In this insightful episode, host Nika is joined by the esteemed Alison Barkman, a dedicated anti-diet dietitian with over a decade of experience in nutrition counseling and academia. Together, they delve into the transformative science of intuitive eating, shedding light on the pervasive struggles surrounding dieting and body image. Alison, who is also the host of the Speaking of Hungry podcast, shares her profound journey from a traditional dietitian to becoming a certified intuitive eating counselor, driven by the need to address the unhealthy obsessions and cycles of restriction and bingeing she observed in her clients.
Throughout the conversation, Alison provides invaluable advice for those looking to embark on a healing path towards accepting and nurturing their bodies as they are. By highlighting the importance of kindness and understanding towards oneself, she offers a beacon of hope for individuals trapped in the cycle of dieting despair.
Recorded in 2020, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to break free from the constraints of diet culture and embrace a more compassionate, intuitive approach to eating and living. Join Nika and Alison as they explore the keys to developing a healthier relationship with food and exercise, and discover the steps you can take today to start your journey towards body acceptance and true well-being.
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*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business or personal success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.
In this insightful episode, host Nika is joined by the esteemed Alison Barkman, a dedicated anti-diet dietitian with over a decade of experience in nutrition counseling and academia. Together, they delve into the transformative science of intuitive eating, shedding light on the pervasive struggles surrounding dieting and body image. Alison, who is also the host of the Speaking of Hungry podcast, shares her profound journey from a traditional dietitian to becoming a certified intuitive eating counselor, driven by the need to address the unhealthy obsessions and cycles of restriction and bingeing she observed in her clients.
Throughout the conversation, Alison provides invaluable advice for those looking to embark on a healing path towards accepting and nurturing their bodies as they are. By highlighting the importance of kindness and understanding towards oneself, she offers a beacon of hope for individuals trapped in the cycle of dieting despair.
Recorded in 2020, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to break free from the constraints of diet culture and embrace a more compassionate, intuitive approach to eating and living. Join Nika and Alison as they explore the keys to developing a healthier relationship with food and exercise, and discover the steps you can take today to start your journey towards body acceptance and true well-being.
CONNECT WITH THE GUEST:
CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie
Instagram: instagram.com/biohacking4babes
TikTok: tiktok.com/@biohacking4babes
YouTube: youtube.com/@NikaLawrie
Facebook: facebook.com/biohacking4babes
SUBMIT A QUESTION OR REQUEST A TOPIC:
I would love to hear from you! Please record your question or topic request to be featured in a future episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/NikaLawrie
DISCLAIMER:
*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business or personal success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.
I mean, when you think about the things that we tell people to do in order to lose weight, think of the things we tell people to do. We tell them to restrict food, to eat smaller portions, think of, like those liquid diets that some people do and the amount of exercise that we tell people to do, and those are the exact things that people with a full-blown, diagnosed eating disorder are doing. However, a person with an eating disorder, it's like, oh my God, you need to go get help, but yet we're using those same exact tactics to tell people who are quote unquote obese to lose weight.
Speaker 2:Right. Welcome to the Inspired with Mika Laurie podcast. Hey everybody, and welcome to the show I am super excited for today. I have a fantastic guest joining me that I think you are going to learn a ton from. Her name is Allison Barkman and she is a registered dietitian. She's been doing that for over 10 years now and she also has a whole lot of experience in intuitive eating. Welcome, allison. I'm so excited to have you join me today. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you have a little bit of a personal story when it comes to, like, eating disorders and kind of that back history. Can you tell me just whatever you're comfortable with, tell me kind of your backstory and then how that led you to become a registered dietitian and an intuitive eating counselor as well?
Speaker 1:Sure so I. When I was in high school I started with an eating disorder, going back even before that. I don't remember exactly when, but I was at some point in elementary school. I remember just feeling noticing like models in magazines and singers you know like I loved Madonna and Cyndi Lauper growing up in the eighties and just I just remember thinking, looking at other people's bodies, other other girls' bodies I mean I was a girl, I was a young girl and comparing it to mine and already having a lot of this, this diet culture starts swirling in my head and I don't I mean I do, I attribute it to society, for sure.
Speaker 1:but I also grew up. I mean I love my mother, we get along, I do not fault her at all. But I grew up with a mom who was very conscious of her body and dieting and exercising and writing down, like weighing herself every day and writing it down in a notebook.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know. So, even if she, I never was told by like a pediatrician that I had a weight problem, and I guess I mean I hate to use this word, but, all things considered, looking back at pictures of me as a kid, I was just like quote, unquote, normal. I guess Nobody ever said, nobody was like, oh, she's overweight or obese or anything like that. But in my mind I started seeing, you know, like when you go through puberty and you start like getting a little fat buildup in your abdominal area or whatever, like I, just I compared myself to others, and it wasn't, though, until high school when I was really like, oh, I'm going to diet and I decided to do Weight Watchers. I didn't join it officially, I think. I just got, like all of the information from my mom, who had also done it, and I decided that that's what I was going to do, and then I just got obsessed from that point when I was losing weight on Weight Watchers, and then I just kind of took it to a completely different level, and I mean it's blurry in my mind now, but I do remember I was restricting food, not really eating a lot during the week, and then I would binge on the weekends and I would use laxatives and then I once, like Monday rolled around, I would go back to like starvation mode, yeah, and that was pretty much what I did mode, and that was pretty much what I did.
Speaker 1:And I went to a therapist for a few months and it was just as I was getting ready to go away to college and I don't know, I mean, the therapy helped and I think also the fact that I was finally I was going away to college and it just sort of changed things for me. And I have to say that once I was at school, away at school, I went to a school that was about six hours from where I lived. It just I still, I know I still had some body issues, but the eating disorder was like gone I don't actually gone is probably not the right word it just was not there anymore. It just wasn't a priority. And so I was pretty, you know, for the four years of college I really just I mean, I was kind of like a lot of other typical college students. I definitely partied and drank a lot and ate, like you know, pizza at two in the morning, and so my weight went up, but I wasn't.
Speaker 1:I just don't really remember being preoccupied with my weight went up.
Speaker 1:But I just don't really remember being preoccupied with my weight the way I was in high school and then after Okay, so also when I was so obsessed with food and dieting in high school, that's when I said I want to be a dietitian. You start exploring what do you want to do for a career and what schools are you going to apply to. And so I applied. All the colleges I applied to were for nutrition.
Speaker 1:But when I got to college, my freshman year and it's your freshman year in college and you're still kind of young and all of a sudden I looked at all the science prerequisites and I was like I don't know what I want to do. I was just like forget it, I don't know about this. I was like I don't know what I want to do. I was just like forget it, I don't know about this. And I was undeclared for two years. And then, I think when I started my junior year, I decided to pick speech communication. So it was kind of like a public relations type program and that's what I ended up. I got a degree in communications and I worked in PR for about five years until the nutrition thing was still there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was still in the back of my mind. My sister got a degree in history and didn't really do anything with that and she went back to school for nutrition and she did it first and when she started taking the classes, she was telling me about the classes she was taking and I was like I was just so interested in all that stuff and I'm like this sounds awesome. And so I went, after being in the work world for five years, working at a PR agency, I decided to go back to school and do it was like a combination bachelor master's program in nutrition. So I really like I think as a nutrition student, I started getting some of these messages where I was like beginning to second guess the way that I was eating again. Yeah, it's very undergrad and graduate.
Speaker 1:It's very like you talk about like calculating the amount of calories that people need a lot and a lot of it is medical nutrition therapy. So a lot of it has to do with like working with diabetics and people with renal disease and liver disease and food allergies and all sorts of things, but a huge component of it is weight loss and you get drilled into your head like that you can't. In order to achieve health, you've got to be able to lose weight if you have a weight issue, so to speak, and using those BMI charts. And so I remember starting to all of a sudden have these thoughts like, oh, maybe I'm. I remember like calculating out my body weight and figuring out how many calories I would need, like using myself as a guinea pig, and I'm like, oh, I eat way more than that. And I was like, oh, and I was very into exercise. And I will also say that after college I did gain quite a bit of weight over the four years of college and after I graduated college I did do Weight Watchers again, actually, and I did lose weight. It was very sensible and I lost it very slowly and I was not going into any of that eating disordered stuff. So I felt pretty confident about myself and, quite frankly, I really what I think it is looking back as I went down to a weight that my body was supposed to be, because that heavier weight after college that really wasn't me. It was all from drinking a lot of beer and just crazy eating in college. It just wasn't normal for me at all. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:So then, as a nutrition student, I got a job at a personal training gym and I was counseling. I was counseling people in nutrition and one of the owners of the gym was like oh, you should. You know you should try our program. You know I was. They had this, this new, this nutrition plan that I was working with people on. And he's like you should really give this a try. In other words, like so that I could go through what I'm working with my clients on.
Speaker 1:And it was like, when I tell you, it was like a switch flipped in my head and I wouldn't say I was 100% fine up to that point. But all of a sudden I was just thinking, well, what's wrong with me? I loved exercise. I had been exercising. I've always been an exerciser.
Speaker 1:Well, I really started exercising a lot in college, regardless of the way I was eating and gaining weight, but I just felt like I was strong. I didn't feel like there were any weight issues. But when he said that to me, it triggered something from when I was in high school and that was that I started this, this plan that I was using to work with clients at the gym. I started doing it myself, I started losing weight and I immediately became obsessed and I just for me. It was. For me. It was just really restriction. It was just I ate all. I wasn't like a person who said, oh, I'm not going to eat carbs or sugar is bad, I just ate very small amounts of food. I weighed and measured every single thing that I ate and I tracked back in the. So this is like. I don't even think there were smartphones then. I think we were still using flip phones, so there were no apps. It was like writing things down on paper or whatever. When I tell you, I had pages and pages and pages and I lost so much weight to the point where my period disappeared, which is exactly what happened to me in high school.
Speaker 1:In high school, my period disappeared for about a year. Now I'm in how old am I now? When I'm doing this? Now I'm in my like late 20s, I just hit 30. I was already married, didn't have kids yet, and yeah, so I lost my period again. And that right there tells you that's a sign that something isn't right. Yeah, your body isn't like happy, that something isn't right. Yeah, your body isn't like happy. And um, and my husband and I did want to start having kids once I finished the nutrition pro.
Speaker 1:Once I finished um, the BSMS program, you have to do a nine month internship, right, become a registered dietitian. And so I said, uh, I actually decided to go off the pill I think it was sometime during the internship because I figured you know, this might not happen right away, getting pregnant, and why don't I just go off now? When I went off, that's when I was getting I'm sorry, I was getting a period while I was on the pill. As soon as I went off, that's when it disappeared, and it disappeared for a year. And so, you know, fast forward to needing to go to, like, fertility doctors.
Speaker 1:And I just found it interesting the way, like nobody really asked a lot of questions about my exercise. I was the one who, actually I went to two different fertility doctors and the first one I went to I you to. I knew way back and I knew somewhere deep in my mind that my eating and my exercise habits were not normal, right, and that they probably had something to do with the fact that I couldn't get pregnant. But I also wasn't really admitting that when my family would bring it up to me like, oh, maybe you should try to be a little bit more lenient with the way you eat. Maybe you should cut back a little bit on the exercise. And I would immediately be like no, no, I'm healthy. Like what are you talking about? I'm just really healthy and I would blame it. I blamed it on the pill being on the birth control pill for.
Speaker 1:X amount of years I'm like oh, that's why my period disappeared, like my body's trying to adjust, you know which. Looking back now, I know I was just, I was just making things up and I think I truly was convincing myself and believing the things that I was saying, which were pretty much all lies and coverups Because I was afraid I didn't want to gain weight, I didn't want to go back to what I was before, which at one point, I didn't even think that was bad to begin with, right, so yeah, so that's so. There was that. And then I did work with a fertility doctor. I did end up getting pregnant with my son, who is now 10. And then I got pregnant again and I had my second son, who was eight.
Speaker 1:And after I had my, I was very, I was very depressed during the second pregnancy and I noticed that I was obsessing during the second pregnancy, like going to the gym and staring at other women who were in smaller bodies and just I just remember feeling like I can't wait till this pregnancy is over and I'm going to get my body back. And I was ready to get my body back with a vengeance. I was just potting in my mind. And after I had my second son, I definitely had postpartum depression, and one way I've always learned to deal with depression or lack of control. I mean, anyone who's out there who's a mom knows that feeling when you have a baby, babies, and you feel like your life is not yours anymore, and it's like lack of control and that's what I turned to. The only thing that I knew that I could control and that was food in my body, and so, once again, I lost a ton of weight. After I had my second son, I probably got to the thinnest point I had ever ever been in my life and lost my period again, and I even remember wanting to be in a smaller body, but also going to a store and trying clothes on and having an extremely small size not even fit me, it was too big and I remember standing in the dressing room and feeling scared and uncomfortable, but yet at the same time, I would be scared and afraid to to gain weight.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so I was a dietitian through all of this, because I became a, I finished, I became an RD before I even had kids and I always kind of worked on and off in different ways. I did clinical nutrition and I even started my own private practice at one point and a majority of the people coming to me were coming to me for weight loss. And that was when I was like I can't, I don't know. Something just snapped in me and I knew that I needed to work on myself and I'm like I can't work with people on weight loss anymore. And I didn't for a while. I was like I don't even know if I want to be a dietician anymore. I don't know if I even want to work with food and talk about food or any of that.
Speaker 1:And basically I found I had heard of intuitive eating. It's a book written by Elise Fresh and Evelyn Triboli. It was first written in 1995. And I heard about it from one of my professors when I was a student, but I didn't really. I had the book, I didn't really grasp the concept or anything, and I decided after you know, having gone up and down this path of disordered eating since high school age, I was like enough's, enough, I just don't want to deal with this anymore.
Speaker 1:It's, it was taking over my life. I I was waking up in the morning feeling like a cloud, just like there was this heavy cloud around my head all the time and snapping at my kids. It's one thing if your kids do something wrong, but they wouldn't even do any. I was just so irritable and all I thought about 24-7 like food and exercise, that's it. I couldn't enjoy anything. It was just totally, totally ridiculous.
Speaker 1:So I started to look into the book. I started reading about it. I started listening to a podcast. The very first podcast I started listening to about this was Food Psych by Christy Harrison, and she's also a dietician anti-diet and she just wrote a book. It just came out, I think in December, and it's called Anti-Diet. I remember listening to her podcast driving to and from.
Speaker 1:I was an adjunct professor. I taught nutrition undergrads for about five years and driving to and from the college I would listen to her podcast like binge listen to it, and I'd had my moments where I was so into it and then there'd be other times where I was like I don't want to listen to this anymore and I don't know if I even agree with any. I was all over the place. And then I decided to become a registered dietitian, can do this course with Evelyn Triboli, one of the authors, to become an intuitive eating counselor. It's not just for it's for registered dietitians, it's for therapists, different types of coaches I think nurses too can do it and so I decided to do it, and at the time, I didn't even know if I wanted to counsel people. I was really just doing it for my own knowledge.
Speaker 1:I wanted to learn more and also, as dieticians, we have to get continuing ed credits 75 continuing ed credits every five years so I was getting continuing ed credits for it and a little while after I completed all the course requirements, the certification, I decided this past in September 2019, that I would start counseling people again, but only on intuitive eating and trying to help women stop chronic dieting, to heal their relationship with food, to stop disordered eating. And I made it really clear in everything, like with my website and even just talking to potential clients. I always make it clear that if you want to lose weight, that's totally fine, that's up to you, but that's not what I do. I won't help you try to lose weight because that's not what you try to lose weight. There are some people out there, some practitioners, who will say intuitive eating can be a form of another way of trying to lose weight, but that's not true. If you read the book and you really get the core concepts. That's not what it's about.
Speaker 2:For someone who isn't really familiar with intuitive eating. What is it? How does it work? Kind of break that down for me.
Speaker 1:So it's based on 10 principles that were outlined in the book by Evelyn and Elise and the principles I don't have. Actually I think I do have them here in front of me. One of the first ones is to reject the diet mentality. So to start really understanding like one exercise I'll do with my clients is I'll ask people to write down every single diet you've ever been on how that felt for you. How much weight did you lose? Were you able to keep that weight off? And if you were, how long were you able to? And if you did gain that weight back, what happened why?
Speaker 1:And when I have people do this exercise, they realize some people have this just diet upon diet, like so many. And they just see a pattern where it's like yep, lost weight on this one, gained it back. Maybe they gained a little bit, maybe they gained all of it back and maybe for some people they gained even more. And when you start to see this pattern, it's like okay, well, clearly something's not working. And a lot of times people then blame themselves because of that stupid word willpower. Like you're supposed to have this willpower and be strong and like muscle through, but really no, like we're just not meant to diet. So that's kind of like step one is rejecting that diet mentality. Next, we want to try and start really getting back in touch with our true hunger and satiety. So I always like to use the example of like if you look at, let's say, a baby or a toddler who hasn't really been influenced yet by diet culture or even by the parents directing the child when to eat. Like, let's look at a baby, if a baby's being breastfed or bottle fed when a baby's hungry, what would she do? She'll cry, scream. Then you go, you either breastfeed or bottle feed and when the baby's done she'll kind of move away and that's her signal of being like I'm good, I don't need anymore. Somewhere along the way we completely lose that, that sense of when we're hungry and when we're full. And so within intuitive eating you really work on and I'll do several sessions with people like just on hunger alone how to identify fullness.
Speaker 1:A lot of people, sometimes myself included I've had that clean your plate mentality where it's like I can't leave any food on the plate even though my body is done, I don't need any more. And then also the satisfaction factor of food is a big part to it. I had a client once who realized after decades of dieting that, like all of the things she was eating, she would eat like cold things for breakfast, like cottage cheese or yogurt with fruit, and then lunch would be a cold salad. And she was like you know, alison, she said I want to start eating Like. I've never used to eat like soup or chili for lunch or anything like that. And she realized the, the types of foods that she was missing out on and the actual like texture and temperature. So there's that component to it.
Speaker 1:And then there's this whole thing of just what the book, what the authors of the book called challenging the food police. You know you should do all this stuff like. People are like oh, you shouldn't eat gluten and you shouldn't do dairy and stop eating meat and all of this. I mean if you're vegetarian or vegan for moral reasons, that's a different story. But you know there's so much misinformation out there that gluten is going to make you fat and, quite frankly, I think the only people that should be avoiding something like gluten are people who have celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity, but some people just automatically associate. Or people who are like oh, I'm off sugar, I'm not eating any sugar. But you know, how long can that last? Realistically, I don't think a person can go without sugar for the rest of their lives and at some point you're going to want sugar. So it's like well, in that case, how can you make it fit? Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, sorry, go ahead. And the other side of that is is are you enjoying not having it all the time? You know you, you have to have those little moments of joy and appreciation, and you know fun, even in your diet sometimes too.
Speaker 1:So Absolutely so. That's. Yeah, that's the whole challenge of the food police. And stop following food rules.
Speaker 1:I used to have tons of food rules and there were certain foods that I would only let myself eat on the weekend, when I was kind of like letting myself go a little bit, and what inevitably that ended up doing to me is I would restrict so heavily during the week and follow this crazy laundry list of food rules, and when the weekend came, I would end up eating uncontrollable amounts.
Speaker 1:I could eat a five scoop sundae, no hands down, I could do it. I mean, I would feel sick after. But ice cream's like a big ice cream's, like one of those things for me. I love ice cream now, after practicing intuitive eating, because I don't have any rules associated with ice cream, if I crave it, I have it. But when I tell you that the amount that I have is so much less than what it was when I was restricting, because I get satisfied after a small amount and I'm like I'm good, that's it, I don't need anymore, yeah and that's a huge shift that people experience is that you're still going to have those cravings, but they're minimal, they're not as extreme.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent, and that's what you want to try to get to with the intuitive eating process. And then another big part of the intuitive eating. One of the principles is to deal with emotional eating, and that doesn't a lot of people think. That just means like, oh, I'm really like upset because I just broke up with my boyfriend and I'm going to eat a half gallon of ice cream. It's not just being sad, it's even like eating when you're stressed, anxious, bored, angry. It's for a range of emotions, and a lot of us do it. And when we're emotionally eating, we're not eating for physical hunger, we're eating to cope with something. And for people who are emotional eaters and do that on a regular basis, your weight more than likely will be higher than what it's naturally meant to be. So for some people, if they can really work on the emotional eating part and they see that they stop binging to soothe their emotions, they may actually find that they do lose weight from the process of intuitive eating. Other people, like myself when I went through the process since I was a person who was restricting and I was in a body weight that was way too low for what's natural for me I actually gained weight through the process of intuitive eating and I'm pretty much I mean, who knows what normal is. But I feel like the body that I'm in right now is, I mean, I get a regular period all the time. Now that was a sign right then and there, that my body is where it needs to be, and just a lot of the depression and the irritability that I was having is pretty. I don't want to say it's a hundred percent gone, because I think I will always have some sort of like depression that I deal with, but it's not as extreme and as intense as it was before. Yeah, and then, oh, go ahead. Sorry, go. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I'm looking up at my bulletin board and I'm seeing, like, the different steps. So this is toward the end.
Speaker 1:You kind of move through all these principles and then another one is to work on the body image part. I like to call it body neutrality, because some people don't like the term body positivity, because we can't always be a hundred percent. We're never going to be a hundred percent positive and our bodies are always changing and there's always something new that we have to get. It's like, oh great, now there's this, and as we age, things shift and whatever. But that's a big part of it too is kind of working on your body image and coming to a place of having compassion for your body and really understanding your body shape and size, that you were genetically given and what you can do to appreciate it more. And that helps tremendously with not dieting, because if you start to appreciate and accept your body then you're less likely to want to do all of these crazy things to try and lose weight and constantly pursue shrinking it all the time.
Speaker 2:You mentioned a little bit earlier about, you know, society's role in, in kind of dieting and stuff like that. Why, I mean, why do you think it's become so normalized for society to to tell us all to look a certain way or act a certain way or, you know, to follow a certain diet? Yeah, and how do we overcome that?
Speaker 1:That's a really good question. I mean, first of all, I think it's the images that we see in media. I think it's getting a little bit better, way better than it was when I was growing up. We actually see models now in larger bodies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even in the last five, 10 years.
Speaker 1:It's Absolutely. I also, I think there's just a lot of misinformation out there. I think a lot of people equate being healthy with needing to lose weight and being in a smaller body, like like there can be no such thing as somebody in a larger body being healthy, and that's completely not true, because there are people in small bodies and there are people in large bodies that can be both healthy and unhealthy. And unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people get messages from their doctors that if they have high blood pressure, if diabetes runs in their family, if heart disease runs in their family, that the answer is you need to lose weight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even though there's skinny people that are pre-diabetic and have heart conditions.
Speaker 1:So yeah, absolutely, and a lot of times.
Speaker 1:Yes, we've seen that weight loss can improve different health parameters, but what I always like to say to people is why don't you try looking at your habits?
Speaker 1:For instance, if you are emotionally eating or eating for reasons that aren't physical hunger, start looking at those rather than all of a sudden being like, oh my God, I'm pre-diabetic, I need to hop on this diet and start weighing yourself every day or a few times a week and completely going that route, rather than just trying to focus on changing habits. So I think that, because weight loss is put on such a pedestal that I mean, when you think about the things that we tell people to do in order to lose weight, think of the things we tell people to do. We tell them to restrict food, to eat smaller portions, think of, like, those liquid diets that some people do and the amount of exercise that we tell people to do, and those are the exact things that people with a full-blown, diagnosed eating disorder are doing. However, a person with an eating disorder, it's like, oh my God, you need to go get help, but yet we're using those same exact tactics to tell people who are quote-unquote obese to lose weight.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Weight, right, yeah yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:When you were telling your story earlier, I really relate to you in the sense that after I had my daughter, I gained the weight back after having her and that's the first time that I really started to look at counting calories and restricting my food and overexercising and I started to be really hard on myself when I would eat something sweet and then, you know, if I didn't do an hour-long workout, I finally got half an hour in, I felt guilty and I felt like a failure, and then I finally just got burnt out and I stopped and I gained about 10 pounds back of all the weight that I had lost.
Speaker 2:And then after that I was like this is not normal, like this, I can't spend the rest of my life living that way, just to lose the weight and be quote unquote healthy, and so it really it took me a while to kind of reset and figure those things out and and I'm grateful that I haven't had, you know, a really long struggle, but it was still very, very eyeopening for me about how quickly you can get sucked into those cycles and and and have them kind of just progress into something that's out of control.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I mean, I think it's wonderful that you were able to see that and identify you know, um, that that's not the way you want to live your life and it it takes something for I think. For me, unfortunately, I feel like I really missed out on the early years of both my boys because I was so preoccupied. But I try not to dwell on that and I'm just so thankful that I'm present now, and even this was something I didn't do. I actually wrote a blog post on this about a year ago. Actually, exactly a year ago, I went on a trip a sister trip with my sister to Bermuda and she sent me a text after we got home and we had an amazing time. It was a long weekend and she sent me a text and she was like you know, you are just so much more fun now that you are like free and you're just like eating chips on the beach for lunch and you don't care that you're not like, you're not.
Speaker 1:We didn't exercise. Actually, I think we did like one 20 minute like workout online while we were there, but otherwise we were just like whatever, Like, and she saw that in me she's like you are just such a different person and it made me so happy. At the same time said to think of how many vacations I've been on. Where I'm on vacation and this is what I'm worrying about I'm stressing over every single thing I'm eating and trying to squeeze in exercise to burn off my vacation food. It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an uncontrollable situation in the long term.
Speaker 1:And to go back to your question about how we normalize it, here's the other thing I feel like. I mean, what do we do as women when we see someone who's lost weight? We praise them, we praise them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like oh my gosh, look at you, you lost weight, you look great, yeah. And it kind of sends a message like is that person a better person now? Does that have anything? Does their body shape and size have anything to do with the type of person that they are? And, quite frankly, I'll use myself as an example.
Speaker 1:When I was at my lowest weight, people who just sort of knew me like not my family, my family knew and they saw, and they were like that is not normal. But there were people who would be like, oh my God, you look so good, like what do you do and what do you do in the gym? And look at your arms and this, that and the other thing. And I mean it, it, it was, it's messed up because meanwhile they didn't know that I was basically like just obsessed and 24, seven, that's all I cared about was food and and of course I didn't tell people that that wasn't my answer I was just like, oh, you know, I just eat healthy. I don't know what I said to people, but of course I didn't tell them the truth, right, I was like tracking my food for years and a food diary app like a maniac, yeah and yeah, so it's like that's.
Speaker 1:That's the other thing. Is we? We just think that beauty and um, that beauty and just status and everything comes down to being a smaller size. And you know, and back in the I think in like the seventies, maybe even in the eighties, it was being like really real thin. These days it's more now that it's like it's like this athletic, muscular, yet thin type body and you don't get that way. But I mean there is a very few amount of people that are might just be genetically disposed to being like that. But for the most part when you see people with like these ripped bodies like walking around, like that, they are not just kind of gliding through life.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, they are not.
Speaker 1:They're working on that all the time.
Speaker 2:All the time, yeah, and I think the other thing to keep in perspective too is that, especially for women, but the way you look in your 20s so a lot of these models are their late teens, early 20s right To the way you look when you're 30s, 40s, 50s, after you've had a child or two, you're naturally going to look different, and you can't compete with somebody who hasn't gone through those hormonal changes, hasn't gone through those body changes, and so I think it's really inappropriate for us to compare ourselves to somebody that's in a completely different spot in their life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, and unfortunately we do it and that's what makes us feel crappy about ourselves. And we even do it with people who we are the same age, as I always tell people, you could be the same exact age as another woman the same height, have had the same amount of kids but have two completely different bodies, and again, that's for genetics. You have to kind of look at your parents and your grandparents and see what their body shape and size is like and realize that that's who you are and the comparison game is not going to help you feel better about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we talked a little bit about ditching the idea of the diet mentality. But for somebody who is maybe struggling with it right now or just starting to understand, like wow, maybe I'm in a bad cycle, what are some steps that you suggest for them to start ditching that mentality, to kind of overcome that?
Speaker 1:Well, the first thing I would do is what I talked about earlier, where I would say you know, kind of write down your history of diets and what that looked like for you. That would be step number one. And then I would say think about any food rules that you might be following and write them down and see, do they have any scientific? Do they have any science to back them up?
Speaker 1:Yeah like you know the the mom blog that you read, where you know somebody who maybe lost a lot of weight and now she's trying to tell everybody else they should do this too. Like where is this information coming from? Or have there been documented, peer reviewed scientific studies that have been tested in a large population of people and and tested over and over again, that showed you like yes, as a matter of fact, this food really is a food you shouldn't be eating, which I would say you know nine times out of 10, you're going to find you're not going to find that information. And then think of the dieting tools that you're still holding onto, like are you using a food tracking app? Are you weighing and measuring your foods? Are you stepping on the scale? That's another big one If you're doing it.
Speaker 1:I always say it might be hard. It took me. That was something that took me a very long time to stop doing. I haven't weighed myself since July 2018. Wow, but it took a while to get there because I was a person that was way. I never, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I don't even think I did it daily, but I definitely did it a few times a week weighing myself. So that's a big one, because I feel like you're looking at that number. That number is external, that has nothing to do with who you are as a person and if you see a number that you don't like, that's going to influence your mood and the way you eat for the day. You're going to start telling yourself I'm bad, I wanted to have a sandwich for lunch, but now I'm just going to eat a salad with all vegetables, because I weighed X, y, z this morning.
Speaker 1:But definitely looking at what diet tools you have lying around, including a scale to weigh yourself, and see what are you ready to let go of. And it might feel scary to let go of everything all at once. So take one thing and if it's, you know, I think for me the first thing was like weighing and measuring my food and I was like this has got to stop because it's just way too time consuming. And I did. I got rid of like those, whatever the app was that I was using. I got rid of it and I slowly stopped weighing and measuring things. I didn't do it all at once.
Speaker 1:There was some things that I was still measuring till the bitter end, and then I was like all right enough, I just got more and more used to listening and trusting my body. So if I wanted to eat hummus or pretzels, I wasn't measuring it or counting it. I was just like how many pretzels do I feel like eating right now? How much hummus do I want to have? So those would be my top things. To do is to look at your dieting history, write it all down, think about the food rules that you're still following and any diet tools that you're still using, and think, make a goal. Say this week, I'm going to get rid of one thing, I'm going to stop doing one thing and feel how freeing it is when you don't. And yes, it's going to be scary too, because if you're someone who's relied on these things for most of your life or the past several years, it's going to be scary to let go.
Speaker 2:With your process through letting go. Were there resources or other tools that you used outside of the intuitive eating book, but other tools and resources that you found helpful?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I definitely had read the book. The authors also developed a workbook, so it's in conjunction with the book and you can actually go through and write out all your answers and it kind of takes you through all the 10 principles and that was a big help for me. Like I said, the Food Psych podcast and then from that point on, hearing a bunch of other podcasts. Like I just started finding all of these podcasts following people on social media, people who were heavily into the anti-diet intuitive eating counselor, and I did a lot of the work on my own but I reached out to her part of the way through because I realized I just needed to get out of my own head and I needed to talk to somebody about the whole. I'm a big believer in therapy. I've been to therapists on and off for years of my life, so I knew that it was going to help me and it did. It helped tremendously to do that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think just having even someone to say the words to it's not even necessarily their feedback, it's just kind of getting it out of your head so that you can really process it I think has such a powerful effect on how we're actually processing the words we're saying. If that makes sense, like putting value to the words that are coming out of us. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So you talked a little bit earlier about habits and routines and I love that because I am a huge like behavior change, look at habits, look at routines, make it small and simple those kinds of things because they really do run our days, even subconsciously. Do you have any suggestions for somebody who's maybe in a routine of negative self-talk or negative, you know they're looking at body image kind of issues again and they're telling themselves that they're not good at. Do you have any suggestions on how somebody might overcome those or maybe change some of those habits and routines that they have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely do. I actually just talked about this a little bit. I did some Facebook Lives in a Facebook group that I run and it was all about body image and how we can improve that and how we can improve that. I think well, like we had just discussed before, to stop comparing ourselves to other people, because that will just bring us down a whole rabbit hole of being upset with ourselves. And again, like I said, you never know another person's story. So when people were saying that I looked fabulous, nobody knew the whole story behind me, looking quote unquote great or whatever they thought it was.
Speaker 1:I also think again, well, I talked about stop weighing yourself. I think that you can't weigh yourself regularly. There really is no reason to, and it's going to make you. What is it going to do? And, let's say, your weight does go down and then you're like, what are you? You're ecstatic, like, look, I lost X amount of pounds. But we can't let that number dictate how we feel about ourselves and so, whether it be feeling better about ourselves or feeling crappy, so again, I think getting rid of that scale and not relying on that number is a habit that we need to stop in order to feel better about our body. I gained weight. Now I don't know. Like I said, it's been two years since I stepped on a scale. I know what I weighed on that day, but I don't really know since I stepped on a scale. I know what I weighed on that day, but I don't really know. And I know that my clothing size went up, obviously. But what made me feel better about myself is just not really even knowing the number.
Speaker 1:And I love exercise and I just talked about this earlier today. I realize this isn't going to work for everyone, if you don't like exercise, but I love exercise. I've changed my mindset around exercise, because exercise in the past was always about beating myself up, compensating for the way that I ate, trying to lose weight and trying to chase after this body size. That wasn't normal for me. That's not what exercise is about at all now for me.
Speaker 1:I fell in love back in September with Pilates, which is something I never did before, I would never have done during my disordered days, because I would have went into that Pilates class and been like I had to be spinning or running or bootcamp and sweating and just crazy stuff. Yeah, now I have different goals for myself. So, as I was doing the Pilates and finding that I was improving and able to do getting stronger with the workouts, that was amazing to me and made me feel good about my body, despite the fact that I was gaining weight or even, for some people, I used to be a big, big runner. If that's your thing and you like it, having goals like, wow, now I can go another mile further, or I've increased my pace. Doing yoga and being able to do some of those extremely hard poses and finding strength that way, these are things that are going to make you, that can make you feel positive about your body.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Even if it's not the way you would like it to look. Let's say, I'm trying to think if there's I said about weighing yourself and body, and then just overall, this is a big thing with intuitive eating is putting the thought of weight loss on the back burner, like if you're going to really try and step into this anti-diet world and really just try to ditch dieting and embrace intuitive eating, you've got to put those thoughts of wanting to lose weight away. And because, obviously, how can we be positive about our bodies if that's all we keep talking about is I wish I could lose weight, I wish I could be this size or this weight that I was before I had kids, or whatever it is that you're telling yourself. Because the more we say that to ourselves, the more we're saying I'm not accepting my body the way it is right now, because it's not good enough. So those are just a few, a few tips For some. Oh and I forgot, I'm sorry, I forgot a big one. I guess I probably have a lot more, but no, a big one is I always tell people get rid of those clothes that you have in your closet that don't fit you anymore.
Speaker 1:Because you keep telling yourself someday, one day I'm going to, because again, that's telling yourself I need to lose weight so that I can get back into those jeans. Get rid of them, donate them If you wanna sell them. There's so many ways now online that we can sell. If it was like a pair of jeans that you barely wore, sell them. You don't have to throw them in the garbage or give them to somebody else.
Speaker 1:But the more you hold on to them or I mean, how many times have we all done this where you go and like try to put them on and then you're like crap, like you can't even zipper them, and then what happens? You just feel horrible about yourself. So just get rid of them. Buy yourself some clothes that fit you, now, that compliment you. And I even say to people like, even if you have some clothes that do fit, but they're the wrong cut for you, or just a color that you don't like, you've got to you want to make. Listen, I'm all about wanting to make yourself look nice and feel good, and I think like, hey, when you put on that dress or that outfit, that just you feel good and don't you feel like you hold your head a little bit higher and so, yeah, holding onto clothes that don't fit and telling ourselves we're going to try and get back into them, not a good idea, it's not going to help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally agree. I love that you brought that up, Definitely. So for somebody who is interested in intuitive eating and maybe probably starting that process, how do they start? Do you recommend they they connect with somebody like you? Do they buy the book, Like what? How do we get started in that?
Speaker 1:I guess you know, I guess everybody's different, I think, for I think a lot of the people that I work with have already read the book. So they they got the book. They might not have read it front to cover, but I mean front to back, but they might have started like looking at it and then maybe they started following some people on social media. It's like a slow process where they're like, okay, I'm hearing this about the reject the diet mentality and I, okay, I honor your hunger, and they start getting things. And then the next step for that person might be they think, oh, I'd really like to work with somebody who does this, whether it be a therapist, a dietician, a coach, whatever. So I really think it's what you're comfortable with. Maybe there might be some people out there who are just like they know. I know, for me, I'm a terrible reader. I'm just so scatterbrained and it's hard for me to stay focused. So somebody might just right away be a big believer in therapy and talking it out and just want to jump into working one-on-one with somebody. For others that might not be a feasible option, whether it's for money reasons. That's one of the reasons. I mean, I have my podcast, I have my Facebook group. Those are all free resources that no one has to pay for. They can just take it or leave it. So I really I think it's.
Speaker 1:I would highly recommend that people get the book and maybe even the workbook, because that's where you can actually interact and do the work and because you I don't know you may get the book and decide maybe it's not for you, because I'm not saying that this is for everyone and I don't like to push my agenda on people. I think you know I do have a lot of people push back on me and say you know, but what if somebody does go on a diet? And you know what about that mom who's just gained so much weight after having so many kids and she's finally feeling healthier and feeling more energized, and I'm like you know what Good for her. Then If that's the route someone wants to take, that's wonderful. This is more for people, I feel, who just lose themselves and get obsessed and end up beating themselves up and are in this nonstop cycle where they can't. They just find themselves constantly being on a diet, off a diet, on a diet, off a diet, and you get to a point where you're like I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I would say definitely getting the book, and the authors just came out with a new revised version, I think in June, so I don't know if it's. I have it somewhere. I don't know if it's the fourth or the fifth edition I forgot but so they just newly updated it. I would say that's a good place to start, to see if it's a good fit and something you're you're really interested in and feel like um, you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely so, alison. I have one more question for you, but before I get to that, uh, where can listeners find you online? How can they connect with you?
Speaker 1:There's a bunch of different ways. Um, so there's my website, which is just alisonbarkmancom, and that's Alison with one L Uh. I am on Instagram and Facebook and my handle is at alisonbarkmanrd, and I do have a private Facebook group. It's the intuitive eating and body compassion community. So, like I said, that's one of my free resources. Anyone can join. It's a private group, so you just have to answer a few questions and agree to the group rules and that's pretty much it. Then you're in and my podcast is Speaking of Hungry and you can find that on iTunes and, I think, google Play, stitcher a few of the different carriers who the podcast players, I guess, you would say. And I do interview a lot of people on the podcast, but I also have a bunch of episodes where it's just me blabbing about intuitive eating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's great, it's great. I'll be sure to link to all of those in the show notes as well. Great, yeah, awesome. So my last question for you and I, just before I get to that, I just want to say thank you. I think just your story and your information and just your knowledge is amazing and so enlightening and I've just really been grateful for that. So thank you. Sure, absolutely, yeah. So my last question for you today is what advice do you have for someone who wants to make change, either in their life, in their community or around the world?
Speaker 1:Hmm, I guess I would say if you want to make change in your life, what is it first that you want to change and what barriers are keeping you from making those changes? When I was a little girl, straight through college, I was big into writing in a diary, a journal, and I kind of let that go. I actually started it up again when COVID hit and everything locked down. I found myself writing a lot and I always say to people if you want to change, write about it. What is it that you want to change and what are those barriers that are causing you to not make those changes and what are some steps that you think you can start taking to overcome those barriers? So if you're caught in this diet, in this like restrict binge cycle or this lose weight, gain weight cycle, what's keeping you from getting out of that cycle?
Speaker 1:And for a lot of people they may find that and I would say actually most people's not about the food, it's about something else and there's a reason that they're trying to either control their bodies or sabotage their bodies, sabotage the way that they're eating, because of something that happened in their life that they're not addressing right. So I I think that if you want to make change, it might. It might be very difficult, it might be hard, it might be ugly. I shouldn't say it might. It probably will be, because that's one reason that we don't end up changing is we fear. We fear what we're going to have to go through in order for that change to happen right but we kind of have to let that, that fear we have.
Speaker 1:we have to let it happen, otherwise the change won't come.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and figure out a way to kind of power through it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I do think I know, for me anyway, that therapy was a huge help with that. I don't think that I could have gotten through a lot of that on my own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm so glad that you did, but yeah, it's just awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for for having me. This was great. I love talking about this and spreading this message, so thank you.
Speaker 2:So important and I'm just super grateful. So thank you again for your time as well. Absolutely.