Adulting - #45 Why Is Nutrition So Confusing? With Dr Hazel Wallace

Episode Date: October 19, 2019

Hi podulters... in this episode I talk to Dr Hazel Wallace aka The Food Medic, about the way medicine and nutrition intersect and differ, how diet culture impacts us and why we need to question our relationship with food and exercise. I hope you enjoy, Oenone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hi podaulters, very excited to be back in your ear holes. Not literally, obviously, I don't think I would fit in your ear hole. And if I would, I would maybe consider contacting the Guinness World Book of Records because you've probably got quite big ear holes. Okay, good. Absolutely not relevant. Anyway, this week I'm speaking to Dr. Hazel Wallace, who is the founder of The Food Medic. She's an author, personal trainer, and now also a registered nutritionist, which is why I wanted to get her to come and talk about the difference between nutrition and medicine, why it's so hard to navigate these conversations around nutrition, especially on social media,

and how we are impacted by food and our relationship with it. I think it's a really meaty one and I really hope you do enjoy it. Please do rate, review and subscribe. And yeah, see you soon. Hopefully not on your air holes though. Okay, bye. and yeah see you soon hopefully not on your air holes though okay bye hi guys and welcome to adulting this week i am joined by hazel wallace hi i'm hazel i'm a medical doctor i work in the nhs in a department of nutrition i also, I've just finished my master's in nutrition, so I'm technically a nutritionist now as well. And I'm author and founder of The Food Medic, which is an educational platform aimed at bridging the gap between medicine and nutrition and discussing

other aspects of health. Amazing. Do you know what, I bet everyone says this to you, but my favorite thing is when you say NHS, because you like, does anyone say that to you? Is it because I pronounce the letters? Because you properly say it. I can't even do it because of your accent. We have to do accent lessons after this. So the reason that I brought Hazel on today is because you're in a really interesting position, which not a lot of people are in, where you're, as you say, a medical doctor, but you also now are a qualified nutritionist.

And I think as everyone is wanting to get more clued up on nutrition, and as we have more access to information, it's transpiring that maybe some of the information that we get fed online is a bit of misinformation. But there's also this kind of knowledge, which is becoming more common now that perhaps even doctors aren't best placed to talk about nutrition, because it really is its own separate thing. And so I just wanted to talk to talk about nutrition because it really is its own separate thing. And so I just wanted to talk to you about how your journey in marrying the two has kind of come about and where you're at with it. Yeah, absolutely. So I started the Food Medic, which is the brand that I run like eight years ago now, 2012. So yeah, seven years ago. And at the time I was in medical school.

I just finished my first degree, which was medical sciences. And I was really excited to go into medicine and learn more about kind of food and nutrition. Because at that point, from a personal point of view, I didn't really feel like I was my healthiest. I'd just done my three-year degree undergrad and had, like, lived the uni life. So I was kind of interested from my own kind of selfish perspective what should I be eating to support my health and how can I support my patient's health and what I found was that we didn't really at all talk about nutrition or physical activity or any kind of lifestyle interventions within medicine. We learned a whole lot of stuff about drugs and surgery,

but there's hardly any room in the curriculum to fit in other stuff. But I felt like this was a gap. So I started The Food Medic, and that started as a blog initially. And I tried to distill the information that I found kind of within the scientific literature into like easy to follow blog posts. I wasn't giving out like anything too robust in terms of the way of like in terms of nutritional advice but I felt pretty confident in what I was doing and you know was sharing like healthy recipes. I also did my PT qualification at the time and went on got my degree in medicine and then moved to London and started working as a junior doctor and in that time I wrote two books the food medic and the food medic for life

and then I decided to take time out to do my master's in nutrition because in order to be a registered nutritionist you have to do a degree or a master's degree and that was really important to me so I've just finished that now in August and I've just started my job as a nutrition SHO which means senior house officer it's basically a junior doctor and that's very different nutrition that's like very unwell patients. Most of the nutrition that I deal with is parental nutrition, which means like artificial feeding via some kind of venous access. So I've really come full circle. And I think the food medic and my initial kind of goals with it

or kind of vision for it has massively changed. I've grown as a person, I've learned so much more. I feel like I don't know as much as I used to know, because I was so confident then. And I think you made a really valid point just there, like, should doctors be offering nutrition? And now that I've kind of come full circle, I think, no, I think I don't think doctors should be offering bespoke nutritional advice I think it's really important though that doctors get some kind of fundamental training in basic dietary intervention so that on a GP level you can say give some kind of like pointers but you're not giving um anything that's like too I guess clinical, because that's when we can run into issues.

But you, because I actually went to the same uni as you, I don't know if you remember, but you used to go to the same gym and I used to see you because I followed you from forever. So when you used to go to UFit, and I would be in there as well. But you've always been someone who's clearly had an incredible work ethic, because even though I've said, oh, doctors don't know about nutrition, like I know from having like doctors in my family you learn a hell of a lot like it's not because they don't know what they're talking about it's just that that course is already so jam-packed full of stuff so it's actually amazing to watch you and also I don't know anyone who could do how you write books do a master's and do a medical degree and all of that is incredible but I think

it'll take someone like you to to see of that is incredible but I think it'll take someone like you to to see it because it is very I think it's quite a humbling position of you to go actually to know what I think I don't know even though you're in such a highly qualified industry and I think what that does is it helps others to understand that that the gap in knowledge with nutrition when it comes to medicine or sometimes maybe things are said and it lands wrong isn't from a place of um I think sometimes people think that when doctors say things about nutrition it's cruel law but i think it's just from a place of actually there's so much to learn yeah that it's really hard to squeeze all of that into one profession yeah and it's a very different science um so like

medical sciences are very or like even medical studies, for example, looking at drugs are really, really like really easy to, not easy to do, but kind of easy to interpret. So it's like X plus Y equals Z, for example. But then when you look at like nutrition studies, we're mostly looking at observational studies. So we're watching populations over a long period of time and we're making assumptions by looking back on their diets and knowing their diets or what they eat will either come from them telling us what they've eaten so that's self-reported and people are notoriously really bad at that like you probably don't remember what you ate last week and also if someone's asking you you're probably going to be like well I ate my five a day and my oily fish so it's like nutritional science is just kind of like

totally open to all of those flaws and things but also like I said it's kind of a different way of interpreting the science so I didn't really learn how to do that in medical school and now I've kind of come through this master's, I read science or that particular science in a different way. So I think it comes with experience, but also understanding. And that's why I think it's absolutely important that we have not just doctors, but like nutritionists and dietitians all working together. But at the moment, there's just this kind of weird vibe, especially I see this on the doctors and the kind of nutritionists and dietitians online. Like, that's your job. This is my job.

Stop trying to, you know, step on my toes type of thing. And I don't think that's what's happening. Like, I don't really, you know, I don't really see an issue with doctors talking about it but I think we just need maybe a bit more of a like a robust nutrition program kind of running through the medical school curriculum or something but it's it's difficult I thought it was easy but now that I've come through I'm like no I guess also because with nutrition as you say to be a registered nutritionist you have to do a degree or a master's but the term nutritionist is not protected is it so kind of like there's a bit of a free-for-all and the regulation around it is difficult could you explain just so we're all clear what's the

difference between a nutritionist and a dietitian yeah so like you said a nutritionist is not a protected um term so you can do like um you know a weekend course on groupon and call yourself a nutritionist which is really really difficult because then some people come to me and they're like hey my nutritionist told me this and i'm like are they a registered nutritionist that patient or person doesn't know exactly so it's really difficult for me to like decipher if the information they've they've gotten has come from a good place and that you know some some nutritionists or nutritional therapists who are unregulated do give good advice but it's just different kind of training pathway and then registered nutritionists like you said

they've done a degree um but that's looking more at nutritional science so like what we're just talking about and then dietitians tend to do like a longer training and they're very clinical based. So most of them will work within a hospital. And we don't have nutritionists in NHS, for example. We just have work with dietitians. So they're the kind of, they also specialize similar to doctors. They may work in oncology or gastro or nutrition, like the ones that I work with

and they've got a better understanding of kind of health problems. So it's more kind of like illness related whereas nutritionist may be more performance or preventative health. Yeah absolutely you can still get dietitians who work in sports and nutrition for example but lots of nutritionists for example work on like public health policy or they'll work in the media and things like that and also lots of them will go on and do just research like PhDs and things like that. You said earlier when you were studying your degree that a lot of the things you spoke about weren't necessarily to do with like exercise and food and do you think that that's something that's changing in that as the wellness for want of a better word industry grows do you think we're seeing well I mean I'm sure this was

important but the idea of being more preventative and kind of like trying to live a healthier life to prevent illness rather than um treating illness do you think that's like an attitude that's changing yeah I absolutely think absolutely think so. I think people, I think most people know that in order to stay healthy, they should eat a certain way and exercise X amount of times a week and sleep and manage their stress. But I think now we've come to the point where if we kind of step back and look at the diseases that we're suffering from or dying from today they're very different to what they were like you know even 50 years ago so we're no longer dying of infectious diseases the example that I always use is HIV where you know 20 years ago that

was in one of the top 10 killers of the world it's no longer really a death sentence because we've got incredible medicines that and we can you know pick it up early but now we see things like type 2 diabetes killing people and like people suffering from type 2 diabetes a very young age and that's not something that we typically see in a young person and that's largely lifestyle related so we're kind of like well I can give you pills to help control your blood sugar but it's not going to fix the problem. So the best kind of alternative to that is stopping people getting sick in the first place. And that's where preventative medicine comes in. But then that's fraught with problems as well, because it's all well and good telling someone to eat, you know, your five a day and get exercising but we know that kind of you know the people who are um more likely

to get sick are also more likely to come from a lower socioeconomic status as well and um will they have access to a gym for example or open areas or can they afford fruit and vegetables so there's so many things that come into the picture when we're looking at like what are the determinants of health, really. And the other thing, I was actually thinking about this earlier, but I guess that these lifestyle choices we're making are a symptom of society. The fact that we work such long hours and we've got cars and washing machines and manual labor is massively reduced by technology improving. So I guess it's not that much of a shock that we're over consuming like highly produced foods and not really moving very far I think a lot of the time the difficulty when

we go to approach conversations especially that might relate to somebody's weight or size is that it feels like it's such a personal attack when actually if we look at you know as you say like the demographics that suffer from weight related illness it's not necessarily the individual's problem there's so much down to the way that our society is set up that impacts it and I think what's hard when we talk about nutrition is because it's so personal and food is more than just food it's like your family time or it's how you show love to your children or whatever it's really hard to to separate those conversations and make people feel like they're comfortable to talk about nutrition

without it then impacting all the other areas of their life yeah absolutely I think that's why weight and and food is such a sensitive area because you it's very difficult to not talk about it without putting blame on the person and also it's very easy to not talk about it without putting blame on the person. And also, it's very easy to pass judgment on someone and think, because you are X weight, you are because you eat in a certain way or you're lazy and you don't exercise enough. You don't know what that person's background is. And also, like you just mentioned, we live in this environment that is, it's not health promoting, I guess. It's more sickness promoting. And I don't want to sound, that sounds really extreme, but like you just walk into like a shop and you know that the food that is like, you know, available to you is highly processed. And while

that's fine in moderation, that's really kind of what we're getting the majority of the time, as opposed to the minority of the time. And that's something that's changed over the years as well as physical activity levels and while our calorie intake hasn't really changed we're just eating different foods and like you said we're not really moving anymore we're not doing laborious jobs most of us have a very sedentary lifestyle um and i think that's only going to get worse do you know i actually want to ask you about i think i heard you talking about this but i think before people would say like a calorie is a calorie is a calorie but actually um i think it's through listening to you that i've learned that we do digest certain foods differently and whilst i think that's not necessarily always like that's

something not something we need to worry about but sometimes especially in times when i know certainly when i was in like disordered eating times I there was times when I didn't care what I was eating as long as I was eating few enough calories but the properties within the food are so important not just for like health but actually you don't necessarily I mean I think calories are something which are useful to understand but aren't always the measure that I think we put them as like the top thing to know about. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, caloric intake when it comes to weight management will always be like top tier, the most important thing probably. And then after that, it'll be like macronutrient, micronutrient composition and macronutrients are your carbs, fats, protein,

and then your micronutrients are all your vitamins and but it's just like you know you've got like one crowd on instagram who are like really like um macro counting or if it's your macros and they're kind of like promote once it's within your calorie or macro range you can eat whatever you want so like you know 2000 calories of pop tarts is going to equal to 2000 calories worth of like like, healthy, fresh fruit and veg. It's not. Your body isn't going to. So technically, yes. If you put it side by side, put it in a bomb collimator, it might just, you know, produce the same amount of calories, which is energy.

But for your body to extract the energy, it's going to be a very different process. And also, we don't eat foods or nutrients in isolation. We eat foods or nutrients in isolation we eat foods together um so like when people say for example that um you know in broccoli it's like rich in iron for example it's not just iron this and there's so many other nutrients how they interact with one another is very different if you cook that broccoli it's going to be different if you have it with i don't know some hummus that's going to make it different as well because there's fat in hummus and so we we're very reductionist when we look at food yeah and it's just far more complex than that do you think that as individuals we need to have because I can't work out which way it goes I can't work out either we almost

are trying to get too involved in our nutrition to the point that it does become disordered. Like I've definitely been through and thank God, like out the other side. But being out the other side, I've realized that my relationship with food is more relaxed and that's actually made me have a better relationship. Like I'm not as stressed about what I'm eating. I actually am enjoying good foods and,

I shouldn't say good, enjoying like nutritionally dense foods and calorie dense foods and whatever I want. But almost when I tried to learn too much probably from not very good sources that complicated my relationship with food more and do you think as I guess it depends on the demographic but do you think as someone coming from like a medical nutrition background is that like an optimum amount that we should know about food yeah I think I think it depends on the person um and also I I kind of when I'm when it comes to this conversation I kind of see two populations I see the population

um where you and I guess would fit into where we are already healthy yeah like we're already healthy and what we do is going to make marginal differences to our health. And in that instance, so if we're looking at, you know, the young women who are users of Instagram, for example, I think they're just seeking better health. And they're the population who are at risk of becoming too obsessed. So they'll exhibit orthorexic tendencies where they're like, oh, should I cut out this? Or should I be eating more of this? And they get a bit too anxious tendencies where they're like, oh, should I cut out this? Or should I be

eating more of this? And they get a bit too anxious about what they're eating. But then, you know, there's the other population who I see probably more in the hospital who don't really have a grasp of nutrition. They probably know that, you know, fruits and vegetables are good for them, but they wouldn't really know that they wouldn't use the language that we use when it comes to nutrition and I don't think I think they could do with slightly more education the thing is when we look at the science we know that regardless of how much you educate a person when it comes to nutrition doesn't really make a difference to their intake so there's so many other barriers that are in the way like we spoke about like money access you know fresh fruit and vegetable goes off all the time um people don't know how to cook people don't have access to a kitchen so that's that's why i get so frustrated when i see like messages

when people are like just eat less move more and you're like it's it's it infuriates me but it's not impossible and that's why we need to it's not just an individual approach we need to do like government top-down level approaches where we make a healthier food more available and easier to buy i was just exactly about to say that every podcast i do that talks about any kind of like social issues the biggest problem that comes down to is inequality and the fact that the people in in the worst case scenarios suffer so much and as you say like everyone knows we're shoved down our throats information about like what's healthy but if you can't buy that or as you say things like there's so many little things that you don't

realize that you have such a privilege in being able to do even just your mum cooking in front of you when you're younger like if you're a single mum with five kids and you're working three jobs like what's the likelihood that you're cooking fresh meals every night probably not very high so that is a massive shame but you do a lot of work with public health england don't you so i guess that's at the forefront of a lot of what you target they like obviously any public health campaign has to help the majority but it's not going to help everyone and so their recommendations are very much blanket general recommendations which is why some people will tear them down and say, you know, this is not appropriate for X person. But so a lot of the things when it comes to like sugar reduction, calorie reduction and things like that will be kind of reducing or like reformulating things.

So changing the ingredients and recipes so that there's less calories or less sugar, less fat, etc. And then overall, people will kind of slowly, they'll still be buying whatever food, but they'll be consuming less calories. So it's kind of sneaky. Right. But it's worked in kind of experiments or other countries that have tried it. And so the sugar tax is one of the biggest examples that we're doing now at the moment. And that's we put a tax on any beverages that have a certain amount of sugar on them.

And then that will be up to the company. Then they have to take that tax on. So it's in their interest to reduce the amount of sugar so that they don't get taxed. Some companies ignore that and they're like, I don't care. We'll take the tax and we'll just keep pumping out our drinks. But a lot of companies have taken that on board and they've reduced the sugars in their drinks. And people haven't noticed really. That's really interesting.

Yeah. And so it's not going to change anything. It's a blunt tool. But I think those kind of population-based things that we can do are helpful. I know some people would disagree with me but i think it's kind of we need to attack this and attack is probably the wrong word but when it comes to health on a population level we have to like look at what we can do that's going to help the most people yeah and again yeah that does you know the people who probably need our help the most may not get it.

But I think when it comes to public health, they're looking at the people who are lower income. And that's why kind of, you know, the messaging is very simple. Really, really easy rules. Some of the things that are not like, they're not great messages sometimes. They're problematic. Yeah. Yeah. But I think people need to understand the difficulty when it comes to

creating guidance and it would be great to for example roll out an intuitive eating program for you know the whole of the uk but i don't know how that would work no so it's you know you have to we have to think about the population we're speaking to when we when we discuss nutrition i think um the other interesting thing that people want to do is they're always looking for like this this perfect diet or what should I be eating and people are always fascinated they always ask me like what do you eat in a day and I find it I remember I used to watch what I eat in a day videos and even sometimes I'd make them and then you think about and you think it's so it's so difficult and problematic because from day to day

you might eat. Some days I eat loads, some days I don't eat very much, some days I eat loads of vegetables and some days I don't. And I think this idea, and you brought it up earlier, is people want a clear instruction to go off. And I think we've lost a bit of the, I think because food has become so politicised, it actually, as much as we're trying to strip away the messages of good and bad like i did earlier there is almost more of a moral attachment to food i think people are becoming even more judgmental around the way that we eat and it becomes misplaced yeah yeah and i think it's changed you know like we we had that like whole backlash against clean eating and good

and bad and that was you know that i mean I'm glad that we've moved on from that. But now we've got this kind of this whole ethical and sustainable type stance. So like people are eating in a certain way because they feel like they have to in order to save the planet or because they don't want to be the person who's still eating meat or still eating fish. And I think that's problematic in itself because there's this massive peer pressure to eat in a certain way and people don't know what to think or what to say and where they're getting their information is from the people who are highly influencing them, which are celebrities,

influencers, Netflix documentaries and things like that. I actually was going to ask you about this because there are some people who, so I've done, I kind of went full vegan out of guilt for like a few months last year. And then I've just kind of reintroduced, and I'm not, I'm like whatever, flexitarian or whatever the word is, but I'm like in the middle. And I find myself apologizing when I post because I'm so scared that someone's going to tell me off but it's so silly I think that we making these extremes just makes it even more inaccessible for people because then you've got this idea that well I've got to go vegan or I might as well just not bother and then I think that's where the troubles cause there needs

to be a bit more um kindness about it these extremes as you're saying that it's so funny I was just thinking you know like when we say you're like that elastic band though when you go on a diet it's like the whole world of that world the whole country went clean eating and now we've got this backlash into almost it's a good it's a pushback against diet culture but in some instances it does seem that we're also going the other way as in like eat to the point of being very over full and that's fine also and like neither of those extremes are ideal but it's almost like the whole country's like yo-yo dieting and maybe we'll get to a point of equilibrium at some point but how do you deal with the problematic messaging around overeating because we know that's just as

much of an issue but it's it's more difficult to talk about I find, so I think there's, you know, there's one group of people who are like, you need to be very conscious of what you're eating. And you know, you are what you eat. And sometimes that messaging is a bit like, nauseating. But I think then there's another group of people who are like, you know know eat whatever you want and just love your body the way it is and I think that's absolutely wonderful and everyone should love the body that they're in and enjoy their food first and foremost and should not feel like they need to shrink themselves however nutrition is really important for our health and so are the things that we do every day so I think sometimes the messaging can be misinterpreted or it can be kind of put out in a way that is not easy for people to interpret.

So eat whatever you want or kind of, yeah, like don't stress about eating, you know, eat donuts or whatever like that. Some people actually will take that gospel and they won't worry about it. And so we need to be really careful about who these messages are landing on um so intuitive eating is something that i don't really um seem like i'm not an expert in it it's a very uh niche area of nutrition um and i absolutely support it but it's something that is only useful for like a certain population of people. And also it needs to be done with a nutritionist or registered nutritionist or dietitian who's trained in that.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. So then you can get girls who severely under eat, for example, and if they want to go and intuitive eat to them, they'll say, well, I'm not hungry and they'll just keep losing weight. So for like eating disorder people, it's very tricky for them to eat intuitively. Also, there'll be some people who will have broken their hunger and satiety cues from years and years of dieting. So they will no longer stop when they feel full. They won't know when they're hungry. They'll just eat and eat and eat. And that's really problematic. And that is a symptom of diet culture absolutely but for them to learn how to eat intuitively again that's such a big process that I really think in those instances they need to be

supported by someone who can train them along the way um so I think we've gotten to the point where it's kind of like black or white and there's no way in between like people are scared to talk about what they eat or ask questions about nutrition because they don't want to uh i guess they're afraid to fall kind of victim to diet culture um and i think there's still a risk of that happening for some people but i think for people like yourself who've come through full circle you know what your body wants but you also don't see food as like this not enemy but um like you're not fixated on it and it's not just uh an energy thing for you it's also family it's enjoyment like you go out to eat and you're not stressing about what's on the menu because you're going out to celebrate someone's birthday and things like that and I think that's the part of food and

nutrition that I love um and I think that we've so we've dissected it so much that that's lost I agree I think what it is it seems that everyone has some traumatic relationship with food whether that's they restricted and so now they binge or whether they have an emotional rate. Everyone I meet has got some quirk, like some weird thing from food. And it is from the fact that in the media, I guess, the way that it's portrayed in so many different iterations of our lives, whether it's my mum who has like still ingrained ideas,

like when those magazines and slim shake thing was out to now to people being like almost anti-salad because they think if they have that it'll look like they're being anti-feminist there's so many weird things that are tied tied into food that I think it is as you say really really hard to question it because you don't want to feel like you don't know what you're talking about because everyone's such an expert on it and I think online this is something I think social media can help but again it's the way that you use it and I think what happens is when people put out headlines or stories we don't necessarily interrogate them as much as we should so for instance I remember reading things like don't eat pasta or don't eat carbs after 6 p.m or don't and i would just do whatever the thing was

or the celery juice thing which seems to have stopped now and all of these things have no nutritional bearing and i think maybe one thing we should do collectively is try to be more scientific with it and and use our i don't know like we try to be more analytical with information we're given because do you find I guess one of the problems is that there is it's like the wild west there's so much information and again everyone is so so different when it comes to their nutrition yeah I think we kind of like suffer from this kind of anecdotal evidence on social media where n equals one um so what works for me will work for you type of thing but you and I could eat the exact same diet and we'll never look the same we'll be the same we'll

have the same health conditions or you know health parameters that will just never happen because our bodies are so different and that's why sharing food on Instagram can be a little bit tricky um and like you mentioned earlier, like the what I eat in a day videos is something that I've never done. I don't want to do, but I've definitely done it for magazines, for example. And I've had to start saying no, because that's irrelevant to my job. That's totally irrelevant um and I think when it comes to the headlines to come back to your um main point the way the newspapers and um kind of like online magazines grasp people is by by fear-mongering or through excitement so they are always going to twist a headline in some shape or form.

I think it's really difficult for someone who doesn't have kind of a background in said science to really dissect that themselves. But I think it's always good to look, if you're reading an article, to look at the comments of the researcher. They usually get the comments of the researcher and they'll say, you know, this is what we found, but, and they kind of make it a bit more clearer. Also, if you're reading these headlines or these kind of posts from people who are on Instagram, I would read their bio first as well and see like, what are, what is their background? Is it just like a girl, like an everyday girl? Or is that, you know, some guy who's, you know, promoting lots of supplements or has like some kind of agenda? Or is it someone who's registered, you know, a registered dietitian or a doctor, whatever it might be. But it's even at that it's difficult because I've seen some people who are

qualified give out weird, weird kind of advice as well. And I think that comes back to people having experiences with food. So it's tricky. It is the wild, wild west for sure. You're right because there's so many different parts that can be broken apart. But I think one really important thing you said right at the beginning there was about how if you you and I ate the same we might never look the same and this took me years to get my head around the fact that some people talking about body image very um what's the word um so this is going to be really an ugly description because I don't mean this now but I'm just saying in the mindset of a young woman I couldn't

understand why someone would be really skinny and eat loads of food and someone else might eat not very much food and not be as skinny and I think we've been so taught that especially for the guilt thing that we are in we are in control of how our body looks and we should be able to especially as women make ourselves look a way that is deemed like a certain social version of beauty but actually all of us i don't want to say set point because i know that's actually like a scientific you might be able to explain that a bit more but basically your body will have a place it wants to be mine always comes back sometimes I lose weight I don't mean to like if I stop training I lose I drop muscle I look a bit slimmer and sometimes I'll eat a bit more and I'll get a bit bigger but generally

as I my body just comes back to the same size which is obviously where it likes to be it's like a natural point for it and basically if you push your body too far either way like it's going to feel uncomfortable but I think the scope for what a natural healthy body can be can be anything from a size six up to whatever size and I think we need to stop believing that um we're wrong if we don't fit into that set body type because as you say you could do everything perfectly with your diet in verticommas and still look in a way that you might deem to be not how you think is healthy. I'm trying to word that carefully. No, absolutely. Like healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes and like even down to like our bone length and structure is so different in one another. So like

I will never have a long torso so like I look yeah I've got very long legs but I've got a short torso and that used to not like upset me but like I would I would always want that hourglass shape and it's just like something that I'm not going to have um I've got like quite a an athletic type of frame and that's fine and I'm healthy and before that was an issue but now it's not and I think we if we're looking at um kind of people on in magazines or on Instagram when we're just seeing one type of body we're going to think that something's wrong with our body if it doesn't fit with that but if we kind of diversify what we see and I know that word's thrown around all the time like diversify your feet but it's so true

yeah like look at different bodies and how they move and how they're different and different color skin and different texture hair and everything's so different yeah um but I think like you know for like I'm always asked like how can we kind of cultivate an environment for like young girls to grow up in and I think when you're going through puberty you have those beliefs anyway you think that way and it's going to be very difficult to change that. Sometimes you have to go through a period where you feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable and you learn what you're, you know, what way you like your hair. I think I had my hair like five, six different colors at one point. But that wasn't a bad thing.

I think the bad thing is that we're like, we don't want them to believe that they have to look a certain way or that there's one right way yeah um and I think that definitely comes down to body shape and size which is why I don't really focus on weight I don't I don't talk about it on my page it's not like an argument I want to get into I don't care what your weight is I'm I just care about promoting health so we talk about dieting from a nutrition point of view, we talk about exercise, we talk about sleep management. My kind of food medic page has become more medical as a result of that. So I think we shouldn't be afraid to talk about food. Talking about it doesn't mean that you have to go on a diet when we say diet we

don't necessarily mean weight loss yeah it's like that's the problem I think people need to stop holding their breath and just and just talk about what they want to talk about yeah I completely agree I think that as you say we all the other thing is we all have our own health whether it's good health or bad health like you have there is always areas that you could maybe change but to someone like hazel right like the way that we could improve our health might look very different to someone else just getting up off the sofa and going for a walk for one person might improve their health tenfold and i think we've got to stop thinking that everything's linear or that we're all a monolith because we're completely not and different it's just it's just also different i think this is probably why

messages don't good messages about nutrition don't get through because you can't condense it into a click click weighty headline it's so nuanced there's so many caveats unfortunately when we see things that get shared around or they're really interesting exciting like the celery juice thing you can't condense nutrition into one thing that can just be used as like a tagline no and i think that we've got to start viewing it as um it's more it's more holistic than that i think yeah i think also the the kind of the main nutrition messages which we've known for a long time haven't really changed and people are maybe bored of hearing them it's not very sexy like you know everyone knows fruits and vegetables are important for them everyone knows to like eat

their you know oily fish or get their omega-3s elsewhere fiber is good for you like going for complex carbohydrates that are brown or whole grain like not eating too much sugar not drinking too much alcohol, like those messages, people are like, yeah, I know, but what can I eat to cure my acne? Or what can I eat to give me glowing skin or beautiful hair? And I wish I had those answers. And while food will definitely play a role in the condition of your skin or your hair or your anything, it's not going to cure X or Y. And like, it's there's very, very few diseases that are purely related to food, like celiac diseases and gluten is the only one I can think of the top of my head, but also like, you know, deficiencies, but for a healthy individual,

food can only go so far. And I don't want people to completely abandon Western medicine because it's like, I just feel that's happening already western medicine because it's like I just feel that's happening already like it's like it's not cool anymore because like we've got doctors who are trying to push pills down our throats it's like maybe in a privatized health care like in the states but in the UK like I don't get any money by giving you a medicine I'm going to prescribe you what I think is the most appropriate for your condition. If that's not pills, then it's not pills. If it is, then it is. You're totally right with that.

Because even when I was younger, I was under the impression, I don't know where I got this from, that they would give you, obviously, in the NHS, they might try to save money in terms of, like, if a certain medicine costs more, like the pills sometimes. I guess they could prescribe a cheaper pill. But I also had that concept that, like, you would get paid more. And you're completely right in this idea of like um we see it a lot especially when people talk about cancer cures and things but modern medicine does obviously work that's why we use it like if it if there was a better way of doing

something it would be done it's just the regulation around medicine takes so long doesn't it to push things through um but as you say like teaming I think going back to the skin point I know that that's a real thing people get it can be so destructive to the way you feel if you have bad skin but when it comes to like um your body image and your hair and your skin and things the best way to solve that problem is stop seeing that as like the biggest problem I remember when I thought that my weight was my biggest issue that I had to fix I was never happy because no matter how small you get you could always get smaller and so that ends up being a never-ending problem and usually actually I think a lot of the time I always say as women but guys probably got this too we use our bodies or our looks or the or the

superficial things as a means of kind of um thinking of we fix that problem everything else we have fixed and it allows us to maybe not address other areas and when you like let go of that feeling of like, just like as if you're not good enough, you actually realize there's so much more to life. And like going out for a walk and eating good food isn't just good because it will make your skin and hair and nails nice. You actually, your mental health improves so much.

Yeah. And it gives you so much more clarity. And I know, again, that comes with a lot of privilege being able to do those things. But it's so hard so hard to strip away the two yeah I don't know yeah no it's so it's so so true and I think like you make a good point because when it comes to food we we purely like just jump onto the conversation of of weight um and that we should only care for it for it from that perspective. But actually, like, food's not just important for your physical health.

It's absolutely important for your mental health. And, like, it's just, like, I think some people are, like, have this incredible metabolism in that they can eat like a horse and not gain any weight, and they don't really care about what they put into their body but we know that food has bioactive compounds that will change or will determine your health in the long run we can link food and and mental health conditions together so there's like there's so many other things going on but you know even coming to the mental health thing like if you are like when it comes to protecting our mental health it's not just eating it's also like taking time

over eating so that your body's not stressed while you're eating so that you can actually absorb what you're consuming um so there's so many things that come into the picture and you want to try create an environment where you're like less anxious about things. Yeah. That's easier said than done. Like we live in a world of fake news when it's very difficult not to be anxious about things.

There's always something happening. We've got access to the news at our fingertips. So it's like, it's difficult. But my biggest piece of advice would be to people is address the stress in your life first and then focus on the other things because what I see people fall down most at is they want to have the perfect diet they want to go to the perfect classes exercise classes they want to sleep eight hours a night they want to have a digital detox in the evening they want to have a some self-care

and like they want to do everything and then they're so burned out from trying to do everything that they're not healthy at all yeah that's the thing I think you're so right that like the extreme as you say like orthorexia and things is that it always comes back to and I hate this like balancing but it is literally that you can't you've you but also you've got to find your own equilibrium like puts I'm me and my friends all eat really differently but I found my perfect balance things that look totally different to what Hazel eats. And it's, I think it's also trusting yourself that you are allowed to be in charge of your food. I know that social settings, sorry, I never stopped talking, but when you're out with friends, I even remember thinking,

if I order a salad, will they think, what if I just want a salad? It would like be a whole, do you ever do that? Like you sit and think, if I order a salad, they're going to think I'm on a diet, but I just really fancy a lettuce. I mean, I'll do you ever do that like you sit and think if i order a salad they're gonna think i'm on a diet i just really fancy a lettuce i mean i'll order a burger because that there's weird pressures depending on your body shape if you're in a bigger body you might think i should order something that looks like i'm trying to diet if you're in a smaller body you might want to eat something that looks more calorie dense there's all these really weird like psychological things that we go through and i think you've just got to trust yourself and boundary setting is really important.

I know we talk about it with friendships and relationships and alcohol and all those things. But with your food as well, if you feel like you should try and be in control of your food rather than let it control you. And I think that's an issue that a lot of people struggle with. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, yeah, we shouldn't be so focused in that,

like our whole day's focused around food. And while some people will be like, oh my God, my whole, like that's the only thing I look forward to in the day. And I absolutely get that. Like some days on the busiest of days, I'm like, I'm so excited for lunch. But it's more so for that like five minutes of sitting down and just like enjoying something. And that's fine. But if it's like, if you're stressing about like what you're going to have in the morning, what you're going to have at lunchtime, how that's going to fit into your day, will that bring you over an X kind of target? How that's going to make you feel?

Will that contribute to how you look? Those kind of tendencies are really, really dangerous and they're problematic. And I'd address them sooner rather than later if you feel like that you're fitting into those brackets because that can really really run away on you yeah I also think that um it took me so long to get out of having those weird almost what's the word like neurotic tendencies around food and I think that sometimes also when we when it can feel quite attacking when you notice that you have disordered a disordered relationship with food like you feel like i'm doing something wrong but again coming back to that thing of like

the individual versus the system we've all kind of been produced in an environment where we're taught to be fearful of food so sometimes it can take some people like love people love to ask like what's your relationship with food it's a really everyone has a relationship with food and I think you should work on it as much you might work on your relationship like with your boyfriend or it's never going to be easy because unfortunately it's not easy and sometimes you might actually have to think god I'm really gonna have to work on this it's not because you're a failure because you've not you're not doing it right it's just something you have to unlearn a lot of things that you've been taught whether that's by parents your friends or the tv um and like not not feel like you're doing anything wrong with food which i think is our our biggest fear yeah it's very rarely to do any anything to do with food

yeah the control yeah um so yeah it's just we need to be more compassionate with ourselves as well yeah those things but yeah for like a lot of people I know for me for a long time it was more the like control of like feeling like I was on top of what I was doing in my life like and making sure I was eating healthy all the time and I think like I definitely exhibited some like orthorexic tendencies and luckily kind of knocked that on the head pretty early and realized actually it's not normal to stress about, you know, kind of the macronutrient composition of foods. Because at that time, like the people who I was spending with

or like online with, everyone was doing it. So it's very normal. We like normalized disordered eating. And then I look back and I think I never want to put anyone in that position I like you know I I got advice from coaches at the time who were like you know eat x and eat this amount of calories and I'm like that is that is so dangerous it was the bodybuilding era though it was when like bodybuilding had just come over from the US and and everyone was like it felt really empowering though because I don't know about you, but that first era, it was like the first time that women were really coming to

the forefront of fitness and being like, do you know what? I'm not just going to be skinny. Not that everyone, everyone was obviously small, but it was like a new, it felt powerful to be like, I'm going to be in control of my own body. So do you think it started, I think it started the whole wave of the fact that women are more successful in the fitness and health space online, which I think is incredible. But it definitely did start in a place that was just trickled down from bikini prep, which was kind of where everything started. I mean, I even did a bikini competition because it was just normal. It was especially in Cardiff. Just everyone was doing that.

Everyone still does it in Cardiff. Body building is so big there yeah um and like no disrespect because i know some people absolutely enjoy it and see it as sport and that's great but i think like not everyone has to eat like a bodybuilder and i think a lot of people fell into that trap um and also like bodybuilding should be seen as a sport or like, you know, like it's an activity, it's a hobby, whatever it might be. It's not like something that happens year on year for the rest of your life and you don't have to eat in that way. And I think loads of people get their meal plans from bodybuilders and it's like chicken and rice and eggs and things like that. And it's like, even that, I don't think that's healthy.

I'm like, you know, I think those, I'm glad that we've moved away from that. And I think that's kind of like dying out, you know, maybe for like select people who are actually interested in doing that, that's absolutely fine. But at least that they're not the leaders in nutrition anymore. Yeah, totally. And they shouldn't be you know um and i don't think we all need to eat like a dietitian or a nutritionist or whatever it might

be either like that's also one of my biggest pet peeves people are like oh you're the food medic you must eat so healthy all the time and it's just like i'm a person yeah you know like i look at my phone when i'm in bed i sometimes don't exercise for days on end. I try to. Like, I drink far too much coffee. I eat a lot of refined sugar sometimes. Like, I'm a human and you're a human. And I think what you do the majority of the time is fine.

Yeah. And what you do, like, on random days for you doesn't matter. And again, when I'm, you know, on social days where it doesn't matter and again when I'm you know on social media I keep thinking like am I really speaking to the people who need you need to hear me I know I completely agree and because that context is so important it's a bit like when someone starts at a place where they do classes and they do challenges and um they were saying like what the meal plan they're on and I was like you can't eat 1200 calories a day you work in the city you start work at seven and you're going to go to a class

and you finish work do you know how much energy you're expending throughout that day like how how is it we've just lost all the context around the fact that like we are we have so many things to do we're like a lot of the people that we're friends with are young, really busy, you're working really hard, like you need energy. So to be on a diet is not only like maybe unhelpful, it's really impractical. We've like lost this touch with food. And I think that like when bodybuilders, I remember, I didn't eat salt for about two years because I remember a plan from a person said like no salt because it will make you retain water.

I love salt now. But it's all these really like why why do you want to worry about your nutrient timings if you're not an athlete why are you weighing yourself like what is all of those things that you sometimes i think we don't interrogate things enough and actually if you step back and look at what you're doing like oh that was so point even now i'm like why do i need to lift really heavy i almost used to like keep training like to get heavier and heavier because male pts are special in life like progressive overload and I was like actually I'm not trying to build muscle I'm not doing just remembering I'm not doing anything I just want to go and exercise

yeah I just want to squat 40 kilos I'm going to do that but I was in this even for a little bit a mind where I was like I have to be doing 100 kilos or more so that I'm like there's lots of weird things that we get in our mind because we're so concerned about doing the right thing in the eyes of others when actually like now I go for a walk in the morning and I count that as my training yeah I love that yeah absolutely and I think you know like you mentioned that diet plan of 1200 and I I know the one that you're talking about and it says like to remove like lots of other things as well but like for most people 1200 calories might even be less than your BMR which is like your basal metabolic rate and that's the that's just what you need to function not exercise just for your body to breathe to blink your eyelids to you know

do all of the processes in your body so like the fact that someone will put you on a diet that's less than that like it's just so damaging to your metabolism your hormones everything that's going on yeah um and yeah i find oh those plants so frustrating how are they still around how are they still allowed um it's like yeah yeah that's that's super frustrating but when you mentioned like using um walking as exercise like i think that's that's absolutely fine yeah exercise doesn't need to fit into like little silos yeah yeah exactly whatever like whatever your body needs to move i think that's where hopefully we'll like come back to and i see a lot with like lots of people that were online in that time now we're finally getting to the place

where we're like oh it's almost just reconnecting with what it was to be human before like the industrial revolution it's kind of like we've lost touch so much with that desire just to move and like the retrograde exercise being kind of like punishment or too much and actually obviously not to be ableist but if you are able-bodied and able to move like it is fun and nice and yeah I feel like we've gone all over the place with this chat oh I know was there anything else particularly that you wanted to talk about or that you think is like important to know I don't think so I think we covered like everything when it comes to diets and particularly online um it's it's frustrating in that like I don't have a solution yeah to like how we get majority of people eating in a way that's healthy

but that's not encouraging disordered eating and that like gives them food freedom as well so I guess you know when it comes to sound bites and takeaways you want people to eat a diet that does support their health but one that does support kind of their social life as well yeah yeah I think that it's with food Jessica Foster Q always says this but she says about how if you have an addiction to smoking or alcohol like you quit those things and then you can hopefully get over it but if you have issues with food you've an addiction to smoking or alcohol like you quit those things and then you can hopefully get over it but if you have issues with food you've still got to eat every day yeah and that that's the problem of it you know it's it's so much more than its sustenance but it's also

it can be crazy and scary and and nuanced and i think i think the conversation around food why we need to make sure that we don't devalue it is that all of the things we've spoken about whether that's body image or your socioeconomic background or your culture religion family or whatever until we have a better well I know that's so awful because we're in like such a messed up moment in the world but until society really fits food is I guess a symptom of everything because it is in everything so I think our relationship with food will only mirror the times and it seems like the fact that we're in such a polarized time with food is just representing like the government I really do think it's that um cyclical yeah and like I mean you always mention like how privileged we are that we even have like food on the table

and one of the things that I was speaking about this week was IV supplement drips because I walk past it in Westfield oh yeah get asked it all the time and it's just like those kind of things are not only like dangerous but totally unnecessary and the kind of the cohort of patients that I deal with most of them can't absorb nutrients via their gut so they'll be all of their food all of their fluids will go through a vein and so they're on lifelong like bags of fluid and food so their food isn't even like food it's just a bag and I know that they would love to not have to be connected to a drip or always have like a line in them and to be able to eat food and enjoy it for what it is then have to

worry about whether they're absorbing or that they're you know and so when I see those people I'm like you know we are so privileged that we can even consume food and that we are you know able to afford it and go out and enjoy it for what it is and that makes me sad when when I think we we reduce it to like a medicine like like with those drips and things like that yeah I think it's it's really sad i think you're right that's such a strange sliding scale of sometimes you need to see realize what you're doing i think when you have so much it can be very very easy to like almost look for the next thing but yeah oh it's been really amazing chatting to you thank you so much for coming on so if everyone wants to find you you are the food medic on everything on everything instagram twitter and facebook even though i don't really

use the latter that much and i've got a website and the food medic could it uk and then my books are on amazon amazing have you got anything coming up that you want to plug i do not no uh for the next six months i'm in this kind of very full-on job. Oh, yeah. Of course. So, yeah, I'm going to be focusing on that. Well, congratulations. I'm looking forward to what you do next.

Thank you. Thanks so much for listening, guys. I will see you soon. Bye. We'll be right back. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca.

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