Well with Arielle Lorre - 6: LISA HAYIM - Food Freedom and Forking the Noise

Episode Date: May 22, 2019

In this episode Arielle talks to Lisa of “The Well Necessities” about her journey to becoming a registered dietitian, achieving food freedom and how to listen to our bodies rather than all of the noise. Lisa has an inspiring personal story and her magnetic energy - combined with her knowledge and refreshing approach to nutrition - will draw you right in to this fascinating conversation! Go here for  more with Lisa Hayim: https://thewellnecessities.com/ Follow Lisa Hayim on Instagram @thewellnecessities   Arielle's cookbook:https://theblondefiles.com/the-blonde-files-cookbook/ Follow Arielle here on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ariellelorre/ And catch up with Arielle here on YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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would auto-hure without your re-sadviseur or sunnycars. combe. You're listening to Over the Influence. I'm your host,

Ariel Lori. I'll be talking to movers and shakers in the world of wellness and beyond, and people who have had their own interesting journey, whether it be physical, mental, spiritual, or professional. Thanks for joining. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. I hope everyone's having a great week so far. I am so excited about today's episode. I have Lisa Hyam. She's a a registered dietitian with a master's in nutrition and exercise physiology from Columbia. Fancy. She works with clients one-on-one. She has webinars. She has an upcoming online course called Fork the Noise. You can sign up for that in show notes. I'll add a link. She's also an influencer and she has such a relatable story. And I love following her because her posts are informative and encouraging and uplifting.

and she just has a really devoted community on Instagram, which is always cool to see. And she's really engaged with her followers. And it's just kind of a happy corner of the internet. So I highly recommend that if you're not following her, you do so. And we just had an amazing conversation. We were just vibing. And I think you guys are really going to enjoy it. So without further ado, Lisa Hyam.

Okay, welcome, Lisa. Thanks for having me, super excited. Thank you so much for coming on. I have loved following you. I think I found you through Hello Wellness, actually. Oh, right? Yeah, I think I've done one or two over the years and yeah, they're great. They're putting on such great events these days. Yeah, yeah, I did one on gut health in the beginning of the year. Oh, is that in L.A. or New York? It was in L.A. It's just such a good way to connect with your community, you know? It is. They do all the work and then the experts show up, which is fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to start by just talking about your journey and having you tell us a little bit about what you do now and how you got here. Sure. So I am a registered dietitian. I've been a dietitian for about four years now. That process is pretty intense.

I also have my master's in nutrition and education, nutrition and education. exercise physiology. I did that at Columbia in New York. And so that whole process was kind of like the last eight or so years of my life. So right after undergrad just went right into graduate school and into then becoming a dietitian where I then opened my private practice and started working with people. So that's kind of my, you know, short version of my professional career. And really all of that before that kind of took me to that place. In undergrad, I went to University of Miami, but I always had this like obsession with nutrition. I just was super interested in it. And then that kind of evolved, I guess, into a intense interest and then an obsession and then an unhealthy

obsession. So it's one of those things where it's like the more you know, the more you want to know, and the more you know it could just kind of spiral out of control. I've seen you talk a little bit on your page about some of this for you too, when you're in the thick of it, you don't realize that you're doing something that could be mentally unhealthy because you're, in theory, doing something that's healthy. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, we'll get into this more, but this kind of diet culture and diet trends,

and it's so prevalent and we're kind of inundated with it. Well, it's wrong. So it's hard to have perspective when you're in the thick of it. Totally. And it's really evolved. Like when I, when my, you know, I never had a formal diagnosis of anything. But looking back, it was very clear that I did have disordered eating, a very disordered relationship to food.

And my mind was just consumed with food. You know, like before I went to bed, I was already planning. breakfast. As I was having breakfast, I was planning lunch. I had this really big fear of being hungry. So I was always overprepared. I was always overeating, even though it was like, you know, completely healthy, safe foods. But I didn't, you know, trust myself at all. So, I mean, looking back, it was so clear that something was wrong. But again, this was eight-ish years ago. we didn't we weren't talking about health in the way that we are now um words like orthorexia didn't exist and if you're a listener and you don't know what that is it's essentially like a very

an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating um and without a that word existing people don't know what to look for you know what I mean even yourself you don't realize that something could be a problem until you learn that a problem could exist right um so nobody knew what was going on. I've always been thin. It was never like a drastic weight loss. There was never anything like this. It was just all kind of just happening in my mind and it was very suffocating

and confining because you're not when you're when food and exercise and body image are occupying all that headspace, you're not living out your life. You know, all of your decisions are made out of a fear and all of your decisions are often made because of food, not because of what you really want. You know, like saying no to going out to dinner with friends or a date or when you have to go out somewhere, you know, pre-screening the menu, just all the, all the energy just goes into kind of like the wrong places for me. Yeah, definitely. And I think so many people, including myself and yourself in the past,

You know, we don't really stop to think about how much energy our body image is actually consuming. Because like you said, all of those decisions, you know, what you eat, when you exercise, how much you exercise, where you're going to dinner, looking at the menu. I mean, that all comes down to body image, right? And probably being dissatisfied with your body image. Because if we were satisfied, we wouldn't be putting that much time into it. I think that it's actually kind of half and half. I think that for some people, it is body image. For other people, you could have an obsession with just being healthy and like this idea

that your body is this pure vehicle. And some people care a little bit less about like, you know, that perfect body, but like they're obsessed with inflammation. And then there's this other small category of people that it's actually like just an escape from their life to deal to focus on something that they can. control. So for intense eating disorders, actually, you'll find real clinical eating disorders. Like, it's not even about being skinny. Because I mean, if you look at, it is about being skinny, but it's not about being attractive, if you will, because if you look at their bodies, you know, oftentimes it's not something that most of us would consider attractive. It's, it's sick. Right. And even people that don't have that body, they're still, or don't have anorexia. And to that

extreme, just are dissatisfied with their life in many ways. They're not living. They're authentic life and they could be in too deep where making those changes would are too scary for them. And so I find that some people just latch on to food rules because that's something that they can control. It's a safe place for the mind to go. And so there's sort of all these reasons why, but, you know, yeah, for the most part, oftentimes it's just this intense body image issue, weight, et cetera. Right. Yeah, that's actually, I mean, I can, relate to that because I was bulimic for years throughout my teens and my early 20s, and it kind of went hand in hand with like my alcoholism and drug addiction, which I talk about a lot. But, you know,

part of it was body image. And then the other part was like you were saying, kind of a control thing. It was very, it didn't have anything to really do with the food and had to do with my emotions and the release of emotions and all of that. And if you have that addiction pathway, too, food can also serve as a safe high until it runs out a lot quicker than drugs or alcohol. So that very much explains your relation, you know, how bulimia existed for you because you get that high when you're eating. But when we eat, how that reward system works is like we need to be actively eating to get that serotonin boost.

I usually explain it like putting a token into a pinball machine and. one token per pinball. And so the food is the token and then the pinball is the serotonin. But the second, like, you put that fork down, it's like, oh, can I curse? Like, oh, fuck. You know, it's like, I feel, I still feel like shit. And now I feel like shit. And I am afraid of whatever this is going to do to my body. So I need to purge this. Totally. And it's like just that shame cycle. Totally. Totally. Yeah. So that's, I think I often do see that. addiction and bulimia do go hand in hand. And then conversely, like when people get sober, a lot of people become either addicted

to exercise or like you were talking about before, orthorexia and really obsessed with putting only the most pure things in our body. Right. Right. Yeah. So you always wanted to be a dietitian, right? I always wanted to be a dietitian, but. Are you always healthy?

I didn't grow up like in a healthy house. I've always been thin. I've always had a, I don't know, I guess like a fast metabolism or whatever. So the issue was never that like I had, you know, my mom telling me to lose weight, which is a lot of what I hear or anything like that. But no, our house was not healthy at all. We grew up on like the most packaged foods. We did not have any of the wisdom now, you know, that we have now.

Although some of my friends will tell me that like their house was still organic. you know, 20 years ago. That just wasn't the case for me. My parents were divorced. It was just, I don't know, food was not really something that we ever really, like, cared or talked about. It definitely wasn't thought about as, you know, something that sounds really ridiculous, but, like, something that affects our health.

Right. Yeah, so, I mean, I could eat ding-dongs all day. You know, it sounds like generic, but literally that's what we were eating in Malamars and all that stuff. And then when I got to high school, you know, hormones. body image, all that stuff, started to come up for me. And yeah, my body shape started to evolve. And that's when I wanted to, I guess, have some control over it.

So I started to, quote, unquote, learn about healthy eating. I mean, it was at that point, like, eat grilled chicken and steamed vegetables and only have berries and blah, blah, blah. We're around the same age. So do you remember the cabbage soup diet? Yes, actually. I do. I tried that in high school.

Yes, I remember one of my friends, Jamie did as well. She was very into that. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. It's funny. I guess most people listening probably won't even, you know. I know. I just aged both of us. Yeah. So that sort of happened, you know, and that was like my first like, oh, you can control your body through food. That's interesting. And I think that's what kind of like was my first interest in nutrition because it was like how, I wanted to know how, you know, what's happened. inside the body. And that just kind of, at that point it was a healthy wanting to know about food. And as I began my college journey, you know, colleges is for most of us, like it, and I went to college in South Florida where like body image is what people are, I don't know, you know, depending on where you go to school. Yeah. Especially Miami.

Exactly. Miami. And where I went my freshman year, which is Florida State and Tallahassee, like, it was like girls you never saw before. Like back in my high school, girls looked like normal. Many of them were very pretty. They had good bodies, but it was like realistic when you got to Calhasa in Florida. I had never seen girls like this.

Like they looked like L.A. girls, you know? And it was like, oh, wait, I need to look like them too. And so it's easy to kind of just get caught up. in what's around you. So yeah, I always wanted to be a nutritionist, but at one point in the beginning of my master's, I've always been in therapy, like my entire life. And I remember like sitting down in therapy and being like, okay, this got to the point where, you know, down the line, not so far away, I want to be helping people.

But I know that in my current state, I can't help people. So I need to start making moves to be normal again. with food, you know? That's amazing that you were able to recognize that. It was with resistance and denial at first. But deep down, I knew that something wasn't right. I mean, I'm a very introspective person, but again, like, the word orthorexia didn't exist. Like, I think that girls now, women now are better able to see that they have a problem

just because the word exists. Like, they know that an obsession with healthy eating can exist. Right. Whereas back then, it was just. just like applaud, applaud, applaud, applaud for, oh, my God, you're choosing to eat salad over this, you know, whatever is not salad. There was so much, so much applauding and, wow, you have so much willpower and all this, you know, reinforcement that, and a lot of people go through that now.

I do know that. And nobody's exempt from it now. But, yeah, that applaud that exists kind of drives you further. and especially as I was in school to become a dietitian, it was like expected that, or in my mind, it was expected that I have to be this perfect, healthy eater if I want to do what I want to do. And that's really not the case, but that sort of fed into the whole thing. When you were in grad school, do you feel like everything that was taught there, everything that you learned there, is, I don't know how to phrase it, current or applicable to what you do now?

Not necessarily. I mean, the basics, yes. And we learn a lot of things in grad school. It's not just about like hot topics or trends. So we're really learning about the inner workings of the body, metabolic processes, how our body converts things to energy, what it does when it, you know, when it can't. There's so many different elements of it that are 100% still true. With that being said, what?

The science part of it. The real science part of it, I should say. I mean, so much is being debated and evolving in science. It's like nutrition science is just so new and it's always going to be evolving. So I think that the best thing about grad school and, you know, choosing to go this route versus a online certification, is that, first of all, you know, you really get people who are serious because it's more intense than a certification, any certification. But really, I think that one of the best things that came out of grad school was the ability to read and understand research. So maybe what I learned then

isn't as current now, but when a health claim is made or a diet claim is, you know, a big, a new diet comes out, the celery juice diet, right? Like, whatever it is, I don't have an opinion. I go by, I might have an opinion, but I let research guide what I say to the public. And that's kind of the high standard that all people with all dietitians or really anyone with a master's degree, kind of knows how to do. We know how to look at the integrity of the study. You read the results, understand a conclusion, but also understand the drawbacks of that study and kind of come out with an opinion about it, if that makes sense. Yeah, definitely. But it's not anecdotal. It's not, I would never, it's not, I, you know, I drank celery juice for five days and or five weeks or five

years and it cured my candida. Like those are not claims that I would ever make or I would be comfortable saying because anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence and it's very dangerous to give that advice to the public. And I, we really value what we can extract from research. And I like to just say, like, research isn't the end all. I think that self-experimentation is important. And I think a lot of registered dietitians get caught up on the fact of like, there's no research to support that, you know, and I think that that's also equally as dangerous as a place to be in for a lot of reasons. One is because lots of research is, you know, funded by agenda-driven companies. But number two is if it could change somebody's life and it's not detrimental, like, for example, celery juice, again, by all means, do your celery juice.

Like, that's how I feel. If it is something that's detrimental, something that, like the keto diet, for example, you know, actually all the research, a lot of the research that we have can show some negative effects, especially for women on our hormones. and some other things, like those are things that I wouldn't say, yeah, go try out keto. That's a good idea for you, you know, but something that doesn't have health detriment to it. It's like I think that some, a level of self-experimentation is important. Right. Yeah, it must be frustrating for, I mean, I would imagine for you, my sister-in-law is a

dietitian too, to see this kind of climate that we're in now. people can go online and take online quizzes and get a certification and practice? Yeah, I mean, I know that a lot of people in my profession feel anger and frustration. I don't feel those things because I think at the end of the day, or if we really look from like a global point of view, anybody who, in theory, at least, anybody who's doing the online certifications going to IIN or whatever it is. They have really good intent. They just want to help the population be healthier. And I think to some degree that is a good thing. The more people know about nutrition and health, the better. And as long as they're using that certification in a

responsible way, I'm all for it. Knowing your responsibility, I think, can be the difficulty of just having a nutrition certification. So kind of knowing that you're, that, you're, that that you don't have to have all the answers. That's what I see a lot is health coaches kind of thinking that they have to have all the answers. So they form really strong opinions. When you don't have to have all the answers, you know, there's so much as evolving. And you don't have to know everything right away or have a strong opinion on a topic. And it's also okay to refer to higher care.

And I think as a registered dietitian, we're trained clinically in a hospital. we are very acutely aware of our scope of practice, what we can do, what is outside our scope of practice, and having those kind of like strict understandings of that allows us to be better practitioners for our clients and best serve them because we're not trying to help them through something that we can't help them through. Right. Yeah. You have to know when it's time to refer out or part of someone else.

you worked at a hospital, right, in food services? Yeah, thanks for having so close attention. Can you talk about that a little? I'm so curious. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, that is definitely a big part of my story. So only at least when I was becoming a registered dietitian, there's only placement for about 50% of people who apply.

And despite going to Columbia, you know, at a considered, you know, good school, I didn't place my first time around. And so that really left me with a very difficult situation because my whole going to grad school, spending three or four years investing a lot of money, the purpose was to become a dietitian. And then that door to becoming a dietitian, the only way to become a registered dietitian is to do a dietetic internship, that door was shut. And I didn't know what to do next. And so I had to take a very good look at my resume and I looked at my grades and they were pretty much all A's.

worked my butt off academically in school because that stuff doesn't come natural to me. So I had to really try very hard. And the one thing I was missing was just like experience during grad school. I didn't have clinical experience. And I knew that I had to get my way into a hospital. So I applied for, and I also needed a job, by the way, because at that point in my life, like my parents were helping me. but like the next year was supposed to be my internship and then like you know you're supposed to fly and with this next year of kind of okay well you're not doing your internship it was kind of like well you need to be making money now to support yourself and they're very generous don't get me wrong but you know it was like okay you need to you need to have a job over the next year rightfully so

I was probably like 24 25 but you know my whole life was spent in school so I had to find something that was paying me, but also adding to experience. So I applied to work in food service without really understanding what that meant. And as a white girl with blonde hair, a thin white girl with blonde hair, you know, it became abundantly clear on my first day that I did not fit in. So food service at the hospital is basically, there's kind of like a giant restaurant that exists underneath every hospital, usually in the basement. And your food is being prepared, plated. Somebody's going through your specific dietary restrictions to make sure that you don't get A, B, or C. And it's kind of this whole, like, orchestrated dance that's going on.

It's actually a decently paying job, considering most people don't have college degrees. So at the time, I was getting 1850 an hour to start, which, yeah, I mean, I also was working a job in the city at a cafe, you know, that was paying me $11. So just for some perspective of like the people that work at a hospital, they maybe didn't even finish high school. But you can, you know, starting at 1850, 22 for some and go, the problem is the ceiling is you hit the ceiling pretty fast, you know. But anyway, the people that work there are the hardest workers you'll ever meet, but they're tough. They're difficult. You know, they don't like newcomers into their territory. They saw me as, it did have to do with the fact that I was, you know, white, but I also saw new people come in and they were equally as tough if a person was black.

It is just a difficult culture that they put you through a little bit of hazing. if you will. So it was really a great experience for me because I had real responsibility. I had to be at the hospital at 6 a.m., which meant, you know, four o'clock wakeups pretty much. I drove from my New York City apartment to Long Island where the hospital was and I left my, you know, fancy clothes in New York City and put on a fireproof uniform, you know, like those black, thick pants that are essentially fireproof, a gray button down shirt and a hat. And I went from being like, you know, attractive, if you will, I was a different person. And I kind of had these two identities, but it was incredibly humbling and important for me to step into that role and work, like,

really feel what it feels like to work like America, you know. And it shaped a lot of who I am, because I understand life better because of it. And I think that like the discipline that I got from it was also important. And also like I had to win them over to survive. So it took about six months to like earn their trust and their, you know, honor. But they made my life so difficult. You know, it's a lot of teamwork that happens there. And you also need to be delivering to the patients on time, right?

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are happening on a schedule. And anybody that gets in your way will affect how fast you can get to the patient, which is reflected in, you know, your work. And obviously your manager isn't going to be happy if problems are happening. And all the people were very much able to stop me from performing well. So if I need a plate of meatloaf, the person giving me the meatloaf might, you know, hold off on giving it to me for as long as they can. So there was, yeah, it was crazy. but I have a lot of respect for the people that do work there and give their entire life to that job. It's pretty thankless.

Most of them don't even go to the floors and see the patients so you don't get that even like reward factor of serving. But yeah, they thought that I was like a white spy from like administration upstairs. But it was undercover boss. Exactly. Exactly. They really did. It was such an important year for so many reasons for me. And that was the reason that I did get a dietetic internship.

So I spent about it, I think a year and a half doing that. And then I placed at an internship at that hospital. Wow. Can you talk about nutrition in our health care system a little bit? Sure. And I've been out of it for a few years. I don't think that much has changed. But just to give them the benefit of the doubt,

everything that we do is specific. So when you go to a hospital, for the most part, every single patient that's admitted, like not an emergency case, like anybody that's admitted to a floor, usually I'd say 90% has some sort of diet protocol, whether they're diabetic, whether they have heart disease, you know, whether they have liver failure or kidney failure, whatever it is, all of those things are specific diet protocols. And a lot of them are old school and a little bit frightening, you know, and it needs to evolve. I guess it would be the best way to say it. You know, we're still using artificial sweeteners. We're still serving soda. We're not doing

things that aid in nourishing and getting the patient better. I guess the best way to say it is when in the hospital, at least the hospital that I worked in and the ones that I've had access to, food is not part of the treatment plan. There are some hospitals that have made some really big headway. There's one called Scripps in San Diego that I think actually has a very cool nutrition program. But, you know, a lot of our health care system is broken and it's really goes down to like huge fundamental problems with so many different things, the costs, the time the doctor has, the amount of nutrition information the doctor is given. And then when you're in a hospital, the dieticians too are, you know,

it's not like seeing a nutritionist outside of a hospital where they're giving you their opinion and their meal plan. It's very specific as to what we're legally allowed to say. And everything we tell a patient gets documented. And so it's a lot of like covering your ass and making sure that you're not saying something that could potentially get you in trouble or sue. or anything like that. So it's, I don't think that it's, you know, the worst.

I think that having a dietitian talk to somebody can be really powerful within a hospital. Not every patient sees a dietitian. But sometimes a dietitian or a doctor could say one thing to a patient, and it really resonates. And it's as my fiancee is a cardiologist, and he takes his role, his time with the patient, that role very seriously where a lot of people don't because he says, you know, that's his one window of opportunity, especially as a cardiologist. You know, they just had a major health scare. They're told that their heart is A, B, C, or D. That usually wakes people up. But he has that five minutes with them that could change the way they think about food. I wanted to ask you

about that because my dad is a cardiologist. Oh, my God. Really? Really? Yeah. He's, he, practices in Massachusetts. Oh. Yeah. But he is of a different generation and they, nutrition and diet was just not part of the program when he was in med school. And there's very little. I mean, he's, he loves his job and he takes it really seriously.

But he's a prescriber of medicine and they have a brief conversation about diet maybe. and it's usually like, you know, lay off the Big Mac kind of thing. Is he just a general cardiologist or? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know. So I was wondering. I was curious about what your fiancé is if it's changed over the years, if there's more of an emphasis on that or I guess it might just vary doctor to doctor.

Yeah, I think it varies doctor to doctor and interest to interest. With that being said, you know, like to your dad's defense, not many people are going to change based on a conversation in his office and if medication can save their life, you know, and not that that's the global answer. Obviously, we need to be doing more. But, you know, I think that medication, it's a very polarizing topic, at least, you know, especially I feel like in California where you live, where it's just like holistic or not, you know. But I think that the blend of both can be really beautiful to use medication and Western medicine in general to our advantage, but that doesn't mean neglecting, taking care of ourselves

and learning about our bodies, et cetera. So I feel like probably for most doctors, the conversation has not changed yet. And the model, again, is very broken. Like most doctors get paid per procedure. So they're more likely to do a procedure than have a conversation. Right. And it's broken. Our system's broken, I guess would be the best way to put it. I think that a good place to start would be a more formal nutrition education process for doctors. I don't know how it is at this current moment, but I know like when my fiancee was going through it, which was already 10 years ago, I think it's like one or two classes on nutrition. That's crazy to me. Yeah. I mean,

it's also crazy because it's like it's four years and just the incredible amount that, you need to know about the body. It just says so much about all the little systems that we don't even know about because if they're not even covering nutrition, right, in four to six years of teaching, what are you talking about? Yeah. And it's like that not just in medical school, but I know when I got sober, I went back to school for substance abuse counseling.

Oh, wow. And there were people there. It was kind of like a continuing education program. And there were people there who were also getting their masters in like social work or their MFT or whatever. And that program was the same thing. In a master's, they had maybe, I think, one class on drug and alcohol abuse, which is, which was also kind of crazy to me, you know, because that's kind of like such a huge population now. So let's, I would love to hear about kind of your approach to. nutrition and wellness now and how you work with clients and all of that. Perfect. Yeah. So I graduated

from my master's and became a registered dietitian and I jumped right into private practice, which is a little bit untraditional. Most people work for somebody, but at that point in my life, like I was just ready to go. And for about a year, I was working with clients and it's a take-what-you-can-get situation. You know, you need to make money. And so, I worked with all types of patients, diabetes, whatever, you know, a lot of gastro stuff, IBS, blah, blah, blah. And it was only about kind of like a year in that I realized that a lot of the things that I was saying to my patients, my clients, was not information that was best serving them. meaning I was telling them to do things that I wasn't necessarily doing. And it was not restrictive in the sense of like counting calories,

but I didn't know how to best educate and teach them to trust their bodies. So I was giving them parameters to live within. And it was very uncomfortable for me, right? Because I had this really big disconnect because I wasn't doing this myself. And I didn't necessarily think it was the best way, but I didn't know how else to communicate with them. And so I took like a good look in the mirror and it was like, okay, well, what are you doing that you can, how could you best serve people?

And I sort of stumbled upon mindful eating, a book that I, I don't even know how it got in my hands. And I was reading it and the book was talking about kind of just like the power of not making food rules. and as a result, kind of just being a lot more chill about food, eating chocolate cake but not binging on chocolate cake. And it was, as I turned the pages, it was like, wow, this is what I'm doing, but I didn't know I was doing it. I had kind of just evolved into this relationship to food, but I didn't know how I got there. And so I was like, how can I translate this to my clients?

Like, what is this mindful eating thing? Like, what does it really mean? And so I began to learn more and more about it, and I did an online pro certification, like all about mindful eating. And there were bits and pieces that really resonated. And I knew that I could help use this modality to not only help people improve their relationship to food, but make sure as they were coming into my office, I was setting them up for future success to have a positive relationship to food. A lot of people that see nutritionists will leave with a worse relationship to food. And that's a very common thing. And I kind of wanted to make sure that that stopped with me and that anybody coming

through my door would only have a more positive relationship to food. I love that. Yeah, it's, you hear a lot like about intuitive eating and just eat intuitively and just be mindful, but it's really hard to then apply that, right? Especially after so many years of kind of being constrained by these rules and stuff like that. So how do you, how do you suggest or how do you help people undo those, those pathways, those ways of thinking? I love what you said, because it's just, it's not helpful to tell somebody to eat mindfully. And even if you Google eating mindfully, like, you're going to get things

that, like, you and I would just never do, Ariel. You know, we're not eating blindfolded. You know, we're still going out to dinner with our husbands, our fiancés, our friends. Like, we're normal 2019 women. So, and so there's one aspect of that. or just listen to your body, right? It's like, what does it mean? My body doesn't tell me anything. It's telling me to eat tacos and Oreos and like, whatever. So what I sort of did over the last three years was work one-on-one with clients and kind of testing the best way to teach them how to do this. And I came out with like a pretty good system that I found worked on almost everybody, you know, like the way to deliver information, the way to get them to trust their bodies.

And after three years, it was, okay, I really need to help more people. How can I do this? And last year, I moved to Washington, D.C. from New York with my fiance, leaving behind my New York City office. And it was kind of the perfect time to transition into digital courses, online courses. So in the past two few months, I launched my online course called Fork the Noise Fundamentals. and this is my first online course, and it's all about laying the foundation to ditching diets and learning to trust your body.

And the way that I do that is twofold to kind of sum it up very quickly, is I teach about two things called inner and outer wisdom. And outer wisdom is the nutrition knowledge that I think we could all benefit from. Not an overwhelming amount of information, but again, going back to what we learned in grad school, right, like the basics, the facts. information that I think that we should all be given in high school because once you understand how food works in the body, you're not afraid of it anymore. Like how many times have you given up carbs or fat or, you know, sugar or whatever it is

because somebody tells you to. But when you understand what those things do in the body, why we need them, you have the strongest weapon against the noise, is what I call it. You know, anything that kind of pulls you away from listening to your body. So the outer wisdom is a big portion of it, and I actually lead with that. And then we move into inner wisdom, which is actually listening to your body. And I know it sounds so like woo-woo, what does that mean? But our body's constantly telling us things about our hunger, our satisfaction, even our enjoyment.

And tapping into those two things, using them in tandem, is like unlocking the door to food freedom. because I did a live with my friend Kate Miller yesterday and she took my course and she kind of put it best. Like she recently was on a road trip and she had like French fries at her first pit stop. And that at her second pit stop, like maybe she was like, oh, I'll just get the fries again. But she paused and she was like, you know what? I could probably use a vegetable today. So I'm going to get the salad right now because I'm actually not. I'm satisfied from the French fries I had earlier.

And so it's not just about like the way intuitive eating displays itself on Instagram. I'm not saying that's what intuitive eating is. But the way people talk about intuitive eating on Instagram probably because it just performs well, you know, is like hot girl eating ice cream. Right. Like hashtag balance. Right. Exactly. Right.

And it's not all about that. It's about actually using what we know about nutrition to make informed decisions to eat healthy, to feel our best. but without feeling restricted. You say something that I found to be so poignant, and that was that your audience is like a younger version of you, suffocating in their own thoughts about food and unable to do what they really love in life. Exactly. So a huge tenant of what I do and why I do it is because I don't think people are aware of what

they value. And so a big part of the course and what I do with my, one-on-one clients is to evaluate what you value. Most people don't take the time to take inventory of what they care about. And as a result, they get swept up in the noise of food. But when you're so crystal clear on what you care about, what you value, you're able to better delegate your time, energy, and your resources to those things appropriately. And for most people, because I happen to work with really fantastic kick-ass human beings, you know, food is a lot far, and body image is farther down the list, then they were prioritizing it. And that's how we get our time back. You know, it's not just

about think less about food. It's, you know, it's saying yes to, again, going back to like having dinner with friends, not canceling wine night because you, you know, you're trying to give up sugar. It's recognizing that you can do all of these things and trust your body and you are liberated and you have so much time and energy back and it's such a better way to live. Yeah. And that's something that probably everybody could do if they're listening to this right now is just make a list of the things that are important to them and see how far down the list body image actually is, although its tentacles reach everything, right? And we don't realize that it's affecting us socially or spiritually. We just think of it in terms of physical. Exactly. That's actually

a really great point. And I love that you said that because like food is and like half the people listening are going to think we're insane. But like, like, food sends up like a vibration like it's sending it's it's alive if you're eating real food and like getting in tune with that allows you to make like empowered decisions not fear based decisions like you can you can connect with the planet and or connect with friends like there's so many different things that food does and I will also mention that like we have to eat like we can't just you know not think about food or not prioritize our health even That's not something that I'm willing to sacrifice either, you know.

And I don't think it has to be one or the other. It's not donuts, ice cream or restriction. It is, in fact, balance, which is such an annoying word. But what does that mean to you? And I think the key is, like, not trying to make it look like one specific thing each day. It's going to look different day-to-day situation to situation. It might mean you gain a few pounds when you're on a trip to Italy. It might not.

I actually find that most people believe it or not when they travel. end up not gaining weight when they are like relaxed about food because if you're going to Italy or Europe or whatever it is like first of all portions which whatever but second of all they're just walking so much and they're not they're eating gelato every day maybe but like it's not this oh I could only have gelato today or I could only have gelato after dinner a lot of them are eating gelato at lunch and as a result they're just paying attention to the signals that their body sending that moments of satisfaction, pleasure. And so most people don't actually end up gaining weight on vacation, contrary to what they

think will happen. Right. Yeah. I actually find for me, I feel like I lose weight on vacation, or at least I lose, it's probably water weight because I'm less stressed, right? And I'm more active. Yeah, bloating. And also just not this intense preoccupation with, like, control over what you're eating.

So a lot of like my clients are like at lunch I have my oatmeal and then I have my protein bar at 1130. And then at one I have my salad. And then at five o'clock I have an apple with peanut butter and then dinner. And it's like this ongoing kind of like specified meal, very specific meals of what they're eating. But on vacation, like you're eating and then you're moving on. And hopefully you're not bringing all the food with you. So it's just like a more natural flow I find that many people get. into and as a result, they actually like their bodies more. They're not bloated. Yeah. And I feel like the

thought process around what you're eating when you're eating affects the effect that it has on you, if that makes sense. Yeah, go further with that. I like that. I mean, if you're eating something and you're thinking, oh my God, this is going to be so bad for me, I'm going to get so bloated, whatever, and you go down that spiral, it's going to affect you negatively. Whereas if you're relaxed, I mean, Isn't this like proven? Yeah, twofold. I think one on the psychological front where if all that noise is going on while you're eating, like I always give the example of like, oh, I'm so bad.

I'm eating the brownie. I'm eating the brownie. And like while you're eating the brownie, you're not even enjoying the brownie. So like you're missing out there. And then twofold or threefold, I should say, on the physical front, your cortisol is up, your stress hormone, which is actually tells your body to hold on to fat. and digestively, you're not allowing your body to properly digest because it's focused on being fearful from the cortisol. So when cortisol is high, kind of like all the systems shut down, they don't work as effectively.

And as a result, you're not digesting food as well. Right. So such a good point you bring up. Yeah. I would love to keep talking about that, but we only have a few minutes left. So let's go into some of the listener questions that they sent in. How do I become less obsessed with food after an eating disorder? Oh, well, I've actually kept getting this question.

So it's a great, like, first step question, I think. And I think that the problem that most people try and do is, like, heal too quickly or heal too soon. Like, you don't need to do everything at once. It's about taking little baby steps each day. So usually people with the history of an eating disorder have what are called fear foods, certain foods that they're fearful of, and they haven't had in a long time. And so the mistake that one could make is reintroducing all of these foods at once that will cause complete panic for somebody with an eating disorder and will often cause a binge and then a purge and get you right back into restrictive mentality.

So I like to actually pair like a fear food with a safe food. So like cheese for me was like my fear food for a long time. And so bringing that back in would be like maybe I add cheese into my salad. and I don't sort of like, I don't try and do all of it at once. So that's one baby step that one person can take. Or if you're like addicted to measuring specific serving sizes, get rid of the serving sizes. At this point, if you're that good at measuring or if you've been doing it for so long, you could eyeball it. Right.

So instead of actually measuring out your tablespoon of peanut butter, just scoop out some peanut butter. And then maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but start to listen to your body and listen to the feedback of, do you need more food or do you need less? And so doing these little baby steps versus sort of huge overhauls, I think, are like learning to trust your body, learning that your body doesn't have your worst interest at heart. Like many people believe that if they have X, their body will just blow up, right? Yeah. Or like their weight is going to catch up to them as if they're being chased. Yeah. It's so true. So this is kind of along those same lines, but how does one have portion control? I think that that is not a thing.

I think that portion control, when you learn to listen to your body, and I don't mean like listen to your body based on, you know, what is telling you to eat, but your body's constantly sending you signals as to satisfaction and fullness. So I think that I'll just say first, like slowing down is the most helpful thing you can do. And that doesn't mean that you need to eat every meal at a snail's pace alone in isolation. but opportunities that you have to eat alone without being on social media, putting your fork down, chewing are going to help you realize that tune into those initial feelings of fullness that you might not know that you have.

The reason I'm kind of like dancing around this question is because portions are really arbitrary. Like the amount that I eat versus you eat Ariel is going to be different day to day. It's also very different than like what Shaquille O'Neal eats, right? like somebody who's so much taller and has such different body composition than us. And so by going by arbitrary portion sizes, which so many people do, is going to get you into trouble by perhaps eating too much, but most of the time eating too little. And so ditching the back of the box, ditching the suggested serving size, which isn't actually

a suggested serving size based on what you should eat, most people think that, but getting comfortable with the idea of like a portion is arbitrary. what a chef puts on your plate, does it mean that's the appropriate amount for you? Most people will think that it's more. In many cases, it could be less. And so moving away from this idea that like a portion is a portion and rather into this idea that the amount of your portion is

totally depends on you that day, that hour, that week, that month, especially if you're a woman, a woman with hormonal changes. And sorry, just one more thing on that, is it changes day to day to the point where like if today your three-fourths cup of cereal filled you up, tomorrow it might not, and kind of being really flexible and realizing that our bodies are dynamic and changing. Yeah, that's so important. And that's one of the issues that I have with macro counting. I'm a former macro counter.

And I understand that it has a time and place. And for some people, it can be a valuable tool. But our bodies are constantly evolving. And what I needed two days ago is different from what I need today. So I want to interview you on that one day because I yeah, I mean, I love how you're talking out about that. And I've like scrolled down on your feed because we only recently started following each other. So I got to, you know, I wanted to learn about you. And it's been fun to see your really honest evolution and honest approach to like, okay, I was doing that. Like it's so many of my clients are just like you. So it was so great to see you talk so candidly about. the process and how that itself can be an eating disorder or disordered eating. Thank you. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like when I was doing that, it was kind of like what we were talking about in the very beginning. Like, I didn't know what I didn't know. I thought that what I was doing was the right thing. I mean, I just was, I don't know, I guess it was kind of naivete and just. No, it's really not. I mean, it's totally normal because especially like if you came from a restrictive past, which most people do, when by the time they,

get to macro counting, it's so liberating because it's no longer about what I can and can't have in terms of food. It's about you can eat whatever as long as you're staying within those limits. Yeah. And like what you were talking about in the beginning, like you were consumed with thinking about food and you kind of had this like scarcity complex, right? Like you were afraid of getting hungry and afraid of not having food or something. That was totally me. So it was liberating because all of a sudden I had my food planned out and that was that and I didn't think about it. Right. So you're getting some of that time back too. But at the same time when there's any glitch in that plan, when you're on vacation, when you're at an airport, right? Like terror. Right, terror.

I was recently on this influencer trip and one of the influencers counts her macros. And she's, I'd say like for the back of a better word in my professional opinion, like in the thick of it. And I again, just not something I would ever bring up to her or anything like that, but unless she wanted help, of course. But, you know, she posted on her Instagram that she really wanted a dessert, but she can't have it because it was out of her macros. And that's the beauty of macros. And that was her take on it. And I was like, so, no, sorry, it wasn't dessert. It was fruit.

Oh, my God. Yeah, it was fruit. And my friend who I was on the trip with who has just like has always had a healthy relationship to food, we just read it and we were like, I feel so sad that she thinks that this is the way. Right. And compassion, not judgment, I just want to say. Like complete compassion for her, for them. Yeah, it's hard.

I mean, especially when it becomes like a habit. I had Justin Janoska. I don't know if you know of him or follow him. He's a clinical nutritionist. I interviewed him a couple days ago. and we were talking about he has a book coming out called the flexible diet disaster and it's all about macros and really yeah he's really you should follow him yeah really smart but he was kind of talking about how like even after you stop those numbers kind of follow you around for a while

they trail you and you're always it's always in the back of your head so um even if like i know for me even when I stopped counting, first when I was counting, there was the guilt and the fear and, like I said, the terror, right? Like, oh, my God, I can't eat that because I already have my macros set for the day. And I don't even know what the macronutrient content of that is. And I'm going to, there's that. And then when I stopped, it was like, it took a while to ditch those numbers that were, like, ingrained in my head.

And just to bring us back to, like, the happy medium of, like, how I talk about nutrition, because we do in my course and with my clients, I do talk about. carbs, proteins, and fats, which can feel like macro counting is it's not about, and 100% like those numbers follow you around to this day. I'm sure you could tell me, you know, and again, those numbers aren't even correct, but that's for a different, that's for a different time, but you could tell me how much that apple has or that, you know, protein bar or whatever. But what I try and think about is like there's an element to that that's interesting, right, like learning about food energy. But,

there's, we don't need to be as like precise, I guess is the best way to put it. So in my course Fork the noise, like I'm teaching you about different amounts of energy that are derived from carbs, proteins, and fats, but I don't want you to think about that and count. I just want you to realize that something that contains fat with protein might be more satisfying than a carbohydrate alone. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Let's see. How does, I'm trying to think how to word this one because it's a little bit wordy, how does if someone is eating to heal their gut and they have sensitivities, how do they not get caught up in food rules? Such a difficult question, I have to say. I'm actually doing a live with a functional medicine

nutritionist who I love Bridget to talk about this tomorrow because it's such a complicated topic. And I think that the main thing that I want to deliver in this message is that if you go to a functional medicine doctor or a holistic doctor, I've never seen anybody leave without a diagnosis and a protocol. So I think that you need to always get second opinions before you embark on one of these intense protocols because oftentimes they're very intense and limiting. And I think if you have a history of an eating disorder or disordered eating, you need to be. be even more careful and make sure that you're doing it for the right reason. So I think that I'm going to leave it at working with a professional, a nutrition professional and somebody that you know has your relationship with food at heart so they can kind of like be monitoring where you're at and evaluate when it's time to like let up is really important. And anytime you start to

overstress, whatever you're doing is impacting your health more than the actual food that you would be eating. That makes sense? Yeah, totally. But it's totally difficult dance to dance. Yeah, it is. Okay. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. So why don't you tell people where they can find you, how they can join your movement for noise? I love that. Yeah, so thewellnesses dot com. I think you could link that in the show notes since I chose a name that's impossible to spell. So the well necessities.com is my site or the well necessities on Instagram. I love connecting with my audience new and old. So if you join because of Ariel, just send me a DM because I'd love to thank Ariel for sending you over, but also get to know you.

And then fork the noise.com is my course. By the time this comes out, we may be in session, but leave your information there if it sounds like something that you would be interested in. Or send me an email and I'd love to connect with you. Thank you so much. I could have gone for another hour. I could talk about your stuff forever. You are a badass horse. You're so, you're really smart. Thank you. You're very, very smart. Ditto. Love that girl. I definitely could have kept talking to her for hours. I hope you guys enjoyed it too.

And I really appreciate you tuning in. As always, please. rate, review, share, spread the word, do all the things. It helps me to continue to be able to do this. So with that said, I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you guys next Wednesday.