Well with Arielle Lorre - 109: Ditching Diet Culture + How to Stop Obsessing Over Food with Lisa Hayim, MS, RD

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

In this episode I’m talking to Lisa Hayim, registered dietitian and founder of The Well Necessities, about nutrition, diets and diet culture, and how to overcome eating habits and beliefs that don’t align with our body’s needs. We discuss her own experience with disordered eating; how her approach differs from intuitive eating; the toxicity of the wellness space and how to navigate it; how some diets can feel like food freedom; how food obsession mirrors addiction; tips for tuning back into our bodies and tune out the internal and external noise; her professional opinion of various diets including intermittent fasting, food combining, veganism and more; and a listener Q&A.   www.Athleticgreens.com/BLONDEFILES to get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 Free travel packs today. www.Beekeepersnaturals.com/BLONDEFILES for your FREE two-week supply of B.Immune Propolis Throat Spray, you just pay $5 shipping. www.Talkspace.com with code BLONDE for $100 off your first month. www.Blublox.com/blonde for 15% off your order plus Free Shipping worldwide.   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Auto-hue with Sunny Cars feels as if the children Not me's high. Giselsramble, Zand-Worda. Actis-verkeer, verdwine, vacancy can chaotic

but who zorgloose an auto-hurt says, Uno-dos, no stress. No, no-verwashed cost, always full-ledged. So, would auto-hueur without your

rice-adviseur or SunnyCars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lorry, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I love today's episode. so much and I love my guest, Lisa Hame, so much as well. She is a registered dietitian and founder of the well necessities. She describes her job being to strengthen your introspective abilities, make you a more mindful eater, and ultimately provide you with the freedom that comes when you realize your self-worth is not tied or related to your body image, food choices, or how much you exercise. Her goal, is to bring joy and lightness back into your life while giving you the tools to swim when the seas get rough. She also has some amazing courses, which you can find on her website, thewellnesses

dot com. And she has two podcasts, The Truthiest Life, which I was on, so go check that out, and Outwe, both are amazing. And she just keeps it real. And this is such a fascinating conversation about dieting, diet culture, learning to tune back into our bodies, how to overcome. disordered eating patterns, the wellness space as it currently is and where it's heading, and how to let our bodies lead the way. Something that she said in the episode that really resonated with me was that we can fall into habits, especially when it comes to diets or ways of eating, that cause us to place our values second to everything else. And we don't honor our bodies. And I just loved how she phrased that because that's exactly what I did when I was

going through this as well. She's also super honest about her own experience with disordered eating and she's just so relatable. So whether you've struggled with this or not, we are all exposed to diet culture daily and probably have been for our whole lives. So there are just some amazing tips in here for everybody. And I think you'll walk away feeling more empowered and mindful. So enjoy. All right, welcome Lisa. So excited to be here. We have been trying to figure this out for the past 20 minutes. So I feel like we're well into the podcast. But very excited to have you here. Have you back actually? I didn't go back and check what guest number you were, but I know that you were like very much in the beginning of when I started this podcast and people just

loved the episode and everybody loves what you're doing online. And I had so many questions for you. So we'll try to get to those in the end. But to start out, this is actually one of the questions that I got a lot from listeners. Can you, first of all, tell us about yourself and also tell us the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist, because I think that's something that a lot of people are confused with, especially with the social media ubiquity of nutritionists and other practitioners. Great question. So excited to be back. I think it was like two years ago, which is crazy because I just remember recording that episode and it feels like yesterday. So that's a really great question, and it is super confusing. So I'm a registered dietitian and I'm a

nutritionist. And registered dietitians can call themselves nutritionists or registered dietitians. Nutritionists can just call themselves nutritionists. And what that simply tells you is the training that they've gone through. So there's no one certification that anybody can get to call themselves a nutritionist. There's all different types of online programs, you can take. Some can be as short as three weeks, some six months, some two years. So at the end of the day, you're walking away with some sort of a credential, likely, if somebody's calling themselves a nutritionist. But there's no real firm, okay, they went down this path, they had this training, they're well equipped to work with all types of individuals. A registered dietitian has to go

through a dietetic internship. Most registered dietitians also have their masters in nutrition. That's something that's kind of coming up that all registered dietitians will need to have. So I have my master's in nutrition and exercise physiology from Columbia. And I then had to go on to do my internship, which is a one-year clinical experience in a hospital, learning how to care for all different types of populations. At the end of that road, I have to take an exam. and I need to pass that exam in order to be a registered dietitian.

Each year we have to keep up with our continuing education, just like a doctor does or many other professions like a therapist, et cetera. And there's simply no other, there's nothing else kind of holding a nutritionist accountable. That being said, I have no issues with health coaches and nutritionists doing great work out there. as long as all of us, registered dietitians included, understand our scope of practice. And what I mean by that is you understand what you don't know. And you don't try to push yourself to help somebody when you're not qualified to do so. And I think being a registered dietitian allows you to better understand a bit more what you don't know,

simply because you have the confidence to say, well, I know a heck of a lot. I know, you know, what medications do and what every body part does and how food works in the body. And we go through such an intensive training that we feel really confident that we can help people, but we know we can't help every single person. So I think, you know, a lot of registered dietitians kind of have their issues with health coaches and nutritionists. Personally, I don't as long as everybody is, you know, doing their part in the world to make it healthier and happier and isn't causing harm to a patient or a population, which registered dietitians can do as well. So, you know, I think it depends kind of which route you want to go.

If you are going to work one-on-one with somebody, a registered dietitian is a fantastic place to start simply because none of us are the same. We have bio-individuality. We're on different types of medications. We have different types of things going on. And a registered dietitian is trained to understand. or begin to understand your chemistry project, so to speak. And I think that's kind of the most important thing.

You want to be in good hands. So you are a dietitian with a large social media presence. And I'd love to hear like how the two can kind of coexist right now. And what your thoughts are as a professional about the, I guess the climate of things like body image and disorseling. and disordered eating and food and food fear and intuitive eating. It's such like a trendy thing right now. So I'm curious what your take is on that and what you think of the social media landscape at the moment. Great question. I am a registered dietitian on social media and it is by accident. I fell into this space as pure happenstance about seven years ago.

So keep in mind, this is before the word influencer existed. And I just had a social media account that was, I guess, my personal. But I was posting maybe less personal things than my friends. I was really immersed in nutrition and fitness at the time. And so I started to accrue, a following of people that didn't know me. This is like 2014, we're talking, 2013 maybe. I think I had like 2,000 followers when most people had 200 followers. You know, like that's how ahead I was.

And for a while, the two competed with each other, my private practice and my social media personality. Because my private practice, I was very professional working with people, all different disease states in the beginning. And my online persona was like the me that you probably know, or I like dance and I'm quirky and I'm very myself. And for a few years, it was kind of like, okay, do these two have a place together? And around 2017, 2018, they kind of really started to come together in the sense that people were finding me via Instagram. And my practice was growing because of that. So around 2018, things started to really shift. And I think the landscape has really changed that people understand it's very beneficial to have a social media presence.

If you are going to have even a side business that's semi-related. So fast forward to 2017, 2018, my relationship to food is really changing and so is how I work with people. And I'm really passionate at that point about teaching people to ditch diets and listen to their own body by using mindfulness. I start talking about these concepts. And for the most part, I got a lot of backlash. A lot of backlash from registered dietitians, a lot of backlash from, you know, anybody who was on a diet which, you know, I'm not talking about Weight Watchers or, you know, kind of like older diets. I'm talking about the people that are doing, that were doing trendier things that I was calling out. And I was saying, you know, I'm seeing a lot of disordered eating around this and this, you know, even like things like, what's it called,

BBG with Kayla It's, yeah, I know that was a part of your story, right? Oh, yeah. Like, I, because, like, never miss a Monday, one perfect week. I mean, all these so it's sayings and practices that were just so, like, rigid and restrictive. but we didn't know it at the time. But I knew it because I had just kind of taken my trip around the sun of Disordered Eating Disordered Exercise for the last five years. So I was seeing things that other people weren't seeing. And I was lightly calling out the trends and being a little controversial at the time.

Fast forward a year or two after I start kind of like, okay, mindful eating has really changed my life. And I'll break down on a little bit what that kind of really looks like. but I was like, this changed my life because I'm not stressing about food anymore. I can miss a Monday and still go to the gym on a Tuesday. You know, I'm really taking care of my health from a way that feels good and includes French fries, but not at the sacrifice of kale. And I was figuring out this like magic, if you will, that nobody else was really

talking about at the time. But then the conversation started to change a little bit. And intuitive eating started to pop up more and more in the first. registered dietitian space even. And I was like, that sounds really interesting. You know, it has a lot of overlap to the things that I think to the mindful eating that I practice. And over the last year, I'd say, you know, it has just really exploded. And I have mixed feelings because it has, of course, really helped a lot of people embrace their natural body types, gain food freedom, and really shifted the conversation around wellness to not be

restriction and rigidity and discipline. Like, I think that what's coming from it is good, but there is a lot lost in translation, number one, but that wouldn't even be my biggest issue with it. I think my biggest issue with the space is that there's just so much judgment for what other people are doing and policing, whether you're on a diet or not. And, we've just lost our ability to be compassionate and kind for what other people are doing and where they're at in their journeys. And it's mixed feelings. I think we're heading in a good direction where the idea of wellness is being challenged to not just, you know, wake up early, go to Barry's boot camp, intermittent fast until X time so that you can have ripped abs and,

you know, wear a bikini to the beach. Like I think we really are expanding the idea of wellness to include rest to recognize that, you know, bodies are supposed to have fat on them and nourishment can be enjoyable. But it's not so pretty out there. There is just a lot of anger and people holding on to firm beliefs and meanness, really a lot of meanness happening. I wonder why that is. I wonder if people just feel like so attached to whatever identity they have, like that it feels like a personal attack. I don't know. I can't figure it out.

I mean, from a health perspective, you have people that have gone through decades of training to say that, you know, BMI is the best predictor of health. So for this newvo, trendy population, you know, Instagram community to come in and say, you know, all bodies can be beautiful. All bodies can be healthy.

it's very hard for somebody who's pure science, numbers, quantitative analysis to say, how could you say that? If we continue to say that, then people are going to continue to eat McDonald's and gain weight and burden our society with public health bills, etc. But again, going back to my first point, which is a lot is lost in translation, is if you really understand even health at every size and the fact that all bodies can be beautiful, you understand that BMI is not everything. Is it one marker that predicts risk factor of disease? Yes, it's one.

But we can't take one and then give all of our advice to the public off of this one marker when somebody could have a BMI that's quote unquote not healthy or unhealthy or obese or overweight. But all their other clinical markers like cholesterol and their inflammatory markers and everything is fantastic. So it's about looking at the whole person and it's about recognizing that our bodies don't define us and that a lot of us have, you know, internalized fat phobia. And, you know, I'd be lying if it's not something that I have to reckon with all the time because we all kind of grew up with this idea that there's one body type that is ideal to be healthy. And if we're not working

towards that, we're lazy. We are, you know, a burden to ourselves and to others. So it's just so much to unpack, and I don't think people like to take time to digest information. They like to say, okay, this is right and this is wrong with all situations. I mean, it perfectly mirrors politics in every single which way, you know. And especially the year of COVID and everything, I think people have a lot less room for gray. And that's just really sad because there's a lot of beauty in the gray. And if people were having conversations rather than like leaving snarky comments on other people's page so that other people like it and that like inflates their ego. You know what I'm?

I don't know if that was super clear. But like I don't, Gwyneth Paltrow just endorsed a book that the anti-diet community went bananas on. I'll keep my. What book was it? I feel like I should keep maybe the name out of it because it was super. were controversial. Okay. And everybody's entitled to their own thoughts about this diet and this book.

And I have my own thoughts on this, too. But the anti-diet community went so hard after her and the author. And I didn't think it was a good look for anybody. I think everybody looked kind of foolish, for lack of a better word. You know, like just leaving these comments on the, I don't know, there was just so much anger. and I've made my mistakes in this in the space as well. But at some point, I think we need to think about, okay, if we disagree with someone and we are worried that their words could cause harm into the world, how can we communicate that message to an audience without necessarily trying to take a human being down?

Yeah. I think that it's other people trying to feel like morally superior to somebody else for, a split second for whatever boost they get from that. And then you're right, like, their comment gets pinned and then they get 200 likes and they feel like everyone's with them. And it's like a little high. That's exactly what I was trying to say. Their comment gets pinned. They get thousands of likes. And now they're like just looking to troll pages for the attention that comes with like being, you know, having that great comment on someone's page. Yeah. It's so crazy when you actually say it out loud. I mean, like, TikTok is the worst with

that. TikTok is like how mean and snarky can I be? You know, like the comments are just out of control. It's crazy. Oh my God. Yeah. You guys know I talk about my love for blue blocks all the time. I wear their blue light blocking glasses pretty much every day and I have for the past year. And I've noticed a big difference in my eye strain, my tension headaches and just that overall burnt out feeling after sitting in front of a screen all day. I also have their red light bulbs in my bedroom in L.A. and it is such a game changer when it comes to falling asleep naturally. And I actually don't have them in New York where I am right now and I'm finding it so much harder to fall asleep at a decent time. You can hear the science behind all of this on episode 46 with Andy Mant, the founder, where he

breaks it all down for us. And as for the glasses, it seems like there are so many trendy blue light company's popping up right now. But Blue Blocks really adheres to the science around light therapy and the glasses are made in optics laboratory conditions and made in alignment with the latest peer-reviewed research. Blue Blocks has plenty of stylish frames to choose from. My favorites are the crystal or you can have almost any pair of your favorite glasses turned into custom blue blockers, which is great. They come in lenses for daytime, nighttime, or readers, so there's something for everyone. So if you want to get your energy back, sleep better, and block out the unhealthy effects of blue light, go to blueblocks.com today and get free shipping worldwide and 15% off with the code

blonde, that's B-L-O-N-D-E, or go to blueblocks.com slash blonde. That's B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com slash B-L-O-N-D-E for free shipping worldwide and 15% off. After the emotionally draining year, we all endured in 2020, there are positive things on the horizon in 2021. It's time to take what we learned in 2020 and start heading in a new direction. That's why instead of just celebrating a month of mental health awareness, it should be our priority all year long. And you can take the first step with online therapy. So you know that I am a proponent of therapy. I've been doing it for years.

I still go once a week. It's just such a good tool to have in your toolbox, to have a non-judgmental, objective person to help guide through the difficulties of everyday life. And Talkspace makes it accessible for everyone. So it's the number one online therapy platform. They have thousands of licensed therapists trained in over 40 specialties, including anxiety, depression, relationships, and more. and your therapist can help you set and achieve your goals. And some of the great things about talk space are that it is affordable. So it's a fraction of the cost of in-person therapy. And instead of waiting for an appointment, you can just send unlimited messages to your therapist 24-7 and they will engage with you daily five days a week.

They also have an amazing therapist network. So they have thousands of licensed therapists with years of experience in over 40 specialties and it is secure. It's secure. It's private. They are using the latest end-to-end bank grade encryption technology to store client information and they comply with the latest HIPAA regulations. As a listener of this podcast, you will get $100 off your first month with Talkspace. It's such a good deal. So to match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com and make sure to use the code blonde. That's B-O-O-N-D-E to get $100 off your first month. month and to show your support for the show. Again, that's the code blonde and it's talkspace.com. So when we were talking about BBG to go back a little bit, we were talking about how there was a lot of like disordered behavior kind of ingrained in all of that. What are some other ways that we may be

engaging in like disordered behavior, disordered eating, disordered, it's just mindset around things like diet and exercise without being aware of it? And it's such a complicated topic because all these things, BBG we use as an example, take any trendy diet out there right now. We begin them because we want to be healthier and because we want to be happier. And oftentimes it's a very slippery slope that takes us somewhere else. That being said, there are people that are going to do BBG, any trendy diet that you name right now, and they will come out unscathed. Or at least they'll say that they're unscathed, and that's fine by me. If you don't feel any sort of negative effects at some point from doing these things,

by all means, go ahead and do it. But we can't deny what's happening to a lot of people, which is less the diet or the food or the workout plan that they're on and more what's happening to them mentally, which is obsession, fear, scarcity, and rigidity, and not a lot of flexibility and honoring of their bodies. So oftentimes a diet will do one of three things. It will tell us what we can eat. It will tell us when we can eat. And it will tell us how much we can eat. Sometimes it encompasses all three, two, sometimes just one. Oftentimes the ones that just tell us one thing that we can do are the ones that are kind of sneaky, or for some of us can be sneaky, I should say. So for example, for me, I give this,

this was kind of my slippery slope was I, you know, started with restriction. I really was afraid of a growing body. I wanted to keep my body thin. And I was just consumed by thoughts of food. I found veganism, not veganism because I cared about the animals or any sort of environmental reasons. But when I found veganism, I said, hey, I love vegetables. This is easy. I can eat as much as I want and I don't have to count anything. And this works for me. I know exactly what I can eat and I know exactly what I can't eat, which made all those painstaking decisions around food like, oh, can I have that piece of cake. Oh, I guess I can't because it had eggs. Where before it was, oh, I want that piece of cake. I shouldn't have that piece of cake. Oh, I'm going to have all that

cake. And by taking away the what I could eat, I found, I'm putting in quotes here, freedom. because for a while it was like, this is the answer. I felt great. My hair was shiny. My body was working. My digestion was fantastic. I'd fantastic digestion at that point. I was eating a lot.

Flash forward about a year and I realized that, you know, I didn't have the words disordered eating in my arsenal, but I knew something wasn't right. I knew that I was overthinking about food, obsessing over food, unable to, I was in college at this time, unable to go on dates or go. out with my friends, I was just obsessed with food. And so for me, that was the what. I just controlled the what. Now what we see a lot in 2020, 2021 are things like intermittent fasting, which great, if it works for you, please just keep on doing you. But it starts off really great. People say, I feel better than ever. I have more energy. I lost this weight. I'm not bloated.

da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Six months go by. And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, okay, well, what do I do when I'm on vacation, or it's the weekend, or my daughter wants to have breakfast with me, or my husband wants to have breakfast with me. And we start saying no to these things that are actually life. And most importantly, where it kind of comes into play, or not necessarily most importantly, but I'd like to highlight the fact that our bodies change every day. So you're ignoring your hunger. And you're also oftentimes going to get into a scarcity mindset of, okay, I have this small window to eat. I need to cram it all in. And again, it happens very slowly, but all of a sudden intermittent fasting isn't working for us,

but we're afraid to leave it because we remember the memories of when it was working for us. And it provided the control that we were so desperately looking for, just like veganism did for me. And then, of course, there's the how much some people will, you know, control their portions or, they'll count macros or calories or whatever it is. So there's different ways that we can find control. And if any of these things are something you want to keep doing, that's fine. But if you can relate to obsessing over what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, feeling guilty when you eat, feeling like you need to compensate, thinking about different ways that you're going to make up for it, thinking that you need to earn your food, I mean, I couldn't even sleep

because I'd just be thinking about breakfast. If you're finding yourself going really, really hungry into meals or finding yourself super full at the end of them, these are signs that you may have disordered eating or you're out of touch with your body's cues, which is totally normal to happen. You're not broken. It's just something to look out for.

Yeah, so my next question was, how can people begin to tune into their body's cues? And you're amazing. You're such a great resource to follow for this, and you have different courses and programs, so much information. So if you can just kind of condense it a little bit and if you have any like practical tips that people can start about your approach and how to eat mindfully and tune back into your body because, you know, the feedback that I get whenever I do an episode on

this and when I told people that you were coming on is like everybody, like we just don't trust ourselves. You know, there's so much fear around it. So I think that, you know, my programs are called Fork the Noise. And it's a great place to start because you can't trust yourself because you can't hear yourself. You can't understand yourself because there's so much noise. I break down noise into two different compartments, one being inner noise and one being outer noise. Outer noise, you know really well. It's, you know, all the social media people that you follow that you're imitating what they eat because it works for them. You're buying their clothes. You're, you know, doing exactly what they're doing because you think that's the answer.

Maybe not as consciously as that, but there are subconscious beliefs that if you do what this person's doing, it will work for you. It's also in the regular media and in TV programming and all these outer places that we take in information.

Inner noise is that mental chatter in your brain that's telling you that you're not enough, that you can't trust yourself, that you need the food rules because otherwise you won't be in control. It's your inner critic, you're all of that. And being able to recognize that there's noise coming in is the first step. And, you know, you talk about meditation all the time, Ariel, so I know your audience knows, but you need to find time to not be numb. And by numb, I mean the distractions that are all around us and the ways that the noise seeps into our mind. The phone is a huge one. And that's why I, you know, just recently went on a really big phone break that I know you wanted to talk about a

little bit. But the phone, for me, somebody who tries to use it intentionally, it just, it's, it numbs me. It, you know, it creates a vortex where my mind is thinking about what other people are doing, easily gets into a comparison trap. Whereas when I put that phone down for 20 minutes and I sit in stillness, it gets quiet in my body and a new voice comes up. And it's not, that inner noise inner critic. It's the one that knows exactly what I need, whether that comes to food or life. There are answers in stillness and silence. And for so long, we have been told that wellness has no time for stillness or silence, right? It's go, go, go, work out harder, sleep less so that you can get that workout in, you know, just follow this plan and you'll get the body that you want,

do this many abs, eat this many almonds, et cetera. And so you are disconnected to your body's wisdom because of that noise that we've been subjected to and no tools to decrease the noise and help ourselves get quiet. At least in my life, there were no tools to kind of do that. Another travel essential and just life essential that I've recently incorporated into my daily lineup is beekeepers natural's bee immune propolis throat spray. It is a spray with a very special potent natural ingredient called propolis. Be propolis acts as the medicine of the beehive. It fights germs and protects the bees with over 300 beneficial vitamins and minerals. And it can be just as beneficial to human beings as it is to bees. Propolis is regularly used in other cultures for all sorts of ailments, and it was the only thing that helped the founder of beekeepers natural is Carly when she was sick all the time, and her story is really fascinating. So I've been taking it daily, and I load up if I'm feeling run down and I spray a little before I record to keep my throat from getting scratchy, and I just love it. So you can take B-immune propolis throat spray as a daily ritual to support your immune system or spray it to soothe the scratchy, uncomfortable throat.

They also have some other amazing products. I love the bee chill honey in my matcha. It is so good. And Chuck and I both love their cough syrup. He has this cough that comes and goes and literally nothing else helps it except for this. So definitely go check out everything that they have to offer. For a limited time, Beekeepers Naturals is offering you guys, my listeners, an exclusive deal. They will ship you a free two-week supply of B-immune Propolis throat spray.

You just have to pay $5 for shipping. So to claim this deal, just visit beekeepers naturals.com slash blonde files, B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-F-I-L-E-S. Make sure you use that URL because this deal is not available on their regular website. So again, be sure to go to beekeepers naturals.com slash blonde files. That's B-E-E-K-E-E-E-P-E-R-S-N-A-T-U-R-A-L-S dot com slash B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-S. And this deal is only available for a limited time, so make sure you go get on it. Start prioritizing your immune health today. And if you don't love it, they will refund your $5.

no questions asked. You can also find beekeepers naturals nationwide in over 2,000 stores like Target, Whole Foods, and Sprouts. As I record this, I have been traveling around a little bit, and with that comes eating out a lot, different sleep schedules, and just a disruption in my overall routine. But something that I brought with me that is keeping me feeling amazing is my athletic greens. I love it because it's such a micro habit with maximum benefit. So one scoop of athletic greens contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multi-mineral, probiotic, greens, superfood blend, and more. And they all work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet, increase energy and

focus, aid with digestion, and support a healthy immune system, all without the need to take multiple products or pills. Seriously, adding this is such an easy daily habit that can really really. improve our lives. And for my trips, I just put a bunch of individual packets in a stasher bag, and I have one every morning. And my skin has been good. I usually break out when I come to the city and when I fly. And my digestion has been on point. And I just feel like even if I'm eating all the things and staying up late and so on, I'm still taking care of myself with this. Athletic Greens continues to obsessively improve this one holistic formula based on the latest research.

the product has gone through 53 iterations in counting and they just go above and beyond in third party testing to ensure that their customers continue to receive the highest quality and best daily nutritional habit on the planet. And right now, Athletic Greens is doubling down on supporting your immune system. They are offering my audience a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit my link today. So whether you are looking for peak performance or better health, covering your bases with athletic greens makes investing in your energy, immunity, and gut health each day, simple, tasty, and efficient. Simply visit athletic greens.com slash blonde files, that's B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-S, and join health

experts, athletes, and health-conscious go-getters around the world who make a daily commitment to their health every day. Again, that's athletic greens.com. slash blonde files and get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. It's so interesting because I think that I can speak for myself. Like if I had heard this five years ago, I would not accept stillness as an answer or remedy or anything. You know, it's like we want to, I don't know, it's like we want to be able to to buy or sign up for the solution and have it be something that we can. I don't know. It's almost like another distraction. You know, it's like what you said, 20 minutes of stillness or starting with five minutes of stillness or whatever. It's so simple and it's so

impactful. But it's scary. I remember the first time I did it. I mean, I remember the first time sitting down to quote unquote meditate and how scary it felt for all those emotions and those fears to come to the surface. But just like a wave, it all comes and then it falls. But, But we don't know that it falls because we try really hard to stuff down the emotions and the fears and the thoughts. And instead we just throw a band-aid on it that looks like a topical solution. So we have a topical problem, which is the fact that we, you know, binge, let's just say. And we go after it with a topical solution. I just won't binge and I'll just control exactly what we eat.

But that's failing to realize that the topical problem started way before it became obvious to the eye. There was a behavior that came before the obvious behavior and a behavior before that and a behavior before that. I was trying to think of an analogy before I came on here today to kind of like illustrate that point. And something that came to mind with my own life is the alarm clock was going off. And I just kept hitting it and thinking, oh, I'm not a morning person. I'm not a morning person. I'm not a morning person. How do you solve that problem? I guess you just keep setting earlier alarms. Every day, you keep doing the same thing, right? Most people that binge, they keep trying to do the same thing to fix that problem,

and they continue to binge or, you know, overeat in the same situation. And that's because we're trying to deal with the wrong problem. So take it with my sleep, right? I can't become a morning person if I don't have a good bedtime routine. If I don't get quality sleep. If I don't consider maybe my mattress or my pillows. or what I did in the two hours before bedtime. If I want to set myself up to be able to wake up and feel refreshed, I'm going to need to do something before that. And same thing with something like binging over eating.

If you're going to continue to go after that problem that you think that you have, you have to say what happened first. Oftentimes with binging, you're going to find that somebody actually restricted before they binged, whether it was total food or type of food. they went into it. You're usually with some sort of a mindset of I can't have this food. So you need to start to break down your beliefs around food and your understanding of your body if you want to change that outcome.

But it's very easy to say, oh, no, I'm just addicted to food because when I eat food, I can't stop. Yes, that's true. Yes, I can't get out of bed in the morning. But if I go after trying to solve the wrong problem, I'm not going to get anywhere. It reminds me so much of alcoholism and addiction. Like as you're saying this, because, you know, like alcoholism, the drinking is a symptom of the underlying issue. And the underlying issue is around our thinking. Not the drinking is just the symptom.

But like so many people, myself included, try to manage the internal problem by adjusting externals. So, you know, only drinking after 5 o'clock, only drinking one. wine, not drinking with this, not, you know, changing and manipulating all the controllable factors and not addressing the real underlying issue. It makes a lot of sense. And food is a way that we cope as well as it can be alcohol. So there are those parallels for sure. And it just comes down to an internal state, I think, of suffering, but not allowing ourselves

to suffer. Like, we all suffer. It's just part of human nature. but we need to make space for pain and feel it in order to find out what we need to do to make it better rather than the obvious thing, which is, you know, figure out a diet or turn to alcohol. Maybe not the best example there. But you ask me like what, you know, what can people do? And it's a great question.

And I know what it feels like to be frustrated by everybody on the internet saying, just listen to your body, right? Like that's what everybody says. and it's completely useless when we're in a state of mind-body disconnection, as I like to call it. So like I said, you can't understand your body's wisdom or you can't hear it, but that doesn't mean that it's not there. So for just everybody listening right now, just trust me when I say your body has the wisdom, it's communicating. If your heart is beating right now, it's running a fantastic fucking operation down below. It's the mind that's over here, distracted, affected by the noise,

affected by everything else going around. So we need to kind of just bring them back together in order to create that mind-body connection. So all of us have a sense, a sensory system in our body called interoception. And it's pretty fascinating. And it's how our brain interprets what our body needs. Or our body sends signals to the brain and the brain knows. So it's the brain's representation of what's going on in the body.

And this is happening automatically, all the time. Like when you're cold, what do you do, Ariel? That will turn up the heat and put on it. Right. You just, you're going to take care of yourself. When you have to, you know, urinate, you're going to go to the bathroom. There's so many automatic things that we do. But when it comes to feeling hunger, for example, we have a lot of ideas that hunger is annoying. It's going to make us eat. It's going to make us over it. It's going to make us eat the wrong foods. So we have been conditioned to ignore that feeling, which has left us disconnected to a very important cue from our body that's asking us for nourishment.

So this interoception thing, what I love about it is that it's been studied. And it's a part of our brain called the insula cortex. So it's different than the hypothalamus where we typically think about food and reward. And we can strengthen our interoception, proven in research. I know you've got like a very diverse different community, but I know that you're all really smart. and it's proven in research that the best way to improve our interoception, improve our mind-body awareness is with mindfulness. And that's why I'm so freaking passionate about mindfulness and finding ways to get people to find stillness.

It doesn't need to be meditation. Meditation can be helpful. And yes, everyone can benefit, even if you feel like you can't right now. But practicing mindfulness allows you to better understand your body and therefore trust it. And in my own personal practice, I believe it's one of the strongest, weapons against all of this nonsense because once you physically feel something in your body and you understand it's cue and you're not questioning it or trying to override it or hack it. It's like, why would you do anything else but listen to it? I love that. And I love your videos when you

talk about like how to deal with hunger. So like it's so obvious, but we've been, you're right, We've been so conditioned to try to fake it out and do all these things when, you know, really it's very, the solution is pretty simple. Right. And so we have to start there, though. We can't just start with, you know, okay, just listen to your hunger. That's just as unhelpful as listen to your body. We need to first of all understand why you're so afraid of hunger. And then most of all, we need to understand the different levels of hunger we can feel so that we can find a more appropriate place to begin a meal than where we need. normally do, which is, you know, ravenous, very, very hungry. So what I found is that when I stopped trying to override hunger and I saw it as just a helpful cue to go get a snack, to go have a food, to help me decide how much to eat, what changed was the chaos around eating. I didn't find myself unable to figure out what I wanted. I was precise about what I wanted, when I wanted. I didn't graze for hours on end. And I ended the meal comfortable.

in my body. So bloating, which can of course happen with certain types of food. Naturally, it can be something that you need to work with a doctor with. But for me, bloating was a huge part of every single day, three times a day after every single meal. I found myself with a food baby in a food coma and I'd laugh it off because I was eating all the right foods. So how could anything be wrong? But the truth is that I was overriding my body's sensations because I was, A, afraid of hunger. So, okay, this is my window of time to eat. I'm going to eat a lot now so I can make hunger go away and stay away as long as possible. And B, I didn't really care about what the appropriate place my body would tell me because

this was my time to eat. And even though that felt like, quote, unquote, freedom, it was. still laced with guilt and what I'd have to do to burn it off. So I was not winning. I was not comfortable in my body. I was not mentally okay. I was disconnected from my values. And it was all under the skies of quote unquote healthy living. So for any listeners who may relate to that and feel like they're in that spot right now, what is one thing that they can start doing today to help get them towards a healthier place. I think checking in with yourself before every meal can be more, or really anything.

I'll just kind of expand this out. I think there's a lot of information in a pause. And that pause can come at any point. It can come when you wake up before you jump out of bed to brush your teeth or into your workout, asking yourself, what do I need today? It can come before you make your breakfast of grain-free toast with almond butter. I'm just making something random up. You know, what do I need today?

Or is that the safe food for me? And is it the safe food, but it's what I actually want? Great. Is there an opportunity to challenge myself and maybe have fruit because I've come to demonize or be fearful of fruit and I really love fruit? Start to bring curiosity to every single one of your decisions. Get to know what sort of voice or body reaction you're having to the thoughts that are coming up. because oftentimes we are kind of oscillating between fear and abundance.

And when we get to know what fear feels like in our body, it can sometimes be a better sign and easier to recognize sign than necessarily the mental chatter that's going off. So I know what fear and anxiety feels like in my body at this point, I should say, this was not the case a long time ago, long before it overruns me and I make decisions from a place of fear. And this also stands for most of the time, not all of the time, but in life, fear feels a certain way in my body. My stomach clenches. I might notice that my hands are kind of even doing funny things. The body is sending signals all the time when it feels in danger. And when we start to practice mindfulness in safe periods, we start to really feel into our body when it is

relaxed and therefore we know when it's not relaxed. And we make choices from a state of do I want to continue and make a decision from this amplified, ramped up place, or do I need to get myself back to baseline in order to be my own best caretaker? So you have body wisdom. You just need to tap into it. Bring curiosity. Notice your reactions to things. See if you can displace some of that reactiveness or that judgment with kindness and compassion and simply make space for yourself to experience joy around food again, even if it's not the perfect food choice. Love it. Okay. Okay. Interesting choice of wording that this person had. Is dairy good or bad? Great question. And I think that just really shows everything we've talked about here,

which is there's a gray area. And the fact that, that I'm being asked this question means that you haven't done your own work to figure out the role that dairy has in your life. I think that, you know, at least from my own personal point of view, I'm somebody that cut out dairy for a long time. And now I have it consciously when I want it informs that I know feel good for me. So there I have friends that really benefit from their daily Greek yogurt. I have some friends where that tears their stomach apart. So I think it's up to you to start to figure out, you know, how dairy makes you feel and moving away from the idea that it's good or that it's bad because if you think that it's bad,

you're going to go ham on that ice cream and then you're 100% going to feel bad and you're going to walk away with information that's unclear about how your body actually responds to dairy. So get to know quality and sources. And if going ham on the ice cream makes you have digestive issues, you should get some urban dessert lab whipped oat milk ice cream. Is that what it's called that Lisa sent me?

It's like the best thing in the world. So there's a shout out there. Oh, my God. That ice cream is insane. Oh, my God. They were like, which one is your favorite? And I was like, you're asking me to choose. I truly cannot decide.

They're all so good. They're in New York for anyone listening. Yes, they're so good. Okay. How is intermittent fasting different from skipping breakfast? So I'm not an intermittent fasting expert, but intermittent fasting has a set of hours that you're not supposed to eat. So whatever that window of time is is going to look different on

when you finished your last meal. So I think it doesn't necessarily, you know, for some people, it might just be skipping breakfast, but for other people, it might look a little bit different depending on their day shift. Okay. How to deal with a ravenous appetite at night, regardless of what you eat during the day? Great question. So a ravenous appetite at night probably means that you're not eating enough during the day. But also, it might just be normal that you need a snack at night. A lot of my clients, and students who are really starting to wrangle with this idea that they feel hunger after dinner and they have been conditioned to believe that eating after 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock even

is bad. So rather than trying to fix that topical problem with a topical solution like we talked about earlier in the episode, eat something, enjoy something. Ask yourself, what would be nourishing in this moment? What would feel good for me? How could I give this some mf without trying to have as little bit as possible? So sometimes when we go to have that snack, we say, okay, I'll just have a little bit of it. And then we find ourselves having a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more before we tear apart, you know, the entire pantry.

So allow your body to send you feedback and play with that. I love that. Okay. How about this one? How to manage overeating when working from home and having easy access? So same thing. I think that getting on a normal meal schedule is going to be super important. We're oftentimes trying to make it as long as we can before we have breakfast or lunch, which

is 100% going to take you. I do like a seesaw analogy. It's going to take you from empty to really full to empty to really full. The best way to keep your blood sugar even, to feel really good in your body, to feel energized, to eat the appropriate amount where you end your meals at what I call gentle fullness is to start at gentle hunger. And make sure that your meals are well balanced. So one of the things that I do teach in my programs is nutrition, because you know,

because we've come to believe that certain foods are good, certain foods are bad, and we have no idea how to create food combinations different than food combining, but putting different foods together to give them more staying power or more satisfaction. You mentioned food combining. So I'm just going to throw this one out there. Every single dietitian that I've had on the show and doctor who, you know, the gut health doctor and researcher that I just had on, I asked them about food combining because so many of my followers ask me about it. And I don't know enough about it. I'm not coming from a place of judgment. But from what I saw, it was one influencer who is not credentialed in any way who kind of made it popular. And I've seen on TikTok a lot of videos with,

you know, hundreds of thousands of likes and comments of people who said that it led them to eating disorder. So I'm curious, your professional opinion on that. Yeah, and also not too well studied on it. Don't know the full-on science. All I can tell you is what it looks like to me, which is a diet in disguise that starts off really good and then kind of sours as your values come second to everything else. You're not honoring exactly what you want.

That being said, I know like one of the principles, for example, is like eating fruit on an empty stomach. I have no problem with that if that feels good for you. But I think it's so important that all of us collectively, whether we, there's nothing wrong with being open-minded and trying trendy things. Let me kind of start with that, whether that's taking principles of intermittent fasting or food combining. But when you do this, listen to your body's wisdom, right?

Is it liking it or is it not working for you? Do you find that fruit on an empty stomach leaves you hungry two hours after? And that doesn't work with your job that doesn't allow you to eat for four to six hours, right? So consider your lifestyle into everything. And then most importantly, we have to be flexible and we have to be curious in each moment. Our bodies need change daily and over a life cycle. I'm pregnant right now and it has been so fun to relearn my body and the way that it communicates and what it needs. And I'm so grateful that instead of trying to predict what it needs for breakfast, I wake up every morning and I let it lead me.

So if food combining works for you for two weeks, but then the week that you're on your period, maybe for example, it's just not working, can you honor that? And can you bring some curiosity and non-judgment on those days where it's simply not working? And then most importantly, when something that's really trendy and works for a really cool influencer or multiple influencers is happening, can you try that trend, recognize out the door that it doesn't work for you, and simply walk away? And the better you learn to understand your body's cues and that information that it's sending you, the easier it will be for you to not even look that way. So like, the reason I know so little

about food combining is simply because for me, that's noise. I know what this body needs. I know that I don't, that the way that I eat works for me and I don't need to try anything else. And some days, I like fruit. And some days I like fruit with peanut butter. And sometimes I like fruit with cereal. And so I have no issues again with people experimenting, but I do have an issue with harm. And if you are harming yourself by way of trying to make yourself healthier, there goes a red flag. So you've got wisdom. Feel free to try different things out, play with food, get your recipes off of TikTok, try trendy fed a pasta. It's fantastic. But give your body a microphone to communicate back with you and say, ooh, I like that. Ooh, I didn't like that. And use your own information to fuel your

future decisions. Amazing. Okay. Last question is from me. I want to know about your social media break, your phone break. What was the best part about it and what was the worst part about it? Okay. So I've been taking phone free breaks for the past two years where I literally turned my phone off. I put it in a drawer for seven days to 10 days. I think I've gone two or to three weeks last June. And it is amazing. Most recently I did a six week social media break. So I was still on my phone. It was. was during the pandemic. It was just a different situation where I knew that I would probably mentally go to some dark places if I wasn't communicating with my friends or family. The best parts of it are that you're exposed to reality. So we, our beliefs and our mindset is a result of what we are exposed to. So me as a quote unquote influencer, as somebody who's on their phone all the time, but also if you're not an influencer, you're probably on

Instagram quite a bit or TikTok or whatever it is, I began to believe that what this phone was showing me back was reality. I thought that all people were angry. I thought that all people wanted to talk about was politics and how negative the world is and how unfair it is, which are important conversations, don't get me wrong. But I thought that no one in the world was smiling anymore. Nobody was even going to their jobs anymore. And the best part was by reemerging, by going on walks by going to the supermarket, by not looking down at my phone while I'm checking out, I interacted with cashiers and other people walking around the store, even if it was a very brief interaction with a mask. And I got re-exposed to other human beings, which is, A, just

important to have these micro connections with human beings, which I used to have, you know, all the time before the pandemic. And also just remember that not all people are unhappy people. And in fact, many of the people who are unhappy are the ones who are spending all their time online, leaving comments on people's things. They're unemployed. They have a lot to be disgruntled about. Don't get me wrong. But it is not necessarily a reflection of the climate going on in the world. And for me, that just felt really good to also remember that people have different opinions, different lives, and not everything that we see is a good reflection of reality. So that's probably the best part.

The worst part I'd say is that I really love my community. I think that as somebody who suffers from depression, usually quite seasonally, I did this in January, which is my January to March, can be my hardest months. This community has saved me time and time again without even realizing it. And not by, you know, commenting on my photos and giving me likes, but because of the meaningful conversations in DMs that I've had with people. And that's, I'm kind of weird like that. I like interacting with people. I have, do you have a peloton? No.

Because my husband got a peloton and he's yet to use it. But I started doing these hikes this week. And the first thing I do when I get into the room is I see who else is in there and I give them all a high five. And it's like this little button that you press. And I told my husband this and he's like, that's so you. And I'm like, what do you mean? And like you wouldn't just get into the room and make sure that you give everybody a high five. And he's like, no, not at all.

And he's like, that's what you do on social media like all day. like, oh, I guess you're right. Like, I get my happy energy from like, you know, there's a woman in my town who's always going for runs and I'll like walk by her. And she's like, woohoo, every single time. She doesn't even know it's me because she's just like on her high. And I do see like a wacky older me in her, you know. That's so funny.

So the hard part was the parts of my community that is not necessarily, you know, the mean people that, of course, come, come my way. Right. Well, it's fascinating to be. Yeah, it's just fascinating to unnum yourself and recognize that when you go to the bathroom, you don't need to pee and scroll at the same time. You could just like grab for toilet paper and that could be enough of an activity for you. But those micro moments even allow for creativity and space in the brain and happiness and all the things that kind of can get drained from social media if you don't have boundaries and you're not checking how you're consuming it.

amazing. Well, I think I need to do one of those soon. I'm going to probably... I've been planning on doing it. I have too much work that I can't do it in the next like a couple months, but we're going away this summer and I'm like, I think that's going to be my time. Well, if you can take a week before then, brands are usually pretty cool about it. Yeah. I put also email boundaries on myself, which has been huge. So I only check email three days a week now and I have an auto responder. But I can't, the reason I'm bringing it up is I can't tell you how many people, brands included, have been like, wow, I need to do that. So when I first heard about this, I was like, mind alone.

Okay, well, I got to be honest. I haven't been so great about only checking on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but it has changed the expected response time from people who email me, which is just changing my relationship to everybody else. Yeah. I just, I don't function well in urgency and chaos. So I had to, you know, recognize. I also took email off my phone.

Fantastic. Highly recommend. Oh, my God. Amazing. I need to do all of those things because I'm the same way. Like, I mean, my inbox is so out of control. And most of it is not urgent, but it feels urgent when you get that notification. And you're like, oh, I feel like you have to get back to everybody.

So I'm going to do that too. Yeah, I think I emailed you and I got the auto response. And I was like, but it doesn't mean that you're less. I think that's kind of the idea. It actually means I'm more productive and I'm bringing really intentional energy to every email that I write rather than on my phone and screenshoting this, sending this to Amaya who works with me being like, why didn't you handle this? You know, it's just choosing to do things less chaotically, not do things less, which I appreciate it. That's the theme of the whole episode. Oh, well, I hope so.

I think that's kind of what I hope everybody takes is that you can nourish yourself. you can listen to your body. You can have both kale and cookies. And you can find just a flow within your body. But you've got to be willing to create that mind-body connection. And you've got to make space for that, which isn't going to happen by just doing your normal routine. Amazing.

Where can everybody find you? You could find me on Instagram at Lisa Haim. Same on TikTok with my solid 500 followers. Woo! No, I really love TikTok. It's really fun for me. But I've got two podcasts, The Truthiest Life and Outweigh. Outwee is all about disordered eating.

Truthiest Life, I have amazing guests on who tell their stories of struggles like Ariel, who, oh my gosh, probably my favorite episode, especially. Yeah, well, I have a loved one with addiction. So, you know, I think, I'm sure a lot of your listeners can relate in some way, but it's a topic that affects everybody, not just the, you know, individual who's obviously suffering. So I love to hear your stories especially because you are so successful and have really created a different life for yourself. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Again, I could keep going. So we'll have to have you back for a third time.

Two years from now. Mark me in. We'll do whatever do you. No, like six months. Perfect. I'm ready. Before you pop. Yes. Fork the noise.com for my courses. Fork the noise.com. com forward slash HF is my course that's all about reconnecting to hunger and fullness. I'll give all that information to Ariel, so you can just pop it in the show notes. Yes, it'll be in the show notes. So you can, everybody can go find it there. And thank you again. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way. And it's actually the best way to support the show. show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blond Files

podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.