL YES! Link here to Ep 6 where discussed with Glenys Oyston RD
• Poodle Science HAES video
• Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon
• Lindabacon.org
• Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays
• Our fab guest Lauren Anton RD's contact info: Arrive Nutrition, @laurenantonrd, @lganutrition
• 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.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:
Immerse yourself in a practice of mindfulness. Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for "Mindfulness for Women Who Struggle With Food and Body - A Meditative Retreat", designed to help you reduce stress, eat well, move joyfully, and guide the way toward ending eating and food struggles. For dates and registration information, please visit

www.fitwoman.com/weight-loss-program-reinvented/2017-mindfulness-weekend/.

The Women’s Center for Binge and Emotional Eating at Green Mountain at Fox Run is the only clinical program in the nation solely for women suffering with binge & emotional eating. Their insurance-eligible program is backed by over 40 years of experience and is staffed by licensed clinicians. Their program has created life-altering changes by helping women to manage emotional overeating through the practice of mindfulness. For more information, visit www.fitwoman.com/binge.

Have you worked really hard to stop hating your body but feel like your family keeps holding you back? Do you find yourself dealing with the food police within your own family, even after you've begun to make peace with food yourself? Do you have family that encourages fat shaming and diet culture, even when you feel like you're doing your best to rid yourself of the mindset?? Listen now as Julie tackles this family-oriented topic and introduces some solutions.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• What is the experience of finding peace with food while family members surrounding us stay stuck in the diet mentality?
• Fat shaming can come from people we care about!
• Setting our own boundaries is SUPER important in trying to protect your own recovery.
• The world that we live in isn't one of body-positivity, HAES, and size acceptance. This means that when we pursue recovery, we are going against the vast majority of society, and sometimes that means our families. This makes the work harder to do, but it is that much more important!
• Going against family dynamics is super hard, and when we actively follow our own path, it is common to feel pressure to go with the flow and back off of our own personal work in order to appease the family.
• When we RECOGNIZE any emotion we are having, it automatically diffuses it and breaks its power.
• How to beat body comparison: recognize the emotion, remove its power, and counteract with readily available responses of self-compassion.
• How do we connect with our self-compassion?? We must actively find ways to support self-compassion for the moments in which we feel vulnerable.
• Remember, our feelings and experiences are not going to last forever!!
• Have some ready-made comebacks to assert your recovery, either by facing it head on or by changing the subject.
• Surviving the Holidays and National Diet Month : #SoAnyway
• How do we empower ourselves to connect to peace and health and feeling comfortable in our own skin?
• When we provide new visuals for ourselves that are more size-diverse, it provides another option for our brains to think that OTHER kinds of bodies are beautiful too!
• IT'S NOT OUR JOB TO FIX OUR FAMILY!
• We should spend our energy on keeping ourselves safe, setting our own boundaries, and focusing on ensuring that we are providing the best modeling for our own family in terms of having a healthy relationship with food.
• Embrace self-compassion, boundaries, and self-care.

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Dear Virgie: How Do I Deal With My Mom's Fatphobia and Concern Trolling?, Wear Your Voice
• Embrace, the documentary
• Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family by Ellyn Satter
• 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.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:
Immerse yourself in a practice of mindfulness. Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for "Mindfulness for Women Who Struggle With Food and Body - A Meditative Retreat", designed to help you reduce stress, eat well, move joyfully, and guide the way toward ending eating and food struggles. For dates and registration information, please visit

www.fitwoman.com/weight-loss-program-reinvented/2017-mindfulness-weekend/.

The Women’s Center for Binge and Emotional Eating at Green Mountain at Fox Run is the only clinical program in the nation solely for women suffering with binge & emotional eating. Their insurance-eligible program is backed by over 40 years of experience and is staffed by licensed clinicians. Their program has created life-altering changes by helping women to manage emotional overeating through the practice of mindfulness. For more information, visit www.fitwoman.com/binge.