The Food Medic - S1 E7 - Clean Eating and Orthorexia

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

Hazel sits down with performance and eating disorder specialist dietitian Renee Mc Gregor. Renee has authored the book Orthorexia; When Healthy Eating Goes Bad. They discuss what orthorexia is, how it may be triggered, and how the clean eating movement on social media is largely responsible. Renee can be found on instagram @r_mcgregor, on twitter @mcgregor_renee and her website www.reneemcgregor.com. You can find her books; Training Food, Fast Fuel books and Orthorexia; When Healthy Eating Goes Bad, on Amazon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hello and welcome to the Food Medic podcast. I'm Dr. Hazel Wallace, founder of The Food Medic.

I'm a qualified doctor, personal trainer, blogger, and best-selling author of the books The Food Medic and The Food food medic for life i'm passionate about maximizing our health through how we live our lives including the food that we eat physical activity and stress management we will hear from leading experts in their field who will be sharing evidence-based advice on how we can live healthier lives and we will cut through the confusing information that we find online i like to think of myself as one of the first of a new generation of doctors. Hi team, it's Hazel and a very big welcome back to the Food Medic podcast. Today I'm joined by Rini McGregor, who is a leading performance and eating disorder specialist dietitian with over 15 years of experience working in nutrition. Rini works with top athletes,

coaches and sports science teams to provide nutritional strategies to enhance sports performance and manage eating disorders. She's also a best-selling author of the books Training Food, Fast Fuel Books and Orthorexia When Healthy Eating Goes Bad. Rini, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Hazel. I'm very excited to speak to you today. So to kick things off, I always like to find out a little bit more about the guests that we have on the show. So to start things off, can you tell us a little bit about you and why you got into this kind of field of nutrition? Yeah, of course. So I started off many, many years ago just doing a biochemistry degree, which I loved.

And I did that in Nottingham University. But when I came out of there, I was kind of, I'm definitely somebody who likes to be with people. I wouldn't say I'm an extrovert, but I know that I connect with people. And my tutor at the time at Nottingham was brilliant. And he did say to me, he said, you know, your knowledge of biochemistry is great, but I think you'll be better suited to a role which involves

kind of just being out there. Yeah, exactly. Rather than being stuck in a lab. And so he really helped me. And I ended up doing a postgrad in dietetics at Glasgow, literally straight after. So I qualified as a dietitian. I'm embarrassed to say it, but in 1999, so nearly 20 years ago now. And I got my first couple of jobs working at teaching hospitals in London so St George's and then King's College really great grounding I worked in loads of different fields

within the the hospital environment ranging from paediatric to renal to gastro I did quite a lot with eating disorders as well at the time but you know when you're newly qualified like anything you're just kind of finding your feet you don't really know what you want to do and then eventually I kind of settled with paediatrics it's kind of where my heart was and a few years down the line got married and we moved out of London um and I was working in a local hospital in in Bath and there I was doing paediatrics and pretty much everything every single case I had was disordered eating eating disorders on the wall like really those very very awful kind of clinically dangerous cases um and I think I just got to the point this was probably back in like 2007 I just

got to the point where I was like I don't know how much longer I can do this for because it's really emotionally draining and I'm stuck like I'm stuck with what I can do this for because it's really emotionally draining and I'm stuck like I'm stuck with what I can do because there are parameters around the work I can do with my time and funding and and the crunch came when I'd been working with one particular client she was very very complex and she'd been on the ward for five months and I'd worked with her from admission all the way through to discharge and she'd made really good progress, but still need a lot more work doing with her. And as she left, I was told that I wouldn't be able to continue to work with her because her postcode was not funded by our department, which meant that she was basically

left without any nutritional support when she was an outpatient. And I just, I found that system really, really difficult. And I just was like, you know what, this is not what I'm about. You know, my ethos, and I think anybody I work with would say the same thing. My ethos is, I really care. I genuinely care about every single person. I give everybody a really big part of me. So to then just have to move away, just felt wrong. And so I took a break from the NHS NHS I just decided that it wasn't for me like I couldn't work under those conditions and I took some time out to work out where I was going to go next and I've always been really good at sport I've always done loads of sport I just sort of joined a local running club at that point and I was running a lot and a lot of my friends who on

the running track were asking me loads of questions about nutrition and I was like a lot. And a lot of my friends who were on the running track were asking me loads of questions about nutrition. And I was like, you know what, maybe this is it. Maybe I should just go down this road because, you know, this is fun. This is exciting and it's like with well people. And that's what I thought. And so I had small children at the time and I did a postgrad in sports nutrition just because I'm definitely one of these people who never ever feels, no matter how many years experience I've got, no matter how many degrees I've got, I always think there's more you can do and you need to be credible and you have to keep learning and keep reading.

And even now I'm still studying and always learning. that's how I ended up where I am now, working across the two, kind of bridging across eating disorders and sport, because one of my first jobs was working with the rhythmic gymnastics girls that went to London. Okay. So quite a tough first job in sport, but really, really good experience. And, you know, I'm always really proud. The girls are still great.

They still stay in touch and they're all doing really well. And I'm really proud of that time because we worked so hard to keep them well and healthy. And we had very strict criteria about what they needed to be like, what they needed to look like. I mean, rhythmic gymnastics is still one of the disciplines within gymnastics where what you look like is still unfortunately really really important and I guess from there to be honest Hazel it's just propelled like I've just gone on to work in different sports I've done I said did London then I did Rio I've moved away a little bit from Paralympic and Olympic sports at the moment and I'm sort of working with different professional sports so I'm doing quite a lot of work with ultra running and I've been involved with the 24-hour GB team that

just got some medals out in Romania and I'm doing some work with some of the marathon development squad that's coming through so so it's still like very heavily involved in sport and I work with Scottish gymnastics but just not really focusing on as much on the kind of Olympic side of things yeah I suppose going into sport, you think everybody's really healthy, everybody's really focused, everybody's going to be, you know, it's all going to be great. And then I started to see the parallels with extreme behaviours that you notice with disordered eating

and that kind of mentality you need to be a sports person. And more and more I was picking up on people who were I guess over training I mean now in sport we call it red so we call it you know it's relative energy deficiency in sport but it kind of overlaps disordered eating female athlete triad and over training it's kind of one term and there's a lot of work going into this at the moment because we know it affects lots of different areas within an athlete. And I suppose there aren't that many sports dietitians. There's quite a lot of sports nutritionists and they don't always have that clinical background.

And I think that's where my role kind of has come in quite a lot in that I see a lot of athletes who've got dysfunctional relationships with food. And I can help them manage the clinical side of stuff as well as the sports yeah stuff so absolutely and actually I think it'd be really useful if you could clarify for everyone what the difference is between a nutritionist a dietitian and also a nutritional therapist which I know you do in your book yeah but if you could try to summarize yeah so um the term nutritionist is a difficult one because technically it's not it's not regulated so anybody can call themselves a nutritionist um which is where a lot of the problems come so sometimes you find personal trainers that have done like a diploma

as part of their training will call themselves nutritionist sometimes you'll get somebody who hasn't got any sort of background in nutrition but it's done an online you know um in i, I don't know, optimal nutrition type course, and they'll call themselves a nutritionist. So it's not a regulated term. So you have to be very, very careful. But you do get registered nutritionists, and they tend to be people who've done a nutrition degree, at least at minimum level, or they've done some sort of postgraduate level of nutrition. A dietitian is somebody who has to have a degree. So you have to have done a minimum four year dietetic degree all the way I did it, which was a three year biochemistry degree and then a two year postgrad in dietetics. And I guess the big difference is that as a dietitian, you do a lot of clinical placements. So similar to medicine. Within the

NHS. Yeah, exactly. So you get a lot of kind of experience of working in a clinical setting, working within MDTs and a real grounding for public health. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. So technically, if you look at the codes of conduct, technically dietetics is the only role or the only practitioner, a dietitian is the only practitioner that can technically work in clinical conditions but it's not i think a lot of people don't always follow that abide by that yeah um a nutritional therapist they don't have a degree um they do i think they do some sort of diploma but it's not regulated and they don't have a regulating body. And I think a lot of their work is created from science that's not necessarily evidence-based. So that said,

there are some good nutritional therapists. I've actually worked with some where they've turned around, they've known where their boundaries are and they've gone, really, I can't deal with this case. Can you please help? And I think there are nutritional therapists that know where their role is and there are those that are also trying to get further education so they can actually be on the same level as a nutritionist and a and a dietitian but at this precise moment a nutritional therapist cannot work within a NHS or clinical setting. Okay now you've just released a book titled Orthorexia When Healthy Eating Goes Bad. So for those who are unfamiliar with the term, can you explain it for us, please? Yeah, of course. So orthorexia, to be honest, it is a fairly new term. So I can

understand why people haven't heard of it. I think if we use the term clean eating, people would get a better understanding of what orthorexia is so orthorexia is um basically the obsession with eating correctly with eating purely and so i think it's become more common because of the whole clean eating brigade and um you know hashtag clean eating and hashtag clean and all these kind of these things that have been coming out um so that these kind of these things that have been coming out. So that's kind of where it comes from. I mean, it is an eating disorder, but it's not a recognised eating disorder as such at the moment. So there's no diagnostic criteria for it. That said, we are working on it. So I'm one of the members of the International Task Force for

Orthorexia. And there's a group of about 12 of us and we are all working really hard at trying to get some diagnostic criteria together so that it can then be accepted in the DSM and used in the future. Yeah. So that makes it more difficult for doctors or dieticians to diagnose it. But what would be the physical or psychological symptoms that a healthcare professional should be looking out for in an individual? You're quite right. It's a to diagnose it but what would be the physical or psychological symptoms that a healthcare professional should be looking out for in an individual it's you're quite right it's a really difficult one to pick up because you know there are so many different food trends and food fads at the moment and i think orthorexia is one of those things that people can hide behind so it

looks like you're being healthy but actually you're doing yourself more damage than good. And I think where orthorexia maybe slightly differs from something like anorexia and bulimia is that orthorexia is more of a kind of compulsive obsessive disorder. It's very, it's very obsessive. It's almost like, you know, it may stem from a health scare. So people have this kind of, they're looking for this magic bullet to kind of make themselves feel well and believe that if they follow a certain pattern, if they follow a certain path, they're kind of going to have everlasting health. So one of the things I guess to look out for is very compulsive trends and traits. So somebody is very insistent that they only eat a certain brand of food

or a certain type of food or is avoiding a certain type of food for no real medical reason, and they can't deviate from that, I mean, that's the big crunch is when you can't deviate from it. Like deviation from, say, a very common one is being fearful of sugar. Sugar is the enemy, as we keep being told. It's not, by the way. But that's what being told, you know. And so people completely believe that if they eat sugar,

they're going to get addicted to sugar and sugar is going to cause cancer and it's going to cause inflammation in the body because that's what we're being told all the time. Yeah. And the problem is then they become very, very obsessive with removing sugar from their diet. Now, you know, yeah, none of us should be eating loads of sugar, but to never eat it, to never include it, for it to cause you huge amounts of anxiety if you have to eat a dessert or, you know, you want to eat a dessert, more importantly. That's when you know that there's a problem.

So it's a difficult one because it's not often associated with weight loss yeah um it's often people actually look okay they look quite well you can start to get chronic deficiencies particularly if you're you know depending on what restrictions you're you're you're doing absolutely because i guess you cut out one group and then it just keeps going yeah exactly and that's the thing is I mean it's like any eating disorder it's never about the food it's always about what's going on at a much deeper level and so if you're in search of that magic answer that kind of golden nugget something to make you feel good yeah um I read a really interesting comment yesterday and basically it really clarifies it's not that you hate your body or you hate your your your physical sense yeah but an eating

disorder is very much about being unable to inhabit your body you feel this constant disease within yourself and that's the same with orthorexia as well in the sense that there's this constant disease within yourself. And that's the same with orthorexia as well, in the sense that there's this constant anxiety that something's not right, you're not right, that somehow you don't fit. And you're searching for that something that's going to make you feel better. And because we are bombarded with messages, particularly with the rise of social media, we believe what we see on social media and we think, well, they look great, they look healthy, they seem to have the perfect life. So, you know, that feeds into our psyche and it makes us want to follow and want to believe that if we follow what they do, then somehow we'll also adopt what they've got. Yeah, absolutely. And I think in this

kind of like era of information and like you mentioned social media it's quite difficult to I guess cotton wool people from that but how can we reduce our risk of developing orthorexia if we are trying to live a healthier life as we've been told you know by public health campaigns everyone's trying to reduce sugar or whether it's saturated fat or x y and z how can you know that you are eating well without going a little bit too far i think i mean i'm going to use that really really boring word moderation yeah um it's really really dull and i've tried many times to sex it up but i don't think i've done a great job um i think in my book, I talk about it as thinking about food as friends, that, you know, you've got lots of friends, but you may spend more time with certain friends than

you do with others. And that's the only way I can really describe moderation. But I think, of course, we should all be trying to eat as well as we can. But if you really cut to the chase, if you really cut to what is the messages are it hasn't changed massively you know that the healthy eating messages are still very similar it's like you know plenty of color plenty of fruit and veg whole grains fiber lean cuts of meat you know dairy for your own health I mean it's all there it's not really changed yeah and yeah sugar should be eaten in moderation now for some people that might be three times a week. For other people, that might be daily because, you know, it depends on where you're at in yourself.

It depends on your genetics. It depends on your lifestyle. It depends on how physically active you are. And this is a thing I always find, especially working with athletes, is that they take on board these healthy eating messages from, you know, the government guidelines. And it's like, you know what, that's not relative to you.'s not relevant to you you're an athlete you're training six hours a day if you start cutting out and following all these guidelines you're not going to get enough energy to manage your training to recover from your training to perform I think the one thing I'd say is a guideline is a guideline yeah it is a guideline based on studies and it's a guideline based on the general population but we are all different and so we have to kind of look at it and and think right well what what of this can i take that's going to be useful for me and i think as i said

earlier whenever food gets the point where it starts to cause your anxiety i think that has to start ringing alarm bells if you can't eat a croissant because you think it's bad for you and we're talking once a week or once or twice a month or whatever then to me that's alarm bells that's not about being unhealthy because in all honesty being healthy means being fairly unrestrained it means listening to your body and actually just eating what you want yeah I agree I think we've a lot of us have lost our relationship with food and cooking and the enjoyment of it it's it's another headache it's something on the to-do list and the fact that people you know use so much brain energy on this is it's true it's concerning so if someone's

listening to this and they think you know there's alarm bells going off in their head and they're thinking well maybe I'm kind of tipping over that side of the scale or they know someone who is maybe has these orthorexic tendencies what advice can we give to them? Firstly I think one of the things I'd say is remember that social media so particularly things like Instagram it's not always real okay it's it's a moment of someone's life and most influencers and bloggers who are putting stuff out there they get paid for doing so so they're selling you a lifestyle it's not real it's not based on fact so that's something i really want to say because i think that's really important to say that if you are finding you've got trapped in this kind of circle of following people and

believing what they're saying and thinking that's my journey and now you've got the point where you literally don't know what you should eat or you're panicking about eating anything that you deem unhealthy yeah then the first thing is that you need to get some help um the only way you can change behavior is to challenge behavior and that's really scary so trying to do it on your own can be really hard work and i always say to the clients i work with is that you know what this is going to be tough it's a it's a tough road recovery from any sort of disordered eating and because you have created beliefs and rules that we have to break down and reframe. And they've become your, you know, your learnt behaviours for a long time

and they make you feel safe. They're not safe, but they make you feel safe. And I think a little nugget, hopefully, for people out there who are struggling is it might not feel like it, but you do have a choice. Like, I think it's really scary and don't get me wrong when somebody's very very poorly and the anxiety is so strong they probably feel like they haven't got a choice yeah but you're always going to be infiltrated with intrusive thoughts always they're part of you and it's about deciding whether you act on that thought or you let it go yeah and so in terms

of getting help i mean most likely if you are struggling with food it's going to have some sort of psychological or emotional reason yeah and so i would um recommend that um you probably need to look for some sort of psychological support yeah to help you through why understand what it is about yourself why can't you accept who you are because that's where it comes from is this negative perception of ourselves and being able to start to unpick i mean it could be that you've had struggles when you were a child and it's about your experiences as a child and and and how you've interpreted that and and this is not to start blaming family members or anything like that

it's about you and your interpretation of your experiences yeah and also one thing I would say is once you get that insight it's being able to remind yourself that that happened then and it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to hold on to that for the rest of your life you can change your mindset yeah but it takes time and you do need that kind of professional support to get help absolutely and changing your environment and what you're looking at and things like that and just following on from that earlier on you mentioned clean eating which i think everyone is familiar with and there's been a lot of backlash against using that term. But also, we are becoming a lot more sensitive to the language that we're using, although it's a bit of a slow uptake.

And I still see a lot of brands using messages like guilt-free, you know, like skinny X, Y, and Z or low carb. And, you know, using these phrases to justify that something's better for you or that you should eat it. Can you explain why that's a problem, why we shouldn't label foods with these moral values? The main reason is that when you are struggling with your relationship with food, you are stuck in a bit of a cycle of destruction to a certain degree. so you will regardless of how miserable it's making you feel you will constantly look for validation you will constantly look for ways in to maintain that behavior because it's familiar and like i said it feels safe so as soon as we read something about carbs making us fat or dairy causing inflammation or something that's guilt

free we think oh it's guilt free so we can eat triple the amount for example it changes how we perceive that food and it keeps that person in there so one of the things i've found in many many years of practice that definitely in the last five years, it's been much harder to help people move away from dysfunctional thoughts because they are using Instagram. They are following certain people because it helps to validate the way they eat. And so you're then trying to break this down and say, no, no, no, what they're saying is not correct. You know, you have to understand this is not how it is. They've made that assumption up. They've made that up.

It's not true. And then you've created it and you've made it fact. And it's like, you know, that's not how it is. So I think labeling is so important because some of it's just so false. You know, it's like the whole gluten-free thing. It drove me insane because, like, suddenly things like tomato ketchup important because some of it's just so false you know it's like the whole gluten-free thing it drove me insane because like suddenly things like tomato ketchup that are naturally gluten-free anyway tins of tomatoes that are naturally gluten-free anyway suddenly we've got gluten-free

on them and it's given it's almost been given the supermarket's permission to charge more money because something's gluten-free but it's naturally gluten-free it I think a lot of issues are around marketing, selling, media. And we live in a society where we're constantly looking to them for our answers. They dictate how we are. They dictate who we are. And it's like we're not allowed to be ourselves. No, no. And I think we forget that. We forget what we've been sold. I think following on from that, already you've spoke about this, we raised some concerns about social media and influencers and what we share online. And I'm actually going to read a little passage from one of your blog posts, which was really good. And what you said was, these non-qualified food bloggers base their nutritional preaching on N equals one. That is something that has worked for them will work for the rest of the population however this is not science and indeed can result in dangerous consequences from nutrient deficiencies to poor growth and development in teenagers and then you went on to say the majority of food bloggers insist that we should go sugar-free however within

their books there are ample recipes that contain honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar that again suggests that these are superior to the humble table sugar. That's such a great piece. Because obviously that was a massive bugbear of mine. I think people are starting to realize now that sugar is sugar. I think more and more people, I think the sales of coconut sugar have gone down. Thank goodness. It's just incredibly expensive for what it is. And I think people are starting to realize that, you know, the body will process sugar,

whether it comes from a coconut, sugar cane plant, honey or molasses. It's the same, pretty much the same chemical structure. So the body just sees it as sugar. But yeah, the thing that was getting to me was that it was being sold as something that was superior. You know, like it had more vitamins and minerals in it. But it's like, well, only if you eat 100 grams worth. Yes. And let's face it, we don't want to be doing that.

No. So for people listening, the reason that it's often marketed as healthier sugar is because it has a certain amount of minerals or different minerals. But to get those benefits or to get enough, you'd have to eat a lot of sugar. And then you'd be going over your sugar kind of allowance for the day. So it's not really worth doing that. And I mean, the thing is, I think that's going to be one of the most difficult marketing myths to get rid of because you don't have to go down the road to one of those health food stores and all the cakes are sugar-free or refined sugar-free and then you look at the back of the label and it's made with dates and honey and maple syrup

and everything they can find that is per se natural how can we ensure that they're getting their information about food and nutrition from credible sources if they are browsing online because not all websites or blogs or social media personalities are completely corrupt or just uneducated. No, not at all. No, not at all. And I think, I mean, from my point of view, I think look for evidence. So, and I doesn't mean like look for scientific studies necessarily, but look at the person

you're following. So, you know, first things comes to mind is check that they're a registered dietitian or registered nutritionist. I mean, they are the first two things to check. If you are looking, I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some good health and fitness bloggers who are learning from people like myself and they will ask me advice and then they'll put their own post up. So not everybody's bad. But I think what I would say is question it. Like if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably not true yeah is the honest answer you know like whether you eat a brownie made from normal sugar or a brownie made from maple syrup it's still a brownie and I'm not saying don't

eat a brownie like by all means go ahead and eat a brownie but just eat a brownie that tastes good and enjoy it for what it is absolutely I think that's a nice note how can we encourage healthy eating amongst kids and teenagers without enforcing rules of restriction around food it's really difficult you know I get asked this question a lot like how do you make it easy to follow you know like I said already moderation people don't know what that means And it's it is different for every everybody. Yesterday, the news headline was they're going to stop selling energy drinks to under 16. Brilliant. Great. But why do we need energy drinks full stop? You know, I mean, there's lots of things out there that I just worry that there's they're just there's no real place for them but yet and they're the things that are actually driving our unhealthy relationship with food and causing us to become obese and there's there's no need for them in our diet it's not like the humble sugar is is bad for us it's it's actually the fact that when you just drink pure sugar and you drink a lot of it and there's no need for it because you can get that from somewhere else.

That's the problem. So I think we have got a big issue. And I mean, all I can do is give you some kind of advice from what I do, what I've done with my girls, and my girls are pretty well adjusted when it comes to food is that I've never ever made food about good or bad. It's never been a treat. It's never been something particularly special I've never gone down that road of you can only have a pudding if you've eaten this I've always tried to just be food is about health it's about enjoyment it's more than just a flavor it's about us sitting around a table and having a conversation and really connecting with each other and I think maybe in schools there needs to be more around that,

like I think more kind of creations. I mean, I know that both my girls, they've come home in the past and sort of talked about their food tech and what they've cooked. And it's quite stuck. Like it's stuck with very traditional old school type recipes. Yeah, why not? Let's just jazz that up a little bit. You know, let's do something a bit more exciting

let's let's make you know when i do work i do some practical workshops with the gymnasts and with i've done some with rugby um clubs and and things and you just throw them out show them how to make a couscous salad yeah really easy really quick takes 10 minutes to make or you make some smoothies again really quick really easy and in the smoothie i don't not use sugar i'll add yogurt which has got sugar in it or i'll add honey or whatever it's it's about balance and i think if you can explain to kids you know what if you feed your body properly the majority of the time then it won't matter if you have a little bit of sugar or a bit of extra fat every now and again it's not gonna it's not gonna kill you no I don't think so and I think when you give um you kind of pass the bat

back over to the child or the teenager they almost just step up and kind of take control of themselves and and I think we almost get too terrified I mean I don't have kids and I I always feel a bit cautious of giving advice on children but I think if we give them a little bit of a rein and allow them to choose some foods, they're not going to run amok and, you know, just eat. Absolutely. And I think just not, never ever, I really have a problem with this,

never ever show that you're disappointed with a choice they've made, you know, because that will run deep. If they feel like, they'll never show your disapproval from a food choice point of view. Food is fun, right? The more fun you make food, the more you experiment, the more you eat, not necessarily eat as a family,

but the more you try and get them to try new flavours. I mean, I remember, you know, my girls, I've always given them all sorts of weird and wonderful things i mean when they were they were weaning they were having things like olives and hummus and things like that which i know it sounds very middle class and and you know but um but but it was not about that it was just that i wanted them to try those kind of extreme flavors so that they weren't just having sugar like sweet things and that we know that if you know our bodies do prefer sweet tastes and so if you if you only give sweet taste they're going to build up but then don't be

fearful of that it's about trying to get them to encourage loads of different flavors and also remembering that children need to play with food i mean that's something else i see is so many families are fearful of mess and you know like let them get in the kitchen, let them make a mess, let them have some fun, let them make cakes. And it's not about having a treat. It's a part of your lifestyle. I think the more you make food part of your lifestyle, the less it becomes something that they look at constantly. I really want that. I really want that. I want that. I mean, I've got friends where they have sort of put kind of a bit of a taboo on sugar or sweets or whatever. And then all you see is you go to a party and then they just, the kids go

nuts because it's available. And it's like even when you're recovering from, if you've got sort of like binge eating disorder, one of the reasons why people get so stuck physically is because they restrict and restrict and restrict during the day. so physiologically their body is starving yeah and then when food becomes available the body's going well hang on a minute i'm just going to eat to excess because i need to restore as much energy as possible because i never know when i'm going to be fed again and it's it's this you know food is very emotional and psychological there's a very very complicated relationship between food and brain and your emotions and and i think don't underestimate that i think people too many people will try and affect change in food and have no realization that actually it can have a real

negative impact on your brain yeah and how you think and then creates a behavior and and a food rule and then suddenly you've got all these rules that you're trying to break down and wonder how you got this place and i think the other thing is that as soon as you create rules you create guilt yeah you know i have so many people that say to me i feel guilty about eating a bar of chocolate and i'm like but why you know the only reason you feel guilty is because you've created a rule to say it's bad for you but actually if you just accept that it's okay to have a bar of say it's bad for you but actually if you just accept that it's okay to have a bar of chocolate it's one bar of chocolate and how many yeah you know

so yeah i think one i would say just try not to be too fixated on good and bad foods and as parents you don't constantly beat yourself up about getting it right all the time you know I'm not gonna lie sit here and lie I have given my children pizza I have used a pasta sauce I don't care yeah because fundamentally I want them to you know eat well but actually if I need to use a pasta sauce because I'm running out of time and it means I'm gonna put loads of vegetables in it then they're still getting the benefit of those vegetables it's not gonna you know nothing awful's gonna happen and I think we again parents give themselves a really hard time they beat themselves up if they haven't created these amazing meals and you don't need to no you know

but like i said the big thing is just try not to cause any anxiety around food yeah at all and finally can you leave us with three healthy habits that you feel add to your life oh blimey i'm not sure i've got many doesn't have to be food um okay healthy habits so one of my healthy habits i'm trying to install more and more and more because i have noticed especially over the last few last year or so i can become quite insular and isolated and introverted if I don't see my friends like I can get into this bit of a funk where I just don't know nobody wants to see me why do I want to see them so one of my healthy habits I've tried to do is make sure I see a friend every week usually for coffee or food or or something but I've really tried to make that because for me I always know that when I when

I leave it's really lifted my mood and I feel better having connected with somebody so that's one of my definite healthy habits I love that because I feel like social and community is something we always forget when it comes to being healthy and it's so important absolutely and I definitely noticed that since since the divorce it's very easy to lock yourself away yeah and think where everybody else is having a great time and i'm sat here miserable on my own and you know nobody cares and it's so easy to get into this victim mentality and i realize that no i'm in control of my emotions i'm in control of my life and so actually one thing i know will make me feel better is to connect with people. So I try and do that. Another healthy habit, I guess I do try and get outside every single day.

Like I do love running, so I do run. But if I can't run, I don't beat myself up about it. I'll just go for a walk. Or especially at the moment, while it's so beautiful, I have taken, I think the people in my village think she's really insane but um I've taken my yoga mat outside and done a little bit of yoga um in the in the green um you have to remember this market town I live in I think the average ages are probably about 65 so it's probably quite entertaining for them to see this woman doing yoga in the morning but if you did yoga in London everyone like it's like, it's casual. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And I guess the final one, I think it is that I just, I let myself have chocolate every day. Yeah, me too. Because I just think life's too short and I know I really enjoy it and it actually makes me feel good. And I think doing something that you know makes you feel good on a daily basis is so important for your self-worth and self, you know, self-esteem. And so I do. I allow my, not allow, it's not even allow. I just, I have chocolate every day because it makes me feel good. I like that. I love them. Okay, great. So before you go, can you let everyone know where we can find you and also your lovely books? Sure. I'm always really bad at this question because I don't use social media that much. So I forget what my handles are. But I am on Instagram. I think it's R underscore McGregor. And I'm on Twitter as McGregor underscore Rini, I think. I'll pop them in the show notes anyway, so people can find you i do have a website which is reena mcgregor.com which is nice and easy which i don't forget yeah and my books so orthorexia when healthy eating goes bad

training food and fast fuel for runners and fast fuel for triathletes and they're all available in most bookshops and online yeah as well amazing and i know we spoke about orthorexia but just a final note um your book training food i also have and i think it's really great i actually used it for some of my research for my books oh yeah brilliant thank you guys but thank you so much for joining us today no it's been a pleasure thank you really really insightful and thanks to everyone for tuning in the food medic podcast please do subscribe so that you are the first to hear about any new episodes and if you are enjoying them please leave us a five-star rating and a review so that we can reach as many people as possible check out my website thefoodmedic.co.uk where you can find tons of recipes and articles

follow me on social media instagram twitter and facebook at the food medic and my new book the food medic for life is out now which is packed full of loads of recipes nutritional advice myth busting and feature pages on topics such as sleep and mindfulness. You can grab both my books on Amazon or in any good bookstore. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Thank you.