Speaking Of Hungry

In this episode, I chat with Zoë Bisbing and Leslie Bloch are both New York City-based, adolescent eating disorder psychotherapists and mothers of two. They met in graduate school at New York University and discovered they shared a dedication to the treatment of eating disorders and body image concerns. While their families and private practices blossomed, they developed specialties in the early detection and family-based treatment of childhood and adolescent eating disorders.    During this interview, we discuss how Leslie and Zoe took their individual experiences as psychotherapists to create the Full Bloom Project dedicated to teaching eating disorder awareness and prevention through body-positive parenting. Zoe and Leslie have outlined an A through Z Guide for Body Positive Parenting with each letter of the alphabet representing a body-positive parenting question.    One question, How Can I Help Kids in Larger Bodies, really resonated with me and my work as an intuitive eating registered dietitian.  Paren

On this week's episode of the Speaking of Hungry podcast I'm speaking with Erica Leon, MS, RD, CEDRD. Erica is the owner of Erica Leon Nutrition, an outpatient group nutrition practice in White Plains, NY. With more than 30 years of experience, she and her team help individuals develop a positive relationship with food and work tirelessly to treat and prevent eating disorders and disordered eating in adults, adolescents, children, and families. Erica and I talk about weight stigma and healing from disordered eating.  We recognize how our bodies change constantly throughout our lives and that embracing these changes can be difficult in our diet-crazed world.  Erica tells me how she works with her clients to embrace the change vs. try and control the changes our bodies are naturally going through.  We discuss how diets are damaging and recognize that the medical world focuses on weight loss as an indicator of health.  In reality, focusing on the scale sets us up for failure. We should put our focus and drive in

Most of us only know two things: 1) being on a diet and actively pursuing weight loss, or, 2) not being on a diet, having erratic eating patterns, possibly a restrict/binge cycle. We go into a diet with a mindset that our end result will be weight loss and a smaller body size.  The idea of intuitive eating does not fit into these two categories. Many people can't imagine what the end result of intuitive eating will be because they are so fixated on weight loss being the end result.  In this episode of Speaking of Hungry, I will tell you some of the TOP BENEFITS of stopping diets and embarking on the intuitive eating journey. 

I was going through my Instagram feed when I came across a great post by Jenna Jozefowski talking about how before/after photos posted all over social media or in diet ads may make some of us squirm vs feel inspired.  I immediately had to address this topic here on Speaking of Hungry! There was a time in my disordered days when I looked at before and after photos and thought, "Wow, this girl has it all figured out!" Now, as an anti-diet, intuitive eating counselor, AND someone who has gone through an eating disorder and disordered eating recovery, I look at these photos VERY differently.  Yes, these people probably worked very hard. I do understand our need to want to celebrate how hard we've worked at something and I think it's amazing to share how proud you are of you.  But I look at these pictures deeper. Why? Because I've heard the "AFTER" story from the BEFORE/AFTER photos. When people reveal that everyone was praising their weight loss, how awesome they looked, how fit and sculpted their body became....

In this episode I am focusing on principle 9, Exercise: Feel the Difference, as part of all 10 Intuitive Eating principles by Elyse Resch & Evelyn Tribole in their book Intuitive Eating.  Do you suspect you have a disordered relationship with exercise? In the journey toward becoming an intuitive eater and ditching diets, exercise can be one of the last pieces people work on healing.  We have to dig deep and ask ourselves...

WW recently acquired Kurbo, a weight loss/nutrition app for kids 8-13. Your child can start tracking everything she eats and get feedback on her choices using a red, yellow, green traffic light system. Red light foods include candy and soda.  Can you imagine an 8-year old needing to concern herself with this? Can you see where this will lead? The child may already feel bad about herself after being told by parents or a doctor that she needs to lose weight. Now she has to scrutinize everything she puts in her mouth... and she is EIGHT YEARS OLD! This latest episode is my voice saying NO to the new Kurbo diet app for kids. I realize many parents are meaning well if they choose to use this for their kids but I'm here to say you can do this DIFFERENTLY! Please don't make it about weight, calories, and size for our kids. This will only set them up for a lifetime of chronic dieting and potentially an eating disorder.  Here are some studies I mention in this episode with regard to children dieting listed on the Nati

On this week's episode, I am talking about my Peloton bike. I love it! I've had it for a few years now, and like my intuitive eating journey, I've learned to respect and listen to my body when it comes to using the Peloton. If you have a Peloton, you should definitely listen! If you don't have a Peloton, you should still listen because this episode may resonate with you no matter what form of exercise you're engaging in currently.  I talk about how I just formed a new Facebook group for the Peloton community, @PelotonIntuitiveEaters. I've been thinking about forming this group for a while now. There are MANY Peloton Facebook groups out there. As you can imagine, many people are posting questions about diets, losing weight, posting before/after pictures, etc. I thought to myself, what if there are Peloton riders out there like me who want a non-diet place to support each other? A place where they can ask questions about health and nutrition but not get bombarded with weight-loss chatter? A place where they can

Episode 12 is a continuation of my summary of the 10 Intuitive Eating principles as outlined in the book, Intuitive Eating, by Elyse Resch & Evelyn Tribole. Here I review Principle #8: Respect Your Body.  Living in a diet-obsessed world has normalized speaking negatively about our bodies, disrespecting our bodies, and feeling uncomfortable with giving our bodies praise or accepting a compliment.  In this episode I talk about how our genes dictate our body type, ways to have gratitude for our bodies, how to stop body comparison and body-checking, how buying clothes that fit and that we feel good in is a form of body respect and language we can use to start feeling better in the one and only body we have in this life.  ------- As mentioned in this episode, I am available for intuitive eating counseling through my group online course, Intuitive Eating Foundations, as well as private online counseling. You can schedule a FREE 20-minute call with me to learn about my intuitive eating services and decide if we'

In this episode, I am thrilled to chat with Jenna Jozefowski, a body-positive, weight inclusive personal trainer. Jenna gives active women a tough love transformation to their approach to fitness. As a semi-retired professional dancer, Jenna first discovered yoga as a cross-training tool and has been teaching and coaching for over a decade. She’s an E-RYT 200 & Yoga For All Teacher, NASM Certified Personal Trainer, and StrongFirst SFG1 Kettlebell Instructor. Jenna is a Body Positive Fitness Alliance Affiliated Professional and believes that “fit” looks different on everybody. Learn how to work with Jenna and read her blog at itsjennaj.com. You can connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter or by emailing her at jenna@itsjennaj.com. In this episode Jenna mentions the following websites to find body positive fitness professionals and find workout clothes inclusive of ALL sizes: Superfit Hero Body Positive Fitness  

I recently read the blog post, "Why It's Ok to Eat Refined Grains" by Elizabeth Ward, MS, RD, and wanted to chat about it here on Speaking of Hungry. I've been telling people since the Atkins diet craze in the mid-late 1990s that CARBS ARE OK!  Why would you want to cut carbs? Why is everyone saying they're so evil? After some time we were then being told that complex carbs - whole wheat bread, brown rice, whole wheat pasta - are the way to go and refined grains - white rice, white bread, white pasta - are the death of us all.  I can't believe it's 2019 and we're still talking about cutting carbs. Listen here as I talk about why cutting out carbs leads to lacking nutrients and that we can eat white rice if that's what we truly want to eat. Mentioned in this episode: Elizabeth Ward's blog Better is the New Perfect  Elizabeth Ward's blog post "Why It's Ok to Eat Refined Grains" Remember, if you're interested in putting an end to chronic dieting and disordered eating, I'm signing people up for my Intuitive Eatin

I was inspired to record this episode after a family member of mine expressed interest in listening to my podcast but she said, "Intuitive eating could never work for me." In this episode, I talk about signs you may be ready to end your relationship with disordered eating, chronic dieting, and start exploring the world or intuitive eating.  Many think intuitive eating "seems like a nice idea" but then say "that won't work for me." Intuitive eating is not simply a license to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and you are automatically expected to be able to avoid binges. There is so much more to it. It is a process. I relate the intuitive eating process to recovering from an eating disorder or tackling drug or alcohol addiction. You can't recover from any of these overnight and you also can't get a quick fix recovery from chronic dieting.  Take a listen to how becoming an intuitive eater IS achievable. You don't need to live the rest of your life in the "on a diet", "off a diet" trap.   

This episode is a continuation of me giving a brief summary of each of the 10 Intuitive Eating principles as written in the book Intuitive Eating by dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. In this episode, I discuss emotional eating. Why do we eat when we're not hungry? Many times we are using food to avoid feelings such as sadness, stress, anxiety, or anger. Other times we may eat because we are bored, procrastinating, or even celebrating.  On the road to intuitive eating, tackling emotional eating and ending the use of food to avoid feeling certain emotions is probably one of the most important steps. If you're eating emotionally on a regular basis you are not eating according to true feelings of hunger. Eating emotionally is not always a problem; we all do it here and there and that's perfectly fine. But when we eat emotionally on a regular basis and have no other coping mechanisms other than to use food, we simply are not meeting our needs on an emotional or spiritual level.  Listen here as I discuss s

Are you stuck in diet culture thinking that just one more diet will finally get you where you need to be? Are you holding on to your "skinny jeans" and other smaller sized clothes in hopes that when you find that perfect diet they will fit you? Do you randomly try on your old clothes hoping they will fit only to find out they still don't fit, you get upset, start body-bashing yourself, and vow to try some radical, overly-restrictive diet?  Part of the intuitive eating process means cleaning out your closet and buying clothes THAT FIT. Who needs a constant reminder that you are no longer the size you once were and hope to someday be again? I'm not saying that you may never be that size again. But for right now, while trying to DETOX yourself from toxic dieting, you need to start building up your self-esteem. And one BIG way to do this is feel good in the clothes you are wearing. Not to feel like you can't breathe in your jeans, or your shirt is clinging to parts of you that make you want to crawl out of your o

In this episode, we tackle two more intuitive eating principles. How do you get back in touch with what true fullness is after years of dieting and/or disordered eating?  How do you know what true satisfaction is from food when you've been eating less-than-satisfying options in an effort to control your body weight?  What's happening that you eat beyond fullness? Distracted eating? Emotional eating? Trying to please someone else?  And eating for satisfaction means eating what you REALLY want to eat. Not what some diet is telling you to eat.  Listen to the new episode and let me know what you think! I have an online intuitive eating course in the works to launch Fall 2019. More information about the course and how to register will be coming soon!

Do you obsess too much about exercise and eating while on vacation that it ends up ruining your trip? Vacation is a good place to start practicing intuitive eating so you can enjoy your trip! When you are so knee-deep in disordered eating, controlling every morsel of food that enters your mouth, and never straying from a rigid exercise schedule, you can’t just take a vacation from that when you’re on vacation. I know this because I couldn’t do it. When our family went on our first Disney trip in 2017 I was dabbling on and off with intuitive eating. That trip was the first trip in years where I didn't torture myself with exercise and obsessive-compulsive thoughts about what I was eating and what could be happening to my body.  This episode corresponds with my latest blog post, How My Disney Trip Helped with My Intuitive Eating Journey. Check it out and if you don't like reading listen to this episode instead!  

This is Episode 3 in a series to help give you a snapshot into the world of Intuitive Eating.  On this episode, I talk about steps to help you start making peace with food and allow yourself to eat the foods you crave. I talk about stopping those nagging, negative voices in your head that criticize your every move with food. 

Diet culture teaches us to ignore our hunger signals. When we diet and restrict food, we aren't eating when our body is truly hungry. We are eating based on a set of rules that tells us when to eat and what to eat. Doing this for a long period of time causes us to lose all sense of what true hunger feels like.  This episode covers how we can begin to reconnect with our true hunger again. What happens when we restrict and deny ourselves? What happens when we try to ignore our body telling us its hungry? How can we better honor our hunger and work toward being more intuitive? 

We dive into the very first Intuitive Eating principle that was written in Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole's book, Intuitive Eating. Principle number one in the book is "Reject the Diet Mentality", AKA, ditch diet thinking. The first step to embarking on this intuitive eating journey is to start ridding yourself of all of the diet crap.  Food measuring tools, scales, food diary apps, following people on Instagram who promote diet culture, etc.  You may not be able to do this all at once but you need to make a conscious effort to recognize the diet crap in your life and slowly start cleaning house.  This first step will be hard. This could take a while and that's perfectly fine. You may do this "ditch diet thinking" step for a while, on and off, through the rest of your intuitive eating journey.  It's something you will always come back to in your ever-evolving intuitive eating practice.  Enjoy this episode as I share practical advice as well as my own journey as to how I slowly, step by step, ditched the diet

This is the very first episode of the Speaking of Hungry podcast. Episode 0 is a brief introduction to let you know what my podcast is all about. Take a listen and find out if you want to subscribe and listen to future episodes all about intuitive eating, anti-diet, and body positivity. I'm so glad you are here and listening!!