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Dietician Disaster
194 Plays2 years ago
On this super vulnerable episode, Julie shares a recent consultation she had with a dietician that- well let’s just say- didn’t go too well.
**Trigger warning in this episode: diet, weight loss, and body image issues.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Outside of Session' with Julie Hilton
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to outside of session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. We're going to cover all the things here, whether it's mental health, entrepreneurship, relationships, trauma, or just life. Nothing is off limits. Hopefully you'll laugh a little and learn a lot, but most importantly, feel encouraged on your journey to live empowered.
Excitement and Personal Story with a Dietitian
00:00:31
Speaker
Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of Outside of Session. I am super excited about today's episode because I feel like I've got a little bit of tea to spill for you guys. I'm really excited to share something with you that actually happened in my personal life recently.
00:00:49
Speaker
And to be honest, this is the kind of episode that I'm actually a little bit more excited about. Not that I don't like the more educational ones that I've done lately about boundaries and anxiety and stuff like that, but this is the kind of episode that I really want to be making because I feel like it's more real life stuff that you'll relate to.
Trigger Warning: Diet and Weight Discussion
00:01:09
Speaker
Um, so you're definitely going to get to see like how human I am because I'm going to share this thing that just happened when I met with a dietitian. So before I dive into it, I want to give a little bit of a disclaimer. This episode is going to be talking a little bit about a visit I had with a dietitian. So there's going to be topics like
00:01:29
Speaker
diet and weight. And if that in any way is a topic that is triggering for you, and it's just not like a really good conversation that for you to hear right now, as much as I'm excited that you want to listen to my podcast, if that's a topic that's just not good for you right now, this might be one that you just kind of skip over. I always want you to be really, really protective of yourself. So if you don't feel like hearing about
00:01:55
Speaker
a conversation with a dietician is good for you right now. Just go ahead and skip this episode.
Health Goals: Balancing Physical and Mental Well-being
00:02:01
Speaker
Okay. So this year I decided that, um, I decided to set some like health goals for myself and I did not want them to necessarily be driven by weight loss, but I'm really trying to start to ask myself the question of,
00:02:16
Speaker
how do I take equally as good of care of my physical health as I do my mental health? And I've always done like a pretty good job of caring for my mental health, like I've always been a pretty active person, but it takes a constant readjustment at different phases of life, depending on what you're going through. The same thing, same as with your mental health, like you're always learning new things that help, you're always learning new practices, things like that. So I think we have to do the same thing with our physical health as well.
Struggles with Seeking Help and Accountability
00:02:46
Speaker
And a side note is I've been thinking a lot lately about how I typically try to always do everything on my own. And so I completely understand it when people say like how hard it is to ask for help because I have totally been that person myself.
00:03:02
Speaker
Um, therapy is something that I've done on and off over the years. And that to me is a little bit easier for me to ask for help with because I believe in therapy so much, but there are other areas of life that I really struggle on asking for help with. And so I was having a conversation with my therapist a few months ago. Um, I think we were
00:03:23
Speaker
don't remember what we were talking. I think we were talking about my spending habits, if I'm being honest, and like trying to reel those in a little bit and trying to be a little bit more disciplined. I think we were having a conversation about discipline.
00:03:35
Speaker
And she made the comment, she asked if I had ever decided to look outside of myself for some external accountability with my finances. And I was like, no, I don't have a financial advisor. I've always done my budget myself and everything. And she made the comment of some people have really good internal accountability, so they don't have a problem keeping themselves accountable to a goal that they've reached. But some people do better when they have outside accountability.
00:04:05
Speaker
made it so simple and normal that some people are just wired that way that going outside of yourself for accountability is just like a normal thing and nothing to feel weird about or feel ashamed of. And I don't know the way she said it just made it really simple for me and so I like logged that into my memory of like there's nothing wrong with external accountability.
00:04:26
Speaker
Um, and so this year when I was starting to think about some of these health goals that I was setting for myself, I decided, why don't I look for some outside help, some outside accountability, because I think talking with someone outside of just my like group of friends and my husband, um, like I just wanted to see what it would be like.
Choosing a Dietitian: Criteria and Decision
00:04:45
Speaker
Um, so I decided to work out to ask for some support with this as well.
00:04:52
Speaker
So I started looking for a licensed either like dietician or nutritionist. I don't really know the difference between those two titles, but I wanted someone that wasn't just like a health coach that did a little like training online and got a certificate online. Um, because fun fact, I used to have one of those and I didn't, I should not probably should not have been coaching people on their health. Um,
00:05:17
Speaker
So I wanted someone who actually had like a master's degree in understanding nutrition and how it impacts the body and stuff like that. So I reached out to a local dietitian. I found one online and I booked an appointment with her.
First Meeting Disappointment
00:05:32
Speaker
And y'all that appointment went downhill so fast. So I got to her house cause she works out of her like home office and her very first question was, so tell me about your goals. What are your goals? And I thought that was a great question. I was really happy that she started with that. And I had already thought about that before I went into it and I had three very like very well defined goals for myself. They were to eat more vegetables,
00:06:02
Speaker
to get more steps in on a weekly average and to have my weekends look more like my weekdays when it comes to everything from nutrition to consistency because what I do during the week just looks very different than what I do on the weekends. And I felt like a really good simple way to summarize that was to have my weekends look more like my weeks.
00:06:28
Speaker
And the reason why I worded it that way to myself is because that's not restrictive. It's not necessarily a plan. It didn't feel like I was being really rigid with myself. It just felt like what I'm already doing during the week I'm really happy with. I just want to see if I can carry it over more towards the weekend.
00:06:48
Speaker
The other two goals of eating more vegetables was just because like I know the benefits. And if you watched my stories on Instagram a few weeks ago, I was talking about how like, I'm trying to be really cognizant of I'm starting to age and I want to support like my hormones and
Negative Impact of Judgmental Comments
00:07:05
Speaker
stuff like that. And so I think that eating a really like balanced diet with like not lots of micronutrients is really, really important. And so I just want to start making that more of a practice of seeing more like green things on my plate overall.
00:07:18
Speaker
Um, and so again, that's a type of goal that felt like not restrictive. I didn't say how much it was just eat more. And then when it came with get more steps in, I'm not hitting, I'm not setting like a specific goal for myself. I'm not saying that it has to be daily. I'm looking more like a weekly average. Um, because I lift weights a lot, but I also know that with my job, I sit a lot and I just want to be a little bit more active and not in a,
00:07:46
Speaker
cardio kind of way where I'm pushing myself really really hard. I just want to get more steps in like I'm trying to make really simple goals because I think those are more obtainable and more sustainable as well. So I told her that that that these were my three goals.
00:08:04
Speaker
But before I share all these toxic things that I started to hear from her, first let me share that I work with a lot of women who tell me about these kind of experiences that they have with doctors or nutritionists or health coaches and stuff. And the reason I'm sharing my experiences is because I want to bring awareness to how
00:08:28
Speaker
like how harmful these messages really are. So I'm kind of presenting it in like a laughing way, like I'm laughing about my experience a little bit. But these messages were actually like, they're really harmful to hear in the moment. So if you are someone who has experienced something similar, I hope this episode helps you to feel like seen and understood and validated. And also if you are someone that's in a position of
00:08:52
Speaker
of coaching people or helping people, I hope that this can also give you a better understanding of what the experience is like on this side because your words hold a lot of weight and a lot of impact. At this point, I'm speaking as a friend, not as a therapist. I just want to share with you the kind of things that I was told by this lady.
00:09:17
Speaker
So question number one was what are your goals? I had them very well defined and I told them and I swear as soon as she asked that question and as soon as I said what they were, they like immediately went out of the window because they were not mentioned again for the rest of our meeting that lasted like an hour long. Like we never circled back to what are my goals and how can she help me with them?
Facing Criticism on Dietary Choices
00:09:41
Speaker
So her next question was what do I eat in a typical day?
00:09:46
Speaker
And that's kind of a hard question for me to answer because again, like one of my goals was that my weekends look very different than my weekdays. And so I was like, well, where do you want me to start? She said, just go with Monday. What does Monday look like?
00:09:59
Speaker
So I told her that first thing on Monday morning, I usually like to work out because I wake up and immediately work out like I don't go in the afternoon. And so she was like, so you don't put anything on your stomach. You don't eat anything before you work out. She was like, you don't have a cup of coffee or anything. And I was like, no, I usually wake up immediately work out. But a lot of times I do take, most of the time I do take pre-workout.
00:10:22
Speaker
And she was like, okay, what kind of pre-workout do you take? And I was like, uh, I don't know. Whatever canister is in the cabinet that my husband recently purchased because I'd take whatever he got. And her response to me was, so first thing in the morning, you immediately put something into your body and you don't even know what it is.
00:10:45
Speaker
And I immediately was like, whoa, like my guards automatically went up because that statement and her tone and the way she said it, I immediately felt so like judged and shamed. And in that moment I realized that like at that moment, she was worried about something that I wasn't worried about. So that wasn't like my concern coming into this, but she was very concerned about it.
00:11:12
Speaker
Um, and so she just like for, for a few minutes, she wouldn't move off of this. She wanted to like figure out which pre-workout I was taking so she could look at the ingredients. And I was like, well, I can tell you the one that I used to use. Um, and I'm sure this one is pretty similar. So she looked it up and she read through the ingredients and she like immediately was like,
00:11:33
Speaker
scratching through all of them and was like, this is terrible. It has so much artificial sweetener and so much caffeine, like you're putting this into your body first thing in the morning. And I was immediately just like, okay, this lady is really intense.
Lack of Personalized Advice and Misunderstanding
00:11:47
Speaker
So the next thing she asked me was like, what kind of workouts do you do? She was like, so you take this terrible pre workout and you start working out what kind of workouts do you
00:11:56
Speaker
do?" And I said, well, I lift a lot of weights and she was like, do you lift heavy? And I was like, yeah, I think so. And she was like, really? Like kind of questioning what my definition of heavy is.
00:12:13
Speaker
And I really again, didn't appreciate that because like heavy for me is going to be very different than heavy for anyone else. Like we're not all on the same like level playing field. And she was like, sir, you're doing like squats and deadlifts. And I was like, yeah, I am. And she immediately was like, we don't recommend deadlifts anymore. They're terrible for your lower back. And I was just like,
00:12:36
Speaker
again got that feeling of I'm telling you what I do and this is day one and I've known you now for seven and a half minutes and you're already telling me that I'm wrong again and that what I'm doing is wrong even though again like if you've watched my stories you've heard me talk about how much I
00:12:51
Speaker
Don't push myself with deadlifts like I'm not going for a like my PR every single day like I baby step myself into it to protect my lower back and there are benefits like you can't tell me that there's absolutely no benefits of it. And at that point I was feeling like.
00:13:10
Speaker
I hired her because I do want to learn from her. But shame is never a good motivator. Like you telling me that I'm doing everything wrong is not going to get me to buy in to what you're trying to teach me because again, like at this point, my guards are already up with her.
Unrealistic Fasting Suggestions
00:13:27
Speaker
So then she says, Okay, so after your workout, what is your breakfast? And I said, Well, lately, I've been on a kick of doing like a smoothie for breakfast. And she said, What's in it?
00:13:37
Speaker
And I said, I buy a bag of like frozen, it's a mixture of like strawberries, blueberries, and kale. And she like, and you know, I'm thinking to myself, like, how can you question that? Like, I'm finally doing something that she can't tear apart. But her immediate question was, is it organic?
00:13:56
Speaker
And at that point I was just like, she is going to question every single thing I say. And so I said, ma'am, I don't know. I don't know. I just buy the bag. I just, I grabbed a bag of frozen vegetables and she was like, or frozen fruits and vegetables. And she was like, it needs to be organic. You need to check your label and see if it's organic. And I'm like, okay. At that point I knew just like whatever I said was not going to be good enough for her. And so I just kind of,
00:14:23
Speaker
One thing that I know about myself is that at that point I started to shut down a little bit because my guards were
Body Image and Unnecessary Measurements
00:14:28
Speaker
up and so I stopped wanting to be honest with her. And so I...
00:14:34
Speaker
I start that feeling of just feeling not good enough and I realized that she was making assumptions about me because, oh, she also asked, she was like, what else do you put in your smoothie? And I said, I've been putting those Fair Life chocolate milks that have like 30 grams of protein and chocolate and strawberry smoothie like goes really, really well together, tastes really good. And so I told her that and she immediately said, oh, so you're putting dairy
Rejecting Restrictive Detox Plans
00:14:59
Speaker
in your smoothie. And I was like, yeah, it's chocolate milk. And she was like, well, dairy is not the best
00:15:03
Speaker
option for protein like she was talking about the the way that's in it or something like that and I immediately thought like how do you know how my body responds to dairy like at that point she's also making assumptions and just saying dairy is not the best option when she knows very little about how my body tolerates dairy and so at that point like again like I switched at that point from feeling not good enough because I felt like she was shredding everything that I was
00:15:33
Speaker
saying to pieces to instead of feeling not good enough, I started to realize that she was just making a lot of assumptions about me and
00:15:42
Speaker
I just realized like at this point she doesn't know me and she's not trying to get to know me. And so I feel like like, listen, I'm 35 years old. I have been in the game long enough to know myself better than anybody else does. And I also trust myself more than I trust anyone else with my body. So at that point, like I just felt like I no longer trusted her because she is making a lot of assumptions about me. Um,
00:16:10
Speaker
So then she went on to say some things like, um, Oh, what did she say next? Oh, she was like, so do you drink coffee? And I said, sometimes like, if I don't drink pre-workout in the morning, yes, I have a cup of coffee. And she was like, what do you put in it? And I said, usually nut pods and a Splenda. And y'all, when I said Splenda, like you would have thought that I told this lady that I put like straight poison in my coffee every morning.
00:16:37
Speaker
It was the biggest deal like I thought she was going to have a heart attack and she was like artificial sweeteners like Splenda are shown that they are linked to blood cancer. You're going to get blood cancer and she kept saying it like my best friend and I have a joke now where every time I have a cup of coffee I send her a picture of it and I like hashtag blood cancer.
00:17:01
Speaker
And again, like I'm not saying that those studies aren't real. I'm not saying that there isn't evidence that maybe artificial sweeteners have been linked to blood cancers. I don't know. She didn't show me the study. I'm not saying that it's not legit. I'm just saying that at this point, I don't really want to hear anything you have to say because again, like shaming me into thinking, like trying to scare me into thinking that I'm giving myself cancer is not a good way for me to give up something when you're not giving me another solution.
Realizing Dietitian's Projections
00:17:28
Speaker
her approach was just so wrong at that point. So when she said that I just laughed and I said yeah well you're not gonna get me to give that up. And so at that point that was like another shift because at that point I was getting a little bit defensive with her and like pushing back a little bit and so I think she could like notice that too because maybe she's not used to people telling her like you're not gonna get me to change something.
00:17:56
Speaker
But at this point, like again, like the meeting was just not going very well. She ended up saying a couple of other things like, what else did she say? Um, Oh, she said something about your gut health is probably way worse than you think it is. Um,
00:18:13
Speaker
Again, like not knowing anything about me, like that's a huge assumption that just because a lot of people have gut issues that I probably have it too. She said, you probably have a lot of inflammation and inflammation is the foundation for all disease. And again, I'm just like, but you don't know anything about my body and how I tolerate things. And, you know, I used to do, um,
00:18:36
Speaker
I've done a few rounds of Whole30 in my life and I actually used to be a Whole30 coach, which I should do a whole other episode about that. I'm not necessarily saying that I recommend it by any means, but that was a part of my life several years ago. And I did learn a lot about myself through Whole30 because if you do it correctly, you really do learn how different foods impact your body. So there was definitely some value and I learned some things about myself.
00:19:02
Speaker
But when I tried to tell her that I had done those kind of elimination diets before and I know very well that I do not have a sensitivity to certain types of dairy and I don't have a sensitivity or an intolerance to certain gluten, she very much dismissed me and was just like, well, you don't really know that because you didn't do it right. And I was just like, okay, but you're not asking me any questions about how I did it. She was just making a lot of assumptions.
00:19:28
Speaker
So after she asked, so then she asked some questions about like, okay, well then what are your weekends look like? And at that point, like if she was going to tear apart my kale and strawberry and blueberry smoothie,
00:19:44
Speaker
Like, honey, I was not about to tell her what I eat on the weekends. Like, I was not about to tell her about my favorite crumble cookies and how that is a tradition that every other weekend when my bonus kits come up, we absolutely like that's the first thing that we do is go get crumble cookies. And I'm not gonna feel bad about that at all. But at that point, I also felt like I couldn't really be honest with her because it was just going to give her more room to judge me. And who would do that, right?
00:20:10
Speaker
So I said, I said something like, I don't know, maybe I eat more more Oreos than I realized or something like that. And again, like if you can't be honest with the person that you've hired to help you, then what's the point of going? And side note, same thing with your therapist, like your therapist is not there to judge you. If you can't be honest, then it's going to ruin the relationship and it's going to ruin your experience.
Importance of Personal Goals
00:20:36
Speaker
So after we talked a little bit about what the weekend looks like, she immediately went into her plan for me, which was her plan for everyone. So she essentially has a plan that she starts everyone on and didn't really take into consideration anything that I had told her about my goals or where I am in life. Like she immediately said she wanted me to be fasting for 14 hours a day.
00:21:02
Speaker
So we talked a little bit about like, what time do I normally eat breakfast? What time do I normally eat dinner? And she was like, you're not fasting long enough. But she did not ask me if fasting was something that was important to me. And she told me she said something like you need to have eaten dinner by I can't remember what she said, like 630. And I was like, so what do you suggest on days that I'm not home from work by 630. And she literally looked floored that like somebody works that late.
00:21:30
Speaker
And that's when I was getting very like elitist vibes from her of not everybody has done with work at like 3 30 in the afternoon. You know what I mean? It has all this time to have dinner cooked and prepared and eaten and cleaned up by 5 30. Like that's just not realistic for my life, you know? Um, then she went into after the 14 hours fasting, um,
00:21:57
Speaker
She wanted me to start a, and she starts everyone on this, on a two week detox plan. And those are her words, a two week detox. And it essentially was like Whole30, like an elimination diet, which again, I see the value in, but calling it a detox was very like triggering for me because I was like, in my opinion, the word detox need to be, is used when people are detoxing from an addiction.
00:22:27
Speaker
Right? Like there is a legitimate reason why people go to detox facilities when they are coming off of drugs or alcohol. Right? And it is so that they can do it in a systematic way to protect their body. People don't need to detox from food. I also have a liver. It detoxes me very well. Thank you.
00:22:44
Speaker
Um, but it was a two week detox where it was like really, really restrictive. Like at least with whole 30, you can eat as much as you want to. Like you should never be hungry on whole 30, but hers was like, um, a smoothie in the morning with a certain kind of protein powder. Um, which for me would not have been enough.
00:23:02
Speaker
And then you, uh, you eat a cup of this like vegetable soup that has like all these vegetables in it, which find whatever one of my goals is to eat more vegetables. So I'm not opposed to that. Um, I don't need a detox soup. And then for, there was no snacks. And then for lunch and dinner, you would eat essentially like a, uh, what was it? Three to four ounces of a lean protein.
00:23:28
Speaker
and as many vegetables like fresh vegetables or steamed vegetables as you wanted. And I think she said something about some healthy fats. So I guess you like would cook your only meat and like olive oil or something or roaster vegetables. I don't know.
00:23:43
Speaker
but y'all three to four ounces of protein twice a day is not enough protein for me with the way that I lift weights like that's that's seriously not enough calories for me in one day I would immediately have like hunger headaches and that is that is not good for my system like I'm five nine
00:24:03
Speaker
I'm not a I'm not a small girl and I'm okay with that, you know, like the detox that she was talking about was extremely restrictive. And at that point, that's when I went from not only like having my guard up with her and not trusting her, but also thinking like,
00:24:20
Speaker
I'm not the problem here. She is definitely the problem here because she has a cookie cutter life plan that she gives to all of her clients. And, um, would you lose weight if you followed her detox plan? Absolutely. And there are a lot of, unfortunately there are a lot of women that would think, Oh, she's onto something. She knows what she's talking about because I've lost so much weight and these two in this two week period. But y'all, my goal is not weight loss.
00:24:46
Speaker
And it just like blew my mind that that is something that a professional, a licensed professional would be advising all of her clients, not just me, but all of her clients, you know?
00:25:00
Speaker
And I just kept thinking like, how are you supposed to be? I'm hiring you to keep you because I want help being accountable for my goals, but how are we going to even focus on my goals if we're focusing on your goals for me? At that point, I really realized that like,
00:25:18
Speaker
She wanted me to be her. She had figured out what works for her and what felt good with her body. And she just wants everyone else to follow what she does. If I went around to my clients and said, this is what works for my mental health, just do this and you'll be great.
00:25:36
Speaker
Like that wouldn't work for anyone other than me because everybody, every mind is so different, so unique. Like what works for one person is not going to work for another person. So when my clients come in, I want to know about them and help them discover what they think is best for them. I don't have people come into my office and say, I have a plan for your life. And if you'll just follow my plan, everything will work out great. Like,
00:26:03
Speaker
That's just not what we do as professionals. So basically she wanted me to do her diet. She wanted me to do her exercises. She found out what works for her and she just teaches people to do the same thing and that in my opinion is just not what a dietitian should be doing.
00:26:19
Speaker
Like for instance, like she even said something about getting steps in and she said, how many steps do you think you're getting a day? And I said, well, I've been trying to be really consistent with it. I said, days that I work a little bit longer hours, I'm not going to be able to get in as many steps. So on days that like on the weekends, I try to go for longer walks. I said, but as long as I'm averaging like 7,500 steps a day by the end of the week, like I feel like that's really good for me. And she said, no, you need to be at 10,000 a day.
00:26:48
Speaker
And I was just like, who are you to tell me that my goal should be different than what I came in thinking it should be. We're talking about steps. I'm also lifting weights, you know, four to five days a week. So if I get 7500 steps a day on top of that, I feel like that's really good. And that is really good for my body. So it's just like everything I said, it was just she was wanting me to do what she has in her plan for her life and what works for her.
00:27:19
Speaker
I had to take a little break for just a second. But so another thing that I want to point out is that she also didn't ask a single question about things like my finances and whether or not getting everything organic was even a possibility for me like
00:27:37
Speaker
she wanted everything to be organic. And again, like that's such like an elitist place to come from is just in that everybody can afford organic food. She didn't ask a single thing about my stress levels and how that could be impacting the way that my body is like processing food right now or like my lifestyle.
00:27:57
Speaker
She didn't ask anything like, am I breastfeeding? What do I do for a living? What my history with, like my relationship with food was. She didn't ask anything about if I had ever had an eating disorder or anything with like any disordered eating habits.
00:28:14
Speaker
I really feel like as a dietician, if you ignore all of those things, like you are, I mean, first of all, like that's not a very realistic or holistic approach to like diet, but at the same time, like I'm, that borderlines in my opinion on like unethical behavior, because to start someone off with your plan of like a detox, like a really restrictive detox when you have not asked them that they have, um,
00:28:41
Speaker
any history of disordered eating, I think is just so irresponsible.
Taking Control of Your Narrative
00:28:46
Speaker
But even if I didn't have a history of disordered eating, a plan that's so not individualized like that, that's not good for anyone's mental health. I literally feel like she was an almond mom dietician where it was just like,
00:29:03
Speaker
wanting you to have the results that she wants for you and weight loss was a huge part of that. So at some point she asked me, like in the very beginning when she asked my goals, um, none of them had to do with weight loss. And a couple of times throughout when we were talking about different things, she said, are you interested in weight loss? And I made the comment, I don't, I honestly don't know how I phrased it, but it was kind of like, I'm not saying that I'm
00:29:29
Speaker
wouldn't want to lose a little bit of weight, but that's just not a goal of mine right now. Like if I start to reach my goals and weight loss is a part of that, great. But like I'm not focused on this scale anymore. I'm happy with my body, the size that it is. So essentially I gave her this, when she said, are you interested in losing weight? It was like, no, yes, it doesn't really matter to me. Like that's not important to me.
00:29:54
Speaker
Towards the end of the meeting, she asked me if I wanted her to measure my body fat to calculate the body fat percentage. I've never had that done before, so I was like, yeah, sure, whatever. Even though I had to hold her several times, I am happy with my size. I look at that as another piece of data, just like the weight on the scale. I have no emotional response to it, so I was just like, yeah, sure, whatever. She used the little instrument where it pinches the fat on
00:30:24
Speaker
in.
00:30:26
Speaker
She did the back of my arm, my stomach right above my hip, and I think it was the outside of my thigh. Yeah, like the outside of my thigh that she pinched. And I guess you add up the numbers and there's some kind of little chart or scale or whatever that she looked at. And this to me is like the cherry on top, the icing on the cake. This is when I knew that for sure I would not be working with her. She calculated my little number
00:30:56
Speaker
And y'all, I swear when she saw it on the chart, she said, Oh, Oh, she said, yeah, you could stand to lean out a little bit. And yeah, there were crickets for a second because I was like, how effing dare you tell someone that they need to lose weight when they have just told you that they are happy with their size.
00:31:25
Speaker
Like I just have to pause because there are no words. Like I did not know how to respond in that moment other than like, can we wrap this up and get me out of here because I'm, I'm so over this. Like I was like, okay, I am, I'm done here. Um, so that was the end of the story. Obviously I'm not working with her. That was the cherry on top, but here's where like the therapist in me comes in and
00:31:53
Speaker
I like process what just happened, right? So at some point I realized that I was, I started to try to gauge my response and take the emotion out of it because
00:32:10
Speaker
This is why it's so important to be able to stay like grounded in moments and know where you are internally because you will start to filter through emotions and defenses. And if you've ever done any kind of parts work, you'll realize different parts of your personality that are jumping in to try to protect you in the moment.
00:32:28
Speaker
But I've gotten really good, well, I've gotten better about being able to stay in self in that moment so that I can see things a little bit more objectively and that does take a lot of practice for sure. But at some point I started to like try to gauge my responses and not go into like these defense modes that I have so that I could still try to hear things that
00:32:49
Speaker
maybe would have been helpful instead of like immediately dismissing everything she said because there were so many toxic things that were going on. Um, and what I noticed about myself is that I walked into this meeting and very much a people pleasing mode.
00:33:06
Speaker
because that's just part of my personality. I want to be a good student. I want to be liked. So when I walked in, I thought, okay, I'm going to tell her about my fruit smoothie. And I'm going to tell her about like, I am a woman who lifts weight and I know how good that is for our health, blah, blah, blah. And as soon as I didn't get that like positive feedback from her, and I felt like she was just,
00:33:29
Speaker
judging everything that I was saying and telling me that it wasn't good enough. As soon as I felt that feeling of not being good enough, I could feel myself just small to start feeling very small in front of her. Um, and it's that feeling of like shrinking in front of someone. I felt very small. I felt very anxious. I felt very judged. Um,
00:33:49
Speaker
And that's a really, like you can notice it in the moment, but to be able to pull back from it to say like, hang on a second, that's a part of me coming out. I don't necessarily need to feel that way in front of her. So I tried to like get my footing back again, right? But then what I noticed is that I had another part of me that came in that was very like defensive and it was very much a, you don't know me kind of part. And I know that I had like a little bit of an attitude and I could tell that she picked up on it, but I got very much like,
00:34:19
Speaker
trying to Like stop being so small and stand my ground to be able to say like you you don't know me You don't know what's best for me But after that I was able to like say okay I don't need to defend myself against this woman either because again like I
00:34:37
Speaker
she's not an actual threat. She's not telling me that I'm not good enough. Um, well she might be trying to tell me that, but that's not my truth in this moment. And so I was able to come back to like ground myself and center and be able to say like, why do I feel the need to defend myself against this rando lady? Um, I want to be able to hear what she's saying and get to a place of being able to take anything that's helpful, but leave anything that I, that I don't need anything that's toxic.
00:35:04
Speaker
Um, and that if there's any takeaway from this episode, like this is the big one is that I always encourage people that with whatever kind of professional that you're working with, don't, whether it's a therapist, a doctor, a trainer, um, a dietician, don't just take everything they say at face value. They are professionals. And so they're, but they're also coming from their point of view and no one knows you like yourself. So again, like,
00:35:30
Speaker
anything that you're told to do or told about yourself, think it over and decide, is this my truth? Is this something that I buy into? Is this something that I believe about myself? And if it is great, you learn something.
00:35:43
Speaker
if it's not, leave it. Just because it came from a professional does not mean that you have to take it on. And so the majority of what I heard that day I decided was not good for me, did not fit me. And so I left it behind. But because I was able to do that like untangling in the moment and grounding myself back to like being centered in myself, I was actually able to take like maybe two things that she said that I was like, okay, that makes sense.
00:36:10
Speaker
Um, I can remember that going forward. So one last little nugget that I want to leave you with is I left that day.
00:36:24
Speaker
like dying laughing. I got in the car immediately called my best friend and I was like, girl, you will not believe what I just went through. And we laughed so hard about like all the toxic things that she said. Um, and again, like we're bringing humor into it to, to get to a place of saying like,
00:36:42
Speaker
this shouldn't impact me. It shouldn't faze me what somebody else thinks of me, right? So again, like that's why we have the jokes now about like how I'm going to get blood cancer because I put Splenda, put one little Splenda in my coffee every morning. You know what I mean? So when I left, I was joking. Um, I felt fine. I felt honestly like really
Emotional Aftermath and Self-Reassurance
00:37:02
Speaker
unaffected. I was a little bit disappointed because I was like, dang, I guess I'm not going to have any outside accountability because at this point after an experience like that, obviously I'm not going to
00:37:11
Speaker
hire somebody else right now like too soon. But I will say and this actually caught me off guard but also just goes to show that again like I'm human and we all have things to work through but the next day
00:37:27
Speaker
I wasn't really even thinking about the conversation anymore. I wasn't really, like it was not on my mind, but there was something in my body, in my system that must have been feeling not good enough because I started to take everything that my husband said that day
00:37:42
Speaker
the wrong way. Like poor buddy couldn't say anything right. Like everything he said, I felt like he was telling me, like I was getting the message that I wasn't good enough. And that's how I know that there were some like younger parts of me, which again, like if you've never done any inner child work or any parts work, I really encourage you to do it because you start to learn a lot about yourself through it. But that's how I know that some of my younger parts were still hearing that message of you're not
00:38:07
Speaker
not good enough because of her words the day before and I was really like pissed off that it it did end up like impacting me more than I I wish it did but sometimes like we don't necessarily have control over that all I could do in the morning or in the moment was to
00:38:24
Speaker
Like take a step back and say like, okay, I am having a little bit of a response to this. What do I need to do for myself to reassure myself that I am good enough that her words don't hold any weight, that I'm not getting those messages from anybody around me the next day. And I had to do some of that work to like work through it a little bit because as much as we would like to think that people don't have an impact on us, sometimes they do, unfortunately.
00:38:50
Speaker
So that's it. That's all I've got. This was an extra long podcast, but I just felt like it was something that I really wanted to share because I think it's just an experience that a lot of people can relate to, unfortunately. So if you have any questions or comments, make sure you leave them below. I would love to respond to them and start a conversation about this. Or if you have any information or ideas that came from this podcast of like, Oh, dive into that a little bit more, definitely reach out to me on my Instagram or
00:39:20
Speaker
Um, you can obviously leave a comment on the podcast and I will respond to it as quickly as I can. And if you don't mind, help me get this podcast out there, share it with your friends, leave me a good review or just like it so that this podcast can reach more people. We'll talk to you later.
00:39:41
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Outside of Session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline.