IFD, Intuitive Eating, and Changing your Mind

So before you read this post, Imma need ya to go listen to this episode of the Party in my Plants podcast. and while your there subscribe to the podcast, give Talia a lil support and you'll get some hilarious and helpful noise in your ears that you'll be super thankful for.

Party in my Plants - Isabel Foxen Duke

Check out IFD's website here

{Second preface - this is more of a blog post/reactionary journal entry about healthy living, not just plant based eating.}

So I just listened to this episode of Party in my Plants, my new fav podcast, and the guest was Isabel Foxen Duke. She was on talking about loving your body at any size, changing the relationship we have to food, and intuitive eating.

This was seriously life changing an mind-blowing.

As a nutritionist, you could understand why I'm so shocked and blown away by the message of this podcast. I thought I had a great understanding of food and our relationship to food, but this podcast changed everything.

I'm not going to recite the whole podcast, so if you ignored my previous request, GO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST -Episode #72. Here are a few things that really struck me.

As i reflected on this podcast and new gospel I had just absorbed, I thought back on my whole life and that always, always, always, I was conscious of my weight and my "duke hips" (our family name for our pear shaped family). my sister was effortlessly thin and I struggled to stay under 150. This not only created so many bad relationships and affiliations with food, but also underlying thoughts about thin people everywhere. This message of IFD's says, if your a size 8 shoe, you don't try to wear a size 6. Own your size. Your body is meant to self regulate its weight, when there are no extremes. so instead of under eating, over eating, killing yourself at the gym, just make healthy decisions. Don't blow off a night with your gals to go to the gym. Life is a balance. Talia talked on the podcast about when her mother in law was dying, she wasn't thinking about her weight! She was thinking about her life experiences. So lets experience life!

One warning I noticed is that you could easily adopt this new lifestyle and say, "woo hoo, I can eat anything I want whenever I want and if I don't want to workout I don't have to!!" I believe this to be an easy hole to slip into bad behaviors, but IFD is very purposeful in talking about making healthy choices, and if you are finding yourself with cravings and over indulging, addressing the actual emotion behind the notion (you like that one). Talia had Simi Botic on in an other episode of Part in my Plants (episode #77), and Simi too follows this intuitive eating and talks about how she balances healthy choices that she knows are going to fuel her day, versus having whatever, whenever.

I love when IFD said, I started to teat myself like I would, my little daughter. you'd never tell your daughter, "okay what are we going to do to lose 10 lbs this month so we can be bathing suit ready." you'd say, okay, how are we going to keep you healthy, and active.

 IFD takes about how her normal behaviors of "dieting" made her turn the intuitive eating into a diet and she caught herself "falling off the intuitive eating wagon". This was nice to hear because as I was getting myself psyched up for this life changing message, the devil inside me said, "meh, this might work for you for a week" but the deeper I dove, and the more I listened, the clearer it got, that the point is, and as IFD's website makes clear, the problem isn't falling off the wagon, the problem is the wagon.

In the interview, Talia said she ran into a friend of IFD's and Talia said to her "oh I wish I could tone up my legs for shorts" and her friend said, "why?" and Talia didn't have an answer. And it really made me think about, "why do we want to look a certain way" or "who said I should be this numerical weight", "do I think I'll find true happiness if i look fit and toned?" Its really worth analyzing your motivations and the true source behind where they stem from.

Its so freeing to think, I'm eating because I'm hungry, or I'm eating to fuel my day, and if I feel myself wanting to overindulge, why is that. what is going on subconsciously, that is making me want to overeat.

I have this guy in my life who is super supportive and loves me and my body. I have never for one second been self conscious of my body around him. He also happens to be my husband. WINNING! But one thing Simi said on her episode of Party in my Plants, was, "if I could see myself the way my husband sees me, I wouldn't have body image issues." And that's very true. I am SO SO blessed to have my puzzle piece, and if I love my body they way he loves my body, then I'll never have body image issues again.

So that's my 2 cents about this podcast episode, Isabel Foxen Duke, and intuitive eating.

I hope this helps,

Turnip the Beet and Jam