The Weight Loss Debate: Do All Food Changes Lead to Disordered Patterns?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:01:05]:
Hello and welcome to the final episode of season four. Of course, not final episode of the podcast, but yes, final episode of this season. We were waiting to unleash this episode, I guess you could say, until the very last, because we wanted context for basically four seasons before we brought this.

Michelle Shapiro [00:01:36]:
Topic to you all.

Michelle Shapiro [00:01:37]:
There's so much about the quiet the diet podcast that has evolved since its beginning. And one thing that we have always promised is to come into conversations with a really nuanced and as compassionate of a perspective as we can. And throughout the time we've been recording, throughout the time we've been seeing clients, for myself, that's ten years. You know, for Nikki, several years. At this point, too, we've really seen trends in what people's experiences are, and what we always want to bring to light in this podcast, and really, especially in this episode, is how what we experience in society and what the societal perception of health is influences what we believe we're allowed to experience. And there's been this really specific trend that's happened recently where we've noticed clients writing in their application forms and in client sessions refusing to say that they want to lose weight. That's one thing we've noticed, and we've kind of realized it's because weight loss has become something that's socially taboo to want with the body. Positive influencers and nutritionists at the forefront.

Michelle Shapiro [00:02:54]:
Of what we see on social media.

Michelle Shapiro [00:02:56]:
It almost feels like people are trapped between doing something really aggressive and restrictive and then, on the other hand, just not approaching their health goals at all.

Michelle Shapiro [00:03:07]:
So we've talked about this many times.

 

It's okay to want to lose weight

Michelle Shapiro [00:03:09]:
On the podcast, always with that nuanced lens. And we're definitely going to just talk about how people are afraid to speak out, that they want to lose weight. So I just want to tell you right now, it's okay to want to lose weight, and it's okay to, in a safe way, pursue weight loss goals. That is okay. What you want for your body is more important than what any practitioner wants for you. And I need you to hear me say that.

Michelle Shapiro [00:03:36]:
Additionally, in this episode, we're going to.

Michelle Shapiro [00:03:38]:
Talk about this really interesting phenomenon we're seeing, where people are so afraid that their health changes are going to lead them down disordered eating, down restrictive patterns they've had before, that they're actually scared to make changes in their health. At this point, for everyone listening, this.

Michelle Shapiro [00:03:57]:
Is so meta that this is the problems that we're seeing in America, where.

Michelle Shapiro [00:04:01]:
People are in many countries, of course.

Michelle Shapiro [00:04:03]:
But culturally, I'm seeing it a lot here where people are desperate for health.

Michelle Shapiro [00:04:08]:
Answers, but then scared to, let's say.

Michelle Shapiro [00:04:12]:
Do something like reducing intake of ultra.

Michelle Shapiro [00:04:14]:
Processed foods because they're fearful that taking out certain foods equals having an eating disorder or disordered eating. Now, I need to make a really big clarifying point here, which is that we also talk about the upwards of 10% to up to around 15% estimated of people in this country suffering from eating disorders or struggling with eating disorders. I would not say this episode is appropriate or the target audience for someone who is experiencing an eating disorder. I am saying this really, this episode is for because I think it's so important when we're giving nutrition information out. This episode is for someone who's developed a fear of disordered eating, a specific fear of falling into disordered eating patterns, and also wants to make health changes. So that's really who this episode is for. We've become so accustomed to believing that every piece of information online is for.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:14]:
Us and is suited for us. So I want to lay out for.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:18]:
You who this episode is for and.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:19]:
Who this episode is not for.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:21]:
So if, and it's not to say.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:24]:
There aren't ample resources for everyone, it's just that sometimes some resources are going to be safer or better or more.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:30]:
Helpful for certain people in certain stages of their health journey.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:34]:
So what we're really going to talk.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:35]:
About in this episode is how do we pursue health changes when we feel that fear of disordered eating. And when we want to lose weight, how do we make that feel okay for us? So this is very classic quiet the.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:50]:
Diet, a classic Nikki and Michelle episode.

Michelle Shapiro [00:05:53]:
I am so excited for you to listen to it, and I really want you to come in with an open mind, and I want you to look out for yourself. So if this resonates with you and your experience, I want you to get the information that is for you. And if it doesn't and that doesn't.

Michelle Shapiro [00:06:10]:
Feel right with you, it's just not.

Michelle Shapiro [00:06:11]:
The episode for you, and that's okay. But protect yourself first. Use information for you, and know that no matter where you are on a health journey, there's always hope, there's always answers, and there's always someone who's gonna absolutely and totally understand you. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. It was a blast to make with Nikki, and I think the message is.

 

Why is what we see about diet culture on social media a problem?

Michelle Shapiro [00:06:32]:
So important right now. Diet culture, as a phrase, has become this hugely over encompassing, covers everything word phrase that now has put people in a position where they feel like they've labeled everything as diet culture, and they have no tools that are okay for them to use to lose weight. So when we're talking about diet culture on this episode, we're going to define it kind of in our context of diet culture versus the context that we see of diet culture on social media. A lot of what we see on social media now is catered very specifically towards those with eating disorders. Nikki, tell us why that's a problem.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:07:23]:
10% of the population has an eating disorder, but the voice of eating disorder treatment has become some of the loudest on social media, which is now labeling, like you said, everything as diet culture.

Michelle Shapiro [00:07:40]:
So here's the problem with labeling everything as diet culture, and with the loudest voice on social media being the eating disorder voice. So if less than 10% of the population suffers from eating disorder, which we completely agree can be life threatening, extremely scary, and something that needs to be treated immediately. What about the other 90% of the population who's not suffering from an eating disorder? Where do their recommendations come from?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:08:07]:
And I think it's difficult for people who have had an eating disorder in the past that now want to lose weight because there's a fear of going back to that place. And now, since everything is being labeled as diet culture, there's a fear over engaging in any weight loss behavior which drives this other fear of, am I back in that restrictive place? Am I now taking a step back instead of a step forward in my journey? And now when we have every behavior or many behaviors being labeled as harmful, there's a fear over even starting this weight loss journey.

Michelle Shapiro [00:08:52]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And the concern for me, let's again look at a case study of a person. If someone came to us, Nikki, and they had diabetes and they had Crohn's disease, and they also had a disordered relationship with food, the question I would have is, what's the priority? And that's what we're missing in the nutrition space, is nutritional priority. If someone has a diagnosed eating disorder or an eating disorder that perpetuates life threatening behaviors, that is absolutely the priority. In addition to other medical concerns, disordered eating might not be the priority to treat. But the only messaging that we're getting online is that disordered eating must be treated first. It is the number one priority and is the most important thing to treat.

Michelle Shapiro [00:09:36]:
And that is really concerning to me, because if someone did come to us with diabetes, Crohn's disease and disordered eating, I can tell you I would be working with diabetes and Crohn's disease before I'd be working with the disordered eating now. Would I be sensitive the entire time and have people evaluate their relationship with food, not create new food fears for people, not do any unnecessary elimination diets? Yes, but if people are experiencing serious and severe symptoms from other medical concerns, I am going to address any concern that my clients have from a nutritional perspective, as a priority to them. So what I see a lot of nutrition professionals doing is treating whatever they feel is most important. So that what happens, and I've seen a lot, is clients are going to health at every size. Practitioners, they're going to other eating disorder professionals when they have other serious health concerns on the table. And that professional specializes in a modality of treatment. So they are looking at the person through their lens of what's most important for them. As functional dietitians, it's our responsibility to listen to what the client wants and what's their most important priority, and also incorporate what we think is most pressing and important and present it to them and get their consent on if it works for them.

Michelle Shapiro [00:10:57]:
So again, this recurrent theme is that disordered eating has become the primary priority for every person, no matter what health condition they have in the social media space. And this leaves a lot of people with not a lot of care.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:11:12]:
And I think it also confuses people. I've had a lot of people concerned that they have disordered eating when they are really just navigating a society that encourages disorder. We're navigating a society that has is we're just met with processed foods on a daily basis. And in order to include nutritious, nutrient dense foods in our diet, we have to be thinking a step ahead of in our day and maybe planning our meals or maybe just, you know, thinking for an extra second about what we're going to be eating. And a lot of people are concerned that that thought, that extra thought about what they're eating is disordered.

Michelle Shapiro [00:12:05]:
Yeah. So there's now become a new sort of disordered eating that is literally fear of disordered eating.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:12:12]:
Yes.

Michelle Shapiro [00:12:13]:
Which is this really fascinating thing. So if we walk it back, you know, the premise of this podcast has always been, how do we bridge the world of body positivity and bridge the world of functional nutrition? The concept of diet culture is so important because diet culture encompasses. For what most people consider diet culture encompasses fad diets, elimination diets, anything that is restrictive in any capacity. If you cut any food out, what we don't often hear about is food culture. Right. Which is that. Or processed food culture, which is that. All of these foods that have been introduced into our food supply in the last hundred years have disastrous consequences on our bodies.

Michelle Shapiro [00:12:55]:
But we're now not allowed to say that, and we're not allowed to kind of encourage people not to consume them without it being a potentially restrictive behavior. I have to be honest, I think food companies are just raking it in from this, and they must be so happy that there are dietitians promoting Starbucks frappuccinos with 70 grams of sugar, as we talked about in another episode on their platforms. Like, they. They're like, this is the best case scenario because food companies cannot be vilified at all. The only person who gets vilified is the person who's existing in diet culture. So there's now there's social implications of doing things that are, quote unquote diet culture y or disordered. So now people are afraid of this kind of, like, boogeyman of disordered eating, where they're like, I'm scared to do anything for my health because I'm scared I'll fall into disordered eating. Let me be clear about something.

Michelle Shapiro [00:13:46]:
Disordered eating is very stressful for people. It also can definitely lead to negative health outcomes, but it doesn't lead to every negative health outcome. There are other things that lead to negative health outcomes, and we're now becoming afraid it's not. You know, I think there's a lot of, like, fitness bros online who are, like, eating healthy's evil now. And it's like, it's not that hardcore, but I think what's happening is that people themselves are afraid to do things that are considered healthy. They are legitimately afraid to do them because they're scared that engaging in health promoting behaviors is going to give them an eating disorder.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:14:21]:
And what you said about, you know, disordered eating not being the cause of every negative health outcome, I have heard the argument when it comes to blood sugar, we know stress and poor sleep impact blood sugar. We know that. But if you're going into your morning after a great night's sleep, you have no stress at all. And now you're having that frappuccino, your blood sugar is still going to go up. So there comes a point where we need to address things from health and food perspective. Again, not an all or nothing perspective like we, you know, I still eat a processed food from time to time. But at the same time, when it comes to making conscious decisions about our health, as our society becomes more and more filled with opportunities to eat in a way that does not serve our health, we do have to think a little bit deeper and a little bit more frequently about decisions that we can make to further our health just because we are. We kind of have a lot stacked against us in our country right now.

Michelle Shapiro [00:15:33]:
You're telling me. Yeah. So I take people's health really seriously, and I don't think any of this is a game or any of this is to be taken lightly. And what I see a lot, again, is people who are making decisions for other people. So they are saying it's more important that you don't have disordered eating than it is that you don't have diabetes. Let someone make that decision for themselves. And I can guarantee you there are many people who would rather have some disorder relationship with food. If you had to pick, you don't have to pick.

Michelle Shapiro [00:16:03]:
You can have a healthy relationship with food and not have diabetes. Potentially. It depends on the person, obviously, and their state of health. But I think that it's really what always frustrates me about all this is that I'm seeing other people and practitioners decide what's important to someone else, and it's mostly not more important to avoid disorder eating and then engage in unhealthful promoting behaviors. So I think what happened was this, and we've talked about this a bunch on the podcast, but there was this body positivity movement that was a knee jerk reaction to extreme deprivation messages. Right? And this is real. I mean, diet culture as it stands, as a fad diet as trying to make people smaller, as judging people for being in larger bodies. Very real, definitely exists, really happened, really happens still to this day.

 

The reaction of the body positivity movement

Michelle Shapiro [00:16:49]:
I think as a reaction to that, the body positivity movement, which was started as a social political movement, kind of trickled into what we see now as nutritional information, online, social media and practitioners offices. It became this psychological solution, became a physical framework for how do we treat people? And what became the big boogeyman in all of this is to potentially have a disordered relationship with food. Disordered relationships with food are being sold as the root cause of every single health condition you can possibly have. So people are going to health at every size, practitioners, and they're saying you have diabetes because you have a disordered relationship with food. And my fear around that is, like you said, Nikki, if you're consuming 500 grams of carbohydrates a day and then you're also sleeping well, which it might be hard, honestly, to do, you're sleeping well and you're de stressed, those 500 grams of carbohydrates are still going to have a physiological effect on your body. So I think the belief is maybe from this group, if you have less of a disorder relationship with food, you'll naturally consume healthier foods. That's just not true. To be honest with you, people don't naturally consume healthier foods because we have to be very thoughtful and intentional to consume healthier foods.

Michelle Shapiro [00:18:08]:
Unfortunately, I wish we didn't have to think about these things to make them happen, but it is. We've seen it time and time again. I mean, there was a time in our career, both of us, Nikki, where we were working with clients. I was definitely more hopeful that if you work with someone's disorder relationship with food, then the rest of the health issues just figure themselves out. It's really not true. It really. It's just not scientifically proven. It's just not true.

Michelle Shapiro [00:18:32]:
And you need more than that. And that's where a dietitian should come in, as opposed to a dietitian only working with someone from a psychological perspective, which I feel is quite out of scope if you're not helping people with their physical problems, too.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:18:43]:
And it's interesting that you say that, because I think there's a lot of people who think that therapy is also the only response. That if you have disordered eating, that, you know, it's just therapy, or if you have, you know, any type of also stress and anxiety, that it's just therapy, as you mentioned, that top down approach. But we know that nutrition and the foods that we consume and our health status and the foods that we not only consume, but digest and absorb are also impacting our mental health, impacting our physical health. So we really need a combined approach of, yes, the psychological piece, but also the nutritional and that physical piece as well.

 

The fear of disordered eating as a new disordered eating style

Michelle Shapiro [00:19:28]:
Absolutely. Yeah. This fear of disordered eating being a new disordered eating style is really fascinating to me because, Nikki, you've been seeing a lot of clients coming to you recently who have been like, I want to eat more protein, but I'm scared that that's going to make me have an eating disorder. Tell us about that experience and what you've been seeing, because this is really. This is so meta at this point. It's like. It's like a world inside of a world inside of a world. Like, we've gotten so far down this path of labeling everything as diet, culture, and labeling everything as potentially disordered that now people don't.

Michelle Shapiro [00:20:02]:
They're. They're afraid of a boogie monster that might not even exist for them. So tell me about what. What's that experience of a client? Like, what are they experiencing?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:20:09]:
So I just want to call this out so I don't forget there's two experiences that I'm noticing, and one is in my clients who I work with, you know, on a weekly basis or bi weekly basis. One is on the discovery calls that we've been getting as well, in terms of people who want to lose weight but are afraid to try to do anything to lose weight. I would say, first, I want to mention something that I've noticed in my clients is that whether it comes to blood sugar management or prioritizing nutrient dense foods, but also prioritizing body cues and listening to hunger fullness signals. I think as a society, we've gotten really good at responding to hunger signals, but not so good at responding to fullness cues or even identifying what those are. But what I'm noticing because we're not.

Michelle Shapiro [00:20:58]:
Allowed to, I don't think.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:20:59]:
Right. That's the part that it's okay to respond to hunger, but it's less okay to respond to fullness or to be vocal about responding to fullness.

Michelle Shapiro [00:21:10]:
So in society, the deal is this what is considered good or bad right now, it's laid out. So what's considered good is food liberation and doing things that nourish you and basically coddle you and feel really good for you and soothing yourself pretty constantly. That's what's considered good. What's considered bad right now is challenging yourself because the perception is it's already. Anything you do could raise your cortisol. It's so dangerous to raise your cortisol that you can't do, you know, you can't challenge yourself, you can't access your fullness cues because you might want something more. And that would be depriving yourself of that. Making any health change that's geared towards weight loss.

Michelle Shapiro [00:21:53]:
The word weight loss is now a dirty word. You can't even say weight loss without it being considered something that's potentially damaging to your mental health. So just laying the landscape of what's bad versus good right now, which is hilarious because of course it changes all the time, but people are internalizing this information very much. They are so afraid to say they want to lose weight. Even on the discovery forms, I've seen people changing to not even write that. When then I get on the call and they're like, oh, I want to lose 100 pounds. It's the most important thing in my entire life. I just can't say it because I don't want to.

Michelle Shapiro [00:22:24]:
I don't want to want something that is potentially not societally acceptable.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:22:29]:
And I just want to zoom out for a second and just call out that this is not just the health space it's become nor. And it's become the norm to not want to challenge ourselves in many ways and to kind of tap into self care and soothing. And of course, yes, we want self care. We want to, you know, we're mushy HSP's.

Michelle Shapiro [00:22:55]:
Trust me, we love it.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:22:56]:
Yes. But there comes a point where we sometimes do need to be challenging ourselves, especially if, like you had mentioned, we either have health conditions or just goals in general, whether it's nutrition, health, or work or any other aspect of our life. But one thing that I'm noticing with clients is that there's this fear around engaging in any behavior that would be deemed diet culture. And so what that looks like for them is having a day where they ate less than usual, and that can be that they were busier or that they just. Honestly, maybe they moved less. They really were just sitting at their desk working all day, and maybe they just didn't eat that much. And then there's this fear over, am I restricting? Am I. Is my metabolism going to slow down?

Michelle Shapiro [00:23:51]:
Oh, my gosh.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:23:52]:
And there's all of this rhetoric that's being repeated from social media, but what I notice is that same fear, and that infiltration of thoughts is not happening on the opposite end on a day where they're eating more than usual. They're just eating more than usual on a day where they are moving more. They're just moving more or moving less. They're just moving less. And so there's this kind of this thought spiral that's coming in over this fear of restricting or a fear of choosing a salad over a sandwich of, oh, my gosh, am I back in my disordered stage because I just wanted a salad with chicken and I didn't want the panini. Like, there's this new dialogue that I just wasn't seeing before. And on discovery calls, as you had mentioned, it comes first off from just a fear of even saying the words weight loss.

Michelle Shapiro [00:24:47]:
Well, they can't say weight loss. They never write in the form.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:24:49]:
People are getting so creative. I do have to give them credit. Like, they're being so creative about synonym.

Michelle Shapiro [00:24:54]:
I would like that to the baseline of what my weight once was. But yeah, exactly.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:24:58]:
And then we'll be on the call and I'm like, you know, it's okay. Like, it's totally fine. If you want to lose weight, that's totally fine.

Michelle Shapiro [00:25:04]:
Our practice, everything's fair game. Any goal that someone has, if we think it's dangerous, of course we'll tell people this is a dangerous goal. But the goal of our work is always bodily autonomy. What I'm hearing that's frustrating me about what you're saying, not from you, but from the world right now, is that people want something and they are being suppressed and being able to even express what they want. How are they supposed to get it if they're too scared to even want it in the first place? It's really like a mental gymnastics that's happening for people and it's really harmful to people.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:25:35]:
And I noticed that, you know, there's this fear over the word restriction has also been hijacked, I think. Yeah, of course, if we're removing entire food groups in most cases, yeah. That's not sustainable. And it's probably going to have negative downstream effects either in the long term or likely the short term.

Michelle Shapiro [00:25:53]:
I think we need to debunk starvation mode. I'm triggered by how triggered people are going to be when we have this conversation, by the way.

 

Debunking the concept of starvation mode

Nicki Parlitsis [00:26:03]:
Right. So when it comes to the concept of starvation mode, what people are definitely definite for people.

Michelle Shapiro [00:26:11]:
Yeah.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:26:11]:
Is that when we eat less, when we reduce our intake, our metabolism slows down accordingly because our body wants to maintain homeostasis. What people also forget about that concept and we'll go into why we're debunking it. Is that it works in both ways. Both ways? Not to the extent that people make it out to be so. Both ways, meaning if we eat more on a certain day, our metabolism revs up a little bit to digest the extra food to maintain homeostasis. Now, the way that that works is on a very small, within a range.

Michelle Shapiro [00:26:53]:
It's a method called adaptive thermogenesis, which is basically that our metabolism will adapt based on the amount of calories that we have and burn the amount of fuel based on that. The amount that adaptive thermogenesis contributes to our overall metabolism is much smaller than people anticipate. They think your metabolism can go from burning 2500 calories a day to burning 1000 calories a day and then it permanently burns 1000 calories a day. Now we do know some cases where adaptive thermogenesis leptin changes can dramatically alter your basal metabolic rate. Like in the case of the biggest loser, which is the most extreme case in the entire world, because they were eating like 800 calories a day and exercising for 8 hours a day. What we're saying needs to be debunked is that if you eat 100 calories less one day, that your body's in starvation mode and that you won't be able to lose weight. That's just not how adaptive thermogenesis works.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:27:44]:
And if starvation mode were actually real, to the extent that it's being made out to be, we wouldn't have people being hospitalized for restrictive eating disorders because their body weight was so low. And when it comes to the concept of that's actually not true, I was eating a very low calorie diet of 700 calories a day for months and I, my metabolism slowed down. What that is coming from is we know that our lean body mass, our muscle mass is a big contributor to our basal metabolic rate or the amount of energy that our body burns at rest. So if we lose a big portion of our muscle mass, then yes, our metabolic rate will decrease. That doesn't happen in days or even weeks. That happens over the course of months without also doing resistance training. Now, most people who are eating a very, very low calorie diet are typically moving less because they have less energy in their body. They're not eating as much.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:28:53]:
They feel like they can't expect, spend as much energy, and most of them are probably not incorporating strength training on every tv.

Michelle Shapiro [00:29:01]:
Anytime you lose fat, you lose some proportion of muscle. If you are not incorporating straight training and you're severely calorie deprived, your body's going to need to get nutrients from your muscle. So losing muscle from losing weight rapidly, which, by the way, if you're eating 700 calories a day, that's not disordered eating, that's an eating disorder. So that's a. That's a whole different conversation. We're talking about people who are afraid to make slight variations in their diet, whether it be from a calorie perspective, whether it be from a macronutrient perspective, whether it be from a lifestyle perspective of doing things that can be potentially supportive for them, not only limiting the amount of foods that they eat, but even not eating processed foods or something like that. They're fearful that every single thing they could possibly do for their health would be considered diet, culture, and disordered eating. And the fear of disordered eating, I think, is twofold.

Michelle Shapiro [00:29:50]:
I think one part is that they feel that they will be psychologically unhealthy happy if they make any health changes, because disordered eating makes you unhappy or stressed. And B, they believe that there's this starvation mode cortisol response that will force them to gain weight even more rapidly anytime they try to lose weight. What's underneath all of this, Nikki, is a deep fear or epiphany for people that weight loss is impossible. And since you can't lose weight, you might as well not get an eating disorder at the same time. That's kind of the way people are thinking. People do not believe in this country, for the most part, that health changes are possible and that weight loss is possible. We hear the statistic floating around that I deeply deny, which is that 98% of weight loss efforts fail. Yeah, exactly.

Michelle Shapiro [00:30:35]:
Which. So if you really believe that, which is the common narrative online, of course you wouldn't try to lose weight. And of course, all weight loss efforts would be risky, because the only thing you're getting from a weight loss effort is disordered eating. So I think that for most people, I would understand if they understood that statistic, they would not attempt to weight loss at that point. We have not at all seen that statistic in play in our practice. I have not seen that in play for most of the people I know who made sustainable health changes. I believe that reversing health conditions and losing weight is absolutely possible, far more than the range of 98%. But what makes it absolutely impossible is if we try to not do any behaviors to change our weight and then at the same time, want to lose weight.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:31:19]:
Right. And there's this fear that any effort that we have now will just work against us in the long term. So if I eat slightly less than usual, then I'm just gonna binge later, or I'm just gonna want to, or I'm just. My metabolism is gonna slow down and I'm just gonna gain more weight later on. Or when it comes, which is, by.

Michelle Shapiro [00:31:39]:
The way, just absolutely untrue. Right. It's just totally untrue.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:31:43]:
So when it comes to the rhetoric on social media, people are using extremes and elaborating on or emphasizing the pitfalls of extreme dieting and passing that off as all.

Michelle Shapiro [00:31:59]:
Any health changes, any health change, not even a diet. Like any health change, they're saying, if you drink lemon water, that's diet culture. What people mean by diet culture is making a move for your health that they don't think is going to work. So they're fearful that if you say, if you drink lemon water, it's not going to heal your gut. Like, I know people, we have lots of clients who are drinking lemon water every morning, and it's very supportive for their gut. We have many who. It's not supportive for their gut, but it feels great for them. They're getting a little vitamin c.

Michelle Shapiro [00:32:27]:
They're getting a little introduction of stomach acid, very gently, could be really supportive for people. Right? So it's like the fear that if you try to do something, like engage in weight loss behaviors, engage in gut healing behaviors, that it's so dangerous to try things that you shouldn't try anything. And it's like, it's actually more risky to try something. Cause you might end up with the boogeyman disordered eating if you try anything.

 

The problem with other people telling us what's best for our body and things that we intuitively feel and want for ourselves

Nicki Parlitsis [00:32:53]:
And again, I mean, this is quiet the diet. So I have to bring this in. It just comes back to other people telling us what's best for our body and things that we intuitively feel in ourselves, whether that's a goal that we have, or we can try certain things as long. Again, of course, as long as it's not super harmful or harmful at all. Um, but we can try certain things and see how it works for us. We could try lemon water in the morning and see, hey, does this help me? Does this hurt me? Okay, if it hurts me, I'm just going to stop. Like, we can work on. Maybe we can choose something like cauliflower rice instead of white rice and see, how did that dinner make me feel afterward? There's no real downside to trying something.

Michelle Shapiro [00:33:38]:
I'm again triggered. I have to be honest with you, because that's a term like cauliflower rice isn't rice. It's like, yeah, no, it's not. Rice. And like, why is there a fear of replacing cauliflower rice for rice?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:33:50]:
Right.

Michelle Shapiro [00:33:50]:
The fear in it. So this is a big thing online. People aren't using social media, but they listen to the podcast. It's. Everything is like, well, you can't use these replacements. Cauliflower isn't rice. Zucchini isn't pasta. No, it's definitely not.

Michelle Shapiro [00:34:03]:
But also, can you not want to get 80 grams of carbs in that meal? Maybe you want to eat your carbs somewhere else. If we just leave everything in as is, for most people, it will be very challenging to lose weight. Most people have to make changes to lose weight or else they would be losing weight already. So if that's something that's easy and helpful for someone great and they like the taste of it, that's what's, you know, really important. But I think, again now, it's. That's vilified to switch that out. And I'm like, why? And it's because everything comes back to, it's hopeless. You're hopeless.

Michelle Shapiro [00:34:33]:
You can't make any of these changes anyway. If you try, you're not only harming yourself, but you're a fool if you try.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:34:40]:
And it always comes back to the intention behind certain things. If we're eating cauliflower rice because we're terrified of white rice and we think it's going to harm us or hurt our health or make us gain weight just by looking at it, then, and that's why we choose cauliflower rice, then, yeah, that's a problem. Maybe we should explore that. That's something that is definitely something to point out in your life.

Michelle Shapiro [00:35:07]:
Absolutely.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:35:08]:
But if we're doing it as a way to incorporate more vegetables into our dinner when we typically wouldn't do so.

Michelle Shapiro [00:35:14]:
Or maybe we want to have cauliflower rice, but then we want to have, like, I don't know, a sandwich on the side of it or something. Maybe you just want to get your carbs from a different place, but you want something that feels filling and yummy and fibrous.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:35:25]:
And that's the thing. If we're choosing zucchini instead of whatever carb and that's. And we're not choosing any carbs throughout the entire day, then, yeah, that's. We still need to incorporate some fiber, some carbs in our diet.

 

The problem when fear is driving your eating decisions

Michelle Shapiro [00:35:41]:
Here's the question, right? Is the question, are you fearing in the decisions that you're making? Are you fearing weight gain in a way that's very urgent and frightening for you and is in the realm of disordered eating, or are you making a choice that feels settled and grounded and like, yeah, this is what I want to do. Feels very different than I'm going to gain a million pounds if I eat some rice or something like that. Even if you might gain weight from eating a bunch of rice, which I haven't seen be the case for most people, to be honest with you. But even if you are gaining weight from that reason, having tremendous fear around one specific food is not going to produce amazing health results. I just haven't seen that work either. But I will tell you that I'd say five years ago, maybe seven years ago, I was excited and insistent that clients could lose weight while only without restricting anything or without being extremely intentional and mindful about the specific foods they're eating. And I have not found that that is the case. Unfortunately, I wished it was because, and there's really smart ways to go about this that I would have people who are listening really be mindful of, which is like, change the language around food, too.

Michelle Shapiro [00:36:52]:
So instead of being like, I'm so afraid this rice will make me gain weight, change it to I'm going to make a choice here, and I know that I kind of want to have carbs in certain parts of my day in certain amounts. So I'm going to make a choice here to have carbs here, but not have carbs here.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:38:58]:
When fear is driving you, either fear of an eating disorder that doesn't exist in your that isn't true for you, or fear of actually gaining weight. Either way, fear can't be in the driver's seat. You are going to have worse health results if fear is driving your decisions.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:39:15]:
And speaking of fear, there's something that I'm afraid to say, then you have to say. But I have to say as a whole, as a community, as a society, we've really, we're not so good these days at sitting with any uncomfortable feeling that, including something like, I really want, you know, a roll on the side of my dinner. But I really also have these weight loss goals. Let me put that role down and maybe choose something else that doesn't feel super great in the moment, especially if we're kind of just starting a journey and we don't have any. We don't notice any positive effects yet on our energy or our sleep or, you know what I mean? Like we might not have any of these biofeedback pieces that are making us notice that our choices are actually happening.

Michelle Shapiro [00:40:11]:
We don't have the pattern recognition yet, so we don't know, oh, when I eat this food repeatedly, I can't lose weight because we don't have any success with weight loss up until that point. So we don't know what's working and what isn't.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:40:20]:
And so there's this moment where you kind of have to sit in this discomfort of like, oh, okay, I'm choosing this thing. It's still good. Like, we don't want you to eat foods that don't taste good, but it still tastes, it's still good, but it's not as palatable as something I normally would have chosen. But to make any change, whether that's health or weight or anything else, we're going to have to do something different than we're currently doing.

Michelle Shapiro [00:40:45]:
Probably going to be a little bit.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:40:46]:
Challenging and it's probably going to be challenging. And so again, if it's coming from a place of fear and urgency, then yeah, maybe we need to explore that. But if we kind of are just, we just have these general goals, whether they're very real driven from our health. Like we need to really manage our blood sugar, you know, soon because we got a diagnosis or something, or it's something where we just honestly have some aesthetic goals that we were working on. And that's a journey that we decided consciously that we want to start. We're going to have to make choices that might not be super enticing in the moment, and we might also have to sit with a little discomfort in that moment. But that is okay.

Michelle Shapiro [00:41:36]:
Yeah, it's actually necessary. It's more than okay. It's necessary. We can't comfort or coddle ourselves into health or success in any area in our lives.

Michelle Shapiro [00:43:38]:

and I know it's funny because we sound like fitness bros, by the way. People are going to. Yeah, people are going to be like these calorie counting, like, you know, fitness bros. But it is absolutely true. And I would say when it comes to any matter of chronic illness, probably the most important component of healing I will ever work on with clients is tolerating discomfort. It's. It's absolutely true. So we have kind of put ourselves into a position where the societal message is that any discomfort is dangerous.

Michelle Shapiro [00:44:03]:
Discomfort is a dangerous thing, and we want to flip the script completely and say, discomfort is necessary. Torture is dangerous. Being cruel to yourself is dangerous. But there's a way to be compassionate with yourself and still push yourself, and it's really important. Pushing yourself again does not mean starvation in any capacity, but to be afraid to challenge yourself a little bit, to make some swaps, there's no way to make progress in coddling yourself like that.

 

How Nicki found support in counting macros

Nicki Parlitsis [00:44:30]:
I want to share something about my personal journey, because it kind of was something that I noticed for the first time in my life, was to overcome disordered eating and to kind of work on that. I counted macros. That was something that was very supportive for me because it gave me a level of structure that felt safe while still making sure that I a got a certain amount in and. But be allowed, like, you know, was able to kind of liberalize my diet in a type of way that was necessary for me at the time. I thought about it for months before ever actually starting it, because I was terrified that counting something was going was too harmful and that I should be able to do this without it.

Michelle Shapiro [00:45:13]:
What was your fear in the counting? Was it for you? I'm scared I'm gonna end up with an eating disorder. What were you afraid of?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:45:18]:
Honestly, it was more people knowing that I was counting.

Michelle Shapiro [00:45:22]:
Cause you were a dietitian?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:45:23]:
I was in nutrition school at the time, and so, because it's so, like.

Michelle Shapiro [00:45:28]:
Taboo to count calories. Okay.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:45:30]:
And so. And again, actually not what I was. We were learning calorie counting, but the conversations during breaks and in the bathroom was like, oh, no, what are you?

Michelle Shapiro [00:45:41]:
Exactly.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:45:42]:
So and so what? Actually, when I started counting macros, I didn't tell anyone, including my best friends, for months that I was doing it because I was, like, terrified of. And then there was also a little bit of shame of, like, oh, my God, I can't overcome this without tracking a certain amount of what I'm eating. And so that actually did help me, you know, create more regular eating behaviors over time and a much better relationship with food, which, again, macros might be super supportive for one person and not supportive for another, but it actually transitioned me into a journey where I was putting on a lot of muscle mass, intentionally eating more intentionally to gain that muscle mass. And then I hit a point where I really wasn't feeling at home in my body. Like, I felt like I weighed the most I ever had, but I actually had the best relationship with it. I was thrilled about it because I was pushing the most weight in the gym, and it was really, like, exciting for me. But physically, I just didn't feel my best in my body for me.

Michelle Shapiro [00:46:44]:
So you were proud, but you weren't feeling physically where you wanted to be.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:46:48]:
So then I hit a point where I realized, okay, I think I might have to start a little bit of a weight loss journey in order to kind of start feeling a little bit more like myself again. And there was fear there. So there was like this fear initially to eat more or for people to know that I was counting macros, but also this fear within myself.

Michelle Shapiro [00:47:07]:
The first one was like, I'm nervous that people are going to find out, kind of, and that I'm doing something that I know is kind of bad, wrong, dirty or something. The second time. What were you afraid of?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:47:16]:
Well, and a little bit of fear in the beginning of, if I increase my food intake, am I going to gain weight? There was that fear in the beginning, and then I actually started to love gaining weight. And then there became this fear later on of, oh, if I now start a weight loss journey by way of eating less than I am now, am I back in a restrictive place? Am I going to be back to the starting line when I just came all this way?

Michelle Shapiro [00:47:44]:
So did you find that it was possible for you and possible for our clients and people listening to cut calories in a small deficit and still not have a restrictive mindset and not have developed some sort of disordered eating as a result?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:47:57]:
What's really interesting is that when I looked at it from a strictly calorie perspective, it was very difficult for me because I, there was this mental fear of restriction, or this fear of, and we know this in studies, that if we give two groups the exact same smoothie, but we tell one group it's a weight loss smoothie, and we tell another group it's a calorically dense smoothie, the group that was told that it's a weight loss smoothie will actually be more hungry afterward. And so if we have this idea of, okay, it's time now, I'm time to cut. It's time for weight loss. I have to restrict everything. Hunger is going to go up. We start to, you know, get, like, very real hunger hormones. It's not just in our head. And so what I ended up having to do was shift a little bit and kind of get a little bit real with myself in realizing there were a lot of times I was eating when I wasn't physically hungry, and it was to either hit a certain amount of protein or a certain amount of macros or, because it had been 3 hours and it's just time to eat.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:49:08]:
Now I have to eat. And so what I started to notice was, if I kind of sit with myself and relearn hunger cues, like, what does it actually feel like when I'm hungry? Like, can I let myself get to that point in a safe way? I'm not starving myself, but I'm letting myself get hungry and seeing what that feels like. What I started to notice was there were a lot of times I was eating out of something outside of physical hunger. And so, and when I was, you know, when I didn't have food in me, I was actually more in tune with my emotions in a certain way. And it made me kind of think back to how a lot of, and again, we're not telling everyone to fast or anything like that, but please, no.

Michelle Shapiro [00:49:54]:
Yeah.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:49:54]:
But it made me think back to how, when a lot of cultures do use fasting in a religious sense, it's very spiritual. It's very spiritual. And so what I noticed, too, was in my binge eating days, when I was physically full, I didn't have to feel. And so the only thing you feel.

Michelle Shapiro [00:50:13]:
Is that fullness, and then you're hyper focused on that, not the rest of what you feel and experience in life.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:50:18]:
So beginning this weight loss journey and realizing, like, okay, what if I portioned out a lunch that was just a little smaller than I'm used to? Can I sit with that feeling afterward? And there was, there was a feeling of like, oh, man, maybe I need that extra serving, or maybe like, I'm scared. I'm scared. And so. But sitting in, that allowed me to get in touch with emotions that I really wasn't in touch with prior. And it started, I started to notice, like, anytime I was reaching for food outside of physical hunger, there was something to be explored there, like I was feeling overwhelmed or something.

Michelle Shapiro [00:50:52]:
So I'm hearing this really smart approach that I know you use with clients, that I certainly use with clients come to fruition in this conversation, which is that targeting calories, by targeting calories, may actually lead to disordered eating and may actually be triggering for some people. Some other people, maybe not some people.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:51:10]:
Fabulous.

Michelle Shapiro [00:51:11]:
Yeah. For you, you said, I know I consciously kind of need to eat only when I'm hungry in order for me to lose weight. So let me target it in that way so that you're not sending this deprivation signal to your brain. You're just sending the signal to your brain that it's like, oh, we're doing the thing where we eat where we're hungry, only kind of thing, or we want to explore when we're hungry and we want to explore when we're not hungry and why we're eating during those times. So applying curiosity is a way to approach this. Absolutely. But there is an overall intention, and let's be totally transparent, Nikki, that you are going to be not eating the excess amount of things that you're eating. That's the goal in weight loss.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:51:45]:
What it was was that I was eating less than, and I realized the number was triggering for me. It made me feel like I was being restricted. So I made a meal plan based on those numbers that I needed to lose weight. And looking at it just from the food perspective of, oh, okay, I'm looking forward to that lunch that I have on that meal plan I made for myself that looks really good. And that kind of took the numbers out of it for me, which is.

Michelle Shapiro [00:52:08]:
What we do for clients. We make the plants, they don't to see the calories.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:52:11]:
Exactly. But let's be honest, I was eating less calories and that's why I was losing weight.

 

Calories in weight loss are a thing, but they're not the only thing

Michelle Shapiro [00:52:15]:
Yeah, there is a. So calories in weight loss are a thing, but they're not the only thing. And the goal with losing weight is actually to do things as indirect as you possibly can. Because like we're saying, it is real that if you consciously say to yourself, we are going to lose weight and we are going to cut calories, cutting calories every single day is not a sustainable way to lose weight. You have to do things in a much more indirect way, by making foods more satisfying, by being really in touch with yourself. And again, the direct targeting of weight loss through that way probably will actually work. And versus this idea that there's starvation mode, so that if you cut calories, you actually won't lose weight, I have not seen that to be true. However, I have seen many clients who have been at a very severe calorie deficit in the eating disorder category for a very long time.

Michelle Shapiro [00:53:07]:
And then I do see repairs to their metabolism, do needs to be made 100% too, but very small deficit over a period of time. And then taking breaks from that deficit and trying to find that deficit while also not creating a really negative, fearful relationship with food is doable. And we see it all the time and it's, it would produce, uh, hopefully weight loss results, but it really has to be in conjunction with strength training, eating enough protein too.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:53:33]:
And when we look at it, we don't want to be doing these weight loss behaviors or these, you know, quote unquote dieting behaviors for an extended period of time. Like if we were constantly eating in a caloric deficit for the rest of our life, like, yeah, we, we'd lose muscle mass, our metabolism over the course of like months, years would still impact.

Michelle Shapiro [00:53:54]:
Our health too, as well. Absolutely. And so, and our mindset for sure.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:53:57]:
We have to look at it in terms of like phases. You know what I mean? Like, okay, is this a weight loss season for me right now? Is this, you know, I mean, when it comes to certain health behaviors, like that might be something that, yeah, maybe we do need to do that for an extended period of time or for the rest of our life, whether it's like a blood sugar thing. But how the conversation that we're having around these things, that's where it becomes either problematic or not problematic.

Michelle Shapiro [00:54:23]:
Yeah. So instead of labeling a behavior as diet culture or not diet culture, or as something that promotes disordered eating or doesn't label it as this feels bad for me or this feels good for me, nothing is diet culture or isn't or is disordered eating unless it applies to you. So I can't do calorie counting, by the way, because I do get, I get really like number. I get Gamey and then I'm like, oh, I can go less, I can go less. The numbers don't work for me, but I definitely have times where I'm like, yeah, we're going to eat at seven and then we're going to eat at twelve. And that's kind of what we're doing now. And it's like, it feels very on my own team. But the problem is when we label things as things and don't even know what we're feeling.

 

The goal in your health and weight loss journey

Michelle Shapiro [00:55:06]:
So the goal with any health journey, weight loss journey, is to get in touch with what triggers you personally and then also reassess that every week there are seasons in my life where I can eat lower carb and there are seasons where I can't. And I'll try and then I'll immediately be like, oh, you're waking up at 03:00 a.m. because your cortisol is jumping up doesn't work for you right now. Or there's times where I'm killing it in the gym and I need the extra carbs, or those times when I'm killing the gym and I don't. It really depends on my body, but it's. Everyone's body's completely different. But blanket labeling things as potentially harmful and not being bold enough to try things is leaving people in a unique, uniquely challenging position because they're afraid to not make progress and they're afraid to try things at this point.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:55:50]:
And I see it with certain behaviors that are looked at specifically in eating disorder treatment. So, for example, there's this concept that you can't use condiments that are low cal. Like, you can't basically be adding mustard.

Michelle Shapiro [00:56:06]:
Like misses dash or something like that, or something, right?

Nicki Parlitsis [00:56:08]:
And if you add mustard instead, instead of, I don't know, like a barbecue sauce. Barbecue sauce, then that's. That's a disordered behavior. But if you're someone that just enjoys mustard, or to be honest with you, maybe you are someone who enjoys barbecue sauce and you do want to work on your sugar intake or work on weight loss goals or whatever your goals are, and it's a conscious decision, not out of self hatred. You're not saying, I hate myself, so I'm punishing myself by having mustard instead of barbecue sauce. That is a problem. That's not something we want to be doing. But if you're someone that's saying, hey, you know, this is actually more in line with my goals right now, and my goals are set up to actually be prioritizing my body and myself.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:56:55]:
This is a conscious choice that I'm making, and it's not, you know, you're not going to go to the hospital for having mustard instead of barbecue sauce.

Michelle Shapiro [00:57:03]:
Like, I love that as a phrase, too. Like, nothing scary and horrible is going to happen to you if you choose cauliflower rice instead of white rice, it's not like the disordered eating boogeyman comes out and, like, gets you the second that you choose cauliflower rice. Like, this idea that every single thing you do can set you off into the path of disordered eating or the path of a lower metabolism is so untrue. And our body makes compensations all the time. Our mind makes compensations all the time. So you can make a decision to have cauliflower rice every day for a month, and it could have no impact on disorder eating or it could be really impactful for you, and you need to check in with yourself. It only matters how it makes you feel. The most important thing is that you acknowledge how it makes you feel.

Michelle Shapiro [00:57:47]:
But there is nothing more inherently evil about choosing cauliflower rice over white rice. There's nothing in that that indicates an eating disorder in and of itself. There's nothing in choosing mustard over barbecue sauce that indicates disordered eating by behavior. It's the mindset around it that matters. And that's what people don't understand, is that doing the things is not disordered eating. It's why you're doing those things in the first place.

Nicki Parlitsis [00:58:13]:
And as practitioners, it's also our job to notice that in clients and to help clients notice that in themselves. So, for example, if I have a client who's, you know, choosing mustard, like, again, continuing this example that we have, if they're a new client, I don't really know them. I'm trying to assess, like, is there fear here? Is mustard the only thing that they're eating with their food? Is there some type of fear going on? And also, when it comes to certain behaviors that we'll do together. So there might be a client that maybe we are using. Macros, we think that it is. It's kind of like these bumpers in, like, the bowling lane that's, like, really feels safe for them. But maybe, like, two months into working together, we're noticing, hey, I'm starting to sense a lot of fear and anxiety around these numbers, and then maybe we're transitioning away from that, and maybe then we're looking into a meal plan or meal timing, or maybe we're not looking at. We're kind of shifting the type of structure that we're using.

 

Wanting weight loss doesn't mean disordered eating

Nicki Parlitsis [00:59:12]:
So it's really important to know that a certain tool might be good for you at a certain time, and it might not be something that just because something did serve you at one point doesn't mean it will always serve you. But again, it really comes back to, why are we doing this thing? And again, just to reiterate, if the why is weight loss, again, that doesn't mean that it's inherently bad weight loss.

Michelle Shapiro [00:59:38]:
Wanting weight loss doesn't mean disordered eating. You can want weight loss, and it'd be completely separate from disordered eating. You can wanna heal your gut, and it'd be completely separate from disordered eating. Most times, it is separate. The reason people want to lose weight is because they aren't feeling well. Most of the time, they don't want to lose weight because they hate themselves in every situation and because they are fearful of being inside of their bodies. Many people want to lose weight because they want to lose weight. There are certain times and places where certain tools, like you said, are okay, but not everyone who tries to lose weight immediately develops in disorder eating or immediately hurts their metabolism.

Michelle Shapiro [01:00:17]:
And this is an absolute fallacy that is being perpetuated all over online. And it's leaving people in, again, this uniquely harmful position where they can't take a step in either direction. They're kind of, there's brick walls on either side. They can't go either way. It's like the second I want to try to lose weight, I'm a bad person, and I'm also a mentally ill person, and I'm going to hurt myself permanently. And then if I want to just repair my relationship with food, that's all fine and dandy. But the second I try to kind of go in that direction, my health worsens.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:00:48]:
Yeah.

Michelle Shapiro [01:00:48]:
So we can kind of. I believe we can have it all honestly.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:00:51]:
And I would argue that if your only reason for weight loss is because you hate the way you look, I can almost guarantee you probably won't be able to lose weight sustainably. It will.

Michelle Shapiro [01:01:03]:
That's where those binge eating behaviors are going to come in. That's where, I mean, any disordered behavior will. It really comes down to the same question we always ask ourselves. Are we taking action based on an intention of love or an intention of fear? That's always the question. If fear is rooted in these decisions, we're not going to get the results we want. And when it comes to disordered eating and the fear of disordered eating, this whole thing is built around a fear that you're going to randomly be attacked by the disordered eating monster, and then you're done, and then you. And then you're in starvation mode, and you have disordered eating. So these fears have where a lot of.

Michelle Shapiro [01:01:35]:
Nikki, a lot of these clients who are coming to us don't actually have disordered eating. They just are fearful of disorder eating. And we do have a lot of clients who have disordered eating and eating disorder patterns. But a lot of these clients that are coming don't even have disordered eating. They're just afraid of something they don't know about.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:01:49]:
And I think what it does is it almost adds just another. As if we didn't have enough roadblocks or barriers to these health tools, it creates another barrier. I've heard people say that, you know, let's say they're at a birthday party and there's a dessert table, and they're being questioned as to why. You know, maybe they really just don't fruit or they don't feel good having their. The dessert table, and it's just not something that they want in that moment, but they feel kind of, like, shamed. We've kind of, the pendulum is swung completely where some people feel that they're being shamed into eating dessert or into, you know, these behaviors versus, like, just staying neutral and just not caring what other people are doing.

Michelle Shapiro [01:02:32]:
Well, the new thing is proving you don't have disordered eating.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:02:35]:
Yes.

Michelle Shapiro [01:02:35]:
You, like, have to, in a societal way, prove you don't have disordered eating. So people even preface, they're like, I'm trying to lose weight, but it's because I have diabetes.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:02:43]:
Right.

Michelle Shapiro [01:02:43]:
Weight loss is not allowed, and any health change, again, is not allowed in society, but it really makes people scared, again to make these changes. And it's not allowed to refuse dessert now because doing anything remotely healthy is societally deemed wrong right now.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:02:59]:
And what's interesting is that some of those things are proven to be health promoting and things that we should be incorporating. So, and I'm guilty. I fell into this for years where, you know, maybe we had in the past, some over exercise behaviors, and so now strength training is being so celebrated, which it should. We should be, you know, increasing our muscle mass, especially as women. But that doesn't mean that cardio is inherently bad. It doesn't.

Michelle Shapiro [01:03:27]:
Now. Cardio is bad.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:03:28]:
Cardio is bad now. And, like, you're not allowed to be, like, seen on the treadmill. So, like, it's, you know, it's something where, again, I hear it from people, I'm afraid. I used to be a cardio bunny back in the day. I'm really afraid of getting back into that disordered behavior with exercise. Okay, well, it doesn't happen like that. It doesn't happen right away. So we know that 30 minutes of cardio five times a week is actually extremely beneficial for our health, our blood sugar, our heart.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:03:56]:
And so maybe can we just start incorporating that? But instead of back in your disorder days, I would assume that you were looking at the calories burned on the treadmill, or maybe you were looking at the miles ran, not out of performance goals, but out of, you know, hitting a certain target in calories. So maybe now we're looking at it as, okay, can I. Can I do 30 minutes of cardio today and see how I feel and reassess week to week, if you're really getting depleted at 15 minutes because you haven't, you know, for ten minutes or five minutes because you haven't been doing cardio in a really long time, we're not saying, oh, yeah, let's push ourselves til we're going to pass out on the treadmill, but we're saying, can we push through the discomfort slightly? Because that actually is giving us a lot of healthy changes in our body. And so, again, it's not something that happens right away. So if you're afraid of engaging in a certain behavior because you're fearful that it's going to be become disordered, maybe you just check in with yourself a little bit more frequently.

Michelle Shapiro [01:04:57]:
Name of the game is checking in with yourself, too. I think people in what you're saying are also afraid of becoming a version of themselves that they are afraid of. Yeah, and I think they're afraid. Like, does cardio mean what it used to mean? So what I think we all need to do is wipe the slate clean. The behavior has no meaning behind it, which means cardio has no morality. Cardio is not inherently bad, and strength training is inherently good. Calorie counting is not inherently bad, and calorie counting is not inherently good. It doesn't mean if you calorie count and do cardio, and you did ten years ago from a disordered way, that if you do it now, you're doing it the same disordered way.

Michelle Shapiro [01:05:34]:
I think we have to take the labels off of the behaviors and just see what behaviors work for us. And some behaviors are going to be triggering and some aren't. We need to take the morality out of the behaviors and just do the behaviors and see how we feel.

 

Coming back to our biological drive and taking the societal impressions and morality game out of the equation

Nicki Parlitsis [01:05:47]:
And I think that's also now introducing, if we're wiping the sleigh clean, we're coming back to our biological drive for certain things. So what I mean by that is we're coming back to recognizing that there are days that we're going to eat more and there's days that we're going to eat less. We're coming back to, you know, there's days where we can run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and there's days where we're feeling really depleted and we just can't. And so if we're forcing ourselves to, you know, eat drastically less on a day where our body needs more, or if we're forcing ourselves to eat more on a day where our body needs less, or if we're forcing ourselves to do cardio on a day where our body needs to rest. Vice versa, too. If we're forcing ourselves to rest when we actually really just should be moving.

Michelle Shapiro [01:06:37]:
Yeah.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:06:37]:
Either any of those things are going against our nature, and it's. If we're wiping the slate clean and redrawing the blueprint for how to feel our best, we really need to be accessing that intuition about, you know, okay, there's certain health promoting behaviors I need to be doing, and it's how I'm doing them and why I'm doing them that actually make all the difference.

Michelle Shapiro [01:07:00]:
Yeah. I think if we took this wipe the slate clean for us means take the societal impressions and morality game out of the equation. The same recommendations that should have been given 100 years ago are the same recommendations that would be given today. Like, we do not have any of the foundations of our lives nailed down, the most important foundation being we do not listen to ourselves at all. We do not do what we need. We only do what society tells us to do. So if you took the stigma out of every single activity and behavior you do, I think you would do things that are generally healthy. I think we are letting what is popular now, what is morally right now dictate our behaviors, because it's creating a deep fear that we won't fit in or that will do something harmful to ourselves.

Michelle Shapiro [01:07:42]:
And if we just did what we come on really know is healthy, ultimately, I think we would be a lot better off for it.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:07:51]:
Again, this is another moment where I'm going to say something that I feel.

Michelle Shapiro [01:07:55]:
Like is love it. Introduce it with fear. Go ahead, Nikki. We have to do hard things and say things that are hard.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:08:00]:
Yeah, well, I think part of the reason why a lot of this might have started is if you're finding that our conversation or that certain things are very triggering to you and inducing a negative response and you're feeling attacked or that you want to attack back. When you hear certain conversations like this, I just invite you to kind of turn inward, because a lot of times when we're triggered by something, it's bringing up something in ourselves. So sometimes what people notice is, oh, so and so told me that they started a weight loss journey, and they, you know, lost five pounds or they lost ten pounds. And this is very real and very valid. Someone else's experience makes you question your own, and so you're like, well, why can't I lose weight? They're doing something that's harmful. You know what I mean? And so we do this with a lot of different things that people use in society to try to either manage their health or lose weight, or we kind of are attacking a lot of different things here and there. And I think we need to really just look at ourselves and notice, okay, if I think that something's really harmful, then if someone's my friend, I'd probably be like, hey, are you okay? How are you doing?

Michelle Shapiro [01:09:21]:
Triggering doesn't mean harmful necessarily. So what you're saying is that if something is coming off as potentially triggering, it doesn't mean it's actually harmful. It means that you need to explore within yourself why it's triggering you. Although sometimes it can actually be harmful, by the way. But if you. Right, if you see someone eating 500 calories a day and they're your friend, yes. Then I would say I would start getting nervous about an active eating disorder. But if someone's, like, cutting maybe 100 calories a day in a really nuanced and careful way, and then, like, adding a little bit of cardio, that's not necessarily harmful just because it feels triggering, like they're doing something I want to be doing, potentially.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:09:58]:
And recognizing that everyone is so different, whether it comes to their body or their beliefs or anything else or their philosophy on something, if you don't agree with something that someone else is doing, the response really shouldn't ever be to attack them at all.

Michelle Shapiro [01:10:14]:
I don't do care anyone else is doing. That's what I'm saying. I don't care less about anyone else.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:10:17]:
When we feel confident in who we are and what we're doing and what our body needs and kind of, you know, we're just feeling like we know ourselves. If someone says something that we disagree with, our response is like, oh, okay, I don't actually. That doesn't work for me. But you do you, it's fine.

Michelle Shapiro [01:10:35]:
Right.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:10:35]:
That's a very neutral response, and I think we've lost that in a lot of aspects of our society right now, but particularly the weight loss and nutrition world.

Michelle Shapiro [01:10:46]:
Yeah, definitely. I think we are getting very self reflective about things other people are doing, but not self reflective about what we're doing. Yeah, we're caring a lot about what people think about what we're doing and not as much about what we're actually doing. And I invite people as well. I love the use word invite. I encourage people to care more about the actions you're taking and less about what the impact, from a psychological perspective, of the actions you are taking. Take a shot, like, be bold, be brave, and be confident in your health. And if you know something really in your core is legitimately what you need.

Michelle Shapiro [01:11:19]:
I think take a shot and go for it again. That would be not extreme behaviors, but those tiny changes you can make over time, I think are well worth it. The takeaway from this episode is that there is not one action or behavior you can do that has any moral consequence outside of what you're actually doing. If you're calorie counting to lose weight, that's all that it is. There's no. There's no subtext with anything that we're doing. That being said, certain things can be triggering for us and certain things can be dangerous for us. The only way we'll ever know what works for us is if we actually try things, if we talk to people, we work with practitioners in a safe way, or we self experiment.

Michelle Shapiro [01:11:54]:
And really, amongst this entire journey, the most important thing to do is always check in with yourself and see what is working for me. And quiet the diet. Quiet the noise, quiet the anti diet. Quiet the noise of anything else going on around you and really take an honest look at yourself and say, what do I need? And that's really the message of this episode.

Nicki Parlitsis [01:12:14]:
And if you are hearing that and you're confused, like, oh, I actually really don't know what I need, or I don't know myself. Whether that's nutritionally or just on, like, an existential level, that can be a great place to start. Like, we really. We only get to know ourself by self experimenting, trying different things, seeing what works and what doesn't, maybe leaning into if something doesn't work. Why was this thing not helpful for me? Why was this thing not sustainable for me? And then the more you start to do that along your journey, you'll start to really develop kind of like your own little blueprint for what makes you you and what makes you feel your best. And that's honestly kind of the best place to start and come back to.

Michelle Shapiro [01:12:53]:
And then in a corny comment, you don't have to overeat in order for the disorder eating boogie monster to not get you. It's okay for you to eat the right amount for your body to lose weight or maintain weight. You don't have to not go to the gym and do cardio so that the disorder eating boogie monster doesn't get you. There's no boogie monster waiting around the corner. Pace yourself, listen to yourself, and constantly check in with yourself.