Body Neutrality & the Non-Diet Approach: The Path to Well-Being with Stephanie Dodier

0:00:00 - Speaker 1
All right, welcome. Welcome, stephanie. I am so excited to have you here on my podcast. 

0:00:05 - Speaker 2
I'm excited to be here to talk about what can help people address their pain to a completely different angle, so I'm very excited to have this conversation. 

0:00:16 - Speaker 1
So good, yes, same here. Well, actually, before I dive into that, why don't you tell people a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today? 

0:00:25 - Speaker 2
I am a clinical nutritionist who specialize in helping women undo diet culture, learn to trust themselves with food and accept their body from a place of neutrality. And I got here because I'm a reformed dieter of 25 years. I have I'd like to say I have a PhD in dieting. I've done it all, yes. 

And then about 10 years ago, i encountered the work of Linda Bacon, which is now named Linda Bacon, about the work around health at every size and that really true, a curve ball in all my education and all my approach with people. And I realized that it wasn't just me, whole slew of people who were struggling with the same thing as me, but nobody was talking about it. Because, you got to say 10 years ago, nobody was talking about like intuitive eating, health at every size and body acceptance. It was like no man's land. And I discovered that world. And here I am today leading this industry with a diet, your life and training, professional from like, taking them out of like specialty nutritionists and dietician, out of this whole narrative of weight and control and food, into health at every size and body. 

0:01:35 - Speaker 1
Yes, I love that And I think it's so amazing. I think it's so valuable too that you've had like the other side of it too. It's so interesting because I'm a nutritional there, or I was trained as a nutritional therapist And one of the reasons I like kind of went away from it because it was so not conducive to the exact thing that we were trying to accomplish as a whole. 

Irony, right, and there's so many parallels, though I saw, because I was doing that alongside physical therapy and chronic pain work. So many parallels to this, like right control if we could control of our body, if we can get it to be a certain way, get it to act a certain way, that that both dieting, creating also this need to like get rid of pain. It's like the same mindset behind it and the same perfectionism and then the same, yes, control. Ultimately, i feel like it just leads people further from their bodies and the exact All parts They have. 

0:02:24 - Speaker 2
You're a part with pain, my part with food and health I was sharing with you. I have a history of chronic pain since the age of like 15, alongside with hating my body. coincidentally, i started to experience chronic pain and I have what is known as an idiopathic scoliosis, which is no explanation. It's been following me, along with my PhD in dieting, this story of chronic pain. 

0:02:49 - Speaker 1
And I think so often, something that we've spoken to is that those who are in a body that is larger and societally accepted are told when they go to the doctor that the thing that they need to do to get rid of pain is to lose weight. This is the most unhelpful thing ever, because it's not true. I love for you to share your experience and your pain and what that journey looks like. 

0:03:12 - Speaker 2
Here's the thing you were talking about. Obsession is, I did not focus on resolving my pain until I was in the thin version of my body because I carried so much shame. One of the things that's very common with people that are not in a normal size body is that we carry the shame that our pain is caused by our weight. Therefore, we have no right to go and ask for help because we caused it. I know this is going to resonate with a lot of people. We just don't seek help because we know when we go there we're going to have the internalized shame of like. How can you dare ask for help when you haven't done your part in losing weight and you're going to get met with a fatphobic practitioner who's going to remind you that you're lazy, that you should be losing weight first. So you just keep your pain and you stay with it, And that was my story. 

I stayed with it until about six or seven years ago when I started to look for a solution because I had done the work of accepting my body. That's what I want to really send the message out to your people. Is that not only my personal story of me reducing and hearing my pain and learning from my pain came from accepting my body. But it's actually what research is showing that there is no link between the actual weight on the scale, like the body weight number, how people feel about themselves, Meaning by that. No matter how much you weigh, it's not automatic that if you weigh like a bigger number, you will hate yourself. What it tells us is that the way you feel about yourself and your body has nothing to do with the weight on the scale. I'm a proof of that. 

After stopping dieting Here I am at this weight and I never felt more acceptance and confidence in my body than I am today at 47. But what it shows us is that the way we feel about our body, how we think about our body as a direct correlation to the resources, to the effort, to the energy we put behind health promoting behavior, independent of the actual weight. Yes, so many women are in almost sized body by society standard, but they don't accept their body. They pick at their body. They hated their body and it makes it very difficult for them actually do positive action towards listening to their body and working towards doing what their body needs, because they hate their body, They're dissatisfied with their body. So working and investing your time, your resources, into accepting your body will position you in a place to do what your body needs to relieve the pain. 

0:06:00 - Speaker 1
Yes, it's so, so good, and I feel like everyone should just go rewind and re-listen to that, because, at the end of the day, what we all want is to do these things that make us feel good. Yes, exactly what Stephanie is saying is, when we hate our bodies, we are not going to do the things that make it feel good. Right, and it's very specific to women, is it really this? Oh, tell me more about that. So well, so yeah. 

0:06:26 - Speaker 2
Body image problematic or body image distortion used to be very centric to women, because the message of diet culture, the system of belief that plays more value on the size of your body was very focused on women as their target. It was kind of an ally to patriarchy. I know you like to talk about patriarchy, right? So patriarchy's tool of manipulation is the weight of women and the way they look. I like to say that this body scale is a tool of torture. Yeah, it's like has no other purpose than to create torture for women. 

Now this, the younger generation, like 20 to 25, 30 years old, because of social media, more and more fully identified as men, will present the same dissatisfaction or hatred of their body. It's again much more prevalent in women. So women dissatisfaction with their body impacts, yes, the way we eat and the way we feel about ourselves and our self esteem, but it impacts so much more in our life And I believe that that work of accepting yourself in your body is what will relieve and I see it in my practice everything else that you have life problem with, by accepting yourself and learning to trust yourself. 

0:07:47 - Speaker 1
So it's just like, so amazing, it's what we get along so well, right, it's like we have that same core message of like. When we can just accept who we are, everything else opens up, and I think it's so common. I'm curious if you run into this, because I know I had this feeling of but if I accept who I am, it's going to mean that I like. It's like, if I come to terms with like, for me it was like my pain and my symptoms and stuff. That means that I am just going to be lazy and sit on the couch and just eat Fritos all day and do nothing, right. 

0:08:16 - Speaker 2
And it's this like fear that if I accept, my life will shut down, when your experience and my experience ultimately, was the exact opposite Everything opened up, yeah, but I want to say to the people who think that, no matter what the circumstances, food and body, it's completely normal that you would think that that you will quit on yourself and you will hit eat Cheetos all day in McDonald's, because that's the message you're heard over and over and over again. Oh yes, intuitive eating is the methodology we use to bring people back to listening to their body for their need for food. It's been countered, cultured by weight loss and diet culture, as if you do that, you're going to eat McDonald's. Pictures with women in large body eating Big Mac all day long. Right, there's a whole mechanism of marketing to destroy anything that's trying to take down diet culture. So it's totally normal. 

When people come into my world, they're like, well, i'm going to eat Cheetos all day. Sure, like, don't fight. That's the thought you have because that's what you're told. But it's not true. Just allow for another way of being, where you actually going to go through what we call a pendulum swing. Pendulum swing is so I don't know. Did you stop where you're a diet or before, a restrictor? 

0:09:34 - Speaker 1
I actually was never. I had like a very brief phase But I worked with a lot. It was funny because in my nutritional therapy practice I would get these women who I would look at their food journals and I'm like, what do I even recommend? Like I mean other than some of them to eat more. It was more like this. This is so like it was a more orthorexic, like obsession with perfection, like I was like this is the most perfect food journal, yet They're having all of these freaking problems. Yeah, i don't know how honestly with my family, that I somehow managed to like I have way other issues, my issues, present in other ways, but yeah, not dieting. There's a self control to diet in the first place. 

0:10:19 - Speaker 2
You know that's using the knowledge. It's like an elastic band. I let's imagine like we have a stick and we have the elastic band running around it and you pull it. That's the restriction, either for food groups like keto, paleo, or restriction of calorie to lose weight. You pull, you pull, you pull, you pull on the elastic. It's tense. The moment you're going to let go of the elastic it's going to bounce right back to the other way and it's going to have this momentum back and forth, and back and forth until it's stabilized. But that's just normal for the brain, especially when it comes to food, because food is a primal need. So as soon as you restrict food, your brain goes into oh my God, it's the end of the world. 

0:11:00 - Speaker 1
Yes. 

0:11:02 - Speaker 2
And you, you're presenting the information to your brain, saying, no, we're just going to cut carbs out because carbs are dangerous Your brain's like, no, no, no, we can't have the bread. When the bread is on the table Danger, danger, danger Moment you're going to allow the bread. All you're going to want to eat is the bread, yes, yes. And then I say to people you're afraid of that? Just allow yourself for a week to eat as much bread as you want. You will find after three or four days you won't want the bread anymore. You'll get sick and tired of it. 

Yes, naturally, your body will tell you we're done now, we're good. So there's this momentum that happens that it is, and I see that with health habits as well. When we work with people with orthorexia or healthism, where the obsession of health, they stop and then they fall into the nothing land. I don't do anything for my body. But you have to allow for that pendulum, for that eat all the carbs and do nothing for yourself. And you have to accept that in order for you to hear the message of your body and then act upon them and build self-trust. 

0:12:11 - Speaker 1
Oh my gosh, i love this And I like it's so funny I'm having like a light bulb moments going off of like no, I never really was a restrictor, but my parents growing up restricted, like my mom's a dentist, And so we had a lot of their and they're European, So it's like we were not allowed to eat what like most American families ate. Like it was very, which is great, I mean. Looking back, I was like I was very blessed to have like a very whole foods diet growing up, but like we weren't allowed to have, you know, any processed foods or like ice creams or desserts, Like our sugar was very restricted, Even, like like I never had had Kraft mac and cheese, Like it's like little things like that, Right. So when I went to college, I just do what my pendulum swung and I literally would eat like a pint of bed and Jerry's and Kraft mac and cheese for dinner And mine was not three or four days, It was probably like a year, And then I would have like five diet folks a day because that also wasn't allowed. I was just very like genetically I got my dad's genes and my dad is like a size of my pinky, So like just whatever, But like crap. I felt awful Right. And finally it was this like I remember I'm not someone who like goes cold turkey or does things like that Well, but I literally remember waking up one day and being like I think I read something about Diet Coke and how it could be impacting what I was feeling, because I struggled a lot with ADHD and things and I just literally stopped drinking at the next day And it was just like, oh, wait a minute, this doesn't feel loving to my body, This just does not. 

And it was like then I started bringing in more foods. And it's just like you were saying when I was on your podcast. You're like, oh my gosh, if I had found you, I could have moved through this journey so much quicker because I would have understood what's going on. And, of course, I had absolutely no idea. But, like man did my pendulum swing but it swung back. Like you're so right, Like it actually swung back and I didn't even. It just did. Yeah. 

0:14:05 - Speaker 2
And I'll give you the example of exercise. So along with my 25 years of restricting in order to lose weight came the exercise is to lose weight. So as soon as I wasn't on the rebound diet, i wasn't moving And when I was on it I was over exercising. So when I quit diet culture and dieting, i kind of stopped moving my body and that repelled for a bit but it started to make me feel worse because, yeah, i wasn't over exercising, but now I wasn't moving my body at all. I was like fully sedentary, sitting at my desk and the couch and the desk and the couch, and I let it be. 

I accepted it as part of the healing process. At some point there was a voice inside of me that says, okay, perhaps we need to move again, but I had to not move, to give myself that permission. In order for me to hear the voice and that act upon the voice and starting to move my body again, but from a place of functional health, like structural health, not from a place of losing weights. I had to relearn everything that I knew about exercise, everything from ground up. I went and hired someone. I didn't do it on my own. 

This time I am not going to try to do that on my own. I went to hire a fitness trainer who was specialized in non-diet approach and we rebuilt my body from the ground up. 

0:15:27 - Speaker 1
Oh, my gosh. I love this and I want to highlight this extra nice piece because I do think there's a lot of my listeners and my clients who have the over exercising and the fear of even with pain, like they still are exercising but they're in pain. But there's that fear If I stop exercising, i will gain weight. It totally makes sense. Yeah, i have a kinesiology background. What's so interesting is the research doesn't support exercise for weight loss. We are still in college I mean, that's in two, whatever however many years ago. The graduate in 2008,. We were learning that exercise was not for weight loss. It was for all these other amazing benefits. It was not for weight loss. So it's like, why has this been so ingrained? but you're so right. It's like that difference. I want to like highlight what you said about giving yourself that time to be sedentary, and I feel like that time is so important for that reset And I'm sure during that time there were voices in your head. 

0:16:22 - Speaker 2
Well, i had to clean those voice. Yes, because they were the voice of diet culture. what I call diet brain had to, like, neutralize all these thoughts. 

0:16:30 - Speaker 1
Yes, yes. So they're running rampant And so you taking the time to clean it and allows you to hear that voice from within said Hey, movement would feel beautiful right now or wonderful right now. The difference of moving your body from a voice of shame and oh, you're so lazy or you need to lose weight versus Oh, it just feels so supportive to me to move right now, it makes all the difference in the world. 

0:16:55 - Speaker 2
And that's what. That's what allowed me and allows people that I work with to embrace health promoting behavior. I had to like just so people put this in perspective I had to start like doing 20 minutes of exercise once a week And I had to unpack that with all the thoughts that were coming up. And I did that for four months before my trainer, my coach, got me to like twice a week for 20 minutes. And that was a whole other series of drama because my brain was saying, well, moving your body for 20 minutes is not worth it, because you need to sweat, you need to be in pain. No pain, no gain. I unpack all of that And it's the same drama with food I see today like, yeah, pizza is okay, you will eat the salad when you feel like it And when you need it. 

One doesn't exclude the other, but we have this black and white thinking that's either all in or all out, and that's the thought pattern we need to change in order for not hustle ourselves to health, because that's the pattern we're in right now as a society. We hustle to health Completely illogic. How can creating stress in order to have the perfect health behavior be health promoting? Oh my gosh. Yes, that can make no sense. That's. One does not equal two. On that one. 

0:18:08 - Speaker 1
No, it doesn't at all, and I just again love what you said about you're like I took four months of spending just 20 minutes today And now I'm curious, like, what has that led to for you? Like, by giving yourself that time and spaciousness to work through all the drama that was coming up in response to that, to be with that and then to subtly increase it again? That's it. Oh my God, i just feel like to. even the fact that I said subtle is like that's not a subtle increase to do, that is like there's. what that creates on an emotional level is massive. so I'm sure that was so much to work through. So I want to honor the heck out of that of like what now? by allowing yourself that time and not getting caught up and like, oh, this isn't enough, what has that opened? 

0:18:51 - Speaker 2
up for you This thing that comes to mind when you're asking me this question. I said that to my coach recently. I said I stand taller in all sense of the word. Now you have to understand. 

I'm six foot tall, so to me to say I stand taller is very paradox. I stand taller. I trust myself in that other part of my life even more. I trust how my body is able to respond to the different environment that I'm in. That I have to climb stairs, that I have to run for a short period of time, like I have this strength relationship to my body Beyond the amount of weight that I can lift, like I'm strong and I trust my body deeper. I am taller in my capacity to handle my emotion. I have more space within myself and I feel it in my core because I have a scoliosis. I didn't say it on your podcast, but I have a scoliosis, so a lot of my core muscle are very, very weak And because the approach I've taken to movement wasn't weight loss, we like 50% of my time exercising is in my core. Physically I'm stronger. Emotionally I've got more capacity. So I'm taller in all aspects. That's the word that comes to mind. 

0:20:07 - Speaker 1
I love that and like what an image. I just love that. It's like. It's literally like being able to take up space. 

0:20:14 - Speaker 2
Yes, well, i'll put it in the perspective of pain, because chronic pain is also part of my life, because that's the mandate that I've given my coach to like set up program around my pain and help me, like strengthen certain parts of my body. I have physically less pain, but I know my body better And I know how to adapt different movements. Yes, to ensure that my body is safe in the movement, like I stopped fighting, i should be able to do it in a way that I want to. Okay, but I can do it, but I just have to do it this way. 

0:20:53 - Speaker 1
Yes, beautiful, like. It's like partnering with your pain, which is what I love to like totally. It's not a denial that it's there, right. So I think there's this mindset people shift from is like, oh well, i got to push through, i just got to like, pretend it's not there and it's like, no, because it's in your body, we don't have to let it take 10 lives. Like it doesn't have to stop you in certain ways. It's just this partnering of like what does it need, what is supportive, what it? so that's just beautiful. 

Because I really haven't had anyone on this podcast talking about food. I do want to be able to just take advantage of having you here and let us more about how someone can actually first know that their mindset around food in their body is something that's worth exploring deeper. Because what I find is it can be sometimes really tricky for people where they can feel like, oh, but I'm doing all the right things and don't even see and understand the level of stress it can be creating in their body and in their lives. So, first, what are some signs for people to like? 

0:21:53 - Speaker 2
just be like, huh, maybe I should go check out the Stephanie, check a little deeper and you know, look into this Because yesterday I posted a quote on social media and the quote was my attempt of explaining a normal relationship to food. I'm going to pull it up and I'm going to read it to you Because I think, that sums it up perfectly. 

So normal eating is sometimes when you eat because you're hungry. Sometimes you eat because your sound, because emotional eating is part of normal eating. So if you shame yourself for any kind of emotional eating, you need to come and see me. If you feel guilt or shame around eating for celebration, i shouldn't be like having pizza for my birthday, like that, and being bad. As soon as you qualify your self, work or yourself based on your eating behavior, we have a problem. Your eating behavior does not mean anything about you And sometimes normal eating is eating too much, but without the guilt of the shame, and you eat past fullness and be totally contempt, like Thanksgiving. Imagine Thanksgiving, opening the pants on the couch and not having the thoughts running in your oh my God, i'm going to gain weight. Oh my God, i ate too much. I'm sorry about not going to be just like I hate and I'm full and I'm just going to enjoy it. That is normal eating. And normal eating is eating a pizza for lunch and eating a salad for dinner. Normal eating is when you eat just because you eat and you don't have to justify any shape form, ways of eating, and that is foreign to be honest with for most people, either because eating behavior is attached to weight or because eating behaviors attached to health. Often when people tell me I eat fine, but I don't eat gluten and I don't eat sugar and I don't allow my kids like for them that's normal eating. But truly that's not. 

Normal eating is eating based on what your body guides you with hunger, fullness and satisfaction, and a great example of that you talked about your cultural background. So many women I work with don't eat their cultural food because it's not by white people. North American standard. It's bad food. White rice for people from like I. Was working with the Filipino woman who hadn't had white rice in 10 years, even though she was raised on the white rice three to four times a day in the Philippines. Since she came to America she was taught that white rice is nutrient voided and she shouldn't be adding. It had to do a lot of work on shaming the cultural background. So if your cultural food in your head is bad, we have to talk, that's so good. 

0:24:43 - Speaker 1
I will give credit to the nutritional therapy association where I got mine is that that was something that was so emphasized was eating to your culture And like how. There are just there's studies that show that like those are. Like what, if your culture eats a lot of rice, like your body digested differently because it makes you feel satisfied. 

0:25:04 - Speaker 2
Yes, it is pleasure. 

0:25:07 - Speaker 1
Speak to that more. Please Wait a minute. You're telling people that they can have pleasure around their food and eat. 

0:25:13 - Speaker 2
Please speak to that more, because I have a concept that's called the gift of emotional eating. Emotional eating is a gift and I'm going to go along the line of pain, you know. You talk about pain being a message from your body. Your eating behavior are a message from your body. If you find yourself randomly one night in front of the TV eating all the things, i'm pretty sure that something happened in the day, something happened the day before, and the body and its wise wisdom is using what's available around you and your pantry and your fridge to make you feel better. Because when you eat, we know that there's a release of dopamine in the brain. Every bites of food, no matter what it is fruits, chips, chocolate, dopamine the brain's like oh, we need more dopamine because this happened during the name, we feel sad And we have a pantry full of food dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. So when you clean up the judgment and the significance of your words around your eating behavior, you can access Oh, what's going on? Hi, why am I eating the pantry tonight? 

0:26:25 - Speaker 1
Like what's going on. 

0:26:27 - Speaker 2
So emotional eating is a gift. but in order to access the gift of it, you can't be shaming the eating behavior. I love that. So emotional eating is a gift. Emotional eating is normal eating. It's funny because you'll talk to people who've never dieted in their life. you know, you all have one of those in your family. They've never dieted, They just eat. They're hungry to eat. They can eat the entire pizza because they're hungry. They won't feel shame, They're just hungry. Move on right, Yeah. And they can skip the breakfast the next morning because they're still full from the pizza. And you'll ask those people do you emotionally eat? And they'll look at you with what? What is emotional eating? They don't know what emotional eating is because eating is just eating. So that is the ultimate place where you want to be with your relationship is where eating is just eating. It means nothing about you. 

0:27:22 - Speaker 1
I love that And I just love this emphasis on eating meaning nothing about you, because and again, this is the same kind of it's just so many similarities a pain of just like the second, we have the shame. The second, we have something, something has gone wrong And it's actually the biggest barrier from seeing the gift and looking at what's underneath. So I talk about this with like dissociation, right, like we even shame dissociation. I'm like, oh, i'm not like in my body at all times, like I'm all about like going in your body and feeling it, but it's like you're not going to walk around being in your body at all times either, and sometimes it takes energy and intention to be there, and sometimes you don't have that. 

So there are times where I will intentionally be like I'm about to go eat some mint, chocolate chip, ice cream Yes, and savor the hell out of it and turn on Netflix and dissociate the fuck out of whatever just happened, because right now I don't have the capacity to be with it And that is the most loving thing I can do for myself right now and have no guilt about it. I feel like it's exactly what I need And then, whether it's tomorrow or three weeks or I don't know. Two years from then, when I have the capacity and my body is telling me it's time, i can then process what was underneath or what needed to be heard or or whatnot, because sometimes we dissociate for a reason, we emotionally eat for a reason, we numb out, for reasons that sometimes it sometimes is just too much And we don't have the capacity to be with what's available. 

0:28:49 - Speaker 2
It's interesting because let's put that in the context of the other element I work with, which is body image. You talk about relationship to the body in the context of pain. For me, i talk about it and just being in your body. I do the pre work, allowing people to like, do the work of like, going deep in their pain and so forth. But first what I see, i talk about women. Women when they start working with me, they're like bubble heads. You know the bubble head you used to put on your car. 

We're just head people, because anything below the neck we are a shame of, we don't like it, we think something is wrong with it. So we dissociate, we learn not to be in our body because we hate it. Basic work we have to do is to like reaccussing ourselves to feeling anything below the neck. Let's not even like complicated feeling the pain, just like. 

Can I feel hunger, fullness, can I feel my breath in my chest and being able to be with our body, not because we love it, not because we hate it, just because it's a tool, it's a vehicle, it's a container of our five senses that we use to experience life. That's body neutrality. I'll go to my story for me to be able to do the pain work very chaotically, because I didn't know you existed. With pain, I had to first neutralize my body. I had to first think anything below. Then I can go there and I don't have to feel a shame, i'm just going to be able to go in there so I can support my body. That's what I call body neutrality. That allows us to feel our hunger, our fullness and our satisfaction with food and work with our body from a health standpoint, so we can be a partner to our body. 

0:30:37 - Speaker 1
I love that. I love that so much. I think that is just. There's so much wisdom in there and starting there. I'm curious. If somebody is listening and they are struggling with their relationship with food and their body, it's like let's make that actionable. What's the step or two that somebody can take just right now, starting today, after listening to this If you're a woman, reflect on this question. 

0:31:06 - Speaker 2
If my body is not an ornament for me to look beautiful to the standard of the society into patriarchy, why do I have a body? Just take five minute journal. Think about that as a woman. If it's not about my beauty, why do I have a body? That's going to set the tone for you to open yourself up to a completely new narrative around why you have a body, how you can take care of your body and then self-trust. 

Every step of the way of you learning to be with this thing that is your body is asking yourself the question how can I trust myself? How can I trust myself with food? How can I trust myself with drinking water, right? Do I absolutely have to drink two liter a day? Or can I trust my thirst Right? How can I trust myself with every part of how I interact with my body? That would be the second step asking yourself how can I trust myself with this? Why do I have a body? How can I trust myself? 

And then we have pathways that are known to be more efficient for you to learn to eat with self-trust. It's called the intuitive eating process. It's a recovery process, known and studied, that allows you to reacquire a trustful relationship with food. We go through this process that teaches you the mechanism so you can be in a place where you just eat. Same path with our relationship of body neutrality. We have a process to take you through and at the end you will be neutral to your body. Don't need to love it, you're not going to hate it, you're just going to be. What can I do to support this vehicle that I have? 

0:32:53 - Speaker 1
It's a work that you can find diet your life. Oh, it's so good. I'm curious if there's any clients that stand out or just stories that stand out that you think people would be helpful to hear. 

0:33:08 - Speaker 2
I'll think I served two populations the population of professionals and the population of regular clients, And recently I was working with a health coach who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. She kind of knew she came from the world of obsession with wellness and restriction and keto and all of that, And she knew that the strain that food restriction, which deemed for health, were taking on her And so she went through our process and became an intuitive eater and started to do less for her health, Because what I have observed also is people that have a laundry list of things they have to do, like a two hour morning routine. She started to do less with that and eating more of what she liked And her symptom of fibromyalgia reduced of 70% because she was doing less. Isn't that fascinating? 

0:34:03 - Speaker 1
Oh yes, and it's just so. Oh my gosh, just what I've seen too. It's like they're doing less. 

0:34:08 - Speaker 2
I know you're sitting there like what She's doing less and she feels better. 

0:34:12 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yes, That's exactly what I saw too. Like we just see these women with like just perfectionism around eating And it was like, actually, when we can take out the restriction, take out the fear around food, it was amazing. I have one woman that just coming to mind of. She started having reaction to chickpeas Like she was like every time I ate them I'm like, i'm blown and I'm gas And like all these issues. She's like I love chickpeas. They're just like. 

I feel like she was just eating a dish like that she was bringing to work daily that had chickpeas in it. So she just was really upset about chickpeas for whatever reason, and it was just like she's like but I know they're bad and I've done all these research on it And I'm like come on chickpeas. And so what we worked on and there is so much already restriction in her life, like massive perfectionism, and what we worked on was just, yes, like chewing your food and being with it and like just looking at, like the love that was like going into making it and actually then easing up on a lot of other areas of her life and perfection in her life And by the end she could eat chickpeas with no problem, right, it was just this, like it wasn't the chickpeas, it was just her body was starting to associate, i think, anything she was eating with A reaction. 

0:35:26 - Speaker 2
It's actually funny, you should say that, because there's links and research between gut issue all the gut issues and food restriction. 

0:35:35 - Speaker 1
Yes, oh, my gosh, yes, and. 

0:35:36 - Speaker 2
I'm sure you can explain it through the anatomy of pain. but what we are thinking is that when we restrict, right the stress because the food is available, like we're talking about common food, like bread and milk and yogurt, like dairy free People restrict and that causes a response of stress. And what they're thinking is that a lot of those receptor must be contracting the guts, the intestine, and that creates gut issue. So what is served to us as a solution actually causes more problem. 

0:36:15 - Speaker 1
Yes. 

0:36:16 - Speaker 2
Releasing the restriction. What we're seeing over and, over and over again is reduction, unexplainable reduction of gut issue, because people, when they see food, they don't have this fear based reaction to it, which probably what is contracting their gut to give them gut issue. 

0:36:35 - Speaker 1
Like coming up with a funny story. Well, a correlation I was seeing is. So in my nutritional therapy days it's like right, everyone, you're running food sensitivity panels and whatever. 

0:36:46 - Speaker 2
Exactly. 

0:36:47 - Speaker 1
Right And it's like, oh, whatever. And within then the like some network of nutritional therapists. They started running food sensitivity tests on themselves And guess what? they were sensitive to Avocado, salmon, blueberry everything we're eating. 

0:37:05 - Speaker 2
They were eating right. 

0:37:06 - Speaker 1
And I was like, but it's funny, as they weren't seeing it right. I'm like, I feel like I'm the only one seeing this, like y'all, this doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense, like it's something else around the way we're eating and treating food and whatnot, and it was just like all right, i'm out, I can't do this anymore. 

0:37:23 - Speaker 2
I was speaking at a university about a month ago and the Department of Dietetic came to my talk because obviously I talk about body image and quitting diet culture And I was sharing a statistic with them. That's 67% of dietetic students could be classified as disordered eating patients. Because people come to the world of nutritional therapy, they sign up for the certification, they go to school because they're obsessed with food being served. That much more intellectual information about it makes their symptoms worse. So they had case after case of students with GI issue, gastrointestinal issue since coming into studying because their obsession got cantupal and 10 times worse because it's triggering their disordered eating. It's not helping anything for your health or for your pain to be stressed about food, not at all. 

0:38:24 - Speaker 1
I don't even like just take that one step further of like once that has been wired in, yeah, that it takes time to re like program that in their sips and it just always like to bring in the time component, because we are myself included fall into this all the time. Right, what the quick fix? and you're like, okay, but no, i've done thought work. Okay, now I can see that I can eat my right. It's like, no, but your body might not be there yet and so it's like that. Can you give yourself the time and the spaciousness and the like sitting with it and the being with it and the baby steps? and I just, i don't know, i like to bring in reality to things of like it. 

0:39:00 - Speaker 2
You must be familiar with titration right, yeah, from a work. 

Well, that's what we use in intuitive eating. So for people listening to this, you're going to go into your social media. You're going to type in intuitive eating. Just be mindful where you're getting your information, because we're approaching it from a wholesome perspective, not just like eat all the food and the pizza and the donut. 

What we do know is that titration is needed for the restricted food. Imagine you're restricted chips, just for the heck of chips. It's not just enough to eat the chips. You need to make friends with chips. You need to teach your nervous system that chips is no longer the enemy. You need to titrate bits by bits, event by event, over a period of time, to neutralize chips. Train your nervous system to not see chips as the enemy. 

I'll go a step further. When you do body image work, when you go from being dissatisfied with your body to being neutral, we also need to apply titration because when you look at the mirror, you have trained your nervous system to look at the reflection in the mirror as a threat and people who are dissatisfied with the body. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Every time you see your face in the mirror, let alone your body, you have this like oh fuck, i need to walk away, right? yeah, we need to retrain your entire nervous system to be able to see the reflection in the mirror, as your friend, and often we need to start with just the face. Exposing the whole body is a trauma. So we start with just a handheld mirror and looking at your face and then your chest, and then we go down to the capacity of your nervous system crazy to think that your own body is a threat, right, yeah? 

0:40:57 - Speaker 1
that's the side effect of bi culture yeah, sort of a patriarchy, right like it's like right there, i mean it's yeah 100%. 

They've done an excellent job of ensuring that that's the case in whatever way whatever avenue, whether it's through food or through how you, you know what, uh, how your brain shows up in this world. That's a big one for me of, like my, the way my intelligence shows up, right, i know ADHD, right. That in itself is I'm not a normal of whatever. I can't even find words right now to say it, right, but it's like, whether it's food, whether it's pain, whether it's whatever, yeah, if you're parenting like it is, there's gonna be some way it is touching you and impacting you and and take your time, because it's not just thought work, it's not just nervous system. 

0:41:43 - Speaker 2
Work like one and the other can't. You cannot do bi culture work. I know for anyway, and I'm sure you'll say the same thing, you can't just do it from a somatic. No, the belief system work and the thought. You need both. 

0:41:57 - Speaker 1
Look for someone who embodies both, not just one or the other yes, oh my gosh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to that it is oh my gosh, i feel like we pit these things against each other. It's like this, like fight of like oh, no, thought works not enough, somatic works. It's like, no, they just both, just both. Yeah, what's that? but? and? 

0:42:15 - Speaker 2
I just want to speak to both of us. The read and we both knew of each other for the last two to three years and we existed in our own world. I didn't know your methodology, you didn't know mine, and now we're having this conversation only to realize we came to the same conclusion yes, just different circumstance we're helping people with, but we have the same method because it's the truth. 

0:42:37 - Speaker 1
People oh my gosh, yes, yes, i love that. No, and it's so funny, right? because the more I'm like in different things and have my hands and different things, the more I'm talking to more things. It's like oh my gosh, it's amazing how much just comes down to the same stuff. I'll just come down to know your body, connecting back into your body and just yeah, i love the wisdom of aging and getting experience exactly, exactly. Okay, this is so good. So where can people find you? 

0:43:05 - Speaker 2
Stephanie, you'll be all in the show notes, but um so if you're on the podcast, the easiest way is going beyond the food. That's my standing podcast for six years. I've got another one for professional on the side. It's a smaller podcast, but going beyond the food, and then my website, wwwstephanie-dosecom. Start with that and I got a health sheet that I can link to you. Yeah, it's a non-diet health habits and how to think of health without weight beautiful. 

0:43:38 - Speaker 1
Thank you so much for being here. I absolutely love getting to talk to you thank you for having me. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page