Episode 14 Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 14 of the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I am your host of Victoria Welsby and in today's episode we're talking about why intuitive eating isn't working for you. Let's do it.

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast. I'm Victoria Welsby, TEDx speaker, best selling author, and fat activist. I have transformed my life from hating my body with desperately low self-esteem to being a courageous and confident Fierce Fatty who loves every inch of this jelly. Society teaches us living in a fat body is bad, but what if we spent less time, money, and energy on the pursuit of thinness and instead focused on the things that matter? Like if pineapple on pizza should be outlawed or if the mullet was the greatest haircut of the 20th century. So how do you stop negative beliefs about your fat body controlling your life? It's the Fierce Fatty Podcast. Let's begin.


Hello, hello my gorgeous souls. Welcome to this episode. How you doing? How you feeling? I'm feeling particularly good today cause it's getting brighter, isn't it? It felt almost like spring today where I am in in the middle of nowhere in Ireland, I had some birds tweeting and the sun is shining. I took my dog, Dougal out for a walk. It's so do you have a dog? Do you have dogs that like to rub their faces and their bodies in the most stinkiest, nastiest shit and disgustingness that they can find. My dog Dougal his smell, his nose receptive smell radar must be off the hook. Now I'm in the middle of nowhere and so I'm in like farm country and there's loads of like sheep poo and cow poo and just maneuver being sprayed on field and all sorts of things. And Dougal manages anytime that we go out to find the most disgusting smell. And when my back is turned for like 0.5 second, I'll turn around and he'll be like gleefully being like hahaha rubbing himself in this stuff. And he did it again today. I'm just like, no, what am I doing? And he did it the day before last and I have to give him a right every time he does this. And so I'm like, you know, bastard, why are you doing this to me? Yeah, but apart from that it was a nice walk and now the sun is not setting, but it's looking beautiful over the Irish Hills. I'm going to be here for a couple of more months and then in in Q one, sometime in Q one, I don't know when I'm going to be going back to Vancouver in Canada, which is where my base is. So anyway, that's what I've been up to cleaning up dirty dogs. And I took my mom's dog too, and she never does anything like that. But the thing that Dougal wrote in was so juicy that she did too. And so I'm like, Oh my God, my mom's dog is massive as well. This big fluffy the Jew looks dog, old English sheepdog. So I was like, why are you doing this to me?


Anyway, in today's episode we're talking about intuitive eating. I don't think that we've spoken much about intuitive eating yet, but it is a big part of what I teach. And the way that I live my life. And I think we should talk about it and what people struggle with in regards to intuitive eating. Because talking to people and coaching people, I see the same things come up again and again and again. And it's the same two things that are preventing people really being, I don't want to say being, doing intuitivity, eating well, but doing intuitive eating in a way which is feels good and isn't yet another diet or another set of rules.


And so I want to talk about the two ways that people stumble in intuitive eating. So in case you don't know what intuitive eating is, let me break it down for you. So the, what I like to call intuitive eating is intuitive eating is just eating. Like we'd never been fucked up by diet culture. So imagine, imagine a world where you were brought up when there was no such thing as diet culture and everyone was just balanced around food. OK. Not being like, Oh, you shouldn't eat that and all. Did you know that salary has 12 calories and you shouldn't have it before 3:00 PM or unless you'll put on like 17 pounds or whatever. You would just eat quote unquote normally you would eat what felt good. And when I say feel good, I mean what feels good to your tummy, what tastes good, what feels good in regards to how it affects your body.


And so you might be like, Ooh, I love chocolate that makes me feel good. And you might also be like, Ooh, I love vegetables cause they make me feel good or you might not, it just wouldn't be a big deal. And you would eat the things that your body needed and you would eat the things that your brain wanted and it just wouldn't be a big deal. You wouldn't be like, Oh my God, I need to work off that grain of sugar that I ate yesterday by doing 12 hours of intense cardio or whatever. You just wouldn't think like that because that's diet culture that has made you feel like that and fat phobia. But there's an official definition so intuitive eating is a term that was coined by Evelyn Tribole and Elise Rash in the 1990s and what they say on their website, which is intuitiveeating.org is intuitive eating is a self care eating framework which integrates instinct, emotion and irrational thought and was created by two dieticians, Evelyn and Elise in 1995 intuitive eating is a weight inclusive evidence based model with a validated assessment scale and over 100 studies to date. So it's been around for a while and really this type of eating wouldn't even need a name, but because of diet culture, it's this way of eating, which is quite strange if you think about because most people have some type of rules, some type of guilt, something going on, which means they can't eat in a way which is free from shame and guilt. It, I think it's, it's very rare to see an intuitive eater out in the wild who just was brought up as an intuitive eater and you would recognize them because as maybe if you're a former diet or, or you have your own stuff around food, you would see them. And they would just eat food and they just, you know, would just eat food and just be, just be quote unquote normal. And you'll be like, what is wrong with you? You're so weird, don't you? You know, don't you feel guilty for eating that or you know, they just seem relaxed around food. And so it's just, it's very strange if people haven't been affected by diet culture and have been taught things by their parents, which leads to disordered eating patterns or full blown eating disorders. So there are 10 principles within intuitive eating, so I'm gonna read them out to you. And so these are cannot, I don't want to say they're not prints, they're not rules because they're principles.


But these are the 10 things that intuitive eating comprised offs and let me just read them out to you. Number one, reject the diet mentality. Number two, honor your hunger. Number three, make peace with food. Number four, challenge the food police. Number five, respect your folders. Number six, discover the satisfaction factor. Number seven, honor your feelings without using food. Number eight, respect your body. Number nine, exercise. Feel the difference and number 10, honor your health with gentle nutrition. So I wanted to read those 10 principles out to you because this is where the mistake number one happens when people are trying to become intuitive eaters. Now, if you've ever been on a diet or you live in a culture that is fixated on dieting, which is most people in the world, then you have been taught that you are not to be trusted around food and around feeding yourself. And what diets do is they infantilize us. They say, you need to follow this diet because we will tell you what to eat, when to eat it, when to exercise for how long. We'll give you these trackers and these apps. And because you can't be trusted because if you left to your own devices, you're just gonna eat forever and just be so fat.


You need to let us do it for you because you're dumb basically is what we've learned and we have really internalized this. And so when people stop dieting and they start intuitive eating, they are really looking for that set of rules. And they look at the principles of intuitive eating and they put them as hard and fast rules, very black and white. And that's totally to be expected that you would think like that because we've been conditioned to think that we can't feed ourselves. Like I remember when I had stopped dieting, I had started to try and eat, I'd know differently, not intuitive eating, but I was trying to learn how to feed myself because I genuinely thought that I didn't know what to eat if it wasn't on a diet plan, like I was just in that you'd like, I don't know what to eat is what I thought the truth is.


My body was like, bitch, give me some beans or give me some cake or give me some whatever. Like I, my body was shouting at me saying hello, I know what we want to eat. And I'm like, Oh, shut up. Shut up. What do you want? Some like was that you want to own one lentil? What is that? So I was just very good at ignoring, listening to my body, which is normal, which is where a lot of people are. And I remember just going to this doing this weekend, this two day retreat thing, and it was all about wellness and what to eat. And they fed us and stuff. And at lunch they gave us like a tiny salad and there was a box of nuts as well. And I was saying to the person, like, so how many like, nuts should I eat as a snack?


Like should I eat like three nuts? Should I eat? Like what, like seven, like 20. And, and good for her that she didn't say, Oh, eat five nuts. She was like, I dunno what you want, kind of things. That was so lucky that because she could have easily just told me a number of what I should eat and I would have been like, well, that's the healthy amount to eat. And the reality is, eat what you want, right. What your body wants and needs and what you think you know is delicious. And I was just like, what give me an answer. Like, you know the answer. Tell me how many do you eat, you know, this is what I was saying in my head, but out, you know, I was like okay. I'm thinking there must be a number because I was craving someone to tell me what to do, how to feed myself.

I was just to let you like, I don't know how to eat like a normal person. And the whole time my body was like hello. I'm here. I'm telling you what you need. And you know, I'd have little whispers from my body being like, Oh, I really fancy this tonight. And I'm like, shut up. Yeah, you're not getting that or whatever it is. So it's really easy to put extreme kind of structure on things and this can lead to not being as successful with intuitive eating. And when I say being successful, what I mean is finding food freedom. It's not feeling out of control around food. It's not thinking about food that much apart from, Oh, I'm hungry. Oh, what do I want? Oh, let's go to this restaurant. Oh, that food's delicious or whatever. It's getting to a point where you just feel at peace and if you don't feel at peace, there's some more work to be done.


And of course it's not linear. It's not like you'll become an intuitive eater and then you'll get to a point and then you'll be like, done. I never have a single issue with food ever again, because then things always come up, right? So let's go through these principles and see how you could be making them too rigid for you and you have to trust yourself versus using outside information. And this, I like the way that they've called this principles versus rules or you must abide by this. And as we know, like with diets, if you didn't abide by X amount of calories or X amount of burpees or whatever it is, that it would have some sort of negative outcome, right? So we're very scared to not follow something to the team. So some of the principles that I'm going to mention, I want to go through how you could be making them not black and white.


So number one is reject the diet mentality. I think that's pretty, you know, basically try not to diet. Try not to think that dieting is the way to go and that's a process. And so that is something that makes sure that your making sure that you are working on it and it's going to take time. But the next one honor your hunger, now a lot of people, they might be like at work and their lunches are say 2:00 PM and it comes around to 1:00 PM and they're really hungry and they don't eat until their lunch break because their job means that they can't go often and eat. And so they're just like, Oh my God, I'm such a bad intuitive eater. I'm doing it wrong. I had to I didn't eat when I was hungry. And then when it came to 2:00 PM I was really, really ravenous. And then I ate all the food and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just a big loser and I'm not doing this wrong. This very black and white thinking, right? So life happens sometimes you are not going to be able to eat immediately at that point that you're hungry. Now you can do your best to anticipate things, right? Like so say you almost always have your lunch at 1:00 PM, but then someone, you know, one of your colleagues said, Hey, can you swap one with your lunch break cause I need to go and pick up my sick kid. And you're like, yeah, sure. And then something happened and you know, and then you're hungry. It's just life, right? Or your stay, you're hanging around with friends and someone says, well, I'm not hungry yet and we'll wait a little bit. And then that food, food takes ages to come and it's just live.


And so you're not a bad intuitive eater for not eating when you're hungry. What eating when you're hungry is doing, is helping you become in tune with your listening to your body. Because during our dieting is if you've dieted we celebrate hunger, right? Like when you're trying to lose way of feeding that hunger feeling in my belly, I'd be like, yes, I'm winning. Like literally right now my body is burning all of this disgusting fat. And so that hungry feeling would be a good thing. Or I'd be hungry at a time where I decided I shouldn't be hungry and I would just say to myself, Oh, I'm not hungry. I'm just thirsty. I'm not hungry. Or if I am hungry I'll just eat some some, some air. I'll just I just gulp some air. And, and kind of ignore that signal or some people don't really feel that signal at all or very much cause it might be years that about you that your body's like hello hungry and then you're just like, shut up.


Don't care about what you're saying to me. And eventually your body might be like, Oh fine, fuck you. You never feed me when I'm hungry so I'm just going to stop sending this signal to you. And so when you try and start feeding that hunger, you're like mine. Don't feel it when it's not there. I don't feel hungry and it could be that you just tend to not feel that hungry or it could be that the signal is so weak from years of ignoring it, that it just needs time to build up trust and for you to be like, listen, I'm going to listen to you now. And then eventually you bought it. Be like, okay, and try this out. And then once you listened to your hunger, then your body's going to start giving you those hunger signals because it knows that you are going to feed it.


So are you being very black and white around that only your hunger. Like I say, try and plan as much as you can because you know, it's not fun to be very, very hungry, right? I know that when I, this was something that I struggled with is I would get so into doing my work, I'd be like, I'm in the zone, I'm in the zone, right? And I could feel that I was hungry and I'd be like, no, no, no. I'll just 10 more minutes or whatever. I now turn into an hour and then I just stop and be like, ah, I'm so ravenous and then my blood sugar would get low and I'd just be like, I just needed to feed myself. Literally, I like felt faint sort of thing. And so I started recognizing that I'd had this, how would have this pattern of getting in the zone is loving what I was doing.


So I would make sure that before that point I would have something, some snack or whatever to take the edge off. So that when it did get to a point where I was out of the zone or finish doing whatever I was doing, I wasn't so ravenous, right. Cause I recognize that that feeling wasn't a feeding that I liked because it made me feel kind of like cold and sweaty and my car was about to faint and I couldn't get food into me fast enough. And just it wasn't a good feeling for me, right. So now I am a lot better with that and I will always do my best to eat and try and plan ahead. But always, you know, life is not perfect and things happen. So number five of the principle is respect your fullness. Now respect your fullness.


What ban is all about, again, is getting in touch with your body. When we're in diet land, what we will do is we'll do two things. We'll either not eat enough and not be full because the diet plan has said that you're allowed to eat two grains of rice and one grain of salt. And then when you be in those two grains of rice and one grain of salt, you're not full. But you're like, well, the diet plan says that. And so you're not getting that feeling of fullness or when you're dieting, it's like a pendulum. You will restrict. And the natural response is to binge. And I never knew this, and for years I was like, Oh my God, I'm a monster because I will eat a lot of food in one sitting. And the reason was because I was restricting so extremely that my body was fighting back and doing everything it could to get me to a place where I was feeding myself.


And so it was absolutely normal that, that you binge if you do binge. And the reasons are all the times behind it is because you've been restricting. So you might feel more full, you might feel uncomfortably full. And so that might might have been the pattern that you've come from. And so when it comes to respecting your fullness, well again, if you're looking at this black and white, you could be sat at the table being like, am I, what's my level of fullness? Like, you know, being very precious about it and being like, am I full enough? Am I not full enough? Did I eat one pea too many? And now I've gone over and now I went from being satisfied to being too full. You know, in the beginning it's nice to be curious about those things, but if at every meal you're really getting into the weeds of, ah, I don't know, and am I doing this right?


And and not allowing yourself to eat more than what your body needs. And here's 1000, 1000000% to eat okay to eat more than your body needs. Sometimes you might eat more because the thing is fucking delicious and you just really like the thing and you eat more. It's not big deal, right? Well sometimes you might just want that, that feeling of more being more full and that's fine. Or sometimes you might want to not be as full and that's fine. You're right. It's all good. It's all fine. It's what you want to do with your body. You're not being a good or bad intuitive eater if you're not being quote unquote perfect with honoring your respecting your fullness. And sometimes I will eat more, I will not like kind of notice what I've eaten. And then I'll have like another bite and I'll be like, Oh.


And then all of a sudden my fullness will hit and I'm like, Oh, I ate more than I wanted. And it's just, it's not a big deal. I'll just be like, Oh, you know, next time I know that maybe this amount of food is enough to make me feel satisfied. And then this amount of food I feel maybe uncomfortable in my tummy and, or maybe I want that feeling, you know, who knows. So are you being black and white with that? And if you are, try not to next number seven, honor your feelings without using food. Now, if I was smart enough to be back in 1995 and writing intuitive eating principles, I might be hesitant on putting this in as a principle because it is very, very easy to use this look at this principle and think that you're doing something wrong by using food to manage your emotions.


You in the past might have, I have a used food to cope with difficult emotions to cope with hard times or even use food as a celebration. People do it all over the world every single day, you know, like kind of birthday having a birthday cake, going out for a meal with to celebrate or whatever. We are using food to honor our feelings all the time. And it's absolutely okay. And you where if you've done this very, very smart and resourceful for doing that, especially at times where you had limited power in your life. So for example, when you were a child, so I used food to help me cope with a difficult childhood and it was great because what we'll see alternative, right? Really, what was the alternative? I broke down, I did something else. Something that was very destructive. What was the alternative at that time?


That for me, you know, the best alternative would be idea. If we lived in an ideal world, then I would have been in like therapy and all that type of stuff. But that wasn't, that wasn't my reality. Right? So you did something that was very, very smart and you helped yourself survive. And if you still do use food to honor your feelings, you're still doing that, right? You're helping yourself cope maybe with emotions and feelings that could be life threatening and your, if you are getting some type of comfort with food, I mean really does that make you the devil really? You know, one of my my clients said she had like a really terrible day and, and she got some, she'll do some popcorn and she was kind of telling me this is maybe like, maybe this was a bad thing because she used popcorn to comfort herself. And I was like, Oh my God, popcorn, you ate some popcorn. Oh my God. Call the police. She's eating a popcorn cause she had a bad day.


Oh my God. Outrageous. And in reality and that is just some fucking popcorn. Like, Oh, you know, it's all good. It's fine. Now there might become a time and maybe not, there may be a time where you identify that there are more complex things going on and you now have the resources or the ability on all the desire to own your feelings and your emotions in a variety of ways. Y1ou might not want to, right. So you might be like, okay, well I'm having a really difficult time with this thing and I have been eating food and that makes me feel better, but still I think I need to do something a bit more as well, or something different and try out and see if that helps. Even better and so you might be like, okay, well I'm going to go to therapy or I'm going to go and talk to a friend or I'm going to go watch some cheesy Netflix thing or whatever.


And you might notice that that is more helpful or not or not, it might be that the using food is the best thing for you, right? So there's nothing wrong with using food to help you survive life, but you might get to a point where you might want to explore other things as well. So for example like, so we all use every, like it's society uses food is totally tied in with our emotions with the happiness and you know, sadness and big events and things like that is the consumption of things. And so, you know, but we're demonizing it when it's in fat bodies, right? So take the black and white out of it and take out, you know, Oh, you know, I had this thing cause I was sad and I'm now I'm bad.


I'm bad cause I did that. You know, you're just a human being, right? And you're doing your best. You're doing your best to survive. Okay. So, number nine of the principles is exercise. Feel the difference. So how could that be black and white? How could you be making that black and white very easily? Especially, this is another one. I might, if I was in, you know, changing the principles, I might be like exercise if you want it, but if you don't want to do just chill, just don't worry about it. Not, not as succinct as exercise. Well, the difference, right? Because I just recognize that so often, dieters, ex dieters and people living in diet culture, AKA everyone turn it into if I'm not doing it, then I'm wrong. You might not be an exercising type person. That's fine, right?


You might have incredible trauma around exercising. Even the word, like I don't use a word exercise because for me exercise means running around the school field on a freezing November day being the last and my bum wobbling and being really ashamed and the teacher being like, why are you so slow and being picked last and I'm going to throw up from exercise and so much at the CrossFit place and you know, that type of thing. That's what exercise brings to my mind. So I don't even use that word. I just use the word movement or I might just say, you know, dancing or just having fun or whatever. I'm going for a walk. And so your, you could have connotations with that, which means that you're not able to at the moment engage in physical activity because it's just a whole load of negativity and shit in your brain, which is understandable.


You know, so many fat people have that story of absolute abuse at the hands of PE teachers and gym teachers at their schools, cruelty, ughhh, from the kids and the teachers and no understanding for the dynamics of what is at play. When you're a young person and you live in a bigger body or you know, anyone who's just not as as athletic, right. And it's a very big kind of like if you are athletic, then you are one of the cool kids sort of thing. So if you want to move your body, great. If you don't, there is no more reality in moving your body or not moving your body, right. Reagan Chastain says it's more equivalent to do a marathon or a net Netflix marathon. Both are morally equivalent. And that's absolutely true. Obviously our society doesn't say that. But if you want to say, if you, you're just like fuck exercise because you know I've had bad experiences with it.


Or you could have the belief like, I believe the exercise, the only reason to exercise was to punish your bad fat body. And therefore it was not to be enjoyable. And so when I was in my dieting days, I would do things like go to the gym, boring, go running, not my favorite, go to these like fitness classes where it's all filled with like Guinea people and doing things like BA peas and stuff, right. I would do things like that because I thought exercise wasn't fun. You did it as a punishment, as a penance for living in this body. And then one day I went to, I don't know what it was and maybe a dance class and I was like, what the fuck? This was fun.


And the instructor didn't once mention like, come on guys, burn those calories. Like let's trim up bombs or anything like that. It was just, yes, I feel like Beyonce right now. And then I had this realization, Oh my God, you can move your body for fun. And I realized that I moved my body all the time like riding my bike, but I didn't count that as exercise because it was kind of like, it was away to travel, right? Or walking. I was as well, that's just a way to get from A to B, right? It's not exercise, but it is, you know, in the word, you know, the definition of exercise because I didn't have any negative feelings attached towards it. So could you try something which you don't have anything negative to attached to or don't know?


Like if you don't want to, don't. My personality type is, I I have a personality type. This is the Myers Briggs by the way. Is free to do a test online to see what type of personality you have. It's like something that everyone uses is like the really common like personality indicator thing. Everyone date your profiles are like, my mind's Briggs is this, this, this, and and my Myers Briggs is the performer slash athlete. So it's a part of my personality type to enjoy moving my body. It's just something that I like, I like doing adventurous things. Like if someone said, what do you want to do on your birthday? I'll be like, Oh, let's go kayaking or let's go white water rafting. Or like I like that's my preference is to do something like movement, something fun like that.


That's just my personality type. Some people never exercise. Some people are not able to move their body. So this, this number nine is able to just, right, because some people can't. Does that mean you're not a good intuitive eater? Nope. No, it's not. It does not mean that you're not good intuitive eater if you never exercise a day in your life or if you are a professional athlete and you exercise all the time, that doesn't mean that your like Goldstar intuitive eater, not just you're just a person, right? And then number 10 of the principles is honor your health with gentle nutrition. Now thinking about this, when you start intuitive eating can really throw you off because to begin with, you almost have to throw out all the rules and just feed yourself everything that you have denied yourself and so you to do that.


You almost can't think about nutrition in that moment. Now that stage doesn't last forever, but it's crucial that you do do that refeeding stage because you are really healing and beginning that relationship with your body again. Now the nutrition thing comes in. Now there's different stages of intuitive eating. There's the beginning where you're like a wild you're, it's like you're a teenager and you're like, fuck the rules. And it's so important to be that teenager of like, fuck the rules. Like because you've been living under diet rules for years and so you have to go mad and go explore the world and AKA eat the food that you have been denying yourself for years and years. And it's a really important stage of intuitive eating. And there's you'll do that for however long a piece of string is and eventually you'll be like, well, that was cool, but I'm a different stage of my life now.


You know, the life of intuitive of an intuitive eater. And you'll start to be like, well, how does this food make me feel? And what does this, you know, do in my body? Does it make my tummy feel good? Does it make me feel alive and vibrant after? Or do I notice that if I eat that thing, it makes me feel a bit yucky? Or what ways can I get more different variety of foods in my life? Like you naturally get to this point. So if you're not feeling like you're naturally curious about gentle nutrition that you're, you're not there yet, right? You have to just be get there naturally. And this can be really frustrating for people because people want to get started in intuitive eating, eat the food and get it over with so that they can just not eat all the food because they don't want to because the scared of the consequences.


But the more that you have fear about the consequences of eating food, the more that you'll stay at that stage. And there's no way to know how long you need to have that healing time. And it's really important. It's kind of like I, like I say, it's your medicine, right? Like you have to take your medicine and sometimes you don't want to. But you have to, you have to take that medicine so that you can begin to feel better. And a lot of people just do, you know, want to know and avoid it and should make it short and put on diet rules onto what they're eating in this stage. Because a lot of people are very clued in on, on the nutritional value of the things that are they're eating. And so they're like, Oh my God, this is X amount of calories and this is this.


And if I have this and Oh my God, I'm just going to put on so much weight and woo, and they lose their mind, right? So the gentle nutrition comes at a later stage. And if you are not able to think about that without being triggered, without having a big emotional response of kind of like, fuck you, no, I don't want to do that, then you're not ready, right. And there's nothing wrong with not being ready. It's just that is just where you are. And however long that refeeding stage tags, it's how long you have been dieting and also how much you let yourself be in that stage. So you could have been dieting for like, you know, you could be really young and I've only gone on one diet and then trying intuitive eating and the refeeding stage could take forever because you're like not really allowing yourself to eat what your brain and your body is telling you that it needs and wants.


Or you could be a lifelong diet or, and go through that stage relatively quickly because you're just like, I'm just trusting the process and just allow myself to eat exactly what I want and need without guilt and shame and making up for it by doing exercise and all that type of stuff. And you know, unless she wants to exercise and go ahead. So that's the first mistake is treating intuitive eating as a diet with expectations and set outcomes that black and white thinking. Being very strict with yourself, trying to be perfect, thinking that refeeding stage is too long. No one else has been doing this, you know, refeeding as long as me because I'm so greedy and I'm out of control. And you know, other people, they just do this for three minutes and then they're on to being, doing gentle nutrition but not me.


I'm just so greedy, you know. No, everyone thinks that, right. and as well on top of this is thinking that intuitive eating is going to make you thin. Oh. Hoping that having that hope in the back of your mind of being like, I had some people get thin from intuitive eating. If you ever see someone, you know, schlepping intuitive eating as a diet to get thin. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's wrong. They should be taken by the intuitive eating police and put into food prison or something. Because it's not a diet, right. And intuitive eating is getting you at a place of peace with food and we do not know what's going to happen to your weight. Your weight might stay the same. You might lose weight, you might gain weight, you might gain weight, then lose weight.


You know, we just don't know because when you're listening to your body there's a weight, there's a set weight that our bodies like to be out throughout our lives, which is a kind of 15 to 20 pound range that most people in their lives stay around that range because our bodies are happy at that weight. So with intuitive eating you get more aligned with your set point weight and we don't know what that is. You might know, you might, you might be like, well, all my life I've been around around this, give or take 10 or 20 pounds. So don't have any expectations of what you're going to way after or during or you know, you'll be doing intuitive eating for the rest of your life. So I don't have any expectations on that. If you do, if you're worried about getting fat or hoping that you're going to get thin, it's going to influence your intuitive eating and what you're eating and what you're not eating right, which is going to make it more difficult for you.


So that leaves it onto point two which is the number two reason why people struggle with intuitive eating is that whole idea about being scared to be fat. Internalized fat phobia. So this is math. This is really, really, really big and you cannot learn intuitive eating without also and learning fat phobia as much as possible. That's why I think, I think intuitive eating should be taught as much as possible by fat people and or have a massive portion of breaking down fat phobia alongside it. Because the whole reason we're kind of in this place where we don't trust our bodies, where we can't eat quote unquote normally we're not at food piece is because we are so goddamn terrified of being fat or fatter. So the big thing about intuitive eating is letting go. And so many people really struggle with this really, really, because the fear of eating X amount of things and that X amount of things turning into X amount of weight gain is terrifying.


You were literally running into the fire that you've been avoiding your whole life, right? You've been avoiding trying to get fat or fatter. You've been doing the opposite. And right now, intuitive eating is saying, eat what you want. And you know, in your head you think you know, that eat what you want in the past, when you have eaten what you want, is meant that you've got fatter, right? So you're taking that past experience and you're like, well, I know, I know myself. I will never stop eating. If I can give myself permission to eat whatever I want, I will eat until I die, until my stomach explodes. Side note, when I was a kid, I someone told me that there was a story about a woman on Christmas day that ate so much, her stomach exploded and she died. Is that a true story?


A very unlikely cause you, you just vomit it wouldn't you if he ate too much. Anyway, so I thought I would, that was my fate. I truly believed my fate was death from stomach explosion. And on Christmas day, like whenever I'd ID, you know, you'd eat like a lot. I'm thinking, okay, this is the day I die. This is it. This is how I die. I kind of thought, well definitely I'm the type of person to die from stomach explosion, from eating too much. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. That is not going to happen. The reality is a lot different. So I wrote Huffington post asked me to write an article on intuitive eating a couple of months ago. And I have an analogy which kind of helps it makes sense for people. So this is my analogy. So imagine your thing that you can't be trusted around if thing that you really fixate on or you love and it's the best thing, say it's chocolate, right?


Imagine one morning you woke up and you went downstairs, you went to your kitchen. To make breakfast and you opened your cupboard and the cupboards were filled with chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate cakes, or different variety of chocolate, your favorite and new chocolate you've never tried. You open the fridge and it's filled with chocolate mousses and chocolate eclairs and fancy fondants. And you look at your kitchen table and you have a chocolate fondue. You have a chocolate fountain with all of the chocolate just dripping everywhere. You turn on the tap and outcomes, chocolate milk, there's chocolate everywhere. And as soon as you take a chocolate, it is magically replenished. And to begin with, you're like fuck yes. And you put your head under the tap and you drink the chocolate milk and you're just handfuls of chocolate and you're bathing in the chocolate fondue and you're just, Oh my God, just eating all the chocolate is amazing.


And you just love it. And this is your diet. Now you are only allowed to eat chocolate. And how long do you think that you could be doing that before that gets old before you're like a fucking chocolate. How long? And imagine if you, you know, society told you you need to be eating that chocolate and everyone around was like, Oh well you're not on your chocolate diet and at work, you know, you go out, you go out to a buffet with all your colleagues and you notice over there is, Oh, there's a salad bar over there. What you wouldn't do for, you know, some crisp fresh lettuce. And so you sneak it, you go to that salad bar and you have some lettuce, cold cucumbers and some all those little tomatoes and it burst in your mouth and say, Oh, so delicious. But you feel guilty because you've slipped from your chocolate diet, but you can't stop thinking about that salad and all the other food that you have been denying yourself and soon chocolate.


It just, you don't want it. You just fed up with it because that's all you're allowed to eat. You're being forced to eat chocolate and you would really love for your taps to just turn back to water and for your cupboards to be filled with a variety of things and to get back to a place where you like chocolate. But you know it's not that big of a deal because you know that you have abundance. So this is, this is kind of what we're doing in society with dieting, but swap chocolate for some, you know, healthy food groups or whatever that we should quote unquote should be eating. And the salad is the bad thing, right? And so you can see how ridiculous it is, right? And you can see how once you allow yourself anything that you want it, the power soon goes very soon goes.


And we don't want to get to a point where you're like, I hate that thing now because no, we want you to still have joy with food. There will be a stage where you don't feel joy with food because all the emotion is taken out of it. And it's very sad intuitive eating. But generally speaking, we don't want you to get to a place where you like being forced fed chocolate and you're like, never again. The idea is just to show you to illustrate the in reality, you're not going to eat the thing that you're scared to eat 24 hours a day for the next, you know, 365 days for the next 10 years for the next, because you'll get bored of it. It's like this illicit thing is elicit right now in your head is elicit because you've not allowed yourself it because society has told you that you shouldn't have too many of those things.


And if you do, you're greedy. If you do, your heart will immediately stop because lard will be running through your veins. You know, and we give it this such power. And, and it starts from a really young age, right? I've, I've spoken about this before, how from a young age we're saying to children, eat your greens. Make sure you eat your vegetables. And we're telling kids, vegetables are disgusting. Eat them. They're horrible. We have to really bribe you to eat them. If you eat them, you'll get dessert. And we teach in care's dessert is this thing that we've put on a pedestal. It's so delicious. You'll be lucky if he get it because it's so delicious. But what if, you know, we just treated the thing that we, this elicit food that we've put into our brain that's so bad, you can't control yourself around it.


It's just a normal food, right? It, it might seem manned to think like, I could never be like that around this food group, but if you filled your cupboards with all of the food group that, whatever it is, and it might be a lot of different things, you literally knew that you had a never ending supply of it. No matter how much away it would just be replenished and it won't be replenished from magic. It will be replenished by you going to the store and buying more. It was soon lose its, you know you know, that sex appeal will go because you'll just be like, ah, whatever. It's just another food. Yeah, I enjoy it. But you know, whatever, you know, it's just not a big deal. So if you're afraid about that refeeding stage because you're going to get fat, if you don't have that fear of fat and have that fare that you are out of control, you were this gluttonous peg that's just going to eat forever and you're going to be that story in the newspaper of woman dies from stomach explosion, from eating 57,000 donuts.


Once you let that that story go, because this is the story, right? It's not based in reality. You I'll get, I'll get someone being like, here's the article about the woman who kind of died on Christmas day, ruin their stomach explosion. No, he's not reality, right? Is it? That's not actually what's going to happen, but we're so scared of the consequences. We've been told that that will happen to us if we eat this, these certain foods that we're scared to eat or we're told that are unhealthy. But say if you, if you were like, I can't let the idea go that this food is unhealthy. So imagine, what about if you think about it this way, okay. You can't let go of the idea that food is unhealthy and it means that automatically you're going to be unhealthy because you're eating it. Are we eating lots of it?


So theoretically you are. Instead of focusing on your physical health, what you're doing is temporarily focusing on your mental health, which is not true. Intuitive eating helps you focus on both but say you can't let that go. Is it possible for you to focus on your mental health more than your physical health temporarily? Is it, is that okay for you to do? If you're in a better place with your mental health and your, your feelings around food, then would you be in a better place to then focus on your physical health? If that's what's important for you? And it doesn't have to be. It's absolutely okay if you don't want to be healthy. If that's not not something that is, you know, setting your world on fire, you're morally equivalent, right? But so can you do that? Can you focus on something else about your health temporarily. Because this stage is temporary, right? And what if you do put on way, what if you do put on a lot of weight? How does that make you feel? Is that like a hell fucking no, I, Oh no, I can't do that. Would it means that you need to work on your fat phobia and we all have fat phobic beliefs, even me spoken about this before, we all have our phobic beliefs because we live in fat phobic societies and we can't help but absorb them. And so you always need to be working on your fat phobia and all the other, you know, bullshit things that we believe, you know, believe in, Oh our racism and or all the other ways that we're beggars. But if you've got a big case of fat phobia, that will be the second reason why you're really struggling with intuitive eating.


So I want to make this as easy as possible for you. So I have made a workbook to go along with this episode and it's called the Intuitive Eating Breakthrough. Boom workbook. And this workbook is going to help you understand the ways in which your intuitive eating is being sabotaged by your thoughts and your beliefs. So to get it go to Oh, what's the web address? It's always right here. There we go, fiercefatty.com/014. That's for episode 14. So www.fiercefatty.com/014, Episode 14. Also I'll drop the link, if you're listening to this in iTunes or what's the other one? Spotify. I'll drop a link. I'll drop the link for it in the show notes. Okay. So that we can you can go deeper on it.


So this Intuitive Eating Breakthrough work book that I've made for you. So what do you think, has that brought you some clarity? Now, by the way, a lot of times people think, Oh, I'm not doing that. I'm not being black and white. And I'm not, I'm not. Because they don't realize, they don't realize it until someone who has been doing it or has more clarity, can be like, yeah, that's kinda, that's kind of fat phobic. Oh yeah. That's kind of, that's kinda diety. You just don't realize it, right? Because you're in it, you're in it, you just, you know, and so you might be like, eh, that's not me. But if you're struggling, is it, is it, is it yeah.


So a little fact about me and today's fact is the last book I read, the last book I read, I finished it last night, very proud of myself and that was Happy Fat by Sophie Hagan and Sophie is a comedian. And of course the book was funny, but also very serious and important and very well written and entertaining. I got through it in maybe five days and I'm not really, I'm not a book reader really. I normally listen to books. I'm not a massive reader, but I, I do you know what I bought it when I went into the, Who Are You Calling Fat house fulfillment? Cause I knew that we wouldn't be allowed our phones. But they didn't get a chance to read it then because it was so fucking busy. And then I've had it on the side being like read me, read me since. Anyway, so I definitely would recommend reading Sophie's book. I'll link it on the show notes as well, and I've just bought another book Losing It by Kai Hibbard. Now Kai was in the third season of the biggest loser and I was reminded that it was on my list of books to buy and I've just been really inspired.


I want to read it immediately. I'm going to read it after I've finished recording because today, Jillian Michaels, the the trainer that used to be on the biggest loser Shane Lizzo fucking not bad. Oh, if I was that presenter, this shit. So what is it she said? She said Jillian Michaels said the present. It was like, Oh we Lizzo and all these people who are representing different body types. And Jillian Michaels was like, why do I need to think about her body? Why are we even thinking about her body? Cause it's not going to be awesome when she gets diabetes fucking idiot. Oh my God. Jillian Michaels is a massive knob. She's had like loads of lawsuits against her because she's been schlepping these diet pills that, you know, kill people and stuff. And she's all like, Oh, I'm worried about your health boo fucking shit.


So Kai Hibbard who was she's under some really strict contract from the biggest loser, they basically take away all your rights about talking about it. And so this book is quote unquote fictional, the fictional story of her Kai's time in the biggest loser experience. But by, I think it's basically so 100% true and how they abused them and told them not to eat anything and made them exercise for eight hours a day and made them exercise on, on you know, broken ankles and shit like that and, and said that coffee is a meal and gave them pills to you know, the basic of the diet pills to make them make the hearts race ready fast. And, and yeah. So Jillian Michael's greedy has about fat people's house so much so that she physically and abuses them.


She loves fat people not yeah, so Kai shared about her book that she wrote and it came out last year. And so it's been on my things to buy less since then, but I really want to read it now because I want to read all the shit or nurturing Jillian Michaels and all of the awful stuff that she did. I want to know more about it, but there's a really, really good, is it New York times article? I think there's New York times article on the, the repercussions that the biggest loser contestants have suffered after being in doing that and how the metabolisms are so fucked up and how, I think one guy was like, Oh, we can only eat 600 calories a day. And if he ate more than that, then he'd put on weight and yeah, it's just heartbreaking. And I used to love that show. Oh my God, that you show. Oh, I would binge watch so many seasons of that show. Ugh. I just think about the amount of fat. Hate that really, that really contributed. And I really believed, you know, when the trainers are, be like, you're so nosy and come on, keep doing. I'd be like, Oh, look at those disgusting fat people. They're just so lazy. Like, why don't they just keep working out? If they weren't so fat, they could work out more. And why? If they only lost 20 pounds this week, you know last week they lost 30 pounds and you know, it just really contributed towards my fat hate. So, Hey, if you're still watching that show and you're trying to love your fat body, here's a little Clover. You don't watch it. It's gonna make you hate your fat body even more.


And it's funny, isn't it? How funny how they do the before pictures and they always make sure that the before pictures look as as unappealing as possible. Like they put them in shit, cloves and you know, make sure that they don't look very happy. And then the after pictures, they're in a glamorous dress with high heels and full makeup and all that type of stuff and, and obviously thinner. And and that's just even the beginning of the bullshit. That's, that's the biggest loser. So, yeah, I'm going to read that book. Losing it by Kai Hibbard. I'll link that and Sophie's book and actually I'm going to link that New York times and let me just write it down. Link New York times article. I want to find it for you and put it in the show notes that you can have a little read that was really interesting and sad as well.


So, Hey, if you want a book to read for free, why not leave a review for this podcast which will really help me because it's going to spread the word. The podcast streaming services really like to promote podcasts that have lots of reviews. Leave a review for the show and say how amazing and good looking I am. Something like that. And before you submit your review, take a screenshot and email me victoria@fiercefatty.com with your review and I'm going to send you a digital and audio version of my book Fierce Fatty so you can get your read on with that, listen to it or read it. And share on social media that you're listening to Fierce Fatty. And I will put you in a drawer to win a Fierce Fatty cup to drink beverages out of. Oh, you can do anything with it. Use it as a hat. Try and put your foot in it and use it as a shoe. Whatever you do, I'm not the boss of you. You do what you want with your cup when you win it.


So thanks for hanging out with me today. It's been fun. Yeah, I'll see you at the I'll see ya. I'll see ya the next episode. Okay. So see you later, crocodile. Okay.