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8. Rethinking How We Talk About Pregnancy Weight Gain: A Return to Intuition, with Jen & Rachel
160 Plays1 year ago
Reclaim your relationship with food, your body, and your SELF in pregnancy and postpartum. Jen and Rachel share some personal stories + professional wisdom for navigating uncomfortable body changes in pregnancy and postpartum.
In this episode we discuss:
- cringy body comments from strangers AND providers
- societal attitudes about body size and shape, and how that can impact our mental health in pregnancy and postpartum
- limitations of pregnancy weight gain guidelines
- a quick overview of intuitive eating practices
Special thanks and credit to the original intuitive eating pros, and whose amazing work we reference in this episode, Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S & Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-S, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND
Links and resources mentioned in the episode:
Intuitive Eating Books and Workbooks
Counselors and Dietitians Trained in Intuitive Eating
If you or a loved one is struggling with an Eating Disorder, please check out the National Eating Disorders Association for resources, education, and support.
You can learn more about Rachel's California-based group therapy practice and how you can work with her at www.racheldaggettlmft.com or on instagram @rachelscouch
Our FAVORITE Food & Nutrition Influencers/Accounts:
If you enjoyed this episode and appreciate what we share here, we would be so honored if you shared the show and tagged us, @bloomafterbaby on Instagram so that we can see it and connect with our listeners!
We’d also be so grateful if you would rate and review our podcast in your favorite podcast app, because that’s the best way for a new podcast to get more people to listen so we can keep growing!
*Please note that this podcast is intended for educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for seeking individualized care from a mental health or medical professional*
Learn more about us and access all of our courses, services, and free resources at bloomafterbaby.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Bloom After Baby
00:00:02
Speaker
You're listening to Bloom After Baby, the podcast. We're your hosts, Rachel Daggett and Jen Jordan. We're a therapist and a doctor and both moms of two. We're here to discuss the mental health and wellness needs that are unique to motherhood. From confusing hormone swings to your expanding body to boundaries and tricky relationships, we'll give you the information you need to experience motherhood in a way that feels good to you.
00:00:30
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. Let's get to it.
Rachel's Journey with Eating Disorders
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome back to a bit frazzled. So today we're talking about a topic that is really close to my heart as a therapist and a human. Some of you may know that a bulk of my psychotherapy practice up until this point has been in working with eating disorders and eating disorder recovery, which has really opened up a whole amazing population of women that I get to work with helping
00:01:02
Speaker
recover from either disordered eating or a full-blown diagnosed eating disorder or just a really complex and chaotic relationship with food and body. And I was really propelled into working with that population due to my own personal struggle with a lot of those things in my teens and early 20s.
00:01:22
Speaker
I'm really honored and lucky to get to help women fully recover from the shackles of their eating disorders and then also to unpack and help them heal from the underlying issues that typically are contributing to eating disorders. So it's something I've really grown through personally and professionally.
00:01:43
Speaker
And I'm really excited to get to integrate that work and experience here with Jen with Bloom After Baby.
Pregnancy and Body Image Issues
00:01:51
Speaker
And especially during the postpartum and pregnancy periods, helping moms really come to terms with their new bodies and how our bodies change and transform. Navigating it can be triggering. Whether you've had a history with disordered eating or you've had an eating disorder,
00:02:09
Speaker
Sometimes pregnancy and the weight gain and the changes that come with it can bring up stuff that maybe we just didn't even know was there or we hadn't dealt with before or faced before. We're in the middle of the holidays here and one big thing that I know comes up a lot for people around the holidays
00:02:25
Speaker
whether you're in the perinatal period or not, but especially around that time, is food and body. And there's a lot of food and body talk. And for moms especially, or women who are experiencing body changes in pregnancy and postpartum, as you may have noticed, people seem to think that they have a right to comment on your bodies. And many of us are confronted with a lot of fears and feelings about all the sweets and the carbs and
00:02:52
Speaker
sugar on the table or on the holidays and feeling like we need to have self-control around all this food or giving ourselves permission to cheat around the holidays. I put that in quotes to cheat or treat yourself and follow that food and then try to backtrack afterwards.
Intuitive Eating Principles
00:03:11
Speaker
And it's really not good for us and really just propels us into this chronic, chaotic and unhealthy relationship with food.
00:03:18
Speaker
So today, Jen and I want to talk about what you can do differently. And what I'm going to do is review the 10 principles of intuitive eating, which is the approach to eating recovery that I use in my practice and that I also use personally. So I'll be reviewing those, but within the lens of pregnancy and postpartum. Hopefully, you can use some guidance on how to approach food and your relationship with your body if you are pregnant or postpartum or
00:03:46
Speaker
a mom in any stage. So let's dive in. All right. Good morning, Rachel. How's it going? Good. Happy to be here with you. It's so nice being able to see your face on a regular basis again. I know. I know. We're so proud. Neither of us are very good about being
00:04:02
Speaker
the friend that reaches out, we're both receptive, but we're not very proactive. So this has been like a built-in phone date. I love it. It has. I love it too so much. I'm super excited to talk to you about this topic today because it's something that I know both of us experienced in the perinatal period, but I don't think we ever really talked. We didn't talk about it until this topic came up and we wanted to discuss it with other people. I don't think. Yeah, I don't either. I know we've talked about
00:04:30
Speaker
the subject of food and body image and stuff in the past, but you're right, not in relation to the perinatal period and our experience is there. Yeah.
00:04:39
Speaker
Nor have I gotten to have the opportunity to hear from your professional standpoint how you approach these topics with clients. I'm excited to hear more and gain more insights from you just from your expertise.
Societal Objectification of Pregnant Bodies
00:04:52
Speaker
So I'll just share with everybody kind of my experience in the perinatal period around issues with food and eating. I'm sure other people can relate to
00:05:03
Speaker
in the perinatal period how you often receive a lot of comments about your body and I think a lot of it is around the bump and people commenting on the bump and touching the bump. Someone who does not like a lot of touch in general and so that was really offensive.
00:05:22
Speaker
really annoying to me. I think when people would comment or want to touch your stomach. But anyway, I think one thing I didn't expect is that a lot of that focus around your body and objectifying your body a little bit, talking about it as its own sort of entity and people feeling like they have the right to comment on that. So that was definitely something that popped up that I hadn't expected going into it.
00:05:47
Speaker
It is such an interesting and strange phenomenon. All of a sudden your body and how it looks and, sorry, can you hear my baby in the background? We're just real here. We've got a baby crying in the background. Yeah. It's just so odd that, especially when you're pregnant, the how that much that escalates, how all of a sudden it's yeah, like you're up for grabs. Is there a sign on my head that says like open invitation to touch my belly or
00:06:13
Speaker
comment on how big or uncomfortable I look. The thing I noticed the most second time around, maybe because I was out and about more, but at least once or twice a week, specifically at the gym,
00:06:28
Speaker
I would get comments from middle-aged men about my body and how it looked and just a couple of top of mind. Like I was trying to get out of the car in a tight parking spot when some middle-aged guy comes over and is like, you know, tight squeeze there, honey. Or middle-aged man who was in a workout class with my husband and I.
00:06:49
Speaker
who's a chatterbox and is also a doctor and makes sure everyone knows that he's a doctor, would come up to me and just give me so much unsolicited advice about birth and breastfeeding and how my body was looking and it's interesting. It's also like
00:07:08
Speaker
For some reason, it's not as triggering or annoying to me when it's a woman, but it was very weird to me to notice how many men, older men were commenting on my appearance and my body and saying things like that. Yeah, I can relate to that for sure. And I don't even, it comes from a weird place. It's, yeah, like you said, up for grabs, almost like there's permission now to make comments. And so they're just gonna, yeah, take advantage of that opportunity or something. But it's not coming from a place that's helpful by any means.
00:07:38
Speaker
No, it's not helpful. And I think Jenna and I were coming from a similar background of experience of both having had struggles in the past with disordered eating and body image in our adolescence and college years. And it's not surprising that the periodal period and all the change that happened in your body would bring this stuff up for us and that we would feel really sensitive around it.
00:08:03
Speaker
But with that said, women who don't even have that history have this struggle as well. Because even if you've never fallen victim to an eating disorder or bought into the diet mentality or the diet industry or had a complicated relationship with food and body, we are still all conditioned in this culture
00:08:24
Speaker
To believe things like that smaller is better, or that weight gain is bad, or that a growing body is an unhealthy body, right? Those are all subliminal beliefs and messages that we all take in all the time. So in my experience, in my practice, whether I have a client who has had history of ED or not, this is certainly something that comes up.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right that universal size related component obviously with disordered eating there are Many different underlying or root causes there But in terms of the size component as a driver I think that's something that's really universal that there's a lot of conversation around how much how big you get how much weight you gain in pregnancy and then almost like admiration for someone who doesn't look
00:09:09
Speaker
that, you know, as far along as they are, like you're eight months pregnant and you look like you're four months pregnant and that's a good thing. Yeah. And then I do want to at least acknowledge the fact that Western medicine still has a lot of antiquated guidelines around weight gain.
00:09:29
Speaker
Thankfully, a lot of OBs are weight inclusive and are not super focused on
Impact of Insensitive Medical Comments
00:09:34
Speaker
it. But I know a lot of friends and I myself have experienced some cruel comments from actual providers around pregnancy and weight gain. And I want to share a little story with that Jen, you haven't heard the details around yet and I'm excited to tell you.
00:09:49
Speaker
So first pregnancy pregnant with my son, I was filled with a lot of fear going into pregnancy in the first place. So that obviously contributed to how I perceived and responded to this interaction with this provider. My husband and I were moving to Orange County from LA mid pregnancy. And so I was looking for a new OB. And I had an appointment set up, I think I was around 18 weeks.
00:10:16
Speaker
Keep in mind that I was at least 10 years recovered from a pretty serious eating disorder in the past. And I also had a practice fully built around helping women recover. So it was a really good place with my own body acceptance. And I actually
00:10:33
Speaker
Just a couple of days prior, I had a conversation with my dad at the breakfast table about how liberating pregnancy had felt for me so far in terms of accepting the weight gain and loving seeing my body grow and really being able to appreciate it and feel so celebratory of it.
00:10:53
Speaker
I went into this appointment, my husband was with me and I was pretty certain that I was going to have a very large baby boy because my husband was a 10 pounder and his dad was a kid you know an 11 pound baby at birth.
00:11:09
Speaker
terrified about this. And I'd gotten comments from his family about how I was going to have to have a C-section because he was going to be a big baby just like his dad and his grandfather, right? And there actually is evidence around that. Baby birth weight is largely genetic.
00:11:26
Speaker
Okay, yeah. I was sure that I was doomed to have this huge baby, but my original OB who I was seeing my first few weeks of pregnancy before we moved, we hadn't even broached the topic of birth yet because I was still so early on. But when I went into this appointment, I went into it intending to bring that up because it was a big anxiety of mine because I personally wanted to try for vaginal delivery and be fine if it needed to be a C-section, but I at least wanted to try. And so I went in.
00:11:51
Speaker
For this appointment, I shared my concerns with her and she checked me out and was in the heartbeat, all that. I got dressed and we went into her office, the OB's office afterwards to talk. She's sort of just trying to initiate scheduling a C-section off the bat and looking at her calendar like when
00:12:09
Speaker
at my 40-week mark we could schedule. And I was like, wait, hold the breaks. I don't want to schedule a C-section necessarily. I would like to go into it naturally and try to deliver vaginally if possible.
00:12:24
Speaker
and she jumped into a lot of horror stories about large birth babies and deliveries and she told us a story about how she had to break a baby's leg to get it out of the mother and how moms die and all these just
00:12:40
Speaker
Things that happen, of course, but just scaring us, right? And essentially try to convince me to just have a C-section. And then I said, I'm open to having a C-section. I'm not against it. I just really want to go into it and try to do vaginal, even if it's a big baby. Like I want to, I'm opening up an epidural. I'm not, you know, trying to do this any crazy way. And so she hands me and I remember this so clearly. She like slid a pamphlet across the desk.
00:13:10
Speaker
weight gain guidelines for pregnant women. So she slides it across the desk, opens it up and circles like four times the range of 20 to 25 pounds being the max weight for a woman to gain in pregnancy.
00:13:26
Speaker
I was 18 weeks at this point and I'd already gained over 18 pounds. So I wasn't even halfway there and I'd already gained almost the amount that she was saying was the max that I could gain in my entire pregnancy. So immediately all this stuff comes up. Shame. I'd gotten out of this habit that I was in for years of paying attention to my weight and paying attention to the numbers. And then there's this authority figure really putting it in my face. So what am I supposed to do?
00:13:55
Speaker
Right? Jenna, I kid you not. She said to me, look through the eye. If I'm going to deliver this baby for you vaginally, I'm going to need an athlete in the room, not Mrs. Bon Bon. What? Oh. Yeah. My husband can vouch for me. Those are the exact words that came out of her mouth. I don't even know what to say. First of all, I want the name of this person, which I know you can't share right now. I want to look up everything in their background. Oh boy.
00:14:24
Speaker
Where did they study? What is their experience? Let me let you finish. I have so many thoughts about this. It's so interesting looking back on it because I felt like I shrank into a sliver of myself in that appointment.
00:14:44
Speaker
I felt like the professional part of me was gone, the therapist part of me was gone, the eating disorder professional, the health at every size professional was gone in the room. It was just me. And I felt like I was like 12 years old again. And she had also already said something condescending to me about how I was a therapist in the appointment too. Oh, okay. Little miss therapist or something. It was horrible. But at the time I was so in it and in this place of guilt and shame,
00:15:13
Speaker
that I wasn't able to zoom out yet and see the reality objectively. I took it all in as truth and I was petrified. I was like thinking, okay, what diet do I need to follow for the rest of this pregnancy to be able to have this baby the way I want to and to at least try this for myself. So we walked out at that appointment. I remember just, I must have been holding it all in and we walked out and I just broke down sobbing to my husband and
00:15:42
Speaker
And he was also, so this interesting thing happens sometimes when we're in providers' offices where we feel lesser than almost, especially if they have that type of approach where they're the expert, I'm the patient, what they say must be true. My husband and I are both smarter than that. My husband works in healthcare.
00:16:00
Speaker
But even he was in this place of, okay, we got to figure this out because I know you really want to have a vaginal birth because you brought up gestational diabetes as well and being high risk for that, which I wasn't and never was. And anyway, so he was also in this place of fear and we both felt like we were just put in our place a little bit. So to fast forward a couple of weeks, I ended up
00:16:23
Speaker
reaching out to a dear friend of mine, if you're listening to this, you know who you are, who now has three boys. And her first two who she had had already at the time were also high weight at birth. And first was a C-section. Second, she had a V-back. And he was, I forget, forgive me the exact weight, but he was like maybe nine pounds, right? And she just had a V-back with that baby. So I reached out to her and I was like, Hey, this is what my doctor said to me. Did you ever get this kind of feedback? And she just came to my side.
00:16:53
Speaker
really was so supportive and kind and you need to find a new provider. That is bullshit. So it took me really needing to reach out to a support person and someone I trusted to get a reality check. No, that is not okay. I was so angry after that. And
00:17:12
Speaker
I know that for women who go into those types of appointments, who don't have the knowledge around the actual truth and facts around weight gain restrictions and food and nutrition, for women who don't have that awareness and go into that,
00:17:31
Speaker
It could really derail them and actually cause them to have an unhealthy pregnancy if they're trying to restrict their food in order to have their doctor agree to try to deliver their baby in the way they want to. So yeah, that's my crazy story. And by the way, I ended up fighting a new provider who I love and adore so much. I never had gestational diabetes. I kept gaining weight. I gained a lot of weight in both pregnancies, way more than limitation. They quote that.
00:18:01
Speaker
And my body needed to do that. That's what my body needed. And my new OB delivered both of my babies vaginally. Never was even a question that I would need to have a C-section full term. And so I have a lot of feelings about that other OB. I want to know your thoughts, Jen.
00:18:20
Speaker
Okay, first of all, I definitely want to speak to our attitudes towards the recommendations because both of us are definitely in support of evidence-based guidelines and recommendations. But first of all, based on current ACOG guidelines, that's not even accurate.
00:18:39
Speaker
It's not even accurate information, but I think more importantly, weight gain, it's a proxy for other information. And so it's a proxy for what energy requirements from a caloric standpoint would be, and that a certain amount of weight gain could push you into other categories, other conditions with
00:18:59
Speaker
known risk factors associated in those categories.
Weight Focus During Pregnancy
00:19:02
Speaker
And so that information can be helpful, but that's not the full picture. And so it's not even an accurate assessment of you as an individual person that you would have been those risk factors. We don't need to speak to those, like this person's medical judgment from that standpoint. But what is crazy here to me is that what you just said about the aspect that has to do with what
00:19:28
Speaker
behaviors could relate or be associated with trying to fit into these boxes based on weight gain or based on not gaining a certain amount of weight. And it's so short-sighted just looking at it in general that we're thinking about the scale and these numbers, not even considering what other repercussions could be of trying to follow that. And so if you're looking at a person
00:19:50
Speaker
who if you give that information is going to go take that literally or precipitate other problematic or harmful behaviors that's huge that's so impactful and the component we're not talking about in our
00:20:05
Speaker
perinatal health visits, right? Yeah, and I had shared with the provider my history with eating disorder and my history of restrictive eating and that being a problem and thinking that I was advocating for myself in that way and getting ahead of it.
00:20:20
Speaker
by forming my provider of my medical history. Obviously, there's lack of awareness there, right? It's alarming and definitely a topic that I am excited to focus more on. I remember one of the things the OBIA ended up seeing and working with was amazing.
00:20:39
Speaker
I remember asking her, so what are your thoughts? Because I think I'd reached, I'm not even going to put numbers out there, but a much higher weight than I had anticipated and that my body was used to. And I wasn't exercising because I just felt like absolute crap. And she said something to me that was just so encouraging. She said, look, your body is gaining weight in the exact places it needs to in order for your baby to be healthy and in order for your body to produce breast milk.
00:21:09
Speaker
for your baby, if that's something you decide you want to do. And it was just so beautiful. And I truly firmly believe that. And we can definitely look for some research around that and evidence around that statement. But I know I believe it. And
00:21:26
Speaker
For me, it's just going back to trusting our bodies, trusting that our bodies know what to do. And as long as we are coming from a place of an intuitive and trusting relationship with food in our bodies, which is something I'll talk more about in terms of intuitive eating and how to do that, if you don't know how.
00:21:42
Speaker
I think that's where the intuitive eating approach fits in so perfectly with this period of time because looking at some of those facts like weight gain and a random blood sugar test in labs just don't tell us the whole picture. Hyperglycemia, of course that's a risk and you could gain less than the amount of recommended weight but be eating a really high sugar diet and have a hyperglycemia. It's a limited snapshot and routine
00:22:10
Speaker
maternal health care. We're not talking about how you're looking at nourishing your body in a healthful way. This is not about it being a free for all by any means, but like you said, really tying and connecting the appreciation and desire to nourish and trust in your body with what you're deciding to put into it versus a few labs and a specific number on the scale. Yes.
00:22:39
Speaker
It's a whole picture. Isn't it pretty crazy that in routine maternal health, there isn't like space for those conversations around appreciating your body. And you hear those conversations a lot with doulas. I know neither of us had one, but in that community, but it's nothing I ever heard from any of my providers.
00:22:59
Speaker
No, me neither. And in two episodes from now, we're going to have a close colleague of mine, Amy Quinn, who's also an eating disorder clinician and also recovered herself. And she's going to share a little bit with us around that. She's also a mom of two as well around body gratitude and
00:23:16
Speaker
I'm hoping she'll even lead us through a little gratitude meditation as to pregnancy and postpartum. It's a mother body. Your body's not the same. And in many ways, it's really not just yours anymore. Like forever. It's wild. I'm so sorry you experienced that. That's nuts. I don't even know what it means either. Like an athlete. I'm going to need an athlete in the room. What does that even mean? That's just...
00:23:41
Speaker
She was making inferences on what I was eating just because of the weight I'd gained already. But little did she know I was...
00:23:51
Speaker
super sick my first 16 weeks and was barely able to eat anything. And I was still gaining all that weight because my body just did what it needed to do. She wasn't just making inferences on what you were eating. She was making inferences on what your weight gain implied about your stamina and your mental toughness and all other sorts of actual personality, but moral judgments too.
00:24:18
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Right. I literally didn't even take it to that level, but you're so right. Oh, that's probably part of why it was so triggering for me because I personally have always been secure about not having been an athlete and not being strong enough and not having that perseverance physically. And been like, I needed to prove that to myself in adulthood. That's crazy. I didn't even think about that. Oh, yuck. I'm just going to add a little Yelp review. Oh, I love it.
00:24:47
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to wrap this up quickly for the sake of time. Our goal really is to keep these episodes short and sweet because we know how hard it is to listen to an hour long podcast in the middle of your day as a busy mom.
Intuitive Eating Literature
00:25:01
Speaker
So I'm going to quickly review the 10 principles of intuitive eating. And this is all credit to Evelyn Triboli and Elise Resch who wrote the book Intuitive Eating and they are the
00:25:15
Speaker
original intuitive eating pros and experts. So all hail to them. Huge fan of their book, of their work. I use their book in my practice and their multiple workbooks. I will link their work in the show notes for you. So the first principle of intuitive eating is reject the diet mentality. You may or may not know
00:25:39
Speaker
that the dieting industry is a multi-billion dollar industry at this point. There's a ton of actual scientific evidence supporting the fact that diets do not work. And not only that, but they actually harm our bodies.
00:25:57
Speaker
95% of dieters regain their last weight. It's important to know also that a lot of diets are starting to learn from our fighting back.
00:26:10
Speaker
and put a veil over them and pretend they're not a diet when they really are. Things like Weight Watchers. So everybody has a set point weight. Every individual human body has a weight that is where it wants to be when it's at its most balanced and healthiest state.
00:26:30
Speaker
We then come in with our egos and try to manipulate it, usually to be a smaller number. But our bodies are always going to fight against that and try to push back and naturally go back to what's called the set point, to what the weight that your body is at its healthiest.
00:26:47
Speaker
So this is why diets don't work. You can do something really extreme with your diet. You can cut out foods, but the second you bring those foods in or you give up on that diet because it's not working, your body is going to gain all the weight back that it needs to plus more because of this backlash effect. So rejecting the diet mentality, and I strongly recommend you to get really mad at the dieting industry. The second
00:27:14
Speaker
is to honor your hunger. I'm going to put in the show notes a hunger scale that I use in my practice. You want to begin eating when you're around a three or a four, just starting to feel some hunger or you are definitely hungry and your skill will break all of this down.
00:27:32
Speaker
You're going to want to stop eating when you're around a six or seven, which means you're satisfied or you're full. You're not just starting to feel satisfied, but you could eat a little bit more, but you're just going to stop because you feel like you should or too full to where you're really uncomfortable.
00:27:49
Speaker
So honoring your hunger, knowing that when your body is giving you hunger cues, it is communicating to you that you need food, that you need energy. And we've just really overcomplicated it. It's really not that hard. Just honor your hunger cues. If you've had a complicated relationship with food for a while, your hunger and fullness cues are going to be really off.
00:28:11
Speaker
I highly recommend getting support and help from a registered dietician to help you get back on track. I need everybody that is listening here to know overeating or binging on food is always
00:28:26
Speaker
preceded by restriction of food. Okay, overeating or binging of food, and that includes binge and purge cycle, is always preceded by food restriction. So just be aware, even if you think emotional eating is your problem, binge eating is your problem.
00:28:46
Speaker
that you eat too much of XYZ. The problem is actually the restriction of those foods. The third principle is to make peace with food. Food is not the enemy. Food is energy. Food is pleasure. Food is not the enemy, especially when you're pregnant and postpartum. I want you to think about all of the hard work that your body is doing to build this baby from scratch that takes
00:29:15
Speaker
so much out of you. The food is there to replenish you and to help you recover in postpartum. I really also want to help promote this idea that food is not the enemy for our kids, for this generation of children that we are raising now. Having a mother who is a chronic dieter or who has a lot of body shame, body shaming language, food shaming language,
00:29:39
Speaker
is one of the top predictors of eating disorders in children. The fourth principle is to challenge the food police. So if you have a policeman in your head that's constantly judging food being either good or bad or a number on the scale being either good or bad, a certain type of food, an amount of food being good or bad, you want to start silencing that. You want to tap into a healthy part of you that is able to take judgment away from food.
00:30:09
Speaker
Food is food. That idea of good and bad food as well as the body shaming around good and bad body weight and size is also one of the top predictors of children with eating disorders. I personally work with teens with eating disorders. I have been for almost 10 years now.
00:30:29
Speaker
Every single teenager, male and female, comes into my office. As we start to unpack the underlying drivers of their EDs, there is always a large influence from the home, from the talk, patterns, habits, and attitudes around food and body image in the
00:30:48
Speaker
Let's take the judgment out moving towards neutrality. Number five is discover the satisfaction factor. So really allowing food to be pleasure and allowing it to be satisfying. Food is fuel and food is pleasure. It can be both. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
00:31:06
Speaker
Feel your fullness is the sixth principle. So in order to honor your fullness, you have to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire. Listening to the signals that your body tells you are no longer hungry will help you to not overeat or binge. And observing the signs that show that you're comfortably full will help you know when that is going to be.
00:31:29
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This is particularly difficult for people who are not very in touch with their bodies. We tend to live, you can't see me, but up here, from neck up is where we live. We're a very cerebral culture. So part of feeling your fullness, feeling your hunger, and being able to practice intuitive eating is learning mindfulness and to follow your body's cues. The seventh principle is to cope with your emotions with kindness.
00:31:58
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The very first step is recognizing that what we do with food is a coping skill. We've made it so complicated. Part of that is because life is complicated and we have a lot of shit to be coping with and to be processing emotionally. Food is a great outlet for that.
00:32:17
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Another interesting thing is a lot of times with clients, whatever those behaviors are around food tend to really parallel our behaviors in relationships. Learning new coping skills with our emotions and on our relationships that don't have to do with food and trying to manipulate our body.
00:32:34
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The eighth is respect your body. Gosh, this is such a big one in pregnancy and postpartum. As Jenna and I mentioned, it's something we really want to focus on more, that respect and gratitude for your body. I mentioned this two episodes from now. We will have a little body gratitude meditation that you can always come back to and listen to. But holy shit, can we just take a second to sit in the fact that when you're pregnant, you're building a human being
00:33:01
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from scratch, it is insane. So really trying to get back to that place of respect for our bodies and everything they do for us and our babies. The ninth is movement. Feeling the difference between militant and even self punishing exercise and mindful movement. A huge piece of intuitive eating is utilizing movement not as a way to compensate for food intake, but as a way to honor your body
00:33:29
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and to move your body in a way that feels good and honoring to you. The 10th principle is honoring your health, gentle nutrition. Obviously, there are food intolerances, food allergies, or food choices that have to do with spiritual beliefs such as veganism. It's important to make those food choices a course. Think about how different foods make you feel.
00:33:57
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physically. So really getting down to that, to anything you're restricting or leaving out of your diet, being in order to honor your body and its needs, not because of a moral judgment of
Honoring Health and Nutrition
00:34:08
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that food. You don't have to eat perfectly to be healthy. It's what you are consistently eating over time that matters the most. So gentle nutrition, mindfulness, paying attention to how your body is feeling. I would love to have a separate episode where I go more into that and we can even unpack it more with how
00:34:25
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It can be utilized in pregnancy and postpartum specifically. Our relationship with food certainly can become more complex than especially if you are sick or having food overgions or have a hugely large appetite when you're pregnant or postpartum. I know when I am breastfeeding, I am
00:34:43
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hungry all day long. I feel like I'm gonna pass out if I haven't eaten in 20 minutes, which can be inconvenient and really hard to keep up with. We're gonna ask for some feedback from you guys. If you're listening to this and you want more on this topic, please let us know in the reviews or message us on Instagram. I would love to do
00:35:01
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another episode diving deeper into these principles and into just the philosophy of intuitive eating and how it can be so good for us in honoring our bodies, especially in pregnancy and postpartum and motherhood, even as we think about
00:35:16
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wanting to foster intuitive eating in our children. Jenna and I are so grateful for those of you who are listening. As you may know, our podcast is brand new and we are working our little booties off trying to get this information out there and to just have honest, real conversations about modern motherhood and what it's like.
00:35:37
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while also bringing our respective expertise as a therapist and as a medical doctor into the picture in terms of how to cope and how to manage these issues that come up in modern motherhood. Hoping to just provide some, the very least, solidarity and support but also some practical tips and a sense of community.
00:35:59
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Thanks so much for tuning in with us today. If you enjoyed this episode and feel like it brought you value, don't forget to rate the show and leave a review. Your feedback means the world to us and helps us know which conversations you are needing the most. And we'll keep bringing you new episodes every week, so hit subscribe so you don't miss a thing. Also, be sure to check out the show notes for any links or resources that we mentioned.
00:36:22
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We're on this journey with you, so be sure to find us on the gram and TikTok, plus go to bloomafterbaby.com and grab our free guides on all things motherhood created just for you. Breathe, be well, and keep growing, Mama.