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S1 E2 Taking Inventory
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HOW to assess the MANY variables of your past and current state that dictate your behavior around nutrition and WHY this is imperative to longterm success.
https://theresemartinezrd.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Navigating Diet Culture
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Eating Between the Lines.
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Speaker
I am your host, Therese Martinez, and I am so happy to have you here. If you want to untangle yourself from diet culture conditioning and get appropriate actionable options to nourish your unique life and body, I'm going to dive deep into the nuanced spectrum of health to help you figure out what to prioritize in your journey without getting trapped in the extreme ideology of health optimization or total complacency.
00:00:32
Speaker
I am here to help you apply the science effectively, not rigidly, and get you feeling better in your body and mind. Here is how to eat between the lines. Hello, hello. Welcome back, you guys. I am very excited about this episode.
Understanding Eating Behaviors
00:00:54
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These first few
00:00:56
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podcasts in Eating Between the Lines are really all about understanding the complexity and the nuance of why you eat what you do. When you understand these many variables that dictate your behavior, the hope is that you will have a little bit more understanding of
00:01:24
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what drives your behavior and in turn be able to take action on those things with right guidance and resources without needing to just continually do random Google searches, throw money into 30 day programs or different courses, just kind of like, I don't know,
00:01:51
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grasping at whatever you can in the hopes that it will make the difference. I mean, I know that I've been there. I think a lot about supplements in that sense, right? Or it's like, oh, maybe this, this, and this will be the combination to help my inflammation and then all of a sudden I'll lose weight or whatever it is, right? And it just doesn't address all the other things.
Health Influence Inventory
00:02:20
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And so today I want to talk about all of those variables and I call this your health influence inventory. Okay. So this is dissecting.
00:02:39
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a lot of the variables that dictate why you do what you do when it comes to nutrition. It can also go into other lifestyle factors as well. I mean, a lot of it is related, but it's a great foundational place to help you see what might be more or less
00:03:06
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powerful when it comes to why you do what you do. And so again, once you have an idea of what drives you and why it really helps with the next steps to figure out how you can, you know, work with
00:03:29
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these influences to shift them, right? And with the right resources and education, then an understanding the process that entails to get from point A to point B, or, you know, just the growth in general with shifting your behavior, then it's much more
00:03:57
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doable versus just kind of again, like I mentioned before, reaching for solutions that you just really don't know are going to be effective. So as I mentioned in the first episode, you know, this is a process and there are a lot of different variables when we look at how one's health is impacted.
00:04:27
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And, you know, stress, sleep, activity, nutrition.
00:04:36
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And there's that spectrum of health. And while, again, I think nutrition plays a massive role, I do not think it is everything. But I also think it's really important to kind of, you know, dissect it. And when we think about that spectrum,
00:04:58
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Everybody's going to be at a different place on that spectrum with where they're at in their progress towards their goals. Again, not trying to get to this optimal point of health, but more so just understanding your own priorities and where you want to focus your next steps towards improving your health.
00:05:25
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and understanding what may be more important or less important and why. So that we stop just throwing money at random things and start to actually understand our motives and our behavior. So I want you to picture this bubble chart, okay?
00:05:55
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I use this in my programs. This is the chart for your health inventory, your influence inventory. And your name is in the middle. And then we've got these bubbles all around it with different topics, essentially. And then with each of the topics, there's additional reasoning
00:06:23
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to support the topic. Okay, I'll go into this. So for me, this is my inventory. And this honestly was just a brain dump, which is kind of how I run through this with clients anyways. But
00:06:38
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These are my personal influences that dictate why I eat what I do. And they can be applicable to other people and other people may have other ones, right? So I'm gonna just go through this so that you guys can think about and relate to any of them that stick out to you too. So first,
00:07:07
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childhood and adulthood. That's one bubble off of my, um, tier. Okay. So when we think about childhood, there can be a lot of influences that dictate why we eat what we do now. And it can be because there were rules that were set up.
00:07:30
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You know, parents saying you must clean your plate. There could be resources, right, where there was limited options. And so certain foods were really, really
00:07:45
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fun treats and so therefore a person make it set up to want to binge on them like later in life when they have more access to them because they were just not allowed to have them before. Maybe a person is you know eats a lot of fast food and their palate develops to really like fast food and then that kind of shapes what they eat down the line. So
00:08:15
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This can be, there can be so many things around childhood. And so for me, I kind of think about what I learned in terms of food growing up.
00:08:29
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And, you know, how I got into the kitchen, which wasn't a lot. I don't remember cooking very much. So that's one thing, right? I kind of, I just, I don't remember working with vegetables or animal products or learning much about gardening or anything like that. And that had played a role, right? As I
00:08:53
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Um, started to learn more in adulthood when I became a vegetarian for a hot minute, started to cook a little bit more. And so that's part of looking at and reviewing your skillsets around and your knowledge around food. And again, that can totally play a role in what you eat.
00:09:18
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then there can be things that parents would say, right? Maybe that you shouldn't eat that. Maybe there's comments around weight. And so then you have all of these shoulds and shouldn'ts and guilt and shame potentially developed around certain foods because of your childhood. And so
00:09:41
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For me, I don't remember a lot of that honestly affecting me. I remember much more after I got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 14, just starting to then create rules around carbohydrates and sugar.
00:09:59
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And then I remember that being reiterated in high school, trying to control my body and hearing that, you know, carbohydrates were a blood to bean fat and, you know, calories in calories out. So then I needed to restrict my calories. So those were seeds that were planted for me in middle school, high school, around food that again, kind of got
00:10:28
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watered a lot throughout my adulthood as well. Even as someone that studied kinesiology in undergraduate college, and then additionally dietetics and exercise physiology for grad school. It was really, really strong wiring still there. So
00:10:54
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That's just one bubble, right? And I didn't even, there's so many other things that I could probably go into, but considering what you ate and how it shaped your taste buds and just physiological responses to food, right? Comfort foods potentially from childhood could also play a big role. And then the shoulds and shouldn'ts around food, the accessibility to certain foods,
00:11:21
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And then other relationship with food and knowledge, skills and abilities. OK, so all of those play a role.
Societal and Personal Food Influences
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Another one is relationship with food. And these bubbles are not perfect. There are overlapping ideas, but this was again, this is a brain dump. I want to roll through this so that you can kind of get an idea of these different concepts around why you do what you do.
00:11:50
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So the next one is relationship with food. Glennon Doyle has this term called the gas. The gas is this idea, particularly with societal influences around like food and body is I think how when she was talking about it. So that's what I'm relating it to, where
00:12:12
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Everyone's got a different kind of stamina for how they handle projections from society, right? So something like you need to look a certain way, like what you see in magazines with bodies being a certain shape and
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needing to go on this diet and you know all of this pressure around food and body and you know manipulating your body to look a certain way like we get bombarded with that throughout all of our lives right some people can kind of handle quote unquote that exposure to this toxic societal bombardment
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of these ideas, others don't handle it very well. I personally did not and developed a really terrible eating disorder for a long time that other people can kind of
00:13:11
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take the information and put certain pressures on themselves, but maybe it's not quote unquote enough to engage in disordered behavior, which honestly, with all of my experience working in this field, I find it pretty challenging to find anyone that does not have some type of, I would say, element of disordered relationship around food and body. So,
00:13:40
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And under that tier would be the gas. Another one would be, this is the tier of relationship with food, right? So then maybe fad diets. So I did, I've done intermittent fasting. I've done a ketogenic diet. I've done so many fad diets as a dietician, you guys.
00:14:02
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This was after grad school, largely because I really believed in them and thought that they were going to improve my health and help me lose weight. And so ultimately when I get exposed to certain diets for me personally that promise this health optimization and my own
00:14:27
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you know, better blood sugars or whatever it is, now that seed gets planted and watered in additional ways based off of what I honestly expose myself to in terms of who I follow on social media, who I trust in the nutrition and health realm. And it can play a huge role with again,
00:14:52
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what dictates what I do. And sometimes it's positive, right? This isn't all meant to be negative and not helpful influences, but they just are things to acknowledge. So these bad diets, I started getting really obsessed with. And I would also have tendencies to cope with food and
00:15:18
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have emotional eating bouts and still do, for sure. This is all just a continual learning process. And so another part with my relationship with food is pressures as a dietician and a personal trainer to look a certain way. So these all affected my relationship with food, right? Having type 1 diabetes influences my relationship with food.
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And that's a whole other tier in my bubble chart, but...
00:15:51
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there are so many things for me that I have looked at in my history that have affected my own relationship with food. And a lot of it is the gas. A lot of it was, you know, the societal influences. Um, a lot of it was bad diets, you know, being told calories in calories out, putting the pressure on myself to look a certain way, getting into a profession that also
00:16:19
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had pressures to look a certain way and then of course my my eating disorder and which is another part of the bubble chart but all of those okay so you're kind of getting the idea here so if so far we've got childhood and adulthood influences relationship with food the next one I have is type 1 diabetes like I said there are a handful of overlaps with this but
00:16:43
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having type one diabetes totally affected and affects my relationship or my, my influence inventory. So I developed food rules. Like I said before, like carbs are bad and I have to like have wonderful blood sugars. And if I don't, then I'm going to have inflammation and it's going to impact my long-term health. And so then there's all of these like stressors around my food intake and then limitations.
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because I didn't have knowledge, skills and abilities for type one management. And so I was just awful, awful, awful. Just thinking back on this, it's just, um, I definitely don't have perfect blood sugars at this point either, but man alive.
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It was so frustrating and sad and really hard growing up, especially without the technology that we have currently to, to manage my type one diabetes without being pretty restrictive with intake, which then of course was not great for someone with Indian disorder. So type one totally impacts the way that I eat now. Physiological variables. So this is another bubble. This is huge.
00:17:56
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So like I mentioned in childhood, you can develop your taste buds based off of what you consume, right? If you consume hyper palatable foods all the time, high fat, high salt, high sugar, your taste buds get stimulated in a very distinct way. You like the punch of flavor. It makes sense. They are very exciting foods.
00:18:18
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And so it's tough to go to alternative options and find them as appealing. And I don't like to say that because I don't like to say healthy options are not wonderfully flavorful, but it does take improving one's skill set and understanding how to make those other foods
00:18:39
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palatable and again change your taste buds a little bit you've got your your gut health which is actually another bubble on my chart in general but going back to the physiological variables your hunger signaling and you know your cues this has to do with your
00:18:58
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A little bit with the hormones, a little bit with blood sugars. I mean, it's definitely multifaceted, but you can kind of have messed up hunger signaling and hunger cues when your body is in the shape that it is, metabolically speaking and physiologically speaking. And so that can affect your body trust, right? If you don't trust your hunger cues, you don't trust your body and ultimately then you have control
00:19:24
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needs around your intake. And that influences your choices. Additionally, inflammation, but depending on how inflamed a person is, that can totally affect so many things. But for sure, it can also impact your hunger, signaling and cues and the trust in your body and different like elements of manifestation of inflammation can affect
00:19:49
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and dictate what why you eat what you do so just kind of looking at the level of that in the body can play a role so gut health kind of going off of that a little bit
00:20:00
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how you eat throughout your life creates the biome in your gut that exists. And it actually starts from birth, which is wild. But your gut health is influenced by the foods that you eat, the stress that you go through, the activity that you do. This is your whole life. Again, I want to reiterate that.
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like these things from your whole life antibiotic use medication use like probiotic and prebiotic intake and sugar intake all of these things and it's not to say and to like scare people into thinking that their gut health is a disaster because all of these things weren't optimized or whatever
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growing up and up until now, but it's just to like take a second to kind of consider the state of your gut health and your gut health impacts
00:20:55
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the rest of your body. I mean, we're talking about your hunger cues. We're talking about cravings. You know, there's a gut brain connection, a gut skin connection. There are so many impacts of gut health with the rest of your health, but ultimately what we're talking about now is kind of the impact of the gut health with your own eating behaviors. And if you feed certain bacteria in your gut, those bacteria thrive and
00:21:25
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they will tell your brain and body to eat more foods that they want. And so ultimately an example is eating a ton of sugar. If you eat a ton of sugar all the time, you feed certain bacteria and they can literally tell your brain to eat more sugar. And so it can be this cycle of craving. And so the idea is to not just never eat sugar,
00:21:50
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it's to feed the other bacteria as well and create more of a balanced biome. Folks that struggle with immunity a lot may have a compromised gut microbiome as well. And I mean, that can even go into what a person then eats when they are sick on a regular basis and how that can
00:22:11
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kind of determine their intake.
Role of Gut Health and Personal Experiences
00:22:13
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And so, I could talk about gut health for a long time, but definitely, definitely makes a difference. Same with, you know, how a person responds to food. Is there indigestion? And are there good bowel movements? I mean, a person might avoid certain foods because they react negatively with their gut and or
00:22:34
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they aren't having regular bowel movements. So they get constipated and again, avoid certain foods or, you know, use other means to have bowel movements that feed the cycle of not actually consuming the appropriate foods for their body and not knowing why everything's happening. So, so just considerations with gut health. Another one
00:23:00
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for me is my eating disorder. So parallels with a few of the other bubbles for sure. But this influenced my intake in a very apparent fashion, right? So kind of going into trying to overcompensate by eating really healthy all the time, trying to fit the image of a perfect looking trainer and dietician.
00:23:26
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And utilizing these health optimization strategies, thinking it was great. And then ultimately I wasn't recognizing the balance I needed for my own intake and it just fed the eating disorder. And so body image is a.
00:23:46
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huge, huge dictator for me with what I eat and what I did especially when it engaged so, so much in my eating disorder.
00:23:57
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And so there are, I mean, there's a lot I could talk about with the eating disorder, but you know, ultimately there's this struggle with giving yourself, you know, full permission to consume certain foods and not have them off limits balanced with this intuitive eating and body trust struggle. And I talk about this a lot with clients now. Um, I really, really like this topic. I've done.
00:24:24
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so much therapy digging into this and working with clients that have similar struggles. And so it's, uh, it's honestly kind of fun for me to, to untangle so much of the wiring and help people find more balance with this eating disorder, another bubble knowledge and abilities. So this kind of goes back into the childhood as well, but
00:24:47
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I mean, I would consider this pretty, pretty obvious when it comes to current behavior. So we're looking at cooking ability, you know, what is your, what is your database look like with foods that you consume on a regular basis? What are the products that you are consuming?
00:25:05
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You know, you're planning your intention around food, your shopping skills. What is, what's your, what are your grocery staples? What are you keeping around the house? Your time, your resources, all of those influence your food intake. And like I said before, these are not all supposed to be negative influences. These can be positive for me. I feel like I've got a pretty good database at this point. I didn't always by any means.
00:25:34
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I remember kind of being made fun of honestly in grad school because I chopped an onion poorly, whatever that means. I don't know. It wasn't the official way that you get taught to chop an onion. And I thereafter remember just thinking, I need to learn how to cook a little bit more versus just throwing my
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frozen vegetables from Costco into a pan with a bunch of Trader Joe's Soyaki sauce and calling it good, which by the way, is totally fine. But I just realized expanding my personal database would be helpful. And it's taken a lot of years to get to the point that I'm at now. And I still have so much learning to do with cooking because I want to.
00:26:24
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and then additionally figuring out what works in my own lifestyle when it comes to foods to have around on a regular basis, what my planning looks like, my prep looks like, and what feels comfortable, not overwhelming, not daunting, and helps me feel good in my body.
00:26:44
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And so knowledge and abilities, I mean, and skills, those are, those are really big. And I have a whole program around building your database that is designed to help in this very area that, uh, uh, I think is just, it's so important, so important. The more people can understand how to put meals together that can be simple.
00:27:17
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pantry and fridge and freezer and just kind of like put the ingredients and seasonings and flavors together like a math problem. I kind of picture, I think it was in like Good Will Hunting maybe where he's looking at the chalkboard with the really complicated math problem and has the bubble of solution over his head, you know, like putting it all together. And I think about that in the same regard looking at, you know,
00:27:37
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and where they can just look at their
00:27:47
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what people have in their kitchen and putting all of it together. And I just think that that is so helpful for folks to have that skill set. But again, it takes a little bit of time, takes trial and error, and it's different for everybody too.
00:28:04
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Another bubble is kind of under a skill set, but it's one that I have its obstacle navigation. So this kind of goes to people really struggling with consistency of intake and largely because they don't have
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the skill set of knowing how to navigate obstacles right eating out social events no prep time no time in general what your budget is you know trying to hit the eighty twenty which is talk about that next time knowing how to.
00:28:43
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Um, you know, give yourself grace when it comes to maybe vacations and figuring out how to still manage this healthy lifestyle with these obstacles because they, they're inevitable. Right. And the goal isn't to be perfect with.
00:29:02
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your intake all the dang time. It's just way too much pressure. It's unrealistic. And I think it's really helpful to just kind of be able to look at these obstacles and understand your own body, right? I mean, and what feels the best for you. I think that in general, having
00:29:27
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less restrictions around oneself in these times is very helpful. In addition to the knowledge, when say you ran out of time and to like prep anything, that's when that skill set of
00:29:44
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You know what I was mentioned, having the grocery staples around and being able to put things together quickly and easily is helpful as well. Giving yourself grace with these situations. And then additionally, having ideas for what is best for you in terms of what feels best in your body. Meaning if you're eating out, if you're going to social events, if you're on vacation, how can you
00:30:11
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take care of yourself in the best way for you. And it doesn't mean being super restrictive, but perhaps it means prioritizing
00:30:21
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you know, one healthy meal in the day. Maybe it's prioritizing movement and water. Maybe it's figuring out how to balance eating out for 50% of your meals that you know are going to make you feel really good. And then 50%, you're kind of just really listening to your body with maybe what it wants and not feeling like you have to restrict it all. Not that I would even say that the other 50% is restricting. It's just being mindful, right? And
00:30:52
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really working to not have crazy rigid rules. So I hope that that didn't come off like you're earning your other more lenient meals or whatever. That's not what I mean. It's just figuring out what works best for you. For me personally, I really like to prioritize one healthy meal a day when I am out away from my home. And I really like to try new foods and I really like to order whatever the heck I want to order.
00:31:19
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that sounds really good to me and not feel like I can only have it if I ate well the rest of that day. It's more just understanding for me like
00:31:30
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I want to limit blood sugar variables because I feel the best when I have more control over my blood sugars. And I also like to feel really good when I'm on vacation and at other events and stuff. And so I have to kind of manage that for my own self. Okay.
00:31:50
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so i think that that is actually all those are all of my personal bubbles this was like like a brainstorm dump i literally did this on my way back from seaside last year and uh just in the car and not driving it was so
00:32:12
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interesting to get all of this out. And I ran it when my nutrition intuition program and I continue to run it in programs, utilize it in programs, because it just, it helps people just actually see what the heck is influencing them. And once we can take these
00:32:37
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bubbles and like these topics and actually like lay it out. I mean, I'm looking at this right now. And to me, I'm like, holy smokes. Like, of course, of course there is more complexity around
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:32:59
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My intake, of course I can't just start eating, you know, super healthy after I've eaten packaged foods that are super hyper palatable for my whole life. If that were the case, it just, I, I need to have.
00:33:16
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The skill set developed. I need to shift my physiology. I need to work on my relationship with food and I need to understand what works best for me while potentially looking at the other influences that like my childhood may affect it all and my gut health that may also dictate it. Right. So again, we're looking at this.
00:33:38
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from the lens of your own personal experience and taking all of this to understand your next moves which is what i dive into in following episodes and today was just getting the breakdown okay so i highly recommend you
00:34:01
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Do this for yourself. It's just a basic bubble chart, you guys. You put your name in the middle, you make other bubbles off of it, and you start to brainstorm. You just dump all the things that you feel like have influenced your life. And it can be kind of tricky to do on your own.
00:34:22
Speaker
You don't know what you don't know. Right. And so this is why it's helpful, like in a program or with some help with someone like a professional that kind of knows a lot of the variables, but ultimately you can still do it. And I think it would be just super duper helpful. Ah, with that said, next time we'll be talking a lot more about the compound effects of nutrition and diving in to more of these concepts. Okay.
00:34:53
Speaker
So thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. If you found this information valuable, please share this episode and give it a review. They truly help a ton. If you want additional support and information, you can head over to my website, teresmartinezrd.com where you can snag my free guide on how to improve your hunger signals. Get on my email list for regular juicy content.
00:35:21
Speaker
or apply for the next round of my signature program, Restoring Nutrition Intuition. Otherwise, Instagram at teresmartinasrd or my Facebook group Fed Fit and Fad Free Nutrition with Teres are always places for more content and support. Until next time.