Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 441: A Thing Most Men Won’t Talk About | Aaron Flores

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Why is it that many men seem unenthusiastic about discussing body image issues? We take a deep dive into this topic with Aaron Flores, a Los Angeles-based registered dietician and nutritionist, and one of the few men very active in the space of intuitive eating. Aaron talks about how capitalism ties our weight to our worthiness, and his notion that “our body is not a project.” In this episode we also discuss: What intuitive eating isHow men experience body image issues, and why they often don’t talk about it The relationship between diet culture and capitalism What “health at every size” means and why it’s sometimes controversialGuidelines for parents The role of self-compassion when it comes to food Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/aaron-flores-441See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, we're going to return today to one of the most frequent, if under-discussed ways in which we make ourselves miserable. How and what we eat and how we feel about the shape of our bodies, the cut of our jibs, so to speak. As far as I can tell, women seem reasonably comfortable, or at least sincerely interested in wrestling with these issues. But in my experience, this is not an easy subject to raise among men, or at least among the men I know. Interestingly, while many men seem unenthusiastic about discussing

body image issues and might even give you a blank stare if you broached the subject with them, when I sit down to meals with the guys I know, many of them are on some sort of rigid diet. They're doing paleo or keto or they're denying themselves sugar or they've subscribed to some sort of hardcore exercise regime. No judgment here, but I've done many of those things myself. But the bottom line, as one writer recently put it, quite astutely in my opinion, and I'm paraphrasing here, if you're a man, it's become culturally acceptable

to diet, even to diet in public, like bragging about your calorie count or exercise exploits on Instagram, as long as you call it a biohack. So what's going on here? We're going to talk about this today with Aaron Flores, who's a registered dietitian nutritionist based out of California, the LA area to be specific. I'll say before we dive in here that I have personally made no secret of my interest in

something called intuitive eating and interest that was sparked right here on the show. A few years back when I interviewed an amazing human being named Evelyn Tribalais, who's one of the creators of the concept of intuitive eating. The basic idea is that diets very often do not work, but what can work for many people is listening to your body to tell you when you're hungry or when you're full. Aaron Flores, my guest today, is one of the very few dudes active in this space, which

is why I wanted to have him on. In this conversation, we talk about what exactly intuitive eating is for the uninitiated, how men experience body image issues and why they often don't want to talk about it, the relationship between diet, culture, and capitalism, errands contention that our body is not a project. What health at every size means and why it is controversial, that concept in some quarters, guidelines for parents around intuitive eating and body image, and the role of self-compassion when it comes to all of this.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us wanna live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you wanna do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation

for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer.

I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music

or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, what's up, such a fan and I'm really excited to be able to talk to you today. Thank you. Appreciate that. I am excited right back. Let's start with your personal story because I'd be curious to hear how you got into this work in the first place. Yeah, I love origin stories. So mine is probably in some ways, probably similar to a lot of folks who go into becoming a dietician. And what brought me to this work was my own issues with food. Probably similar to a lot of folks who go into becoming a dietician. And what brought me to this work was my own issues with food.

I've grown up in LA, I was born in Mexico, but basically lived in LA almost my whole life. And I had always sort of struggled with food and body in some ways, maybe not up front, but sort of in the background for most of my teens and 20s. And it was in my 20s that I went on like my first real restrictive diet. And it was purely for the purpose of losing weight and being smaller. And I was really good at it. I like followed some lessons that a dietician taught me

when I was 15 that I never applied, but I applied later in life. And I was really strict about what I ate and how often I exercised. And I noticed as my body changed, as I got smaller, that the world sort of opened up to me. And that people treated me differently. It was easier to like go on dates.

My friends treated me differently. My co-workers treated me differently. My family treated me differently. And I was in the midst of a career in this is in the 90s, so think of the .com boom that was emerging then. And I was a college dropout, living in LA, and working in the internet.com boom, making video games. I was a video game producer and hated just about every minute of it.

I would come home Friday and cry that I had to go back to work on Monday. It was really like not a good place for me to work, even though I love playing video games. It just wasn't fulfilling to me. And so I was in the midst of this dieting, I was losing weight and I went to a career counselor and I was like, I think I need to do something different. I said, I think I might wanna be a nutritionist,

a dietitian, but I don't wanna go back to school. Anyways, long story short is I did. I quit work. I went back to school to become a dietitian with the intense drive that I was going to tell other people how to do what I did. I sort of had this hubris that if I can do it, well, so can you. And I got through most of all of my education and my internship with that mindset. I was working at the VA running a weight loss program for them.

And that is when I first heard about intuitive eating. I heard one of the co-authors speak. I heard a least-resh speak at a professional meeting organization. And I sat down and I was like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. I had heard about intuitive eating when I was a student in my dietetics work. And I read a couple chapters and I was like, this is wacky. There's no way this could be true. Like I am, no way. Again, I was in the midst of this dieting history. And so I heard her speak.

I picked the book back up and I read it so quickly. It would just like popped through, and I'm not an avid reader, right? So it's rare that I go through a book very quickly, but something spoke to me and I read it. I emailed her and I said, thank you for this book. There's, I think you wrote it about me in a lot of ways. And I just want to thank you for

it. And she responded. And she said, thank you so much. You know, you're a dietician. I have supervision groups in LA. And you're welcome to join, like come and join us. And I did. And I went for many years every like once a month on a Wednesday night and would sit and really what I realize now is that was my therapy. Like that was me unlearning diet culture. That was me learning a new way around food. I had to apply it first to myself before I could apply it to clients, but basically intuitive eating led me to this new way of thinking around food and body. And it was there that I learned about health and every size. I learned about body trust principles, which sort of think about where you think about weight stigma within all of these things. And I finally realized like,

I need to change what I'm doing. I cannot teach weight loss anymore. I need to work from a very different perspective. And I literally did a 180 180 and I quit my job at the VA. I worked part time at a few eating disorder treatment centers and I realized I wanted to work with eating disorders. I wanted to work in a place where people were healing their relationship with food and to have a deeper conversation around not just what to eat, but why?

And why is it so challenging to exist in our body in this society? And it was really like all of that that just led me to this work. And I was like, and now I'm so grateful for it. Like this is exactly where I wanna be. Like these are exactly the conversations that I wanna have with folks around food and body, and

most people aren't having them. That was great, and you've given me a million places to go. But let me start by getting you to describe in as simple terms possible, the difference between the approach to dieting that you had imbibed to use a loaded phrase and intuitive eating. So what I realize now is that the dietitian that I met when I was 15 taught me a bunch of eating disorder behaviors. And what I mean by that is she taught me how to basically focus on amounts of food, whether it's calories,

you know, amount of carbs. Again, I'm, this is about 35 years ago, right? So things change over time, but basically that mindset that I was in in my 20s was extremely rigid, right? You only eat this, you only eat this amount, you don't eat any of like certain food groups, and it was for me, it was like carbs and sweets, like I didn't have a dessert for I think probably about a year and a half, which was horrible, but I got praise for it. Anyway, so that was dieting, right? Dieting was like this rigid set of rules that you have to live by. There's no choice in it. Anyway, so that was dieting, right? Dieting was like this rigid set of rules that you have to live by. There's no choice in it. Like, this is what you have to do if you want to make your body smaller. Intuitive eating is such a different principle in this way. Well, first off, intuitive eating,

when I speak of intuitive eating, I'm referring to the book written by Elise Ress and Evelyn Tribbley. Evelyn Tribbley's been on your show. It was one of my favorite episodes. And the book talks about 10 principles of how to heal your relationship with food. But at its core, intuitive eaters do four things. They have unconditional permission to eat. They eat for physical rather than emotional reasons. They rely on internal hunger and fullness cues to determine how much to eat and they have body food congruence. And that last one is a little wonky, but I think what body food congruence means is that people are able to notice

how food makes them feel, how it lands in their body, when we get rid of all the noise around the emotionality of eating. So just to pick up on what you're saying about intuitive eating, I kind of think about it and this may be a little bit of a little bit flip and you'll tell me, you know, as somebody who tries with very decrease of success to practice intuitive eating and has studied with Evelyn Triple A directly for years. I kind of think about it as eat what you want, when you want, and have whatever quantities

you want. Just pay attention to what your body wants. Yeah, no, I don't think that's flip at all. I think one of the challenges with intuitive eating compared to a dietinging mindset is I think it's hard to put it in a sound bite right it's how it's hard to distill it down to like a 15 second 30 second sound bite or pitch that sounds for lack of a better word like sexy or like that people want to do it and die culture and dieting has done a really good job of that, right? Like do this and you will achieve this.

And I think it's just, it's so, in some ways, complicated in a way to like think about like the nuance of what intuitive eating is. But I think what you said is absolutely correct for sure. For once, I appreciate that. So we've talked about intuitive eating on this show before and as you know, and I'm happy to keep doing it because it's so my opinion and my experience is genuinely a game changer, a life changer.

And so we'll keep talking about it, but I think in particular what I'd like to focus on with you, at least for part of the conversation, is men. And the question of why men don't talk about this stuff. I mean, it's funny because we do talk about it. You know, I noticed going out to lunch or dinner with my male friends, that everybody's got a whole set of complicated rules they're following about what they order. But we don't really talk about body image or what's driving us to eat in this way or what's beneath all this sort of biohacking language that we guys tend to buy into. And I know this is it's not just men, but for sure, it's quite prominent. I'm a man. So I see it through that lens and I see it

among a lot of my male friends. So why is it on one level we're happy talking about whether we've achieved ketosis, but we're not happy talking about like what's underneath all of that that's driving this? Yeah, and I think that experience is something that I see with the clients I work with. I see it in my own relationships with my male friends. Again, there's so much nuance in this answer, but I think one of the things we

need to think about or that I think about in this answer is how masculinity and how being raised socialized male impacts us and that when we do show feelings or when we do show something that is raw, we're mocked, we're te teased, were bullied, we are ridiculed for it. So the conversations I hear other men having around body image feels like bro culture. It feels like teasing. It feels like fat phobia. It feels like joking. I think of the office, right? And I think of how Kevin and Stanley were treated by their coworkers-workers and their bosses. I see that happening, like that it's always a joke. And when it's at that level, we dismiss all of the feelings that are associated with being in a larger body. And the impact of that

is that, oh, I know that I should never bring this up. And that if I do bring it up, it's not safe for me with my friends or family or anyone else. Like I'm going out too far into this vulnerable space. And I don't know if I can come back from it. So I think that's one of the main things that drives this underlying silence around body image, around the true impact of what it means to exist in your body. Right.

So if you start talking about the feelings, the odds are that in some circles and reasonably evolved circles, frankly, somebody's going to call you the P word. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's also that when I was growing up as a teenager, right, I heard people say really horrible things about people's bodies. So to me, the interesting sort of connection here is that I think so much of how men talk about females bodies and sort of the misogyny

in that. Other men internalize, say like, oh, this is how someone is talking about people's bodies. I don't want to be talked about like that in any way or judged in that way. So I'm going to conform and that impacts us as we grow up and we try to exist in this body of ours. Okay, so it's not just that we don't want to talk about our feelings. It's also that the whole culture is for men, we grow up talking about women's bodies and, you know, rating women on a scale of one to 10. And how could we not consciously or subconsciously start applying that to our own bodies? Absolutely, absolutely. And so again, the research shows that we learn this from a very early age that our bodies are judged and that a thin body is preferred over any other body type. And

you know, these things form it's to where we're in this space where we are now as adults struggling, right? And we're trying to control it all, right? I think it's a very common thing that I hear from so many of my male clients is that like, I can control everything else, right? I can do be successful in these ways, whether it's career, finances, sports, or whatever, but I can't control this. I try to exert all the willpower I can, but I can't control this. I've tried to exert all the willpower

I can, but I can't control this. And why can't I? Because everything else seems so easy. Aren't there people that made it if I look at Instagram or look at some of my friends? It seems like they're able to control this. Ah, yes. And this is, comes down to a great question I ask all my clients because they'll say, well, this worked before. And I think about work in sort of air quotes because let's think about the definition of work. You know, has the diet really worked? And what we find is that most people, like a vast majority, we're talking like 90% higher depending on which study you look at, people will regain weight within three to five years of going on a diet. 90% higher depending on which study you look at, people will regain weight

within three to five years of going on a diet. So it works for a short period of time, but it doesn't work over the long period of time and it's not sustainable. What do you say to, I'm trying to figure out, like could I talk about this to my guy friends? I know I could one on one, but could I talk about this to a group of my guy friends? I mean, just to paint a picture here, like, my male friends, generally speaking, are, as

I said before, like, pretty far on the evolved scale. They think about social issues and sophisticated ways. But nonetheless, I would hesitate to bring this up to people. Why is that? Well, I think it's interesting this sort of example you're giving because I think about social justice, I think about privilege, and I think about the one thing that is missing from some of these sort of evolved conversations is the conversation around fatness. And that there is still so much fat phobia in the world.

And for a lot of folks will feel like the one thing I don't want to be in this world that I feel like I have control over is my body size. And I don't want to be larger. I don't want to be larger. I don't want to be fat. And, you know, I think it's that lack of discussion and a lot of sort of social justice circles that is sort of impacting or actually halting the growth in a lot of spaces. So I think about, you know, your group of friends and I have a very similar group of friends in a lot of ways and say, you know, how, to

me, it centered around people still are really worried about being in a larger body. Not just from a health standpoint, but from like a societal acceptance, I want to look good, I want to feel good, I want to be seen as worthy point of view. So with your friends, how can you have this conversation without getting laughed out of the room around like being, you know, somebody who's, you know, wants to talk about their feelings, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things I think is really helpful

is setting boundaries with people. And I think what I've done with a lot of folks that I'm close with is saying, like, I don't wanna talk about food or body, right? I don't wanna hear about what diet you're on. I don't need to hear about how much weight you've lost or things like that. Like there's so many more deeper conversations

that I wanna have with you. How would it feel if we had lunch or went to golf or hung out, watched the game, and didn't talk about these things, right? We instead just sort of said, hey, that's not a topic, let's engage in. Number two is I think it might feel very intimidating to do this in a group. And I think what I talk to folks about is

who are those people closest to you, right? Which friends do you know that can hear this and give empathy back, not sympathy, right? Not fix it, but just sort of empathy. And I often show a YouTube clip to a lot of clients and it's a clip from the West Wing, one of the all-time great shows. And there's a scene where one of the characters

is telling them the story about a scene where one of the characters is telling them the story about a guy who falls in the hole. And the story is, you know, basically saying that guy falls in the hole and a doctor comes by and says, Hey, can I, can you help me out of the hole? And the doctor gives him a prescription, right? And then a priest walks by and says the guy in the hole says, Hey, can you help me out and the priest throws down a prayer? Finally a friend shows up and he says, Hey, I'm in this hole, can you help me out?

And the friend jumps down in there with him. And the guys like, you know, well, now we're both stuck in the hole. And the other guys like, well, yeah, but I've been in this hole and I know a way out. And I think when we find one or two friends who can be in the hole with us, who can hold space, not to fix it, right?

Just to say, wow, that sounds really hard. I'm thankful that you told me and that I know what you're going through. That becomes the game changer. And I think it might only be a handful of people who can do that for us, but those handful of people are incredibly helpful in our own healing. That makes sense. It does. I've read that you've described yourself as kind of like persona non grata or a bit of

an outcast within the dietitian community as somebody who's in a larger body. Am I describing that correctly? I don't know if it would be an outcast or persona non grata. I think I'm an anomaly. I think, well, one, there's not many cisgender men in diatetics. There's not a lot of cisgender men in diatetics who practice from a weight-inclusive approach. And there aren't a lot of fat dieticians

who cisgender male dieticians practicing from a weight-inclusive lens. And I use the word fat there as a descriptor, not as a weaponized word, but as sort of like an activist reclamation moment to sort of help people normalize the word and reclaim that word from all the negativity that it used to be.

I definitely feel like my profession still has a ways to go around accepting body diversity and accepting that people, that there will be fat people and thin people. Like I said earlier, I think it's still a profession that is dominated by thinness and dominated by that narrative and many of the people who are working in the field are in smaller bodies. I notice that I don't fit in, right? I notice that I don't fit in, right? I notice that I don't fit in in a lot of ways. And I think that the implication of that is that I find my people outside of that profession office sometimes or I find my

Community in other ways. It just makes it hard to go to like the national conference, right? It makes it hard to like interact in some of the circles and I have to set a boundary for myself. It's hard to be around it, right? I don't wanna let that in because I'm human too, right? I have hard days in my body and I have days where I question all of this and the less I let it in or the less I'm exposed to the intensity

of the scrutiny of it, the more self-compassion I have for myself, I just notice that I stand out a lot, and that's challenging. Coming up, Aaron's going to talk about how capitalism teaches us to tie our weight to our worthiness, and he'll talk about how to operationalize his notion that our body is not a project after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on Page Six or Du Moir or In Court. I'm Matt Bellissi.

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You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. Can you say a little bit about how I think among women, my sense is that the relationship to food, the relationship to body image is an issue that's, so to speak, on the table, but it's talked about. As we've established, it's not explicitly talked about much or not talked about in such a direct way among men, often shows up and sort of under the guise of like biohacking or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing out there in the world about like how men are talking about this issue without talking about it? That's a really good question. I think that that biohacking example is really there so much for a lot of folks about like

I got to know the numbers, I got to like, I can hack into my body in a way, right, or change my intake to make this machine run better more efficiently. And I think the ways into which men are talking about it without really getting to the real issue is that we are, we are someone who identifies as male, is that we're really struggling. We know that there is a intense pressure to also have an ideal male body. And that pressure is present in a lot of the same ways it is for females and folks socializes female.

It shows up in a little bit different ways, but I think people are talking about it without talking about it by being hyper focused on fitness often. There could be, like, people could be avoiding going to the beach, right? Like, hey, I'm gonna go to the beach, but I'm not taking my shirt off, right? Or I'm not gonna go swimming. I think people are talking about it in the ways

in which they're trying to cope with these feelings and oftentimes using food as a coping, right? Saying like, hey, this is really hard. I don't know how to cope with it in any other way than going back to food as my tool. And so I think underlying, there's all these different struggles that people are going through and not naming at all.

Can you say more about what you're seeing when it comes to men's attitudes about exercise, which again, I think to a large extent, we're not talking about it in terms of body image in a sort of healthy psychological way. We're just talking about it in terms of either biohacking or just outright machismo. So I'd be interested to hear you free associate a little bit about what you're seeing out there in the world about men and exercise right now. Yeah, it's sort of two different conversations.

And I'm gonna sort of break it down in a couple of different ways. And one is for the folks who really have long histories of going to the gym or being active in sports and keep it going, you know, through adulthood. And I think there is the way people are talking about it is they need to measure success, right? It's measured by how much I can weigh. What do I look like in the mirror? Right? How does my body changing as a result of this or keeping up performance? It's very like numbers driven. And the hard part with this in fitness is that so many of these behaviors are praised.

So when I was in the midst of my own experience in my 20s and going to the gym, maybe twice a day, everyone thought that that was great. Right. Everyone like gave me. Pads on the back. And I got kudos for it left and right. But it wasn't flexible, like it wasn't enjoyable. Like I was on that treadmill or elliptical or lifting weights or whatever from this really intense place of fear that if I don't do this, what will happen to my body. And so within that

fitness world, I think there's this intense drive that is really reinforced and and praised in not just the fitness world, but outside of it, like, oh, these people are so healthy and they're taking care of themselves and and they're doing so many positive things for their body. But I think in a lot of ways underlying all of that is a rigidity that is impacting their lives in a lot of other ways, right? Oh, I won't do this because I got to go work out or I won't, you know, eat that because it's not on my plan or I got to have a cheat day because of all the restriction in all of these, all these other days.

So I think what I see for those folks is really hard to pull themselves out, to be able to say, like, why is this bad? You know, isn't that rigidity serving me? And really needing some help in being able to sort of look at it from a broader perspective to say, oh, like I'm actually like sort of suffering through this process, right? I wish it felt more compassionate. The other side I see is folks who are really scared of working out, like they don't want to go to the gym. And partly, it's again, because of all of the weight stigma that shows up in these spaces,

where someone in a larger body is struggling to go to the gym. One client said it really, really, clearly to me, I don't want to go to the gym because I feel like everyone there is working out to not look like me. And that hit me like a ton of bricks, right? Because even for someone who wants to try to move their body more, they are struggling with, well, if I can't do it at this level, or if I can't do it at a certain intensity, it's not worth it. Even the entry point into it feels so daunting, right? I don't want to look like someone who's struggling. I don't want to be the person in the gym or on the hike or on the

bike ride who's last, or needs to take a breath before I hike anymore. Yet, they're also like, and I love hiking. I wanna do it, but I'm so ashamed of my performance level or my fitness level that I don't want people to judge me or even say mean things to them as they're working out, which happens often. And so I think of how weight stigma is impacting those folks and trying to get into movement.

Can you say a little bit about how intuitive eating talks about exercise as opposed to the way the larger culture does? Yeah, again, it's a very different mindset. You know, movement is quite good for us, right? It helps relieve stress. It helps us center ourselves. It's one of those things that is a positive self-care behavior for us in many, many ways. And instead of looking at it from a perspective of what I should do, it's like what feels good to me, what feels like I would actually enjoy this. And it sort of sets the bar at this article on how to use a kettlebell.

But if you don't want like a kettlebell, don't use a darn kettlebell. Let's do something else. And if you want to start salsa dancing, let's go salsa dancing. That is probably going to be a great form of movement for you that you'll probably enjoy a lot more, and if you enjoy it, it becomes sustainable, right? It becomes something that you can do over the long term, rather than something that feels like a should and I have to, and if I don't do it, I feel bad. Yeah, and just to add to that, I found that in my own exercise life, I found that if you really hit this shift to become helpful, because I was almost entirely exercising with the mindset. One of the mindsets you described earlier of trying to hit my numbers and look a certain way,

and et cetera, et cetera. And I found this shift to be really helpful. Another little hack that a friend of mine, who sadly is no longer with us, gave me a while ago, which was once in a while when exercising, and maybe when you notice yourself pushing yourself too hard, to just drop a word into your mind, in this case, the word was gratitude. Like, yeah, I've got a working body. Yeah. Why not take some measure of delight in that

rather than thinking about how performing right now, whether I'm gonna hit a PR on Peloton or whatever? Right, it's like acknowledging like, wow, what a privilege it is to be able to do this just from the get-go. I also tell folks, get rid of the Apple Watcher, the Fitbit or all of these tracking devices, right? Instead of graphing how many steps you're doing

or how much movement you've done in a day, like what if you didn't have any sort of external feedback to tell you you did enough. What if you started just like within to a meeting? What if you started to listen to your body to say like, hey, this was enough for me today, right? I don't need to go X amount of steps. I can turn around whenever I want and go home and be completely content and happy with what I did. Obviously, so many of the things you're talking about today are applicable to all genders. But I'm gonna just go back to men for a second,

because we were talking earlier about like how to reach men so that they can do less, do and perpetuate less suffering around these issues. And I just wanna share that there are at least two things that the aforementioned Evelyn Tribbley, one of the co-founders of Intuitive Eating, said to me in my fateful first interview with her right here on the show, that really jared me out of the dominant mentality around food and body image.

One was, she pointed out, how much self-centeredness there is in spending all this time wondering about whether you're adhering to the rules of whatever diet it is you've signed up for, and how much self-centeredness there is to be sticking to some sort of exercise routine in a way that actually is slavish rather than enjoyable. And that was that really took, you know, she, I think she asked me to think like, well, how many meals have you been to where you're not paying attention to the people

you're eating with because you're thinking about whether, you know, you can have that slice of bread. And then the other thing she said was, what kind of message do you want to send to your son about this? So I just share that just to see if you have any reflections. I think those are both really good examples as a father myself. I think about how do my partner and I bring in our own relationship with food and

body to my son, my daughter. I think about breaking the cycle, right? And I think about how important that is to break sort of that cycle for my son to know that all of his emotions are valid and that he's allowed to feel them. And it's okay to be angry and sad and lonely and scared and happy and that those feelings are something to really cherish all of them

and that we're allowed to feel them and express how we feel as we experience them instead of bottling them up. That's one thing. I'll be honest, one of the things that I think is really helpful is I love metaphors. And I think one of the things that helped me sort of explain a lot of this to people is Star Wars.

And I know that sounds a little bit wonky, but I remember there's a line in one of the Star Wars movies, Empire Strikes Back, where Yoda is training Luke Skywalker, and he says, judge me by my size, do you? And that clicked for me. I was like, oh my goodness, there's some messages in Star Wars that relate to die culture versus being in our bodies and being fully present in our bodies.

And what pulls us out of that experience? And so sometimes metaphors are really helpful in sort of like explaining these messages in a way that speak to men. Yeah, I think most men are pro-yoda. So just to round out this discussion of men, it sounds to me that you're saying that if we want to have a more, I keep using this phrase or this word, enlightened discussion among men about food and body image, it sounds to be like you're saying two things need to happen.

One is that we need to rethink our stigma around what you call fatness. And the other is we need to kind of rethink and reimagine masculinity. And please tell me if I've got that right, A and B, how optimistic are you that either of these things can happen? Yeah, well, yes, I think you have it right. And two, okay, I'm going to go back to Star Wars again for a second. And I'm incredibly hopeful. And there's a line in one of the Star Wars movies, Rogue One, where they, she says, Rebellions are built on hope. And I think this is a rebellion.

And I think there are, again, across all genders. I think there are a lot of people talking about these very issues and about how can we change how we think about body size in this society? How can we not think of it as personal responsibility? Any more, an embrace body diversity? And I think there are more and more men who are talking about being able to challenge what it means to be masculine in this world and being able to hold space for feelings. I also really, I'm going to plug your podcast up and down, by the way.

The Kramas Interview was amazing because I think it highlights that first point that you said, how much can we allow and challenge the idea of how masculinity needs to change in order for us to really evolve as men and be more compassionate towards ourselves. So I am incredibly hopeful and I'm incredibly aware of how big of a shift this is for our society. I don't think it's going to happen overnight, but I do think in a lot of ways this shift is happening in many aspects. You've said that diet culture, which is a term of art in the intuitive eating world, but diet culture, which is basically the opposite of intuitive eating, you've said that it's tied to capitalism. Can you talk about what you mean by that?

First off, if diets worked, we'd be on one, and then we would never be on another. So people are benefiting financially from us going on multiple diets. So if we are constantly going on another program, constantly investing, it's a over $60 billion industry. You know, people are profiting off our body shame. But I think the deeper part in how capitalism is influencing us is, I think how it comes to worthiness, right, my worth in this world, right? Especially from a male perspective,

is determined by how successful I am, right? My worth as a man is set forth by how much money I make, how well I do in my job, how my career advances. It's not really valued much on how I evolve emotionally, right? I don't think we have a lot of value in the evolution we're talking about, especially around being in our body. So I think there's this idea that, oh, well, if I'm aging and I'm getting older, right? That's my worthiness.

Well, I also need my worthiness to be connected to my body, right? That's my worthiness. Well, I also need my worthiness to be connected to my body, right? That at 18, I could do all of these things, right? I was on this team. I could play this sport. I performed this way. I ran this fast. I lifted this much. And as they get older, maybe my body is not as able to do some of the things that it used to do. So where is my value? And I think this idea of this hierarchy of how people value their bodies, I think is tied to this idea of capitalism in a lot of ways. Here's another quote from Aaron Flores, I would love to say more about this. Our body is not a project. So much of what the die culture again tied to this capitalism idea is if my body is a project that needs fixing, right? I go through this cycle of, oh, shoot, something's wrong

with my body, right? It doesn't look right. Yeah, someone will say, like, oh, I got a little, I gained a little weight. I had too many in and out burgers, right? Or whatever. Okay, now I got to fix that. Right. So how do I fix that? Well, it's through dieting, right? It's through restricting. It's through eating less. It's through moving more. And just like you've shared on this podcast many times before, is that we can hold on to that restriction. Our body fights it. And eventually we give in, we end the diet, we gain weight, or we gain the way back that we lost. And then all of a sudden we're back at the top of the cycle of like, oh shoot, now I got to fix this problem again.

Like my body is constantly a project that needs attention. And I think if we step away from that and say, you know what, my body is not something that needs fixing. I don't need to make a project out of my body. I need to actually think about, how do I care for my body? And what does caring for my body actually look like when we take weight out of the equation? What does it look like?

That's the great question. And it looks different for everybody. I think what I think about is, how do you manage your stress? Number one, especially how we've lived over the past three years in this pandemic, how do we manage our stress? How do we manage anxiety? I think caring for ourselves is connection with people.

Who are the people I can connect with on these feelings that I'm having, no matter what they are, whether it's issues with my body or it's depression or it's anxiety or it's joy, how am I connecting with people? Again, moving our body is a part of that, right? How am I moving my body in a way that is consistent with my values and consistent with what feels sustainable to me and joyful. And how am I eating, right? How is my relationship with food? Am I disconnected when I eat?

Am I really, am I disassociated when I eat? Am I not even thinking about the flavor, the texture? Do I like this food? Thinking about, you know, how can we be present when we eat? And I think about broadening the idea of self-care, not something sort of that might even sound sort of feminine in nature, right? But saying like all humans should think about how can we incorporate more self-care that it's something we need to survive? Why is it that it sounds feminine? There's something about this whole conversation that I think is going to be tricky for many

dudes, particularly straight dudes, because it's, I can feel it in myself. It's, I don't know, it's out of my comfort zone. Even though I do this a lot. I think that's interesting, right? How even someone who might feel like they do this a lot, right, it might just feel a little bit out of our comfort zone. Again, I think this is why we need such a shift in our thinking, right?

Why is connecting to these things in this way even perceived as negative, right? I think there's probably some holophobia in that. I think there's probably some misogyny and sexism in that. But I think, again, Star Wars, right? I think there's a balance to us. I think we all have feminine sides. I think we all have masculine side.

There's nothing wrong with it. And I think nurturing both sides of that and everything in between helps us be better humans. And I think it all sort of builds on the stuff we're talking about, Dan, because if we sort of think about the beginning of this conversation about how we've learned from such an early age that these topics are not allowable or that they aren't nurtured either in the home or at school or with our friends, it was that way for our fathers, right? And their father. So it's almost like this historical learning that we know to be sort of quote unquote true

that we don't just we just don't do this. And and so I think it is uncomfortable, but I also think when we get to those levels of discomfort, that's also where the most growth is, right? And I tell my clients like, if I'm making you uncomfortable, I'm probably doing the right thing. Like this is probably a space that we can occupy, right, safely and together, but it's probably going to lead to some growth. After the break, Aaron explains, what is meant by the slogan, health at every size, and he responds to critics of that notion. He also offers some guidelines for parents who want to raise intuitive eaters, and he has

some tips for practicing self-compassion when it comes to how we look at and think about our bodies. That is right after this. I'm gonna go back to something a phrase you've used a couple times, health at every size. I've seen somewhere in my vast area of digital roaming and paragrination somewhere. I've seen, and I may be the ones on a podcast,

I can't remember, but I have seen this notion of health at every size, which I wanna get you to describe, but I've seen it dismissed in some quarters as kind of a leftist, harmful, politically correct piece of dogma because the argument goes, of course, there is some connection between our size and our health. So, that's kind of a two-part question. What is health at every size and what do you say to the folks who are saying, well, actually,

there's maybe a harmful message to put out there. Really good question. So health at every size is a paradigm and it's sort of evolved over years. It was born as a rejection out of die culture, really sort of came to be, or in the 1990s and early 2000s, and there really five principles of health at every size. And as we talk about the principles, right're actually going to hear a lot of overlap to intuitive

eating in a lot of ways. The first one is thinking about weight inclusivity, and that just starting with the idea that there is body diversity in the world, that we are all going to come in different shapes. Some people will be tall, some people will be short, some people will be thin and some people will be fat. And there have always been fat people throughout history and there will probably always will be fat people in the future.

And sort of respecting and understanding that people come in different shapes and sizes. And let's just sort of embrace that instead of saying everyone needs to be thin. The second is health enhancement, is how do we think about equaling the access to information and services for people across body sizes?

People in larger bodies will generally get less healthcare, less quality healthcare. Really from the impact of weight stigma. Research shows that doctors, dietitians, my profession, and many other healthcare professions see their clients in larger bodies as non-compliant, as ugly. They spend less time with them in visits. Oftentimes, they might not get screenings because the machine doesn't accommodate the individual. They might not get accurate blood pressure readings because the cuffs don't fit their arm.

Basically thinking about how does the impact of weight stigma impact healthcare? And then how do we think about then what things are we gonna help people do or add to their lives to help them think about health not just from a weight perspective, right, but from maybe a much broader perspective. The next principle is respectful care. And again, that is very similar to the health enhancement, right? Where we're talking about weight stigma and how that impacts people, but understanding that aside from weight,

that there are other factors that affect people's health. And we need to think about how race affects health, how gender affects health, how socioeconomic status affects health, and adding some more nuance to the discussion rather than just focusing on weight. The last two are, again, sort of fit within that intuitive eating idea, and that is eating for well-being, thinking about flexible eating patterns that focus on hunger and fullness rather than just a rigid rule, and also what is life-enhancing movement. What are movement patterns that are joyful, accessible to folks across all body sizes. So those are the five principles of what health that every size is. The second part of your question is, you know,

people seeing it sort of as dogma or sort of seeing it as sort of this leftist agenda, I can understand that. I really question when people bristle at hearing this, I really think about how is their reaction impacted by their own bias around weight, right? So if we think about how bias shows up and how, you know, again, we've all been influenced by this idea of what is a healthy body and it's a thin body is, you know, we sort of then say, well, anything outside of that

is not okay. And we develop these biases that are implicit in our lives and show up in many ways. And what we're sort of missing in the research when it comes to this is that, sure, weight is connected to health in some ways, but I think we're missing the correlation. Is it a direct connection, or is it just sort of one of the things?

So if it's one of the things, right, what are the other things that impact health? And I think when we look at all of these studies, we don't include how weight stigma affects people, right? Because if someone in a larger body is living every day with the idea that they're not allowed to exist in that body and the idea that they're not allowed to exist in that body. And the idea that like I need to change, they are constantly receiving sort of these almost traumatic events about their body and their existence. And that impacts our health, right? The way in which weight stigma impacts health is really important. So to me, health at every size broadens the conversation in a big way to say,

listen, let's think about how can we help support people in adopting health behaviors for the sake of health and well-being not for weight control, right? Because weight control is not going to work. They're not going to lose weight and keep it off. The research proves that. So then how can we help people adopt healthy behaviors without making weight the focus? And to me, in essence, that's what health at every size is. So just to be clear for the critics, you're not saying go for it, eat in whatever way you want, in perpetuity, eat without any regard for the health of your organs. You're saying make healthy choices and let's not use the number on the scale as the only metric when it comes to health.

Yes, and I would even go a step further to say that let's say someone does what what you said, right? And there's sort of like, I'm gonna eat whatever way I want and however I want and sort of without disregard, I'm still gonna work with that client. And I'm still gonna treat them with the respect they deserve as a human, right? And then think about what support do they need from me around eating in a way that feels more sustainable to them.

Cause I think even on that extreme that you're talking about, Dan, right? I think there's probably something deeper going on, right? For that person, then just sort of gonna throw it all in, right? I think what I'm hoping for is a deeper conversation with folks around, again, not just about what they're eating, but about why, right? And that no matter what they're doing and what body size, right, we can treat them with

some respect and some dignity and that their lifelong pursuit does not have to be losing weight. What tips do you have for parents? We talked earlier about how one of the things that jared me out of my habitual patterns around eating and exercise was Evelyn Triple A saying, you know, what kind of messages do you want to send to your son? What do you recommend to parents when it comes to how to talk to their kids around food? And because it can be complicated at every age. I have a seven year old. It's really

complicated around like, how do I get them to not eat just mac and cheese or whatever. And then as kids enter the teenage years, it becomes even more complex, I would imagine. So what are your guidelines for parents? Well, first off, I think one of the things that we need to do that is clearly evident by what you're talking about is we need to think about how our relationship with food impacts our kids, right? Our stuff will become their stuff if we're not really cognizant of it, right? So what I tell parents is how can you create a home, a space where all bodies are loved and respected? And again, we think that we embrace body diversity. So that means, how many times have parents

think like, oh, I don't look good in that picture, right? And their kids hear us, right? Say that. Or we say, oh, I look horrible in this outfit, right, or in this dress, or this suit, or these pants. I'm so fat, right? Like using that word fat as a sort of a weaponized word. I think creating a space where we think about how we talk about our own body and our kids'

bodies and knowing that it has an impact. And this is again, why intuitive eating also landed so well with me is that we are all born intuitive eaters. We are born with the skill to know when and how much to eat, and we just need to nurture it. And that kids will go through phases where they eat a lot of one thing, and they will also move out of that phase. And we need to give them the space to be able to nurture that intuitive eating side and build the skills to do that. I recommend to a lot of my folks that they read some books by Ellen Satter.

And she writes about how to raise competent eaters. There's also a great new book out. I think it's called How to Raise an Intuitive Eater by Amy Severison and Sumner Brooks, which is using the principles of intuitive eating and applying them to kids. And so, I think what we do, like in that mac and cheese moment, is saying, what we did in our house is like, we're going to put all the food on the table. So, if I'm responsible for plating the food for my kid, I'm going to put the mac and cheese there, and I'm going to put whatever vegetable we have, and maybe there's a piece of steak on it

or chicken or whatever, right? And I'm gonna give my kid their plate and then they get to eat it, right? They're gonna eat whatever they want on that plate and I'm not gonna say anything. I'm just gonna ask them like, okay, are you still hungry? Do you want more? Do you need more?

And it's sort of like getting out of the way of that process, right? Where Ellen Satter talks about having a division of responsibility, right? My responsibility is this, my kid's responsibility is this and it changes over time. The third thing is to really think about, again, how bias shows up as our kids get older, right? Is like saying, oh, my kid's body is changing, right? They're getting older. They're moving into puberty or they've, the pediatrician that said they've gained kids get older, right? Is like saying, oh, my kid's body is changing, right?

I'm better, they're getting older, they're moving into puberty or they've, the pediatrician that said they've gained too much weight, right? Is if we go back to body diversity and understanding that all bodies, you know, kids are gonna be in different size bodies, is like, you know, how do we embrace how bodies grow up and that, you know, things transition, but also knowing that

my fear, my bias, my fear of their weight gain is probably playing a huge role in how I think about food in this house. I know you have argued that self-compassion is really important when it comes to having a healthy relationship to food and the way you look in the mirror, et cetera, et cetera. Can you say a little bit about how exactly we can practice it in this context? With regards to looking at yourself in the mirror, your own body image. Yeah, and also how you talk to yourself about how much you're reading and what you're

reading, all of it. One of the things I really love about self-compassion and I think about Kristen Neff and her work when it comes to this topic is being able to say to ourselves, I'm doing the best I can with the tools I have right now. And so it's this idea of like, I can't be perfect in this pursuit. No one is a perfect intuitive eater.

I'm not a perfect intuitive eater. No one is. Let's get rid of perfection and the pursuit of perfection. And instead, let's just know that this is a process. I will have good days. I will have bad days. Some days will be really easy. Some days will be really hard. But in the end, I'm doing the best I can with the tools I have today with parenting, right? And food. I think being able to, as our kids get older, circle back and say like, hey,

I didn't handle that moment very well around that ice cream or dessert, or I said something around my body that I don't like the way I said. I don't like the way I said it. I want to circle back and say like, you know, I don't, I think I'm learning here. I'm trying to do better.

Like I don't think that that's really how I feel. And I probably could have done better in that moment in these ways. I think being able to sort of say like, I'm doing my best right now and it doesn't have to be perfect. The other aspect of self-compassion, and I think is really important. And we mentioned it earlier, is knowing I'm not alone in this. I'm not the only one struggling here. I'm not the only one struggling with being uncomfortable

in my body. I know other people are having a hard time. How am I going to be able to share my experience and know that my experience is not isolated in the world? That there's other folks who can understand what it feels like to go through this. And I think that allows us this space to say like, oh, I can sit with this more because I know I'm not alone with it. And I think the other thing within self-compassion that becomes so helpful is understanding that the inner critic that has been dominant in our lives is no longer useful.

Right? It might have served a purpose a while ago, but that voice is really driving us down a path that is not helpful anymore. And I need to nurture a new voice. I need to allow this other voice to have some time. I would even like give it a megaphone. How do I give it greater space in my inner dialogue around my body and my experience? I really like everything you said there. And it just thinking about my own experience with intuitive eating. It's been a couple of years now. And yeah, if I was to give the megaphone to my intercritic,

I would say something to the effect of, like, I really suck at this, because many meals, many days, many weeks maybe even go by where I just lose touch with it and overdo it and then end up in a, at what Evelyn calls the toilet vortex of self criticism. But I sometimes recall, if my sane or moments, some of the things that everyone said to me over the years, like when I'll come to her and tell her some

whole story about a disastrous run of mindless eating that I've been on, and she'll just kind of like, she'll say, great. So counterintuitive. She'll say, great. Well, what did you learn from that? And that really is the self-compassionate attitude. If when I can muster it, if like, okay, maybe I kind of lost my connection to what I was trying to do there for quite a while. But okay, that's what I was at the bridge. What can be learned from it?

I can start over immediately. You know, I think that's such a powerful moment that you're talking about right there. It makes me think about why as professionals, right? People doing this work and helping people along, how intentional of a space I need to create to do that work. Because the dominant narrative, I think,

especially being trained as a dietician, is that if someone doesn't do it, it's like, I'm gonna get the red pen out and we're gonna sort of figure out where you went wrong, right? Or why didn't you do it? Instead of embracing the moment and not even seeing it as a mistake, but saying, oh my goodness,

there's so much to learn from this. If we can pull out that negativity, I think there's so much beauty in that moment of creating this space. Even the hardest moments, there's something I'm gonna learn there and something worthwhile that I can take from it. If people wanna learn more about you,

where can they do that? My website is smashthewatriarchy.com, and I'm on Instagram at Aaron Flores, RDN, and I'm not recording new episodes, but I did have a podcast for a while called Dietitians Unplugged, and so you can check that out and listen to the past episodes, and it's a really great way to sort of hear more about this topic from

maybe a little bit of a humorous, edgy perspective. Great. Aaron, thank you very much. Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on. Thanks again to Aaron Flores. Thank you as well to all of the people who work incredibly hard on this show. They include Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davy, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Plant. And of course, all of the good folks over at Ultraviolet Audio who do our audio engineering. We'll see you all on Wednesday for a freshy, a brand new episode with the great Dharma teacher,

Kamala Masters. We're going to be talking about the coveted but widely misunderstood mind state of equanimity. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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