[CRISTINA CASTAGNINI] Behind The Bite podcast is part of a network of podcasts that are good for the world. Check out podcasts like the Full of Shift podcast, After the First Marriage podcast and Eating Recovery Academy over at practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to Behind The Bite podcast. This podcast is about the real life struggles women face with food, body image and weight. We're here to help you inspire and create better healthier lives. Welcome. Well, hello everyone. Happy new year. It is wonderful to be back after taking a couple of weeks off to spend time with my kids and just recharge a bit. You know what, here we are at the start of yet another new year and with that comes something I have to admit. I always know it's coming, yet I always dread. Yep. It's getting bombarded with diet, weight loss and gym ads. Let's face it. They're incessant and everywhere you turn. The timing of these ads are so deliberate and they just serve to perpetuate this toxic message that we were all so bad and indulgent over the holidays and now we just need to be so good and we start with what they have to offer. And yes, they tell us there are saviors to help us get back on track from all the bad we've done and it's awful and it's so untrue. The more ads that there are out there, the more difficult it can be to not start to take it all in and just believe that they're true. It's so hard not to find yourself tempted to do something. After all, isn't this the time to take on a new year's resolution? Well, if that's the case, might I suggest trying to turn a blind eye to all of these ads instead? I mean, look, I know I've been there. It's much easier said than, but the great news is that our entire show today is going to discuss this post-holiday time and discuss how you can get through all of this without falling prey to any of those ads. I'm so excited because we have the perfect guest with us today to do just that. Mya is a registered dietician and nutrition professor based in Seattle. Her passion is in helping lifelong dieters break away from toxic diet culture and empowering them to trust their own bodies. Her signature online programs are built on approaches such as intuitive eating, help at every size, and self-compassion. She's helped hundreds of individuals break the cycle of food guilt and body shame, and instead find food freedom and body appreciation. So Mya, welcome to the show. [MYA KWON] Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. [CRISTINA] So would you mind telling us a little bit, I said some about you, but would you mind just sharing a little bit about how you got into your work and maybe how you got into working with all the people and in this specialty? [MYA] Absolutely. So I see myself as an anti-dietician and a body image counselor. But this is my second career. So I used to have a corporate job in me and communications. Interestingly nutrition was something that never crossed my mind, but what got me into nutrition was just being a workaholic and neglecting my self-care for seven, eight years in the fast-paced corporate world. I just came to like a burnout point of, "Okay, I can't keep on doing this. Maybe I should start taking better care of myself." So that led me into the path of nutrition, but little did I know then I thought I was going to become a dietician that says, "Eat all your kale and keto. Stop eating sugar, everyone." Because I think first, when we get interested in health and nutrition, because of all the extreme messages that we hear, like that's kind of the default view of how you get to look at food and nutrition. And I think I kind of fell to kind of that orthorexia trap for a little bit until I actually went to my graduate program in nutrition and just kind of serendipitously, I got to have an opportunity to train with eating disorder specialists at a children's hospital in Seattle. Luckily the dieticians, there were ones practicing from a non-diet, health at every size, intuitive eating approach, even though we were working with acute eating disorder clients. So it wasn't just a weight-based recovery approach. So that's where my kind of whole view about bodies and food and weight and nutrition really changed to a point where I was able to see, oh, it's not just what you put into your body as nutrients, but really the relationship you have with your body and the relationship you have with food. Whether that's at a healthy and a happy place or not real dictates, not only our physical health, but emotional, mental health, really our whole being to the core. That was just such a paradigm shift for me that even before I got my license as a dietician, I kind of declared that I was not going to practice from a weight-based approach and also be really mindful of not harming my clients and patients relationship with food and body, because we all know that the average duration of treatment for eating disorders are just so long. So that prevention piece is so crucial. So that's how I got my foot into, I fell in love with working with adolescents and then the population, just the realm of disorder eating and eating disorders. So after that training, I started working on a college campus at a student counseling center and saw that 70%, 80% of my student clients who came to see me were talking about a disordered and a very difficult relationship with food. And I was like, wow, there's so many people who struggle with this. So when I started my private practice, which is now my online business, I really kind of vowed to dedicate my work to helping individuals restore and rebuild their relationship with food and their bodies, whether they are recovering from chronic dieting or maybe have a history of an eating disorder to really prioritize their mental, emotional health and their relationship with food and body while also catering to physical health. So that's a bit of my story and how I got to where I am. [CRISTINA] That's a fantastic story because I think, I hear that so often people think, oh, when they say nutrition and getting "healthy," they do just what you said. They talk about the "healthy foods," but when you say healthy means so much more than that. [MYA] Absolutely. [CRISTINA] So even defining healthy, because I'll get people debating all the time, they're like, "Come on, doctors, healthier foods than not and if I eat this, it's healthy enough. If I eat that that's not healthy." I'm like going in my mind, like, okay, we've really got to dispel this myth here. We've really got to talk about this. So I don't know if in your work, you get people that come to you and kind of debate you with that too. But how do you address that question? [MYA] Absolutely. Yes, I think it's just such a normalized way of thinking about food and not to mention how media talks about food. It's always like avoid these foods, eat these super foods. It's always putting things in like that dichotomous light of healthy, unhealthy good and bad when in reality there is no inherently good or bad food and that's a good point when you even say healthy. It's such a loaded word that has so much underlying beliefs and values, kind of beneath that, that shapes someone's view of what they mean by healthy and also are. So I like to ask my clients when they bring up that point of view with food to really direct the question back at them and ask them, what does it mean? What does healthy mean to you? When they say that with food does that mean you don't want to be deficient in certain nutrients and want to have like a well balanced fuel and nutrient balance? Like, does it mean that, you know but what if it comes at the expense of your relationship with food? And I think oftentimes we really kind of zoom in and micro scrutinize every single thing that we eat at the expense of our emotional and mental health. So a lot of times I find it so helpful and so many clients have told me that it's been helpful to be able to kind of zoom out, look at the big picture. Because, you probably heard that we can use an example like sugar, for example, and someone might argue and say, "Well, how could eating sugar ever be a good thing?" I say, "Well, what do we mean by eating sugar? So how much sugar are we talking? Are you talking about added sugars? Are you talking about including fruits and carbs and how often are we eating this? More importantly, what else are we eating?" So we could have like two people who both eat two cups of ice cream every single day and let's say one person eats two cups of ice cream every single day, but they also have a variety of other foods in their diet. They don't think, they don't stress about food so much. They include all kinds of different food groups. They eat regularly. They feel enough energy. Then can we say, oh, that two cups of ice cream is bad? What is bad about it then? But then maybe there's another person who is eating two cups of ice cream and maybe their big picture looks different. Maybe if it's a bit more imbalance and they don't feel good emotionally or mentally. Also we have to also examine if someone is eating something, "too much" or "out of balance." I put those in quotes because that's also very relative idea. So we want to kind of think about what are the underlying things that might be influencing that and depending on again, like what that person's big picture of their overall eating pattern looks like. How that two cups of ice cream is going to be impacting their health or not is going to be very individually different. So we can't just say that everyone who is eating two cups of ice cream a day is eating too much sugar. Like there's really, that's not how food and nutrients work in the body. Food and nutrients don't manifest, don't impact your body in isolation. Your body is not keeping track of what is this person eating every single moment, every single day. It's how you eat, your regular eating pattern, your overall kind of diet, habits and patterns over time, coupled with a lot of other health factors. Because again, also nutrition is not the only thing that impacts health. So that's another thing that people often lose sight of as if nutrition is the only thing that is going to be impacting their health. It's one of many, many other things. Health works very complexly and so there's a lot of kind of moving targets here that we need to really examine and have to be really careful about kind of over-emphasizing one food or one aspect of health. [CRISTINA] I love that you said that because just at this time of the year, you know just thinking about people's mindsets around food and their labels around food. I know we're coming off the holidays and I people are thinking, "Oh my gosh, I ate," let's say they have the concept of, "I ate so "bad", or "unhealthy" during the holidays," and now they're very stressed out and they're feeling guilty and they're beating themselves up. They might have a very different mindset right now, as they're listening versus somebody who really ate the same exact foods as this person and they were like, "Wow, that was amazing. I enjoyed it. I had fun with my family and my friends and the holidays were fantastic. That was great." It's a mindset. So one person might be very stressed in beating themselves up and like really emotionally, like not doing very well and another person's like, "That was the best time. That's great." But they ate the same things. So for those people listening who are like not doing well because they're beating themselves up, they're buying into the diet cultural labels of like eating "bad" and stressing out about like, potentially I gained all this weight, maybe they did or didn't, but they might be feeling like they did. Now's prime time of like, I know what's happening right now where it's out there in the media. [MYA] Totally. You brought up such a good thing because is the problem the foods that you ate or is the problem the guilt and the stress that you're putting yourself on? Where is that struggle and pain coming from right now, when you said there are people out there who ate the exact same way, who feel great, both physically, mentally, emotionally, and yet so what is the actual problem here? By having that so much guilt and shame and stress and judgment around food, how is that impacting you? Like, is that helping you actually take care of yourself? Is that helping you actually meet your body's needs? Because a lot of times it's not, when we are in that kind of stressed out and fearful state, people will often opt to doing pretty extreme things and going back into a rigid diet. And how does that turn out to be right? How sustainable are those things? Does being on a very rigid diet program make you happy? And does it actually bring like physical and emotional benefits? Well, if you're not able to stay on it, like that didn't really work either. So it's time to kind of examine what is kind of the actual problem here? Is it going to be, does that mean is it going to be better to continue to control food out of fear and then feeling like I failed again and then going all out because you feel like, okay, well I failed so I might as well go all out? So oftentimes people go back and forth between these two extreme ends instead of finding a place where they can really listen to their body, take care of their needs, enjoy food. While also that doesn't mean that you're going to neglect having nutritious foods. You can. You can't have nutritious foods and you can't enjoy food without guilt. It's not, that's a very black and white thing that diet culture and the eating disordered mind really enforces on us. So it's a good time to examine, okay, it makes sense why I feel that pull for another diet at this time of the year after the holidays, but how have my past experiences doing that worked out for me. If I know that it didn't, is that what I need to focus on right now? [CRISTINA] Exactly. And I always hear people say like, well, it worked in the past or this diet worked, or I just need to get the weight off. I need to jumpstart everything. And here comes the us, and they say those words, like jump start your new year get back on track. I think it plays on people's emotions because they are in that state of feeling really guilty and they're so worried if they don't get back on track or they don't "jump start". Like they're going to stay in this state in all eternity of feeling bad and guilty and that there is something wrong with what they just did. So they have to undo the wrong and then feel like not guilty anymore. It's almost like they have to pay pennants and here comes this ad or program or diet that's like, hey, this is their saving grace. Like this is your solution. I'm going to help you undo all of this. So jump on board and it's so enticing. [MYA] It's so enticing, you're right but what is even like, did it really work? When clients say, well, it worked, well, that's a good place to also examine what do we mean by that? Do we mean by the weight being kept off because we know that diets are actually not effective at producing lasting weight loss. Like 80% of any weight loss will, most people will gain back within a year. 95% of that will be gained back in five years. There's a lot of studies that show that. A place like Weight Watchers, for example, there are cases when a Weight Watchers executive has been caught saying that they actually do rely on repeat customers. Because if it actually "works," then why are people on and off Weight Watchers 5, 10, 20 years? If it worked, they would be on it once and they would be done, but that's not a very sustainable business model. And the reason why the diet industry is a $72 billion industry annually in the US alone is because it really relies on repeat customers in that way. So they do they really work in terms of that lasting weight loss and not only on weight loss, but what were the impacts of that while you were on it? Were you actually happy? Was what the program kept you on? Was it sustainable? I have clients who tell me, even though they have these kind of like warped memories of, okay, there were aspects of it that felt like it was good because they saw some weight loss for a while but after looking back they're able to say that "that was the most miserable time of my life, because I was fighting myself with all the food cravings. I was constantly hungry all the time. If I ate even an ounce more of food that was allowed on the diet, then I would feel this extreme shame and guilt and I was not able to operate and focus in the present with my friends and with my family. I was really miserable." So is that, I don't think that is the definition of like what works. So it's a good, we have to kind of examine really what are the actual effects of this? [CRISTINA] Absolutely. People might argue and say, "Well, what else am I supposed to do? I was so "bad" or I overindulged in the holidays and I really did gain weight. So now what do I do, doc? Like I have to do something." I don't know if people are coming to you saying that, but what do you answer to them because they're saying, "Well, I have to do weight watchers. I have to do this new program. I have to join the gym now. I have to do something. I can't just stay like this." [MYA] Yes, and that would be a good place to really kind of start asking clients, I like to ask them like, what is important to you? What are you really seeking when you are wanting to go back to these diets? And a lot of times it can be a lot more deeper things like, well, I want to feel in control or I want to feel that my body is good enough and not hate my body. I want to feel that I feel good about myself, that I'm doing something. So we have to kind of really seek what does that mean or does it mean like, I want to feel healthy? Again, then we go back to like, what does health mean? Does that mean that I'm not overeating? Does that mean I can move my body in a way without feeling out of breath? So by asking these deeper questions of like, what are you really needing and seeking by feeling like you need to go back on these diets, we can get to understanding what those underlying needs might be and by really kind of reflecting on the past experiences of how being on a diet made you feel physically and emotionally. And like did being on that really actually meet those needs in a sustainable, in a lasting way? If not do you want to keep going back through this cycle of being off and on again? It's a vicious cycle that feels like it's never ending. I have a lot of clients who say I've been doing this all my life for 20, 30 plus years. Then once they get to a point where I don't want to be on this race for the rest of my life, they might say I have my mother who is 70, 80 years old and she's still picking apart her tacos when we go out to eat. I don't want myself to be that right. So it might come to have a really hard look on how do you want to live your life and how do you want to feel around food and body? And lot of times by being on diets, like it doesn't make you feel good about yourself. It makes you actually feel pretty much like a family, or I think that's the word I hear most often that they say it felt like I was in control for a while until I failed and that I felt like a failure. Then I went all out and everything kind of went out the window. So again, like those extreme going back and forth between those extreme ends, if they're not working. And the reason why diets will never work is because they don't really have any regards for your own internal, like physiology. They're giving you a set of arbitrary rules and saying, everyone on this diet program follows these set of rules. Here are the foods that you can eat, here's how much you can eat, here is when you're going to eat. And everyone's body is so unique and different. How much food you need is different, even in the same person, how much food is going to keep you fueled, is going to be different on a day to day basis, depending on a lot of factors, like how much are you moving? How much are your stressed, like a lot of these things. And these diet rules, these external rules don't really take into account for who you are, what your life is like as a human being. So how can we expect some external set of rules to apply to everyone for the rest of your lives? So the alternative to that is to really get to learn your own body, to learn how much food feels good to me to know that I have enough, that I feel happy in having a balanced diet? What kinds of foods give me satisfaction? What kinds of foods do I actually enjoy and not enjoy? A lot of times when people have been dieting for so long, they might say, "I don't even know what foods I like or don't like, because I've been just following these rules." So by helping people get back in touch with their own base, with their own bodies cues, with their own preferences, with the important factors to them, right then you can start to build your own internal compass instead of having these set of external rules. And guess what's going to be much more sustainable and enjoyable to follow? Is it going to be to follow something that comes intuitively to you because it meets your own unique needs or the set of arbitrary rules that are just being dispelled to everyone out there? [CRISTINA] Absolutely. It's interesting, I'll talk to people and they're like, "Well, gosh, if I was left to my own devices. I didn't have any guidelines or if I didn't have a diet, I would just eat all these foods and I would, I don't trust myself. I can't have these foods in the house because I'll eat them all. I can't have them." I hear this all the time and I have the things I say to my patients, but I'm wondering what you say to people when they say that to you. [MYA] Absolutely. That comes from that kind of experience of being kind of on and off of diets and having these like off limit foods, because that's how the human brain works. When you say don't touch the fire, you want to touch the fire. As human beings, we don't like to be told what to do. We don't. So by building this internal compass, like the reason why you feel out of control with food right now with certain foods is because of that very label that you put on it, that it's a bad food, that it's a food that you can't have unless X, Y, and Z. So every very rare occasion that you get to have at your body is like, "Ooh I'm going to get as much as I can because we don't know when we're going to get this again." So that's how this kind of out of control feeling, that's how these like binges happen. So I often kind of like joke with my clients on there's a reason why you don't binge on chicken and spinach. It's because you never restricted them as opposed to binging on the chips or the ice cream or whatever it may be. Not to mention that also carbs are just the preferred method of fuel that your body needs and t's your kind of lifeline. So that's also another factor added onto there. So it's the restriction, it's that kind of rule of these are off limits that create that kind of urgency in your yourself, not the fact that you actually lack self-control inherently. I know that again, by being on this kind of a mindset for a long time can make you feel like, oh, I'm already doomed, like I can't change that. But I have had so many clients who have changed that after again, 10, 20, 30 years of being on these sites. Just a recent client who was in my group program said pop tarts was her thing. She was like, I can never have pop tarts because I'll just eat the whole box. I have no self-control around it. Yet we started kind of working on getting it back and normalizing it and giving herself that permission to eat, to really kind of retrain her thoughts and beliefs around this particular food and fast forward a couple of weeks, she said, "Wow, I have an open box of pop tarts in my pantry that I forgot about in there and it's been there for the past two weeks. This has never happened in my life." It's real, really cool to see that happen. I know that it is possible for you, whoever is listening out there too. [CRISTINA] I want to echo that for anyone listening. I've had so many people on my caseload who have had that exact same experience. So I know people think, oh, that's not possible, but it is. So just hold onto that too. This can happen, but it's the fear of it can't, not trusting yourself for sure. [MYA] Absolutely. It works, with those so-called healthy foods as well. Because I will have clients who are like, I will eat all my veggies and salads when I'm on a diet and then when I'm like in this kind of like, what the heck mode, I don't want to look at them because I'm so sick of them. Yet, once we start to really get back in touch with our bodies and repair our relationship with food, then they can also get to a place to say, "Wow, I actually craved a salad today and thoroughly enjoyed it. That was never possible when I was on these strict diets," because again like that was what you were told to eat, not something you ate because you wanted to. So it's also cool to see that opposite experience. That's when you can get to a place where your body has this inherent wisdom to know to say yes and no to different foods in balance without being told when, and how much is that right balance? It has that internal knowledge and as babies, we are all born with this ability. No babies are stress eaters or eaters. They will cry for mama when they're hungry and they'll push you away when they've had enough. They're very good being intuitive to their body's signs and yet, as we grew up and we started to hear these messages and learn from diet culture we have this kind of noise in between our body's signals in our mind that made us kind of mistrust our own body's wisdom. [CRISTINA] Absolutely all these external factors. I wanted to kind of bring that up too. So I'm sure there's going to be people out there listening who maybe are at work or around family or friends and diet talks going to be there and people are going to be talking about the new diet they're taking on, or they want to. Or they're going to feel pressured to like join in or maybe get triggered like, oh, they're on a diet and I'm not. What can you say to people to kind of either inoculate themselves from those conversations or if they feel like they're right in the heat of it, what can they do to kind of steer clear of those things or not feel the pressure to join in? [MYA] That's a question that I get so much from clients. So I came up with this acronym, it's PSA. So it stands for protect, soothe and advocate. It kind of goes in this order. So if you are pretty early on in your journey of trying to get off of diets or pretty early on in recovery, then first and foremost, you got to protect yourself. So you may not be in a place where you can kind of speak up and try to change other people's minds. That's a lot of pressure and that pressure doesn't have to be on you. So if you feel triggered by just hearing people kind of talk about these things, you can simply choose not to engage in that conversation. You can stay quiet for a while. You can change the subject and say, I love seeing you and I would love to hear how you've been doing, to kind of change that subject gently. Or if you're in a group of people, you can excuse yourself for a little bit so that you can kind of wait for that conversation to pass. So those are some kind of those subtle ways to not engage, to not to further feel triggered. But if you do already start feeling triggered, then that's a time to use the S, the soothe. So by soothing, I mean when we are triggered by these talks or triggered by anything for that matter, you're kind of activating, your nervous system is activated, and you might be going into this kind of like fight or flight mode or freeze mode. You're starting to kind of feel anxiety and a bit of like a panicking feeling. So those physical signs are a good sign that, okay, we need to, you know, you can do something soothing to calm the nervous system down. So simple things like deep breathing, or just taking again, like excusing yourself from that conversation, go to the bathroom, get a moment for yourself. Get someone who you know is like a safe person so that you can kind of get back to a state of, okay, I'm okay. I don't have to feel so triggered by the situation. Something that helps you calm down, whether, even if it's something really simple to do. But if you feel a little bit more grounded and you feel like, okay, I can take a little bit more on then that's a good place where you can start to kind of draw some boundaries and advocate for yourself. That might mean just saying something like I've done that in the past too. I've been on a lot of diets in the past two, but I found that it really damaged my relationship with food and with my body. So I'm now working on moving away from diets. I would really appreciate if we don't talk about diets, because I really value our relationship. So you can kind of ask what you need. Again, like that might be something a little bit further down the line. If you don't feel ready to do that right now, that's okay but those are some kind of potential ways to kind of think about what is the level of my own support that I need when I feel these triggers from other people's conversations? [CRISTINA] Fantastic. This great acronym, so to people can just kind of have it in their mind, because I know there's very, very common circumstances right now or just, I mean, anytime really, but fantastic. So are there any other, I guess things you could give to people as quick advice or things that they can just take with them as they're kind of navigating January and kind of this tough time? [MYA] Well I know January is such a prime time to get back into kind of dieting, but again, so much of that is based on your own fear and anxiety. So I would really invite everyone to kind of really think about, you know use this time to reflect on your past experiences because your lived experiences have so much wisdom you know really best. If you know that going back on these diet programs and listening to these rules have really not benefited you physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, then is that something that is really going to serve you? Again maybe this would be a good time to really take a different approach and repair your relationship with food and the relationship that you have with body so that you can build back that internal wisdom and compass. So right now I have like a free anti diet challenge going on with people who join in on my email list. So it's giving kind of like pieces of nuggets, quick things. One thing that you can do for 10 days to kind of build up your own anti diet toolkit is kind of the purpose of the challenge. So it's, again like these kind of quick things that you can kind of set yourself up so that you don't feel that immediate need to kind of go back to, jump on these diet programs that you might be seeing every year at this time. I want to say that you can put a bit more trust in yourself than in these programs that are out there. [CRISTINA] That's perfect. So I know people are like, "Oh great. Where do I find you?" So how can they find you? How can they find these emails? [MYA] In order to get on that 10-day free anti-diet challenge, you can go to my website, my website is foodbodypiece.com. That should be the first thing that you see pop up on the website when you get there. You can also find me on Instagram, at foodbody.piece. That's my handle, foodbody.piece. I post pretty regularly, give lots of tips and nuggets there almost daily. So I would love for you to join in on my community and I hope to see you there. [CRISTINA] I second that. You have an amazing Instagram. Your Instagram has lots of great stuff there. So guys go head over there and if you didn't get any of that down, I'm going to have all her contact information on the show notes. So do not worry about like rewinding and getting that back. I love that all there. [MYA] Thank you. [CRISTINA] Thank you so much for all of this fantastic information. It is such good timing for everybody to listen to all this right now because I know right now is just such a hard time. So thank you so very much. [MYA] Thank you so much for having me. Thanks. [CRISTINA] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.