This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 017 / Intuitive Eating...Eat What You Need When You Need It With Alicia Romano

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

In this episode, I welcome my special guest Alicia Romano - Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist, to share her perspective on the importance of nourishing our bodies both on and off the plate. Alicia helps guide us BACK to the basics of understanding what our bodies really need to function at our best. And guess what? Traditional dieting doesn’t play a role in any of this. So many of us have unhealthy relationships with food, and for a lot of us, our food fears have kicked into high gear during this time. My consumption of cheese and wine has hit an all-time high...HELLO emotional eating! But I love how Alicia says “That’s ok” and to give grace and kindness to ourselves, and how cravings aren’t such a bad thing after all. Big bad craving monster...take that! What if we shifted our focus and took on this concept of choosing our food based on how it’ll make us feel, as opposed to how it’ll make us look? For me, this is a much healthier (and somewhat freeing!) way to live. I’m excited to share Alicia’s perspective and am committed to putting it into practice myself. I hope you’ll join me! This is Woman’s Work To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

I am Nicole Kalil, and one of my greatest desires in redefining women's work for all of us as women is to build our overall confidence. And I believe one of the most important ways to do that is to shift our focus away from how we look and back toward who we are. To shift our focus on what we eat and working out away from what it does for our outsides and toward what it does for our insides. How it makes us feel. What fuels and nurtures our bodies. Having that be the priority over how it impacts our overall looks. And working with so many women, I know many of us have unhealthy relationships with

food. And for a lot of us, those beliefs, fears, confusions, et cetera, have kicked into high gear during this time. Can we say hello, emotional eating? I don't know about you, but my consumption of cheese and wine has hit an overall high. I actually had a listener email in and ask, how do I not eat so much butter? And I clearly don't have the answers, but what I can do to help all of you and myself included is give us access to somebody who can help. I'm thrilled to introduce Alicia Romano, registered dietitian and nutritionist with Tufts Medical Center here in Boston. She's also a national media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. I am thrilled to introduce her as a guest today. So Alicia,

thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. So let's get into it. I feel like there's a lot of misinformation about food and nutrition and what to eat. And it might even be worse right now as companies and people try to tell us what to consume and what not to consume. So can you just sort of share with us a guideline or how to identify misinformation right now? Absolutely. You know, just to get started, I think one of the most important things to recognize during this really unpredictable time we're experiencing is there's a lot of uncertainty about the type of food we're going to have access to, number one, as well as, you know, what we should be doing to appropriately take care of ourselves.

And what's happening right now is that we're all home. We have a lot more time on our hands and a lot more access and reliability on social media markets. And so we're turning to those types of sites and we're turning to news and we're turning to all these different areas of information and seeing information about this diet or this supplement or this particular way of eating that's going to really boost your immune system or do X, Y, and Z. And so one thing I tell anyone I work with, any clients, any friends, even family members,

is that if something sounds too good to be true, if it's wrapped up with a bow and it has some kind of big flashy label that this is your cure-all, it likely is too good to be true. We need to take a step back and really go back to the basics of nourishing our bodies, of taking this time that we have for ourselves to understand what our bodies need to function at their best, take a pause. We have time now to do maybe some of the things you weren't able to do, to cook and prepare awesome meals for ourselves and try to zone out some of that misinformation that might be clouding us. Yeah. I've learned the hard way over the course of my life that there is no magic bullet. There is no fad diet or whatever that

fixes everything. In fact, in my experience, it has done more harm overall than good when I've done those. I guess talk to us a little bit about what's probably kicking up for a lot of us, and that's emotional eating. Like I mentioned before, I'm eating a lot of cheese. That's my go-to craving. And what does that mean? How do we stop it? Should we stop it? Just give us some overall insight into emotional eating right now. Absolutely. You know, I think one of the things that you mentioned before you even mentioned emotional eating was, you know, this whole diet mentality and this whole diet culture that we've been super overexposed to, especially as women, you know, we have this, this hyper awareness of what everybody eats, what everyone's supposed to eat, what all these different diet trends,

particularly, you know, do for our bodies. And I say that in quotations, and what that's done to us is led to, you know, unhealthy relationships with food, which in turn, can lead to habits, and not necessarily to habits, but may, you know, contribute to habits like emotional eating when you know, we either are dealing with deprivation, depriving ourselves, excuse me, of foods for prolonged periods of time that may lead to periods of overeating. Just the nature of restriction is stressful enough on our bodies to create an emotional response that may in turn lead to emotional eating. So to kind of address this whole idea, number one, we have to

pull in some of the tools of what we refer to as the intuitive eating kind of plan and restrict diet mentality as a way to cope with, you know, emotion and distress and any restrictions on food and then exercise a little kindness to ourselves, right? We're going through a time that's so unprecedented right now. And in some ways, having something to eat can be comforting. Having certain foods that we enjoy, that we associate with a feeling of calm and stress relief can be comforting. And that's not to say that we have to take that away altogether. I mean, cheese is delicious. A glass of wine is lovely. A piece of chocolate. Instead, what I encourage people to do is not only be kind with themselves, but acknowledge. Start to take

the time to acknowledge these behaviors. We know that food's not going to fix any feelings. It's going to be short term. It might distract from whatever emotion we're dealing with, but it won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger may make us maybe feel a little bit worse in the long run, but it's not allowing us to ultimately deal with the source of the emotion. So what I encourage listeners to do is number one, find ways to acknowledge these emotions. Number two, acknowledge if food is kind of becoming that crutch for you. And that's okay if it is. Number three, maybe try to find some other ways to cope with those emotions, whether it be a different

activity, if you're able to take a socially distanced walk, or, you know, maybe you want to puzzle or, or knit or color, choose a new, there's so many people doing all these cool new activities, you know, it might be a good way to kind of allow your stress out. And then three, also acknowledge, you know, isn't actually emotional eating, or is it physical hunger? Because that's another thing that we oftentimes mistake. Am I actually hungry? Am I reaching for foods because I actually physically need to nourish my body? And if nourishing your body means you want to have a little piece of cheese, find a way to nourish it that also accesses nutrient-dense foods that allow you to feel full, allow you to feel satiated. And we can get into that a little bit more as we chat.

Yeah. So that's actually triggered the question. What are some good, healthy, go-to quick snacks? So for those of us that are working during the day and maybe are grabbing something on the go or on the fly, and like you said, maybe we're just hungry. So we're just going to like our go-to quick thing. What might be some good examples of good snacks to have on hand during all of this that might satiate that hunger? Yeah. I think before we can even get into what those snacks are, it's really important to remind listeners that this is, again, we might be working all day, we might be busy connected to our computer, but we really should take this time to also start to acknowledge our

hunger cues. I always tell people to keep in mind a hunger scale, a one to 10 scale, one being that kind of so hangry that you can barely have a conversation with someone like you're not able to focus. And 10 is that like post-holiday, you definitely ate more than you probably should have. And you're so happy full that you pop the buttons open on your pants and you're like, you're uncomfortable almost. We never want to be at either of those extremes. We always want to live in what I like to call like the three to seven zone. The three zone is like when you're hungry, you know you're hungry, you know you should eat, but you're not having those hangry sensations. And seven is that like you're comfortably full, you're satisfied. So before you even reach for anything, disconnect for a second from your computer, take a second to check in with yourself, and then think about what your body actually wants.

I'm sure I've seen so many memes and posts about how many times a day you go and open the fridge and close the fridge and open the fridge and close, right? And it's like nothing changes in there. But sometimes that's your body saying like, I'm craving something. I just can't figure out what it is. And that's okay. Cravings are okay. What we have to do is actually discover the satisfaction factor. So again, tuning out those thoughts in our heads of restriction, really key here, tuning into our hunger. I feel physically hungry. Okay. That means I should eat. And then tuning into what our body's actually craving. So again, if maybe you open the fridge up and you're like, I really want something cold and crispy. Maybe you kind of scan the fridge.

You might not have everything on hand that you'd like, but I typically say, try to go with what your body's craving in terms of like texture, taste, flavors, and then try to pair that kind of craving with nutrient dense foods. So when I say me and nutrient dense foods is trying to pair that kind of craving with nutrient-dense foods. So what I mean by nutrient-dense foods is trying to combine some kind of healthy fat with some kind of protein and some kind of fiber. And we'll go into those in detail. So healthy fats are going to be, you know, whether a little bit of avocado, maybe a nut or nut butter.

This can be like a dressing or a full fat kind of yogurt or something that you may add for a creaminess to a meal. That's going to add some texture and some satiation. Fat also keeps us pretty full. So we don't want to be completely fat free. Protein. We all know we hear protein, protein, protein. We probably all eat more protein than we need, but protein is going to be something

from plant-based proteins like beans or seeds or nuts or plant-based protein powder, maybe tofu could be from dairy foods. Plant-based proteins like beans or seeds or nuts or plant-based protein powder, maybe tofu. It could be from dairy foods. It can be from eggs or, you know, cheese or chicken, fish, whatever you have on hand. That's easy. Again, it doesn't have to be anything crazy. I encourage a lot of my patients to keep, especially right now, you know, chickpeas and lentils and black beans in the cabinet. Keep tuna or canned salmon available.

They're super easy. Boil a bunch of eggs, little things that you can still throw together to make something a really satiating snack. And then your fiber component is going to be your fruits, your vegetables, your whole grains. So maybe that's your baby carrots, your cucumber slices. Maybe you have mixed greens in the house. This can also be something like a really great cracker that's flax seeds or whole grain, a nice slice of bread. A lot of us have been baking. Maybe you really are craving that homemade baked bread that you made and you want to lather that with some of those other ingredients. Again, the idea is that we want to have this combination of foods because what that will do in turn is kind of hit all those notes of satiation

while also filling our stomach with foods that digest slowly, digest optimally, and nourish us as well. I love that you brought up healthy fats. I grew up in the non-fat, low-fat era. Yeah. And it has taken, honestly, a lot of time to retrain my brain because my brain was fat equals bad. So can you elaborate a little bit more on how to change our thoughts about healthy fats and reiterate how important they are? Yeah. I think this is the biggest challenge when it comes to nutrition in general is that what we have to realize as a consumer is that nutrition is a science. And so as we've evolved over time, science changes. We know this in all different aspects of life, right? With medicine, in terms of our health system, nutrition is a part of that health

system. And so back in the 90s, fat was certainly turned into a phobia. It was kind of demonized as well. And when we looked at these studies, we associated all fat with bad. And now what research is showing us today is that it's not that fat in itself is bad, right? No foods are inherently bad. Let's also make that very clear. No foods are inherently bad. We have to make peace with that. But there are certain fats that actually have really potent, protective, and healthful benefits for our body. And that's where I'm talking about fats that come from plant origins. So we're talking oils from vegetable sources like olive oil, from different

seeds like sunflower seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, the fats that we find in avocado and healthy fats found in high omega-3 containing foods like fatty fish, like salmon. That's why I love canned salmon. It's a great source of healthy fat. Or maybe you get it in some olives or walnuts. Those healthful fats are really, really rich in anti-inflammatory nutrients that are wonderful for our body, right? We need those to kind of help our body function optimally, really rich in certain vitamins and minerals, vitamin E in particular, and then also helps us really optimally absorb certain nutrients in our food systems. So if we want to optimize the absorption of, for example, fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, we need to have some fats

in our diet to help us do so, right? And so fats are going to help be the carrier for that. And then in addition to that, although they may be calorically dense, we do know that fats per gram offer the highest amount of calories per bundle. But again, we're not counting calories here. We do know they also create a large satiation factor. So they kind of delay the digestion of food in our stomach, meaning that they keep us fuller longer, right? And also, if we compare a fat-free product to a full fat product, there's also a different layer of satiation from the mouth, the tongue, the whole flavor profile. You know what I mean? It's silkier, it's smoother, it's creamier. It adds a different level that signals and sparks

our brain to just say, oh, this is delicious. Which again, it goes back to the enjoyment of the eating experience, right? That's such an important part of nutrition that diet mentality often rejects. It doesn't allow us to acknowledge, but eating is meant to be about an experience about nourishing ourselves and fat is a part of that. So we are all different people, right? With different bodies and different. So maybe what works for one person might not totally work for another or just being mindful about what works for you. So I guess my question is twofold. Number one, can you share a little bit more about intuitive eating and how that might play to us as different humans? And then the second, is there anything, regardless of our

differences that you would say with general consistency that it's best to avoid, not restrict completely, but avoid. Like, so for example, every person I've ever talked to on the nutrition side, it says, you know, too much sugar for anybody is not a good thing. Share a little bit more about intuitive eating. And are there just any general things that we should be mindful of that don't fuel and nurture our bodies generally? Yeah, absolutely. I could touch on that. So, you. So I think you hit the nail on the head. A big piece of intuitive eating, in addition to kind of your whole mission with women empowering themselves to look at aspects of health beyond their physical appearance, right? How do things

nurture us? How do things make us feel? A big part of intuitive eating, there's 10 pillars, but one of the pillars is actually respecting our bodies and accepting that we all have different genetic blueprints. You know, every person's different. Everyone has a different shoe size. We wouldn't realistically try to squeeze our size, you know, eight foot into someone's size six shoe. You know, we need to respect that our body sizes are all different. They're all beautiful and they all may, they may need different kind of combinations or different types of ways of eating and, and fueling. But at the, at the end of the day, we all deserve not only dignity for our bodies, but we all deserve to be nurtured and we all deserve to reject mentality that we need to,

we need to change our bodies to fit a mold. Right. And so that's kind of the theory behind intuitive eating. It's a 10 principle type of program. And there's a number of intuitive eating RDs out there. If, if again, if you're listening to this podcast, I highly recommend if you do find you're struggling in that realm to, to reach out and try and to find a dietitian within your area. And I can give you some resources, Nicole, towards the end of the podcast of where people can kind of loop themselves in with that. But again, the 10 pillars really go back to rejecting diet mentality, honoring our hunger, making peace with food, challenging that food police that we had that certain foods are bad

or certain foods are good and we have to eat minimal calories. We have to monitor every little thing, nurturing and discovering that satiation factor, understanding our fullness, really recognizing that, coping with our emotions with kindness, as we discussed, respecting our body, gently moving our bodies, feeling the difference of how movement makes us feel, energizes us rather than the calorie burning effects of exercise. And the final pillar is honoring our health with gentle nutrition. And this may go actually tie in really nicely to kind of the idea of, are there any foods that are not good for us to eat? And so what's really important about that 10th pillar is that our goal is to make food choices that honor our health and our taste buds while making you feel good, right? So you don't have to eat

perfectly to be a healthy human, which is really important. There's no such thing as the perfection of eating. And anyone who says otherwise, they're practicing something restrictive. So gentle nutrition, again, means progress, not perfection. Certainly, as I mentioned before, there are not necessarily any bad foods. All foods can fit in the diet. In the scope of what we know and research to be optimal for the human body is that we want to incorporate a large abundance of foods from plant-based sources. That doesn't necessarily just mean only vegetables. That means your beans, your nuts, your seeds, your fruits, your grains, et cetera.

And we want to crowd the plate out with those foods while keeping certain other foods more as like a little sprinkling here or there. And that would be things like large amounts of added sugar, really highly, highly processed foods. The guidelines for Americans right now for healthy eating is to take in 10% or less of your diet from added sugars. So if we were to do this calorically, which I'm not one to count calories, but looking at their guidelines, if the guidelines they give us are a 2000 calorie diet, 200 calories of that come from added sugar a day. What does that mean? You know, you can have a little bit of chocolate, you can

have, you know, maybe that special whipped coffee that I was making right now, but that's a little bit of sugar, right? But it shouldn't be the mainstay of your diet. What's important to note is that doesn't mean you have to avoid it altogether, right? So anything that says like, this food is bad, don't eat it ever, it's not realistic. It's not gentle with our bodies. So that would be really one of the big things I'd say, just be mindful. If that's kind of creeping into your diet a lot right now, make sure it's not crowding out other nutritious foods, right?

Because it may be doing more harm in your productivity and your nourishment than good, right? Not that it's necessarily bad. We're not talking about it from a caloric standpoint. We're talking about it from a nurturing standpoint. And the same thing applies to really, when I say super highly processed foods, I mean that you look at the back of the label and you literally can't, one of the first ingredients that you can recognize is like 10 lines down, right? Everything else is like, what is this? I don't even know how to pronounce it. And again, right now, be patient. We're in a time where people probably stocked up on so much frozen food and so many can and box things that that's what we have available and that's okay, right? But then how do you take something

like that and make it nutritious? Maybe you're able to go to the market and grab some fresh greens. Maybe you're able to have a piece of fruit on the side. So again, we don't have to demonize these foods. We just have to find a way to crowd them out with more nutritious foods more often. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it's great. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. One of the things I think we're all seeing a lot of right now are ways to boost our immune system. You know, obviously everybody's very concerned about being sick and getting sick and all that. Are there any ideas or guidelines around boosting your immunity through food or supplements or anything that you would share forward? Sure. Again, we kind of mentioned this in the very beginning that this is, again, a lot of what is the flashy type of media we're

seeing right now. Eat these five foods to boost your immunity, yada, yada, yada. Eat, drink these supplements. Supplements are never going to compare to foods in their full form. Right. And so again, what I want to remind listeners is that there's so much more to our immunity than just the foods we eat. Okay. So before we even think about foods, we have to remember what other factors affect our immune system. You know, number one, are we doing all the things that we're supposed to be doing right now per the guidelines of the CDC and nationally, washing our hands, practicing those guidelines? That's going to be number one, always. Number two, are we doing things we can to reduce stress in our lives? And again, that's a little outside of my lane to suggest stress reduction techniques,

but we do know that that plays a huge role in the immune system. So if we're not handling that, no particular food or supplement is going to combat high levels of stress that may alter our immunity, right? Are we sleeping? Are we drinking water? Are we doing the fundamental things that we need to be healthy as humans? And then that's where nutrition ties in. Are we eating a balanced diet? And that's where I tell people to start. Before we start to say like, oh, I need to go out and buy 10 pounds of asparagus and eat all the ginger and turmeric and, you know, go crazy like that. Why don't we just start by saying what's on my plate? Do I have access to the things, you know, to create a balanced plate? Number one,

before we put pressure on ourselves to eat particular foods, do I have a way to make this plate more balanced by having a larger amount of plant-based foods, maybe some vegetables and fruits, maybe some grains? Because that combination of foods in itself is going to offer a wide range of vitamins and minerals and nutrients that our body needs to thrive, right? Before we can even talk about how they may boost the immune system. And the great thing about trying to get color variety through that type of eating into our diet means we're going to get access to a wide range of

nutrients, nutrients being micronutrients that incorporate anti-inflammatory, may potentially immune boosting components. So we shouldn't single out a particular food right now. I'd say that all foods, all kind of foods in their whole form, plant-based foods, even if they're frozen, even if they're canned, they still work, right? They still have nutritional content, have the ability to potentially keep us healthy when used in conjunction with all those other components of just a generally healthy lifestyle. All right. And so again, I highly advise against turning to supplements unless they're particularly recommended by a provider due to a deficiency. No high dose supplement is going to be the kicker for us. Eat an orange, have some strawberries, some red bell peppers. We don't all need to be taking crazy doses of vitamin C, right? Get it through food because there's so much more to it that will be helpful for us in different facets. I've heard somebody say, and I'd like your take on this, that the area

that we have the least amount of information about is our gut health. And I don't know if I'm saying that exactly right, but what are your thoughts on probiotics or anything specifically as it relates to the health of our guts? Yeah. So what's really exciting is that the realm of gastrointestinal or gut health, as we say in kind of mainstream media, is that it's really new to science. And so it's an area right now that we're learning a lot. And it's very promising in making connections between different disease states, different, you know, different ways we can provide therapies to patients, whether it be through diet or

understanding the way that medications affect, you know, just the general health of our gut. When it comes down to the recommendations that we can provide right now based on science, what we do know is that, again, the health of our gut is influenced most by both factors that we take in internally, so what we eat, but also the health of our gut is affected by similar external factors, right? So stress, medications, environmental exposures and whatnot. So from a standpoint of, you know, I do a lot of work with gastrointestinal health. It's one of my specialty areas at Tufts. And again, unless you're dealing with a specific disease state or condition of your gastrointestinal health that requires,

you know, a very tailored specific diet, the most important thing that we can do to optimize our gut health is to eat a wide variety of fiber-based foods. So again, we talked about kind of those nourishing little meals and snacks, fiber coming in the form of plant-based foods like fruits and vegetables and whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds. Fibers are really what help to feed the bacteria in our gut to provide it with all the nutrients it needs so they can continue to ferment and create, you know, recycle the different short-chain fatty acids that we need to keep our gut health really optimal, right? It helps to create regularity in our system. Fiber, in addition

to water, right? We need adequate water to kind of make sure not only we're well hydrated, but to make sure those fibers work efficiently and help to move contents through our gut. In the realm of probiotics, since you asked, probiotics are really exciting, again, area of research, but still we lack really strong studies that connect specific strain probiotics with general gut health, right? There are billions of different strains of probiotics. We have not been able to target specific strains that can just universally be used for general gut health, right? So before we start to turn to probiotics and things along those lines, I say, eat a balanced diet again, because again, balanced diet, variety of fibers, prebioticsbiotics you know a little garlic and

onion asparagus they are food for the bacteria really good stuff if you're if you want to expose your gut to probiotics maybe try some fermented foods again certain fermented foods like kombucha and kimchi and whatnot we don't really know the probiotic content but yogurt kefir really good naturally occurring probiotics try incorporating those in the diet once in a while. If you can't, for whatever reason, do dairy-based foods, there's a number of dairy-free alternatives on the market too that incorporate great probiotic blends. They expose you to an array of different probiotics and may have some benefit to gut health. Alicia, this has been awesome. I've been taking notes and, you know, I think one of the things

that I really loved about our time together is I have felt calmer and less worried and stressed about what I'm eating or what I'm not eating. And just a good reminder to kind of do the basics or what, you know, what is within our control to do right now and to be kind to ourselves and that stress is something more to worry about than whether or not I ate an extra piece of cheese. Right. So all of that was really resonating with me. And I hope those of you that are listening, resonating with you as well to learn more about Alicia. Um, you can follow her on Instagram at Alicia Romano RD. So A-L-I-C-I-A-R-O-M-A-N-O-R-D. She's actually starting a weekly Instagram live meal prep session.

She'll talk about health benefits and answer questions and things like that. So I think following her on Instagram will be particularly useful right now. I know I'm going to do it. And then of course you can visit her website at aliciaromano.com. She mentioned that it's under construction. So I'm guessing a lot of good things are going to be coming. Alicia, anything to add before I close this out? No, I just, I really want to thank you for this opportunity and just remind everyone again, just to be patient with ourselves and try not to overcomplicate it, right? Nutrition is meant to make us feel good.

Food is meant to make us feel good. And I hope that we all gained a little bit of insight and a little sense of calm, like you said, Nicole, after this session. So thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure. And somebody told me like a year ago, this concept of practicing gratitude when I eat. So being grateful for the food on my plate, being grateful for the hands for me because, again, my background, having had an eating disorder, having had an unhealthy relationship with food, you know, I always associated food as bad.

I always worried about what I was putting in my body. And somebody pointed out, well, if you're always thinking it's bad and you're putting it in your body, then that's how your body is going to feel about it. And so just that switch of practicing gratitude. So that's my request or thought for the listeners is as you're putting food in your body, how can we begin to practice gratitude for all the things that it does for us? And maybe you listened in today to find a compelling reason to stop eating so much cheese or butter like me. Maybe you wanted to break some unhealthy patterns or beliefs and create a healthier relationship with food. Or maybe emotional eating might be getting the better of you right now.

Maybe you want to begin to see your body as the temple and gift that it is and learn to better honor it. Regardless of why you joined, I hope you will join me in this journey to focus on our health, what fuels and nurtures our bodies for ourselves, not for anyone else. And loving ourselves and the package we come in has got to be one of our biggest opportunities as women. I've said, nobody really cares

about the gift wrapping of a present other than kids under the age of three. For most of us, it's the gift inside that matters. And so my ask for all of us today is be the gift. Don't worry so much about the packaging and the gift wrapping and the bow that we come in. Focus on the gift that's inside. Be the gift, not the bow. And this is Woman's Work.