#53: Intuitive Eating and Anti-Diet Culture with Lisa Dahl

This week, we are joined by Lisa Dahl, a Health and Wellness Coach specializing in Intuitive Eating, Mindful Eating, and Body Image. She is a former caterer and an expert at meal planning. We got to chat with Lisa all about her health at every size approach to nutrition and coaching and how she helps her clients unpack their long-held beliefs about food and dieting. She also gives us a peek into her Menu Mapping technique for waste-free meal planning!
Enjoy!

Connect with Lisa:
https://www.lisadahlwellness.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lisadahlwellness
IG: https://www.instagram.com/lisadahlwellness
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWFu4WBJhsKYJ2WLQTgShUw

Recipe: Salmon Carpaccio Towers
 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner.

Riley: Hello and welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast. Uh, today we gotta talk to Lisa Dahl of Lisa Dahl Wellness. Uh, she's a health and wellness coach specializing in intuitive eating, mindful eating and body image. She's a former caterer and now an expert meal planner. Um, she uses a tool called menu mapping and mindful meal planning, which is based in flexibility, balance, variety, pleasure, and.

Roni: Today we got to talk to Lisa all about how she works with her clients to move them from, a yo-yo dieting lifestyle into a more intuitive eating lifestyle. So she helps people who struggle with body issues, maybe have a love-hate relationship with food, and helps them shift their maybe disordered eating [00:01:00] patterns into this intuitive eating style.

We also talk about her menu mapping process and how she uses that to help her clients create meal plans that will help them love the food that they eat. And we hope that you enjoy this episode.

Well, Lisa, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.

We appreciate you being here.

Lisa: I'm so excited to be here. I have been following you and part of Plan to eat for probably three years, and so it's really, I'm just super excited to talk to you and continue to get to go to know both of you better. So this is a great opportunity.

Riley: Oh, we're excited too. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your business.

Lisa: Awesome. So I am Lisa Dahl. I'm a health and wellness coach, and I focus on the practice of intuitive mindful eating and body image. And what that all really means is that I take a non diet approach to health and wellness. So we take. the number on the scale off of [00:02:00] our metrics of success, and we focus on hopes, dreams, clarity, other ways that you will feel better in your body about your life, mentally, emotionally, physically, cuz we are full bodies and far more greater than that number on the scale.

Roni: Oh, that's wonderful. Do, did you come to this through your own, dieting issues,

Lisa: What a kind way to say that. Um, so absolutely, yes. So my dieting history or being uncomfortable in my body started when I was in elementary school, and I remember in third grade I had this really nice gym teacher, Mr. Lazarus, and he pulled me aside and he said, you know, you need to go to special gym so that you can learn to walk on the balance beam.

And that just set me up. Well, it was meant with the best of intentions. It put me last, you know, to be, [00:03:00] pick last in any, you know, class dividing of teams and sports, not wanting to participate in athletics. You know, trying harder than I was before to get out of gym class. I am sure it had the direct opposite of what his intentions were.

And then it was further compounded when I was in high school and we were in ninth grade and we were told the week before that we were gonna be weighed and measured in school. And then I'm thinking, okay, you know, if I start starving now, you know, What will that number be? And thinking about, you know, okay, I can skip breakfast, and then standing in line and sweating and then worrying about, you know, are they gonna say that number out loud?

And looking at a sea of bodies that were appeared to be in a smaller body than mine, or a better body than mine. So I really started dieting when I was, you know, 13, 14 years old. I was a lifetime member of Weight Watchers lived and by, died by points, numbers on the scale. Took that scale everywhere I went.

and [00:04:00] I proceeded to have a very long sorted diet history for 40 plus years. And I could diet really well. So I knew a ton about nutrition. I knew how to restrict. I was known for that person who had so much willpower, lot of judgment about what I ate, what other people ate, and. When I shifted careers from catering, because when you have this major, you know, love hate relationship with food, you surround yourself with food in.

A very dis disordered way. I moved into health and wellness coaching cause I thought, oh, you know, all my experience, I, you know, I can meal plan, I know all this nutrition. I know how a diet better than most, I'm gonna be the best weight loss coach out there. . And when I started working with my clients, I started to really feel uncomfortable and feel their stress and anxiety on the days that were quote unquote, share your progress days, which meant tell me are where you are on the scale.

And they would be [00:05:00] making such amazing progress with their sleep and their energy and their food choices. And sometimes, a lot of times it doesn't get reflected on the number on the scale. And it made me start to look at my behavior, which was not healthy, which I didn't know because. It's so normalized to have unhealthy disordered eating patterns.

You don't even know that it's disordered eating patterns. And you know, when I'm in my sweet spot, I would weigh myself multiple times a day to make sure that I didn't gain an ounce between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And if it creeped, then I wouldn't go on the scale for days and starve myself. So because of, you know, feeling their stress and anxiety and going like, this is.

How do you coach that? Because it's terrible. And I discovered a book called Health at Every Size, which was written by Linda Bacon. And it literally changed my life personally and professionally. Everything that I thought to be true about thinner bodies [00:06:00] being healthier, better, happier, was simply not true, and so much misinformation about health and wellness.

And from there I discovered the practice of intuitive eating, which is the anti diet way of really making peace with your food and your body. And it shifted my entire perspective and that is, you know, kind of the very condensed version of how I became a non diet health coach.

Roni: yeah, That's such a powerful story and it's so interesting to me how. Things that are, you know, said to us, when we're children, impact us for the rest of our lives, for our whole, you know, for our whole life. I can remember when I was about seven or eight and somebody really close to me told me that I was getting a muffin top, and it brought me so much shame and.

I think it was definitely something that propelled me into, yeah, like a diet lifestyle for a really long time. And I tried to, you know, like do a bikini [00:07:00] competition when I was in my early twenties and all sorts of stuff, and it's like it was all fueled, you know, by this one comment that just I feel like will forever be stuck in my brain,

Lisa: Absolutely like when I work with my clients. You know, a lot of people like have that guilt and the shame like, what have I done? Like, why am I this way? And it's really flipping that story as to, you know, who helped pack those bags because we didn't. We are born loving our bodies. We're born intuitive eaters.

We are born knowing when we're hungry, when we're full. When you feed a baby, they will, you know, cry when they're hungry, which is really a later sign that they're hungry. And they'll turn their heads away when they're full. And then as parents, you know, we wanna be the best parent or caregiver and we offer the breast again, we offer the bottle again.

Are you hungry? We play games, trying to get them to open their mouths, and we start to build distrust in these little tiny babies that know so much more than we do. And then it gets compounded as we get older and people start to have a [00:08:00] comment or, oh, you know, when, oh, look at how much you've grown to. Oh, look at how much you've grown.

You know, just the inflection and the change of voice and tone starts to shift your thoughts about your body. If the only thing who ever is listening to this podcast, if the only thing that you take away from this is to never. Comment on somebody else's body. You have no idea if they are struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating patterns.

If they are experiencing loss, if they have been diagnosed with an illness or don't even know if somebody seems unhappy. Talk about, you know, You, you look sad and your eyes look sad or you look stressed. Tell me what's going on. Leave their body out of it because you have no idea what you are saying with the best of intention.

Even when, oh, you know, you look great. But what that says is, well, they didn't look great before. So there's, it's so [00:09:00] nuanced and double edged.

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Lisa: One of the, it's something that I just have such a strong affinity to of really working with people to, you know, keep those comments to themselves. Don't even comment on your own body, because that sets yourself up against pitting it against somebody else.

How do we work through those challenges? And it's hard because we're so, you know, trained to do that.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: So how do you help your clients? I, I just feel like that's such an inundated thing. It's in our minds, it's in our culture. Um, , these things that we're talking about, struggling with comments and all, like the way we feel about the scale, all of that. How do you help take your clients and shift their mindset?

Because that's a pretty hard fought battle. I think

Lisa: It is a very hard fought battle. So you know, first of all, when I work with my clients, . It's not about fixing them, it's about helping them learn how to shift and change their perspective. [00:10:00] So think about if you're climbing a ladder, you have to go one rung at a time. So when we're talking about shifting our mindset, it's, it's also talking about statements that we can actually believe.

So when somebody says, you know, I hate my body, or I hate being fat, or Nobody could ever love me if I'm fat. , how do we find a statement that you can start to accept? You know, I, you know, is it really true that anybody who's in a larger body cannot be loved? So perhaps that statement is someday, I will believe that.

People in larger bodies can be loved. Or I notice people in larger bodies holding hands with somebody and they look like they're in a relationship or some sort of partnership. Finding things that your brain can accept because you can't go from, I hate my body to, I love my body. That's not reality.[00:11:00] 

Understanding where, where you got these stories from. So I have one client who is now in her early fifties, and all through her childhood, her father would literally look her up and down and pass judgment on how she looked and commented on her body. and we were talking, you know, and he lives out of town, so she doesn't see him that often.

But the stress and the anxiety that ensues, like with these visits and it's learning to set boundaries over, you know, you are no longer allowed to say anything about my body. And that takes confidence too, to be able to get that verbiage out so it's not a simplistic task. And then she struggles with when she sees him, , is he not saying anything because I don't look good?

Or is he actually accepting my boundaries? Mm-hmm. . So it takes a lot of time to unpack, [00:12:00] relearn, set boundaries, and gain confidence in separating your value and your self worth from the size of your body. Because we are like, our weight is the least interesting thing about all of us. How do we start to shift those thoughts and practice learning new associations?

So it's food is just the messenger we're really talking about so many other different things that go on to that dieting mentality.

Roni: So along with changing, trying to help people shift their mindsets, are you also helping them, specifically with food? I mean, you said you, do meal planning and things like that. So are you also providing that for your clients as a way to, um, create healthier relationships with the food they're eating?

Lisa: So it's it. There's a couple of things that I do. One is the practice of intuitive eating is based on principles. So I help my clients understand the principles of intuitive eating, [00:13:00] which are. Understanding or rejecting diet culture. Where did all this messaging come from? Learning how to connect your mind, your body, your heart and your food.

So understanding when you feel your hunger, understanding your fullness, understanding how to cope with your emotions, with kindness. We all think emotional eating is this horrible thing. If we shift our perspective that emotional eating is actually a gift, it's telling you that you have some unmet need. and you're using that food to soothe that pain that you were experiencing.

Imagine if you didn't have that tool when you were going through a really cha, you know, like, think about the pandemic. I mean, how many people needed to eat to get through the pandemic to get through those long days if they didn't have that? What other tool, you know, what would they have done? The, the amount of stress and anxiety would've even been that much worse.

I work with my clients to help them find other tools in their toolbox in addition to food, [00:14:00] because sometimes food is what we need. Understanding what satisfaction looks like and food, it's food, it's environment, our relationships, our. Our financial stress, our emotional stress, all of those things come into how to create satisfaction every meal.

It's impossible to have every meal be satisfying when you know what creates the ultimate satisfaction. You can start to create and make changes to become more satisfied. Um, I help my clients understand to move and bring in exercise because it feels good not about shrinking their. And nutrition comes last.

So when I talk about meal planning, I don't tell my clients what to eat. I help my clients figure out what foods make them feel best and give them, help them to develop tools to make meal planning easily more easily accessible in their day-to-day lives. And that looks different for everybody 

Riley: So you [00:15:00] used a tool, um, which I know you haven't mentioned yet, uh, called menu mapping and Mindful Meal Planning. Would you talk to us a little bit about menu mapping first? Um, cuz I think it's, I think it's gonna be really helpful for people. As they, think through how they meal plan and it could, um, help people who might wanna work with you, but also people who just meal plan.

Lisa: Yep. So when I talk about menu mapping, I think about a core food and where it's going to be used. Because everything that I try to do can be multipurposed or reused or repurposed. So let's just start with a basic roast chicken. Um, and this one's really fresh cause it's something I did this way this week cuz I use, it's, it's just such a great base.

So you have a roast chicken, and in my roast chicken I also put in, you know, onions and carrots and either sweet potatoes, things to make it a complete meal. So that meal is just one. [00:16:00] One pot easy. There's only two of us, so there's always extra. So I always think about, you know, how can I repurpose this chicken so that that chicken got put into, I make a lentil salad and the lentil salad could be vegetarian, or I can add chicken so I can pump it up a little bit more and can go a little bit further.

or I, and I added it to um, I make a quinoa, stuffed eggplant, and we added some chicken in there so that we had some extra protein. If you have kids, you can turn the chicken into some quesadillas. I take that carcass, I put it into the freezer because I know I'm gonna make chicken soup. Everything is always reused, repurposed.

We have a two-year-old dog, the little scrapings that come off that chicken because she is a very well indulged dog. She. She always gets something yummy in her, um, in her dog bowl. So chicken is part of her regular [00:17:00] diet. So we will always take, you know, nothing goes to waste. And we take chicken and we put it right into her bowl, goes into containers, and it goes into the freezer so that I don't have to make an extra meal for her.

So that's just a simple, you know, one example of many. Another example could be, shrimp. Like one night, like my son was home and we were gonna make this big shrimp dinner, and then we all kind of were like, eh, we're just not in the mood. So instead of turning the shrimp into like a pan seared shrimp with orange sauce, avocado, and this whole thing like, oh, we can just turn it into shrimp cocktail.

From that shrimp cocktail, the next day I was able to take the leftover shrimp and turn it into shrimp salad. So I kind of think about here's my core, like my center, and then there's little spokes all coming off. If you think about an infographic on where the different places that that food can go, and you [00:18:00] can be very ingredient focused as well.

Um, like if you are. If you know that you're cooking several different meals, you know, where can you use red onion and only chop it once and put it into, you know, a container for tomorrow and the next day or something such as quinoa or farrow that can be used today and then frozen into, Different sizes.

Like if you know that you always need a half a cup for this size, I will put it away into my freezer so that I don't have to make farro three times a week. So I'm always thinking about how to map it out, how to go into the future of how to repurpose and reuse.

Riley: it feels, like a game, but a really, like a more interesting, you know, I, I think it's, um, easy to get locked in. And even as simple as chicken of like, okay, we're gonna have this, then we'll have it as leftover, and then everybody's tired of chicken. But the, all the recipes you're suggesting with this, they're very diverse.[00:19:00] 

Um, and so even if you're eating, like, you know, just continue with your chicken example, even if you're eating chicken, uh, you're making it really interesting to keep it mixed up. And then no one's getting bored of it. We're not, you know, going to get takeout instead because we're tired of chicken. It's really keeping things interesting in a way that's, pretty beneficial.

I, I need to do that better at my house.

Lisa: you know, and it goes to, you know, cuz how many times do people say like, oh, you know, or their, their partner or their son or somebody will say, well, I don't like leftovers. Well, that's all great. and you're not doing the cooking seven days a week . So how do you be more efficient? I love to cook. I don't wanna cook seven days a week.

There's so many other things that I'm interested in doing that I really work hard at trying to figure out how to reuse, how to repurpose. . You know, I'm always thinking, you know, can something be frozen? And I prefer a plant-based diet, but my partner's a meat kind of guy. [00:20:00] So, you know, I definitely have flexibility.

I can prefer one thing and still have room and space for others. So it's not, I don't eat or won't eat. So another example is like Turkey meatloaf, something basic, all American. can make that recipe and you can just slice it and put it in the freezer, and I know that he will eat it on another night where I'm probably really not in the mood for it, or it can be used as lunch.

I try my best to not do one and done. Is really what it comes down to. And there's a way to be able to do it. And it's very different than that mindset, diet, mindset of meal planning, where you're very strict on this is what I'm having for breakfast, this is what I'm having for lunch, this is what I'm having for dinner.

And then if something doesn't go according to plan, then you're all, you know, crazed and stressed. Mindful meal planning really brings in, you know, flexibility. What is your schedule looking? Balance. [00:21:00] Keeping it simple, you know, here's your list of macronutrients, you've got your proteins, you have your vegetables, you have your starches.

You can keep it super simple. Kind of like pick one from column A, pick one from column B. If you don't like to cook, just think about how you can mix and match those. And even with that, You know, when you're talking adding in variety. So let's say that you're, um, a parent or caregiver and you've got three kids and a husband or spouse or partner who.

a different flavor palette. One of the tricks that I have done over the years is like, I love these combination of spices. He likes these combination, combination of spices, and I've created my own little spice kit so that when I go do X recipe, I'm not putting together five things here, five things here.

Cause then all of a sudden it takes a half an hour to make roasted broccoli and you wanna jump. And, you know, the little ones just want a little bit of salt and [00:22:00] pep, you know, a little bit of salt. You don't even wanna put pepper on. It might be too much flavor. So, and, and on that same sheet pan, you have three different flavor pallets based on what everybody likes with very ease and simplicity. And that goes into helping people discover, you know, what tastes good. Because just cause it tastes good to me, doesn't mean it tastes good to you. You know, how many times have people said, oh, you know, you're gonna love it. Really, you know, I really don't love it. How can we not cook 10 different things but still have a main chunk of it, like the same with a little bit.

A variety so that everybody becomes satisfied and has some pleasure. And also focusing on simplicity. You know, how many times do we can go to the market and you can buy chopped vegetables and chopped fruit. Where is, you know, when you think about meal planning, where does the stress start? Is it. You know, I don't wanna cut all this stuff up.

[00:23:00] Well, if you don't wanna cut this stuff up and you still would like to nourish your body with these things, here's some ways that you can get it in finding your path of least resistance.

Riley: Oh, I wanna come back to that for sure. The path of least resistance. But, uh, that certainly ties into what I've been thinking is that all of this blends so beautifully with the way you help people navigate their history and dieting, and I don't even wanna use that word now, , um, but intuitive eating, cuz it feels like intuitive meal planning.

And oftentimes when you're making shifts. in the way that you eat. The hardest part of it, or the part that gets you derailed from goals or whatever is the cooking part in the meal planning part. And the way you're mapping this out, um, it really removes a lot of that stress. You could potentially only cook once or twice a week, and you're doing a lot of that work for yourself without really working that hard.

And I feel like when you lower that stress, it helps everything else flourish.

Lisa: [00:24:00] Absolutely. And it's knowing, you know, it is, it starts with knowing where that resistance is. and sometimes the resistance even starts earlier than that. And it could be that you don't even, that you don't have the right tools to be able to get to that experience. So like I've, you know, occasionally will teach, um, cooking classes or it's really meal planning classes.

I'm not teaching cooking per se, but having, you know, sharing the right tools. Just a simple knife is your knife sharp?. The biggest way to be frustrated, or in my opinion, one of the biggest ways to be frustrated with meal planning is having a knife that's dull cuz all of a sudden what could be swift and beautiful and easy is this is the equivalent of taking a hacksaw and cutting through a piece of wood when you could just make one slice and all of a sudden you're trying to saw through this thing and rocking it back and [00:25:00] forth and a task that should take a second now.

30 seconds and you don't wanna do it anymore. It's not fun.

Roni: one, one thing that I'm thinking about with this is that I'm envisioning somebody who maybe doesn't have a wealth of recipe knowledge. like stored in their brain, you know, like they can't just say, oh, I have shrimp. Here's three different recipes I know how to make with shrimp. How do you help people navigate that part of it?

Of like, okay, so I have a roasted chicken, but what else do I do with it?

Lisa: So that's where we really talk about and. unpack. And sometimes people don't even know what they like, especially if they have come from a diet mentality. I remember when I was high in my diet world and somebody says, well, what are you in the mood for? And I'm like, what do you mean when I'm in the mood for like, this is what I have to eat.

Like there is no deviation. Helping people, being willing to explore and experiment and really kind of be [00:26:00] their own scientist on exploring flavors and talking about, you know, what type of flavors do you like? Do you like things that are sweet, spicy? Helping them understand texture, really bringing in mindful eating so that they can start to connect with what foods, how do they taste, how do they feel?

Why do you like certain foods? Where did you learn to eat these foods without judgment and just based on curiosity, helping them, you know, think about it as a child, how do we start at step one and discover and expand that palette? A lot of people, you know, will grow up thinking, well, they don't like something because they've never been exposed to it.

Or, you know, I, my mom will be like, I grew up, you know, we don't eat feta cheese, we don't eat beans. And you know, 30 years later I'm like, well, why don't I eat beans or feta? I'm. because my mother all of a sudden like, well, wait a second. This is ridiculous. I can go taste it and see if I like it for myself. So it's just learning to. Be willing [00:27:00] to, you know, go into the produce, you know, try the produce aisle, you know, is there something that you haven't tried yet? Are you willing? So it really starts with the very simplicity of helping people to be willing. Within their scope of willing, what they're willing to eat today might be very different than what they're willing to eat in six months from now.

So my main intention is to meet them where they are at. I don't ever tell anybody what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat. I help them discover what is best for them and we really start wherever they're where they are in that moment in time.

Riley: I, that piece of, uh, I didn't grow up eating this or somebody told me that they didn't like it as a child. And that's a really big thing for me sometimes. My husband and I grew up on different parts of the, you know, different parts of the US and eating's different in different parts of the US and there are things that he grew up eating that I did not grow up eating.

And so as we, you have been married for a while, I'm trying [00:28:00] things, I'm like, I actually do like this. Why did I think I didn't? So we have a daughter and it's, it's fun with her because I have to really stop myself. She wanted to try something the other day, and in my mind I'm like, oh, you're not gonna like it.

Please just don't waste it. You know, like, and I stopped myself and I said, sure. , if that's what you wanna do, try it. Like I'm, I tried not to stop her from that, uh, to help, uh, remove that thing that I have of like, oh, I don't like that

but I actually, I just don't know. I've never tried it or I've never had it that way, or whatever.

Lisa: and especially like, and, and that's a great example. And when you also come from that diet mentality of, I don't eat this and that's something that I struggle with. I still, you know, have it pop up every once in a while because I come from, you know, well, I didn't eat these things for years and. Convincing myself, well, I don't like it.

I don't miss it. I don't need it. And every once in a while, like, we'll be out and you know, he'll and we share a [00:29:00] lot of food and he'll be like, really? Like, do you really not like that? Or where is that coming from? So my partner's very in tune to like my diet craziness that can pop in still every once in a while.

And it's, it's learning to give yourself permission to change. and that's hard. Your brain wants to keep you like safe and stuck. How do you be willing to kind of question, well, where did I get that information from? You know, it's, I grew up, you don't eat pork. Well, it's actually very tasty and I can still have that conversation of like, he loves pulled pork.

It's not a meal that I'm yet comfortable going out and ordering. But I will all of a sudden take fork fulls off of his plate. So it's a process. I, it's, it's really interesting to just kind of be your own experiment and to allow yourself to shift and change,

Roni: I'm curious, uh, if you are okay with sharing this, if you feel [00:30:00] like there is one area of resistance that is the most common with your clients.

Lisa: I would say. . The, the biggest thing that is really hard is that people believe that the dieting keeps them safe,

Roni: Mm.

Lisa: because I will often hear, well, if I go off of my diet, I'm going to be out of control. The false belief is that the diet is what keeps you safe. Because the truth is, is that. When you learn to be able to listen, trust and respect yourself, that you can be the expert on you.

You no longer need the rigidity because you get stuck. Cuz when you're in that rigidity, once you go off of it, you feel outta control because you don't know how to trust yourself or listen to your intuition or, or, you know, experiment. You're, you've gone on a pendulum from being all the way here.

[00:31:00] Restrict deprived rules to. Being let go into the playground and it's scary and unsafe. When you can start to understand your relationship and that that diet is the thing that keeps you stuck and out of control, that's when you can start to be able to connect your mind, your body, your food, and your heart.

Roni: It makes me think too, in my own personal experience, that idea of safety, there's an element of, you know, quitting dieting that alienates you from other people, like from other women a little bit. Uh, if, if women is who you're associating with, right? You know, because everybody, quote unquote, everybody is on a diet and it's almost like you're now the odd one out by not being, by not also being on a diet.

And, um, there, there, like, there's a lack of safety in that fact of being the odd one out.

Lisa: Absolutely, you hit the nail on the [00:32:00] head. That is a conversation that I have with my clients a lot. And we all kind of have that like superiority feeling of like, oh, I'm on this new great diet and I'm gonna do all these things and I'm the expert. And everybody's like listening and judging themselves on, oh, like I'm on this diet.

Maybe I need to flip to that diet. And now all of a sudden waiting, somebody says, well, I'm not dieting. Then people think, well, she's giving up on her body and she's gonna let herself go. And you know, we bond over Body Bash. how horrible is that when we decide that that's no longer okay. And that's not serving me in a positive mindset. It's, it's a hard shift. And how do you show up for that? Is it you, you know, disengage from the conversation? Do you shift from the conversation? Because when people are practicing intuitive [00:33:00] eating, It's not their responsibility to go out and tell everybody, oh, you have to do this because intuitive eating is about autonomy and self-discovery, and it's definitely.

It's, it's a hard topic to try to figure out how to go from the Diet Queen to the anti-D diet and to not feel that you're letting yourself go. And it's, you know, I wish I had a black and white answer. Um, fortunately I don't walk work in black and white thoughts any longer, so I, everything is kind of in the gray.

It's, it's not, you just have to do. Because that doesn't work. It's finding your own way, finding your own boundaries, trying to find people that have commonalities with you. Um, thinking about social media, you know, what is your social media feed looking like? Are you looking at the before and after pictures where everybody's, you know, jumping up and down on the bandwagon on how amazing X person looks?[00:34:00] 

I would be willing to bet money within one to five years that that person, that after picture is going their before picture is gonna be their after, after picture. you shift out of that, you know, we've curated our social. To reflect our interests. You can curate your social to start to see all different types of bodies, body positivity, people who are focusing on mindful eating, non diet approach, all different bodies of shapes and sizes.

When you see people that look like you, you don't also feel that negative pull, that you are the quote unquote only one in a larger body, cuz that is simply not true. So it's we bond over body bashing. How do we find a bond? that's more nurturing and kind to ourselves versus, you know, looking at our tummies and pinching the few, the inches that are there and saying, well, look at this.

I can't believe it. We age, our bodies change. It's normal. It's part of living. And as long as you are [00:35:00] breathing, there is more right with your body than wrong. How do we shift our mindsets?

Riley: Yeah, I, the thing I keep thinking is how, uh, Inner voice, the inner critic can be, and so you have to really have to shift that. But who you're surrounding yourself with helps with that. Like what feels better when someone tells you something encouraging and kind about you, or when you know they're like bashing something, not, not necessarily about you, but like bashing something about themselves that leads to other people who are hearing that person.

put that in their mind as, and it kinda like becomes their own inner voice. It's like, well, that person said this, and then they, you know, you think that, so maybe potentially, I mean, I love what you said about curating your social feed, but, you know, curating the way you interact with your friends and what you're, what you intake, um, and what you allow to kinda, like dwell in your mind is really, really important in this, uh, intuitive eating.

And, uh, just totally shifting gears on the way you view yourself, and other people too.

Lisa: yeah, and [00:36:00] it's setting boundaries. And when we get into those comp, when we get into that comparison, we're talking a lot about self-esteem. So if you're sitting at a table with. Women, and you are the smallest person at that table. Your self-esteem is way up high. You kind of feel like you are above the fold.

If you are sitting at that table and you are in the largest body, your self-esteem is often on the floor. How do we shift from self-esteem to self compassion? how do we, and, and that is where, you know, self-compassion. People say, well, you know, self-compassion is weak. Self-compassion is one of the strongest, one of the most valuable resources that we have because it allows us to understand that we are not alone, that we can have kindness towards our other, towards ourself and others, that it's not a weakness.

So really focusing on noticing, like, I'll have, my clients will say, you know, oh, you know, like how, what? What did [00:37:00] you, what did you achieve? Or what were, you know, what did you notice this week and or what was your goal? And they're like, well, I didn't really do much except that I really noticed. I really became aware of.

That's where the gold is. When you can be aware of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, that's when you start to have the capacity to be able to respond versus react. And it's learning to take a pause. How do you, okay, here, here's that mantra that automatically marches in. Well wait a second. That's not serving me.

Here's, here's three other thoughts that we came up with last week that I can start to say to myself. And the more that you shift that language, the greater that shift is gonna be over time.

Um, you know, the bottom line is that. There's, there is no best way for anybody to be other than understanding their own selves. [00:38:00] And intuitive eating is about instinct, rational thought. an emotion. And when you can start to combine those things and understand that you can be the expert on yourself and that you don't need some diet guru who is telling the world how to eat, nobody knows better than you what your emotional state is, what your physical state is, what's happening.

Inside of you. When you understand that there is no pause, it's only doing the best that you can do at that moment in time, that's when you have your power and you get to choose how you wanna show up for yourself.

Roni: That's beautiful. Well, Lisa, uh, why don't you tell everybody where they can find you online if they are interested in working with you, where they can do that. And then anything else that you wanna share with our audience?

Lisa: Awesome. So you can find me on my website at lisa Dahl, d a h l lisa [00:39:00] Dahl wellness.com, and you can find me on Instagram. Facebook, I'm always welcome to an email I offer free office hours twice a week and they vary. So you can find those on my website. It's a great space to come in, ask questions.

There's no agenda. Just simply a Zoom link. And you can also go to my website to learn more about my one-on-one coaching. And my coaching is all about meeting you where you are in your health and wellness. We focus on what's gonna make you feel best, create your vision, your dream, one step at a time.

And I offer online workshops. And again, just go to my website so you can see what's being offered. Um, depending on the time of the year.

Riley: Yeah. That's awesome. So we like to end all of our episodes by asking our guests, uh, if there's a recipe or meal they had recently that was just killer. So what, uh, what about you?

Lisa: I made, um, they [00:40:00] were salmon carpaccio towers and it was with, so you take tomatoes, like whole tomatoes, you cut them in half and you put them in the oven with oil and garlic like sitting in it so that it's simmers. And then you take the skins off and you save the oil and you can use the oil, um, the garlic oil, garlic herb oil in the rest of the recipe and.

you take the skins off. And so here's another example of menu mapping or repurposing. So the recipe says, you know, discard the skins. I'm like, well, wait a second. These skins have like all this amazing flavor. So we ended up taking the skins and the garlic that was roasted in the oil and put that on crackers.

Then, The rest of the tomato, we, you know, diced up to put as the base of the recipe. And then it was with avocado, some microgreens, um, s slivers of salmon. But the, um, oil went into all the different parts of the recipe. So [00:41:00] it was super, super tasty. So that was, it was delicious and it was pretty too, so it was really cool.

Roni: That sounds great. 

Riley: sounds, yeah. Really great.

Roni: Lisa, thanks so much for joining us today. This has been a great conversation and uh, we really appreciate you being here with us.

Lisa: thank you. And I just have to say how much I love plan to eat that I wish I had used it as a tool when I was catering, cuz it would've saved me so many hours and hours and hours of expanding recipes and planning. And it is my favorite, favorite app that I recommend to all of my clients.

Riley: Thank you so much.

Roni: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Plan to Eat podcast. We love hearing different approaches to food, and we hope that you enjoy hearing it too.

Riley: We would love to invite you to find all the recipes mentioned on the Plan to Eat podcast, um, in our podcast account on Plan to Eat you can go to plantoeat.com/PTEPOD that's PT, E P O D and the variety of recipes that you've heard about [00:42:00] and the variety of eating types that we talk about, those can all be found in that account.

Roni: Thanks again for listening.