#15 Nourish Your Mind and Body: Intuitive Eating with Dr. Sara Styles and Hannah Martin

In this episode, we explore the enlightening world of intuitive eating with our guests Dr. Sara Styles and her Ph.D. student, Hannah Martin, both advocates for transforming our relationship with food. Together, we explore the principles of intuitive eating and acceptance and commitment therapy, emphasizing their relevance, especially for people in midlife. We discuss the importance of self-compassion, mindfulness, and unconditional permission to eat in fostering a healthier connection with food. We also explore the connection between intuitive eating and self-determination theory, focusing on the role of personal values and motivation on this midlife journey.

Join us for a conversation filled with practical advice, and insights into mindful eating, as we journey towards understanding and honoring our body’s needs, beyond the size of our waist.

Resources from our conversation:

Recommended Books from the Podcast:

Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Triboli and Elyse Resch:
Intuitive Eating Book (Amazon)
Ten Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship With Food (Amazon)

An example article from Dr. Styles:
https://www.researchprotocols.org/2016/4/e180/

Evelyn Tribole Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/evelyntribole/
 https://www.youtube.com/@etribole/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So I'm going to start here and say welcome to the show Hannah and Sarah.

Speaker 2: 0:04

Well, thanks for letting us join you.

Speaker 1: 0:06

Yeah, as we've been discussing. I'm thrilled. Sarah, could you start off by just giving our listeners some insight into your background and how you got interested in the topics we'll be exploring today?

Speaker 2: 0:17

Yeah, so the topic that we're talking about with intuitive eating and acceptance and commitment therapy, there's this academic path that I've been on and, starting with the personal side, I recall being back in high school when one of the thoughts I had to myself was I can do everything but lose weight. I was a strong athlete, strong academically, had a job, was involved in extracurriculars, and for me it was really frustrating that I wasn't small like the other girls and for me as a senior in high school I was a little bit more like a senior in high school. It was on my mind quite a bit because I come from a family of people with larger bodies. We have a strong family history of diabetes and cardiovascular disease and I had a swim coach say you know, if you lost a few pounds, you might be a little bit faster and going through all the different unhelpful, maladaptive eating behaviors a teenager does. I found myself later on being in a class for my master's degree in nutrition and that's when I was introduced to intuitive eating and for me to learn about an approach where our body has its own wisdom to tell us what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, and weight is a side effect of that you can still be healthy and still have a higher than recommended body mass index. I thought was really really valuable.

Speaker 2: 1:55

So, continuing on the personal story to all of this, I've been an intuitive eater through lots of different phases of my life. So I was in my early twenties when I found out about intuitive eating and at the time I was getting ready for a wedding and I thought I'll listen to my body for what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat. But actually it was definitely a learning process. At first. I explained to Hannah before that for me it was kind of a eat when hungry kind of diet, and that's not what intuitive eating is.

Speaker 2: 2:30

I let myself eat all the things whenever I wanted to, but I was eating to the point of satisfaction. I always felt like I wasn't completely satisfied. All the corners of my stomach didn't feel like they were touched with food and I didn't really love that feeling. But later on, as I got used to listening to my body, I was like I mentioned. I was an athlete in high school and even after high school I got into a triathlon and I worked my way up to an Ironman distance and that is a long event. You spend months and months. For me, it took four years to get up to that point and to prepare for a day that took me 14 hours of swimming, 2.4 miles, and cycling 100 and 112 miles, I think.

Speaker 2: 3:17

And then doing a marathon after that. I had to really get in tune with how does my body feel and my hydrated? Do I have enough fuel for right now and do I?

Speaker 2: 3:28

have enough fuel for 10 minutes from now? And do I have enough fuel for an hour from now? And then later on, I was an intuitive eater through my pregnancy with my son, and that's a really unique time in a woman's life where your body is going through these changes. You have health professionals trying to help you keep yourself healthy, try to keep your baby healthy, and I distinctly remember a day where I was balancing a tub of ice cream on my baby bump and just thinking like I want to eat the whole thing, but it, but I have this urge to eat the whole thing, but is that really? Is that really what I want to do right now?

Speaker 2: 4:10

So, I take a spoonful of ice cream, enjoy it, notice the taste, notice the texture, notice the temperature, and I would just have this message inside me saying I want another, another bite of ice cream. And I did keep going and I ate most of the ice cream, but I didn't have that guilt or shame along with it because my that was one time in nine months where I sat down and ate all the ice cream. Yeah, and then the final stage.

Speaker 2: 4:40

Well, it's not as final stage, I'm still going with it but, the final important part of this story has been the last four years, with me having chronic fatigue syndrome.

Speaker 2: 4:50

So four years ago I got sick with a virus and I'm still recovering from that and it's affected me cognitively. I have had days where I cannot follow I could not follow a recipe. It would give me a really bad headache and I wouldn't be able to think clearly for hours. And I would try to stand up and chop vegetables and stir them in the pot and I didn't have the physical capacity for doing that. And there were days where a bowl of cereal was was it that? That was what was all I could, all I had energy for? Or there was days where scrambled eggs that was all I had energy for. But with intuitive eating I was balancing, making sure my body was fueled with what my body was capable of doing. So I found that intuitive eating through all these different phases of my life has been really valuable and over the past 10, it's longer than 10 years, now almost 15 years I've been researching intuitive eating because I found.

Speaker 2: 5:57

Personally, it was really important to me. But what is the evidence for it and can I, can I contribute to that evidence and I?

Speaker 1: 6:06

I have been yes, you hit on so many notes there that just you know. That's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you two on this show, because it really is a healthier, psychologically way to approach you know your body approach food because, in part because of you, Sarah, there is emerging, there's evidence for it, you know it's, it seems like there's. It's becoming more popular, but that's, I think, because there is evidence for it and let's see, without cussing holy cow, Sarah, those are some real challenging situations to do intuitive eating that you're discussing. You need a lot of fuel for the triathlon. You need you had stress and you're caring for somebody else through your baby and being a coming, a mother, and then also with chronic fatigue. Those are really challenging situations. So I appreciate so much that you can speak to all of those. So let's dive deeper into that.

Speaker 1: 7:01

I have to admit this is one of my first encounters with intuitive eating and I'm sure it's not going to be the last. So can we go a little deeper into that in terms of what intuitive eating is and some of the core principles of it?

Speaker 2: 7:13

Absolutely With intuitive eating. I'll base what I share on the intuitive eating books by Evelyn Treboly and Elise Rush, so that those came out maybe about 20 years ago Hannah can correct me on some of this and so they're American dietitians, and the book is based on 10 principles, and I find for a podcast it's probably simpler not to think of the 10 principles of intuitive eating, but look at how we measure intuitive eating in a research context, using Tracy Tilka's intuitive eating scale. So those 10 principles are combined into four key components, and one of the components is eating for physical rather than emotional, eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, and we have reliance on hunger and satiety cues. So eating based on when that gnawing in your stomach is starting to show up or when you notice that your concentration is starting to fade things like that rather than.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I'm tired, I'm lonely, I'm bored, I'm sad. So using not eating in response to those feelings. So we have unconditional permission to eat, which is really tricky for people to think about and actually do. So unconditional permission to eat is allowing yourself to eat what you want, when you want, how much you want, and so it's not having rules like I can only eat between 12 pm and 8 pm. It's if I'm feeling hungry, I love myself eat and it is.

Speaker 2: 9:15

If I feel like eating a salad, that's what I'm eating, and it's not because a diet is telling me to do that. It's because that's what my body is telling me is going to help me function well, as well as the things like the cakes, the brownies, the pastries. Those are okay because those are pleasurable to eat and that might be what we need right then and there. Or there is a social occasion and that's what we're having. So, yeah, and laying ourselves, eat enough to feel satisfied. So, thinking about what works for me in this moment, regardless of what I had earlier in the day. So we're not punishing ourselves if we're feeling hungry now, but thinking, oh, I ate too much earlier. But there is a degree of being practical with intuitive eating. So if I know I'm going to have a meeting and it just I know I'm going to get hungry during the eating, it's okay to have a little bit of fuel now so that I don't get angry during the meeting.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Right yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:22

The last component is body food choice congruence, and that is listening to your body and choosing foods that help your body function well. But there's also this gentle nutrition component, where you can inform what you eat based on dietary guidelines, but using them flexibly and not using them like rules that you have to follow.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Yeah, oh, my gosh, that's mind blowing already, and we're only what a few minutes into this, so I really like that. This is a mind shift for me. I hear you saying we're kind of like scientists with our body, like what we know works, we keep doing. We're being reflective about what we're eating and then using that moving forward. That is so cool. You know, this podcast is focused on midlife and midlifers and the reason that you got my attention was because you published you used. One of the reasons is you published a really interesting study on using intuitive eating with midlife women, so could you talk a little bit more about how intuitive eating relates to midlife?

Speaker 2: 11:29

Yeah, it relates to. At midlife, we're either going through a lot of different things we might still be having babies or raising children and taking care of parents and balancing a job and our body is changing. It's not the way it was back in high school. We have a bit more of a tension around what is our health going to look like in the future. You might see people more likely to have the doctor say are you looking like you might have pre-diabetes, for example? We are, relationships with our partners might be changing and we might be thinking about am I as attractive to my partner as I used to be? Those are the things that come to mind about midlife. They're relevant in your 20s and later.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:24

It's popped up as important issues to our study participants.

Speaker 1: 12:28

For sure. We're going through so many changes in body and energy and our responsibilities, so fueling our bodies for all those responsibilities and maintaining health as we age is really important. I'm sure there's a big component of self-compassion and mindfulness. I'd just like to hear how that fits within your research and what you'd say to our listeners about that.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, so the mindfulness front. In order to be able to fuel our body in a way that it wants to be fueled, we have to be able to notice am I hungry right now? So taking those pauses throughout the day to notice what am I feeling in my head or in my throat or in my stomach, and being able to label that in a way that works for us, so that helps you be able to identify this feeling is hunger rather than this feeling is boredom. And then that awareness during that snack or during that meal so being aware of the taste, the texture, the food and how our stomach is feeling is more of that goes into our stomach to help us notice when would be the last bite threshold, which Evelyn and I at least talk about in their book in the last bite threshold is when you realize that that could be the last bite of your food that you're going to have for that eating occasion.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Definitely, and you really went in depth with some midlife women and they had some challenges and they had some changes. Could you talk just a little bit about challenges that people might be facing as they try to incorporate intuitive eating and what you might say to that?

Speaker 2: 14:50

Yeah, so some of the challenges, a big one, particularly for women who have a long history of dieting because, keep in mind, with the research that I've done, there have been women who started dieting when they were nine years old or when they were in their early teens, so they have a very long history of restricting what they eat and how much they eat, and so when I am there or when they are, we're on the website that we created for the intuitive eating intervention.

Speaker 2: 15:24

To be told it's okay to eat what you want was scary. That was a huge challenge that people felt scared to trust their body because they thought if I open up a package of Oreos, I'm going to eat the whole thing. Or if I do open that tub of ice cream, I am going to eat the whole thing. And that's quite scary for people because they label that as something that's bad. If they do do that, and what do you do? What do you do If somebody has that fear that they're going to binge eat?

Speaker 2: 15:59

That's a big concern. People, women in particular word that they're going to binge eat. And then that's when I would say well, these are your thoughts, that your mind is telling you that you are going to binge eat if you let yourself open up the Oreos. Just be open to seeing what's going to happen, have that curiosity about what you'll do with the food. And if you do eat the whole sleeve of Oreos, do it intentionally, not in a way that you're going to feel guilty or shameful about, but enjoy the fucking Oreos. I don't know if I'm allowed to swear, but you are.

Speaker 1: 16:39

In fact, I'll probably make a t-shirt of that in a mug and send it to you. You can definitely say that this is an adult show, so bring it on, Tara.

Speaker 2: 16:50

I think just owning up to what you're doing helps people either break that cycle, that diet cycle that they can get into where somebody's been really restrictive, and then they fall off the wagon, have the forbidden food, feel really bad about it for a while and then get back on the diet cycle. So if you just say this is what's going to work, for me right now is leaving the sleeve of. Oreos just going for it. So it's okay to be scared of what will happen, especially if you've been dieting for a long time.

Speaker 1: 17:26

You know, that resonates with me a lot. It's been really interesting doing this podcast because, especially for me as a midlifer, I am reframing my life in terms of yeah, you know, I used to do that, but now I'm wiser and I'm more intentional about my path, that I want to move forward. You know, and it's not like a denying reality, it's about confronting yeah, you know, I have eaten that whole piece of fucking Oreos. That doesn't mean that's how this is going to be moving forward, and I think that's a really cool way to look at that.

Speaker 2: 18:02

Yeah, because you are it's unlikely that you would keep eating a food like that all the time, because your body is going to tell you actually eating a bunch of those, whatever it is, will stick with. The Oreos might have made me feel really yucky, and so the next time that I'm having the urge to go and do that, then I've had that past experience and it's been an opportunity to learn that in the future. Maybe, maybe I will stop a little bit sooner.

Speaker 1: 18:32

And that's a big part of it too is having self compassion for yourself, you know, and being aware and learning and growing, and that's another reason I'm just so excited to share this with people. Hannah, I'm thrilled you're with us here too. You've been taking an interesting angle on it as well, so could you give us a little personal background and then talk about your angle? You've been putting on this in terms of self determination theory.

Speaker 3: 19:00

Thank you for having me on the podcast. So, like Sarah, I guess, when I was younger, going through college, I had the similar body image issues and maladaptive eating behaviors that a lot of teenage girls in particular go through and.

Speaker 3: 19:20

I think that really probably drove my interest in studying nutrition. So probably not the healthiest way to enter the profession, but it's okay. Unfortunately, I think that's a lot of the reason why a lot of people do enter it. So studies undergraduate nutrition, then went on to doing my maths as a dietetics and it wasn't until the last six months of my masters where I found out about intuitive eating and I thought so. We were essentially given these research topics to work on, and my one was on intuitive eating and self determination theory.

Speaker 3: 20:06

So that's when I was introduced to those topics, and it must have been like a month or two into writing my thesis and I thought, you know what? It would probably be a good idea for me to actually read this book that I keep referring to. So I read it and I was like man, I had such a revelation. The book really resonated with me and I guess you know I had always been interested in the psychology of eating. You know that's kind of the reason why I had gone into nutrition, because I wanted to figure out why I eat the way I do. And yeah, it was kind of when I read that book that I don't know so many things kind of clicked into place and I thought oh, I finally get it.

Speaker 1: 20:51

I love it.

Speaker 3: 20:53

It was a little unfortunate that it happened like six months, you know the last six months of my degree but that's okay.

Speaker 3: 21:00

I got there in the end and so then it was really cool. I went on to working as a dietitian for a wee bit, and particularly as a community dietitian I was able to introduce people to the concepts of intuitive eating and, just like Sarah was saying before, I did have a lot of midlife. People referred to the dietitian service and so many people would often say, like I don't buy chocolate because I'm scared that I'm just going to eat the whole packet.

Speaker 3: 21:37

And it was really cool to be able to bring in these ideas of intuitive eating and kind of you know, talking through, like maybe the reason why you feel like you're going to eat the whole packet is because you're feeling that sense of deprivation because you're not allowing yourself to have the chocolate. So yes.

Speaker 3: 21:56

Yeah, it was really a really cool experience bringing in those ideas of intuitive eating in my practice. And then and then now I am back doing my PhD because I loved intuitive eating so much. So again I'm looking at intuitive eating from a self determination theory perspective. So that is really, that is a theory of motivation, so it's looking at the reasons why people might be wanting to eat intuitively.

Speaker 1: 22:27

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Just curious, which book did you read? I know you read many books now, but was it the same one Sarah reference, or what book?

Speaker 3: 22:35

was it? Yes, yes, the same one, sarah reference. So the intuitive eating, the intuitive eating book, the one with the 10 principles of intuitive eating, and I think it was first published in 1995. So there's four editions out now, but I think I must have read one of the first editions.

Speaker 1: 22:56

Yeah, yeah, cool. So this is Hannah. As we discussed before the show, I'm a big fan of self-deterreditation theory and I'm aு. Could you tell us a little bit about the core components of self-determination theory and how it relates to this topic of intuitive eating?

Speaker 3: 23:11

Yeah, absolutely so. Like I was saying, self-determination theory is a theory of motivation. So you might think of yourself as having high levels of motivation or low levels of motivation to do something. But self-determination theory also distinguishes between different qualities of motivation. So basically there's six different qualities, but they kind of fall into two broad categories of controlled motivation and autonomous motivation.

Speaker 3: 23:42

So that controlled motivation is where we kind of feel pressure to engage in something. We've been controlled to do it. So, for example, someone may have been told by their doctor like you need to try intuitive eating. So in this case that person might feel pressure from their doctor to please them by trying intuitive eating. Or perhaps they would feel guilty if they didn't try to eat this way. So they're kind of feeling that pressure from themselves. So that's kind of quite a controlling source of motivation. Autonomous motivation, on the other hand, is where someone engages in a behavior because it kind of reflects their own personal interests and values. So, for example, someone might see the value intuitive eating. They can see the benefit of eating foods that make their body feel good, as well as the importance of not depriving themselves.

Speaker 1: 24:37

Yes.

Speaker 3: 24:37

So also, perhaps they actually enjoy finding and cooking new meals that taste good as well as making their body feel good. So those are more what we call more autonomous motivation. So yes. What's really interesting in my research is that you don't have just one of these qualities of motivation. You have a mix of all of these different qualities and different amounts and we're kind of looking at the mix of that pattern and how it's associated with intuitive eating.

Speaker 1: 25:08

You know that is a fascinating way to look at it. I can guess where this is going, because autonomous motivation is more self-sustaining than those extrinsic. So can you talk a little bit more about how people might apply that?

Speaker 3: 25:25

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess, yeah, the reason why these different qualities of motivation is really important is because, like you say, we know that the autonomous motivations are more self-sustaining, they're associated with healthier outcomes. So, amongst, like I was talking about, I did my master's research on intuitive eating and self-determination in midlife women. So what we kind of found there was the autonomous motivations there associated with healthier eating habits. So that looks like higher intuitive eating scores, less frequent binge eating and a higher intake of fruits and vegetables, whereas the controlled motivations, on the other hand, they're they're the ones where you feel a bit more pressure to engage in a behavior. They're more associated with a higher frequency of binge eating, lower intuitive eating scores and lower intakes of fruits and vegetables. So, yeah, we're really trying to, I guess, with understanding the motivations for why people do the things that they do. So we can kind of use these ideas as maybe, like health professionals, as a dietitian or as a doctor, to guide our patients to hopefully develop more of these autonomous motivations.

Speaker 3: 26:51

Absolutely To help them persist with their behavior change.

Speaker 1: 26:53

Exactly that is so important, so important to so many aspects of life. I think a lot of us have learned some negative thought patterns around food, and so we really need to cultivate this more autonomous relationship with our eating. You mentioned some intrinsic reasons like enjoyment. Are there other ways that people can be more mindful when they're eating and cultivate this more autonomous motivation for intuitive eating?

Speaker 3: 27:22

Yeah, thinking about the qualities of motivation. We talked about how the more controlled motivations so feeling guilty or feeling pressure from somebody else, whether it be your doctor, your partner, your friends or family those aren't very, I guess, sustaining sources of motivation. So I guess if we're we're trying to move our motivation to a more autonomous form, like it's really thinking about the reasons why we're doing something. So trying to think about the reasons why you yourself want to make the change, rather than why does somebody else want you to make the change. So if we're trying to make, I guess if we're trying to make healthy eating changes, it might be thinking about you know the benefits that it's going to bring yourself. So, for example, sarah mentioned that the body, food choice congruence, so recognizing that you know you can eat foods that are going to taste good, but there's certain foods that are going to make your body feel good and function at its best.

Speaker 3: 28:35

So fiber, for example, you know, recognizing that if I was to eat more fiber from, say, fruits and vegetables and grains, that's going to make my gut function better and it's going to make it's going to make me feel better. It's not going to make anybody else feel better, it's going to make myself feel better.

Speaker 1: 28:53

That's right.

Speaker 3: 28:54

Likewise might be thinking about. You know if I, if I eat a particular way, you know if I'm listening to my hunger and satiety. So I'm making sure that my body gets enough fuel rather than maybe trying to, you know, go hungry to lose weight or work To lose weight or whatever. Making sure that I get enough fuel. That's going to mean that I can engage in the activities that bring me lots of joy throughout the day. Right and that might be important for myself.

Speaker 1: 29:28

Exactly. All those are awesome points. Recently, I did an episode on midlife body image, which was really enlightening for me, and I'm guessing that body image interacts with this in a way too. I think body image might fall more on the extrinsic side of things. Is there anything you'd like to add about how body image interacts with this, sarah or Hannah?

Speaker 2: 29:55

Yeah, so I didn't go through all the principles of intuitive eating earlier, but one of the principles is respect your body, and the way that we brought that into the intervention that was researched was by helping people in midlife pause to think about appreciating how their body functions rather than what it looks like. So, for me, even in my worst days, when my chronic fatigue was at its worst and I was stuck in bed still finding ways to appreciate.

Speaker 2: 30:32

Maybe for me at the time it wasn't appreciating because I had a lot of limitations but being in awe of how my brain was functioning to still keep me alive, or like noticing my lungs. The way my lungs felt when I breathed had changed after I had this virus and I focused on breathing exercises and over time my lungs were able to take in more oxygen and I was starting to feel better.

Speaker 2: 31:03

So, appreciating what my body was doing and how it has carried a baby in fact a baby for 17 months, and appreciating my body when I've done from 5Ks to marathons, regardless of what I looked like, because no one was out there on the race coursing. Oh, you're not a size 6, you can't be here.

Speaker 1: 31:27

That's right.

Speaker 2: 31:29

So yeah. So how did we do that with body appreciation? We kind of did body scan kind of activities like taking time to scan our body and think about can I appreciate my lungs and my liver at least things that we don't really think about and my butt for giving me something cushy to sit on and then also taking an opportunity to think about ways that we could describe our body other than thin and fat.

Speaker 2: 32:02

So is my body agile? Is my body robust? Is my body curvy? Things like that, and, interestingly, if I could put a quick New Zealand spin on this.

Speaker 1: 32:14

Yes.

Speaker 2: 32:15

And an indigenous spin on this. We had Ashley Gillan visit our university to guest lecture on what is fatness from an indigenous point of view, and she was saying actually, from a Maori point of view, that means a body is fertile and plentiful, and there were really positive connotations. So it's just when you start looking at a Western lens of bodies, it's where you pathologize them and think look for the things that are wrong with them.

Speaker 2: 32:47

So a lot of us have grown up in a culture that thinks in this dichotomous way either a body is good, or it's bad, or it's unhealthy. So allowing a bit more of that kind of wiggle room.

Speaker 1: 33:01

Mm-hmm. Yes, that is well said, you know, and for me too it's something that's come up recently is like just this being aware of this socialization of the conventional beauty, you know just we have been socialized with what beauty is, but there's just so many different interpretations and to be aware that that's just kind of I'll just say a lie and unrealistic, you know, it's just not helpful what we're fed in media in terms of what is conventional beauty.

Speaker 2: 33:31

Yeah, and with social media. Social media has been cursed for how it's an easy way to keep pushing the thin ideal. I use social media in the opposite way, so I follow people on Instagram who are in larger bodies and by me seeing those larger bodies doing whatever they're doing. They could just be sitting, they could be doing yoga, they could be on a hike through the Grand Canyon. That's helping me normalize that. Bodies do come in different shapes and sizes and different abilities, and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 34:09

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean that is one of the reasons why I do this podcast is to change the narrative, to open up our thoughts and to really say we're midlifers, we know better, we're smarter than this, we can be critical thinkers and we can talk about this in a healthier way and be advocates for healthier ideas, for example, when it comes to body image and eating.

Speaker 2: 34:37

And what we haven't talked about yet. Really too much has been around mental health.

Speaker 2: 34:43

And with the research that I did for a few years ago. We looked at teaching women to eat intuitively, but also using acceptance and commitment therapy skills. We saw improvements in mental health and we have lots of data to suggest that there's an association between dieting and poor mental health outcomes. And internationally, mental health is a big issue. There are not enough psychologists or not enough social workers to treat everyone who seeks treatment, and we know that most people who are experiencing mental health difficulties are unlikely to go experience to get mental health support.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Right.

Speaker 2: 35:28

So if we have intuitive eating as a tool that somebody could try, not just for physical health but also that mental health component or a spiritual health component, I see, I think add that to your repertoire, add that to your toolkit, if it's useful to think about it from a mental health point of view.

Speaker 1: 35:52

Yeah, exactly that fits really nicely with what I wanted to ask you about. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you incorporated ACT acceptance and commitment therapy with that.

Speaker 2: 36:02

Yeah. So for people unfamiliar with acceptance and commitment therapy, the model that underlines underlies what you do Individually one or one or when you're developing intervention. There's the six components of the model, where you're looking at contact with the present moment, which would be like mindfulness and diffusion we think of as being able to unhook from unhelpful thoughts. There's this values component, committed action component, self as context component. I'm missing something right now, but actually the way that I think of acceptance and commitment therapy is from the DNA V model point of view. Okay, and so, for people unfamiliar with that model, it's been developed by Louise Hayes and Joseph Trokey to be developmentally appropriate for adolescents.

Speaker 2: 36:58

But when I learned about this model, I thought this is really simple and also relevant to adults, where you can think of yourself as someone who is a noticer, so noticing the things happening within you and around you.

Speaker 2: 37:15

You have an advisor, which is this part of you that can take your experiences from the past and give you advice about what you should do in this moment, but also thinks ahead about what could happen in the future and how does that inform the choices that you make right now. So, like I said, you have that noticer, you have the advisor, and then we have an explorer. So the explorer part of us is thinking about our values, what's important to us, and trying new ways of being, trying new behaviors, trying new actions, trying new things that are in line with who we want to be, how we want our life to be, and then just being open to seeing what happens, like experimenting, and if the thing that you tried works for you, cool. You might use it again in the future. If it didn't work, that's okay too. You now know that that approach didn't work for you, so you won't use it in the future, or maybe it just didn't work in this particular situation.

Speaker 1: 38:16

Very cool.

Speaker 2: 38:18

Yeah, with thinking about acceptance and commitment therapy, we help people think about their values. Hannah talked about values when she was talking about self-determination theory with people that I've worked with in midlife it's what's important to me. People will talk about domains of their life Like my health is important to me, my family is important to me. So then we ask, we drill down and say, well, why are those things important to me? A lot of time people want to be around for their children, for their grandchildren.

Speaker 2: 38:58

There's a lot about wanting to feel independent and not feeling like we have to rely on other people. So we link these values to why would you eat intuitively and how can you use acceptance and commitment therapy processes to support that? So from an act point of view I mentioned diffusion. I like to think of it as a more simple way of thinking about it, as unhooking. And so we might have a thought that we're all caught up in like, oh, I'm lazy. So you might be somebody who wants to eat their fruits and vegetables or add the legumes and lentils to a meal, whatever. But you think, oh, I'm too lazy, and you get really caught up and fused with I'm too lazy To unhook. From that we can say I'm having the thought that I am lazy, so you still acknowledge that this is coming up for you. But by saying I'm having the thought that I'm lazy, it takes some of the control away from the thought and creates this space for you to then respond in a way that is meaningful to you.

Speaker 2: 40:12

The other diffusion technique that I recommend to people is saying things in a silly voice, whether that's Donald Duck or Donald Trump or I think of the band Journey, when they sing Living on a Prayer and my unhelpful thoughts. Like I'm lazy, I would sing it in the way that Journey would have sung it when they were singing Living on a Prayer and, Kyle, the reaction that you have right now is exactly the reaction that you would be looking for taking something that has a bit of a sting to it and not trying to make fun of it, but trying to take some of the power away from the thought so that you can react or respond or do what's meaningful to you. So, yeah, that's why I thought I would mention about those would be around the values, thinking about our values, defusing. There's also urge surfing. I don't know if you've talked about that on your podcast before.

Speaker 1: 41:10

No, I have not. Please enlighten us.

Speaker 2: 41:13

So we talked a little bit about hunger and being able to notice hunger and respond to hunger. And even me, after 15 years of practicing intuitive eating, sometimes it's just like oh, is that? Is that physical hunger, or is that my mouth just wanting something?

Speaker 2: 41:33

and my hands wanting something to do, and so somebody might practice urge surfing where you pause, you take a breath to just get into this moment and notice where in your body are you having the urge is a thought.

Speaker 2: 41:52

For me, sometimes it's just a thought that I'm having the urge to eat. Special for me it happens at nine o'clock at night where I'm having the urge to eat. And so then I surf the urge and I give myself time to see if that feeling I need to eat grows inside of my body, and if I give myself maybe 10 minutes to see if that, that urge, is a physical sensation that does say like, feed me now I am hungry, then then that's what I'll do, it, then I'll eat. Or maybe there the urge it rises like a wave and then it crashes and it goes, it disappears, it becomes part of the ocean again and the feeling, that urge to eat, is gone. So allowing ourselves to surf the urge to see what happens can be really important but really useful. The last I don't want to call it a trick or tip the last thing that we can use in acceptance and commitment therapy context. I call it, just in time, intervention and it's called the choice point.

Speaker 3: 43:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:05

And so we're in a situation where we can make a choice, and we can choose to act in a way that's in a line with the person that we want to be, the life that we want to live, or we might choose to act in a way that moves us away from the person that we want to be and away from the life that we want to live.

Speaker 2: 43:27

So an intuitive eater might value living according to the body's wisdom and they might have a moment where they're going out for coffee with a friend and they see their friend ordering a muffin or a slice of cake to go with their coffee, and that intuitive eater is thinking ah, they ordered it. Should I order some too, Because that's just a social norm sometimes.

Speaker 2: 44:02

So we also order food, but you listen to your body and you're like, not actually physically hungry. So what do you do in that moment? Do you not order the cake or the muffin Because that's the person that you want to be? Or do you order it and eat it, but you're not actually enjoying it because you're doing it because you felt like you had to. Yeah, so, using that choice point to help you decide do you order it or do you not order it?

Speaker 1: 44:27

That is great. That sounds like being authentic with your eating. Who do you want to be? Are you making decisions for yourself, based on your own values and your own priorities? I love this conversation. I think that the times I'm most at risk are when I'm stressed or when I'm tired. Do you have any response to that, as it relates to being an intuitive eater?

Speaker 2: 44:50

Yeah, so Evelyn Treboly and Elise Rush, so the authors of the intuitive eating book also have a really helpful workbook and within that workbook there's a section devoted to nutrition 911. And what do you do in those moments when you're stressed, or when you're sick, or when you're depressed or whatever reason, your life demands are high, your motivation might be different than usual, and what do you do? And it's a little bit of preparation to know what would work for you in those moments. So, based on your past experience, what would you need to have available to you in the cupboard, in the fridge, in the freezer, in your bag? For me, it's usually like when I'm on the go.

Speaker 3: 45:42

It's when.

Speaker 2: 45:42

I need that nutrition 911 and figuring out what will be low burden and satisfying that.

Speaker 2: 45:52

I can have available to me and not having shame or guilt around what that looks like. So, like I mentioned, with my chronic fatigue when it was bad and this still happens sometimes the scrambled eggs work for me. I know it's nutritious, with the protein in there, I'm satisfied for a decent length of time where I'm not going to be putting energy into eating again really soon. Or the bowl of cereal and the milk. So I know there's it's got a mixture of different vitamins and minerals and the fiber that's going to nourish my body in those moments. And I'm not sure, when you're talking about the stress, whether that was like an emotional eating kind of thing or not eating at all kind of thing. But I think it's still relevant to think about what are the situations where it's most difficult for you to make those eating choices that are in line with the person you want to be, the life that you want to live, and just taking the five minutes to to mentally prepare for that and then going a step further and Preparing for that.

Speaker 2: 47:02

So buying buying the pretzels, buying I don't know whatever it is to make things work that is Spot-on, practical, useful and that really works for me.

Speaker 1: 47:15

That that's exactly what I was asking, okay, so you've given us a lot of practical tips here so far. Is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know?

Speaker 2: 47:31

Last tip that I would suggest is based on research that we've done, and it has been as simple as Rating your hunger, rating your fullness and rating your mindfulness. So, before you eat, rating your hunger and it could be on a scale from zero, where You're either not hungry at all, to ten, where you're completely stuffed, or, in our research, a zero was your hunger is so extreme that you're almost sick from how hungry you are and then the other end of the scale is You're so sick from eating so much. So where are you? Where are you falling in that moment and then starting to eat when that rating is At a level that's just just kind of like a little tap on the shoulder saying hey, I'm hungry.

Speaker 2: 48:25

Or when it's that tap on the shoulder where like, okay, I've had, I'm Satisfied, I've had enough and I'm not gonna leave this snack or this meal feeling like I'm depriving myself right so, rating hunger, rating fullness, like I said, we usually do it on a scale from Extremely hungry, where you're feeling sick from hunger, to extremely full, very sick from fullness, and then the mindfulness. So you can rate that on a scale from zero to ten, where zero would be absolutely not mindful at all.

Speaker 2: 48:58

It is the distracted eating at the desk, the sandwiches by the side. You're typing with one hand, eating with the other, or when we're driving, trying to Eat whatever it is with one hand and drive with the other hand, whereas the other end of the scale would be absolutely, 100%, mindful and noticing every single Bite of the whole meal, noticing taste, texture, temperature, how it's feeling in the body.

Speaker 2: 49:26

I Find that a lot of people find that really impractical, especially when we're in social situations. Yeah, a lot of us are eating meals with co-workers or with family or with a partner, whoever else and it's just impractical to be in your own zone.

Speaker 2: 49:44

Other people around you and giving yourself permission to say it's okay that I? I just check in every once in a while during this meal to notice am I still enjoying what I'm eating? And yeah, so that sort of mindfulness might be rated maybe somewhere between a five and a seven on a scale from zero to ten.

Speaker 1: 50:08

Okay, because a little bit of mindfulness might feel better than none at all hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, those are really great practical steps and a helpful mindset we can adopt right away here and continue to practice and and again. I love how you're talking about this in terms of it's it's small steps, it's doing it continually, making it more habitual, making it more autonomous, as you're talking about Hannah. Really feel it like it's becoming a part of us and Part of our values and again.

Speaker 1: 50:40

I love it. You know eating it for your authentic cells you know, and this has just been a really incredible and lightning and and helpful conversation. It just really is. Before we come to a close, it just seems to me like there are there gonna be many people seeking further resources on this. What would you recommend for Resources that people could access if they want to go deeper with this topic?

Speaker 2: 51:09

Hannah, do you want to go, especially with your dietitian hat on?

Speaker 1: 51:14

mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: 51:14

Go for it, hannah well, I mean, I was just thinking of, I guess, the Intruder of eating book that I mentioned right at the very start. I think that was Quite a solid foundation for me and, as Sarah mentioned as well, the intuitive eating workbook is also a really good results because it's got those, you know, that space where you can write down your own experiences and reflect on it and really work through Through it as a process.

Speaker 1: 51:42

Yeah, Perfect, sarah. Did you have anything you wanted to add in terms of resources?

Speaker 2: 51:48

Yeah, I found Evelyn Treboly's Instagram account and YouTube channel really valuable cool and I think people will find following her really useful when they're not sure if something's a diet or not. For example, she's done a post on noom, the app that Markets itself as a lifestyle intervention but really there is to be potentially controversial. It is a dieting app but. But she explains why it's a dieting app. But she also has done really short, one minute or less Videos on what is intuitive eating. And something else that I've valued about Evelyn's Instagram account and YouTube channel, especially during the pandemic, is she does a nice job of saying it's okay to Be flexible and how you fit intuitive eating in your life, especially around the stigma that can happen with people who use canned foods and frozen foods To feed themselves.

Speaker 2: 52:58

There's a stigma that if you eat those things that's bad, and there's a lot of freshest best Messaging out there, but Evelyn helps us feel okay about that. The frozen vegetables and the frozen fruit and our freezer are Just as nutritious as the fresh stuff that you're paying twice as much for in winter time, right? So that has been one of the criticisms of the intuitive eating. That I think is important to acknowledge is that it could be criticized for being only for people who are privileged, particularly financially, but also people who are in more socially acceptable bodies.

Speaker 2: 53:39

In whatever way. So I did want to acknowledge that I do. I'm aware of the privilege that that someone needs to have to make this more accessible to them right very important point Fed. Fed is best, and If all you have is the two-minute noodles this week, and that is okay.

Speaker 1: 54:01

That's right. That's right. It's not a light bulb, it's not a light switch on or off, it's. It's kind of more of a dimmer, if you know.

Speaker 1: 54:09

And there's somewhere between you just have to find that place where you can be and do the best you can. Eating what's available and affordable is entirely acceptable. Sarah and Hannah, again, I know I've just been, you know, like just gushing all over you, but I just really appreciate how you approach this topic. It's very real, it's very thoughtful, it's very rooted in science and it's about really approaching life in a healthy, healthy way. So I'm Extremely grateful for this time. It's been extremely enjoyable. So thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 3: 54:45

Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 54:48

And at one hour of stuff. I hope that was okay with you all, but oh my gosh, that was so good. Thank you, thank you.