Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of just nut butters of all kinds,
Speaker 1: but nutella is obviously like the holy Grail of nut butters.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the best. I've always relive the word.
Speaker 1: The phrase nut butter just sounds so a little bit illicit,
Speaker 1: and I love that nuts. You know, nuts are a
Speaker 1: little sexual. From Transmitter Media, this is Rebel Eaters Club
Speaker 1: and I'm your host, Virgie Tobar. Today we'll be eating
Speaker 1: nutella with a really good friend of mine, Isabel Box
Speaker 1: and Duke. I've known Isabel for almost a decade. We're
Speaker 1: neighbors now, and on a nice San Francisco day, you
Speaker 1: can find us walking around in the park discussing Pemma Showdred.
Speaker 1: We both talk with our hands and are known to
Speaker 1: fling a crumb or two while eating treats and talking
Speaker 1: loudly about how much we hate diet culture. Beyond being
Speaker 1: my friend, Isabella is kind of a big deal. She's
Speaker 1: a health coach who helps her clients break out of
Speaker 1: cycles of binging and restricting so they can finally make
Speaker 1: peace with food. I am so thrilled to talk with
Speaker 1: her today. Now let's get back to the nutella. I
Speaker 1: went to the I walked down to like the little
Speaker 1: coop down the street, and they have like that they
Speaker 1: had just gotten the bread delivery. So I got this
Speaker 1: like sweet, warm baby loaf of it's called like Duca.
Speaker 1: It's like a Duca bread and it's got seeds all
Speaker 1: over it, and it was like so dense and delicious.
Speaker 1: So I got that. I cut it up into I
Speaker 1: really love cutting my own bread into like really fat slices.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. Yeah, and the war is like the spongy,
Speaker 1: warm fluffy bread. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like spongy and
Speaker 1: dense and I love that. And then it's got like
Speaker 1: a nice crunch, which we're gonna I'm gonna crunch it
Speaker 1: in a minute. But also yeah, I just slathered nutella
Speaker 1: on it and then cut up some banana put that
Speaker 1: on top, and it was just oh so good. Should
Speaker 1: we share a bite together? Normally? I come down, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, Okay, here we go, okay three
Speaker 1: two one, no, no, okay, here we go. Oh glo, okay,
Speaker 1: where'd you get the full? Mmm? I like that right,
Speaker 1: very good. So tell us about why we're eating nutella.
Speaker 1: I always just thought that nutella was like the ultimate
Speaker 1: symbol of like bad foods that people like avoid in
Speaker 1: diet culture. You know, it was like the holy grail
Speaker 1: of that. It was the ultimate creamy, fatty sugar. Are
Speaker 1: you know everything that was villainized in diet culture like
Speaker 1: felt to be embodied by nutella. So yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: the best obviously, yes. Yeah. So the first time you
Speaker 1: encounter nutella, I want to go back to that moment
Speaker 1: or the first time you remember. I remember really discovering
Speaker 1: I went to France one summer I did like a
Speaker 1: teen tour in France when I was thirteen. I remember
Speaker 1: going to France and it being everywhere and thinking like
Speaker 1: this is the best food that ever existed. I was
Speaker 1: definitely attached to this really happy memory of just being
Speaker 1: like a free kid running around like being almost spoiled, right,
Speaker 1: I mean really, I'm like in France, I'm thirteen years
Speaker 1: old and I'm eating nutella creeps. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like really the ultimate decadent experience. That food represents
Speaker 1: that whole trip, that whole experience of my life. And
Speaker 1: I had loves in France. I had my thirteen year
Speaker 1: old love in France. I think I had my first
Speaker 1: kids in France that summer, maybe my first like real
Speaker 1: like makeout, you know, French frenched, and so there's just
Speaker 1: a lot and so there was just a lot of
Speaker 1: really positive, you know, feelings about that trip. I do
Speaker 1: remember coming back though, and freaking out that I had
Speaker 1: gained weight, and I remember thinking like, well, it's because
Speaker 1: of all the nutella that I ate. The villainization of
Speaker 1: nutella was like very quickly attached to the joy of nutella, right,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really remember ever thinking the nutella
Speaker 1: was really okay because by that age, by the age
Speaker 1: where I really discovered nutella, I was already pretty entrenched
Speaker 1: in diet culture. I was probably already I think I
Speaker 1: had like a full blown eating disorder at that point already,
Speaker 1: but I I yeah, so there was no time where
Speaker 1: I really felt nutella was a safe food. But I
Speaker 1: remember always thinking it was the fucking best food, you know.
Speaker 1: My first encounter with nutella was also abroad. I was
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. I was visiting extended family. It was
Speaker 1: like kind of you know, my grandmother had been waiting
Speaker 1: until I was sixteen to sort of take me on
Speaker 1: an identity pilgrimage to Mexico. So that I could meet
Speaker 1: our extended family. So I was in the town where
Speaker 1: my grandfather grew up, which is called San Luis Potosi
Speaker 1: in Mexico, and my we like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was my uncle or what he was like some
Speaker 1: kind of relation, and he brought home a jar of
Speaker 1: nutella as sort of just a hospitality gesture, and I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, what is this right? And
Speaker 1: then I put a spoon in it and it was
Speaker 1: like fireworks are going off. It's like the scene in
Speaker 1: a movie where you're like you see your first love
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, it's happening in my mouth.
Speaker 1: And I ate the whole jar that day. Like they
Speaker 1: were like you know that. I think the next one.
Speaker 1: They were like where the new tela go? And I'm like, whoops, um,
Speaker 1: So it was yeah, and then I have one, so
Speaker 1: I hadn't. I mean, I think that also what's interesting
Speaker 1: when you're talking about going to France, like my next
Speaker 1: my next chapter of nutella history, you know, novel or
Speaker 1: whatever is. I'm studying abroad in Italy and I have
Speaker 1: decided to turn this short term study abroad into a diet, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think that I was so drawn in by
Speaker 1: the idea that you could go overseas and then after
Speaker 1: like a few weeks or a few months, come back
Speaker 1: and be completely transformed, you know, like to the to
Speaker 1: the point that no one can even recognize. You're like
Speaker 1: your friends and your family are like, who's that, and
Speaker 1: You're like, it's me, um and um and Italy every summer,
Speaker 1: like every summer break, every it was. It was always
Speaker 1: that fantasy, every single time you were going to be
Speaker 1: like a way and then you'd come back a new person. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and it never happened, as we know, as diet cultures
Speaker 1: always always be disappointing us, right totally. But I'm like
Speaker 1: in Italy literally basically starving myself. Some friends are like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a good idea, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're just jealous. I'm in capable. I'm like
Speaker 1: completely completely in like I don't know, I'm in like
Speaker 1: the sunken place with my fat phobia, right, and I
Speaker 1: cannot understand these people's gestures of care as anything but jealousy.
Speaker 1: But then, you know, we're in Italy. People like the
Speaker 1: other people in the house I'm sharing with, you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, We're sharing a house like eight people
Speaker 1: or something, and someone always had new Tela in the
Speaker 1: you know, in like the kitchen, And of course in
Speaker 1: my moments where I would like, you know, could not
Speaker 1: just starve myself endlessly, I would just find the jar
Speaker 1: of new I would like sniff it out like a
Speaker 1: trouble pig, and like I would just eat. I would
Speaker 1: just eat as much and sometimes a whole jar and
Speaker 1: um yeah, and then like being called and then somebody
Speaker 1: being like, did someone eat my new Tela? And everyone
Speaker 1: knowing that it was me because I was like doing
Speaker 1: all this wild insane food restrictions, and then pretending that
Speaker 1: it wasn't me, and then finally caving out of shame
Speaker 1: and being like, I did eat it. I'm sorry, I'll
Speaker 1: replace your new Tela, and it all started over again.
Speaker 1: It's about like it was like a horrible it was
Speaker 1: like that horrible cycle. And I think, right like, and
Speaker 1: this kind of is starting to pivot into what you do,
Speaker 1: right Like, of course we have this sense that we're
Speaker 1: monsters that were terrible, but then you know, we realize
Speaker 1: that this kind of behavior is actually completely in line
Speaker 1: with what dieting and food restriction does to a person. Yeah. Completely,
Speaker 1: I want to get into that more in a second. Um,
Speaker 1: we we've known each other for a long time, but
Speaker 1: you've never told me. We've never had that moment where
Speaker 1: you tell me what your relationship to diet culture was, like,
Speaker 1: how you ended up the have to becoming a health
Speaker 1: coach who works with people who are recovering from chronic
Speaker 1: restriction or disordered eating. So, I, you know, had been
Speaker 1: a sort of classic diet in cycler. I was put
Speaker 1: on my first diet by my pediatrician when I was three,
Speaker 1: and I remember my mom lovingly refers to this diet
Speaker 1: as the broccoli and skim milk diet. I was like
Speaker 1: high on the BABYBMI scale. I was like, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: and the pediatrician said, oh, you gotta watch your weight,
Speaker 1: you gotta be careful. And so I don't have a
Speaker 1: memory of not being on a diet as far back
Speaker 1: as I have consciousness. I always just had this experience
Speaker 1: of myself as somebody who wanted more than I was
Speaker 1: supposed to have, and I loved food too much, and
Speaker 1: my desires around food were not good, and I had
Speaker 1: to actively sit on my hands and try not to
Speaker 1: eat because you know, if I ate what I really wanted,
Speaker 1: I would be fat. We all got this message. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to have a p fat phobic pediatrician to
Speaker 1: get the message that this was bad. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: about health, come on, I mean, it was lovability issue.
Speaker 1: It was a social issue. I remember I did have
Speaker 1: this feeling of like, if I was thinner, I'd be
Speaker 1: more popular and more people would love me. I'd get
Speaker 1: the boys to like me. And I had crushes going
Speaker 1: back to like the age of five, and I thought
Speaker 1: that thinness was the thing that was missing in my
Speaker 1: life as sort of like this like white, upper middle
Speaker 1: class girl that seemed like the only thing that maybe
Speaker 1: was the problem. Like it's like, well, yeah, if I'm thin,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna have everything. Life would be perfect when
Speaker 1: I was thin, right, I would get everything, I'd have
Speaker 1: all the attention, I'd have everything that I wanted. And that, fundamentally,
Speaker 1: my body and my appetite, right was my biggest problem.
Speaker 1: And so I spent my entire childhood into my adolescence
Speaker 1: trying to control my appetite but not being able to,
Speaker 1: then hating myself for not being able to, then trying harder.
Speaker 1: The next day, and then not being falling again even
Speaker 1: more intensely. The more I would restrict, the more I
Speaker 1: would binge, the more I would hate myself, the more
Speaker 1: I would try to restrict, until eventually you do get
Speaker 1: into like real clinical eating disorder behaviors. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember being so desperate, right, I mean I was. I
Speaker 1: think I was throwing up my food by age ten
Speaker 1: or eleven, and so this went on throughout my whole
Speaker 1: childhood and adolescence, through high school and college. And then
Speaker 1: I remember so even at some point I discovered stimulants, right,
Speaker 1: appetite suppressants, cocaine, adderall, and that really was the only
Speaker 1: time I was ever able to actually lose a significant
Speaker 1: amount of weight and quote unquote stick to my diet
Speaker 1: was when I was using drugs, and that very quickly
Speaker 1: landed me into rehab. So I was nineteen when I
Speaker 1: went to rehab for an eating disorder, and eating disorder
Speaker 1: slash cocaine whatever, it was really just basically needing disorder,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is so great. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to treatment and they're going to teach me
Speaker 1: how to not binge without drugs. I remember being in
Speaker 1: the intake and I said, if you can teach me
Speaker 1: how to control my weight without coke, I'll quit tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I will have I will give up drugs tomorrow if
Speaker 1: you can teach me how to control my weight without it.
Speaker 1: And they said, yep, we can do that. And when
Speaker 1: I was in treatment, and this was like a fancy,
Speaker 1: rich girl rehab, right, I mean, this was like the
Speaker 1: highest level luxury healthcare you could be getting. I think
Speaker 1: my parents, my mother spent one hundred thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: treatments for me that year. And and what I got
Speaker 1: was I mean, I got clean, right, I mean I
Speaker 1: was in an environment where I couldn't do drugs, so
Speaker 1: I did get clean. But you know, functionally, what they
Speaker 1: were doing with food is they just put me on
Speaker 1: a meal plan that was less food than my body
Speaker 1: actually needed. Because the meal plan was designed to keep
Speaker 1: me in the BMI range right, right, not to heal you,
Speaker 1: but to keep you in the range, to keep me
Speaker 1: in the BMI range, right. There was no real rehab.
Speaker 1: There was no like you know, we had group therapy
Speaker 1: where we would talk about our feelings, but then we'd
Speaker 1: have to go eat our meal plan calorie allotment. And
Speaker 1: that was the treatment. And I remember, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of coming out of rehab and I was like, what's
Speaker 1: you know, what's the aftercare plan? And they would say,
Speaker 1: go to OA, go to Overreaters Anonymous, and stick to
Speaker 1: your meal plan and you know, work with a nutritionist
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, like have a nutritionist watch over
Speaker 1: your meal plan essentially right. Like, So I came back
Speaker 1: and I was working with the nutritionist. And when I
Speaker 1: worked with the nutritionist is the same thing. It was
Speaker 1: all about. She would weigh me every week and like adjust.
Speaker 1: We'd talk about what I was eating and we would
Speaker 1: adjust the food to keep me in the weight range.
Speaker 1: It was all about keeping me in the weight range.
Speaker 1: So I, again very quickly after getting out of rehab,
Speaker 1: could not stick to any kind of meal plan. I
Speaker 1: had the same problem. Nothing changed. I wasn't doing drugs,
Speaker 1: which was good, but I could not stick to my
Speaker 1: meal plan. And I realized, I think, like I remember
Speaker 1: being in an Overreader's Anonymous meeting and I met someone
Speaker 1: who is, like to this day, one of my best
Speaker 1: friends in the entire world. And she somehow came across
Speaker 1: a Janine Roth book. I don't know if you are
Speaker 1: you familiar with Genine Roth. Yes, yes, yeah, So she
Speaker 1: came across a Janine Roth book, and this was my
Speaker 1: first introduction to the concept of intuitive eating. This was
Speaker 1: my first introduction to the concept that you have hunger signals,
Speaker 1: that you have a body that gives you information about
Speaker 1: what it needs. I didn't know that. I thought that
Speaker 1: what your body needs is whatever it needs to stay
Speaker 1: in the weight range. The idea that I was supposed
Speaker 1: to listen to my hunger on food, that that was
Speaker 1: like important, was pretty new. The idea was, if you're
Speaker 1: listening to your hunger signals correctly, right, if you're really
Speaker 1: waiting until you're hungry and really stopping when you're full,
Speaker 1: you will be thin. That was the message. So this
Speaker 1: is what I call the intuitive eating diet, or the
Speaker 1: hunger and fullness diet. And I became totally, like, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty obsessed with the hunger and fullness diet. But I
Speaker 1: would fall off of it. I couldn't stick to the
Speaker 1: hunger and fullness diet either. Sure, No, I would eat
Speaker 1: way past the point of full in quotes, and I
Speaker 1: would eat when I quote unquote wasn't hungry whatever that
Speaker 1: means all the time, right, So I couldn't stick to
Speaker 1: the Hunger and Fullness diet. And then I mean I
Speaker 1: went through many different iterations of the hunger and Fullness diet.
Speaker 1: At one point I was involved with the Way Down Diet,
Speaker 1: really super very intense Christian group, this church that basically
Speaker 1: it's a lot of like pray to God to not
Speaker 1: eat when you're not hungry, because when you want to
Speaker 1: you when you're not hungry, it's like a spiritual malady, right,
Speaker 1: And so I was even like a weight lost church.
Speaker 1: It's a wait losch church. Yeah it's church. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's a documentary about this. It's actually quite disturbing.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty much it's a cult. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: how culty it was when I was doing it because
Speaker 1: I wasn't actively in the church. I was just you know,
Speaker 1: buying all the programs and reading all the books, you know.
Speaker 1: And I remember you're supposed to wait until you have
Speaker 1: a growl in your stomach to eat, and if you
Speaker 1: eat before you have a growl in your stomach, that's
Speaker 1: a sin. Wow wow wow, very intense. I mean I
Speaker 1: was starving myself. It's a starvation program. And I remember
Speaker 1: having a huge binge eating episode. I was like, couldn't
Speaker 1: hang on any longer, binged my face off. It was
Speaker 1: like four days in the fetal position, could barely, very
Speaker 1: physically uncomfortable, like low bottom binge eating, where I like
Speaker 1: call had to call in sick from work because I
Speaker 1: was so full and stuffed that I just could not
Speaker 1: really breathe or move. I felt like I was in
Speaker 1: the depths of hell. I'm sitting there, like sweating, so full,
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable, calling and sick from work, and I'm just
Speaker 1: like I call it like my final, my final binge.
Speaker 1: I'm just not in control of my food. I can't
Speaker 1: do it. I can't get up and try again tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I can't. It was like a surrender moment of like
Speaker 1: perhaps I'm just a person who's going to have a
Speaker 1: jar of nutella and I can't do anything about it
Speaker 1: because every time I try, I end up here and
Speaker 1: I can't be here anymore. I cannot be like face
Speaker 1: down in my bed hating myself because I fell off
Speaker 1: the wagon. I don't have the energy to keep trying
Speaker 1: to control my food, and so I just gave up.
Speaker 1: I gave up. I was like, screw it. If I
Speaker 1: gain weight. I gain weight if I eat whatever I eat. What.
Speaker 1: I can't think about this anymore. I can't have my
Speaker 1: life revolve around this anymore. I'm just gonna let myself
Speaker 1: just eat and whatever my weight will be will be.
Speaker 1: And the magical thing that happened was I ate. I
Speaker 1: gained weight, But I never had a four day bender
Speaker 1: where I just wanted to die ever again after that,
Speaker 1: you know, like it was like the really intense binge
Speaker 1: eating episodes that the hardcore diet inch cyclers have experienced.
Speaker 1: And if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: That never happened to me again. Did I have days
Speaker 1: where I had a jar of nutella? Absolutely? I could
Speaker 1: still have that day. You know, Stabilized, normalized food doesn't
Speaker 1: look like what diet culture tells you it's gonna look
Speaker 1: like right right right. And I feel like you and
Speaker 1: I have talked about this. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: quite called it radical hopeless, yes, but I think there
Speaker 1: is a rocket of hopelessness, the gift of he does Yeah,
Speaker 1: giving up was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: That was the healing, giving up the hope of dieting
Speaker 1: will ever work for me, I kind of want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of the points on
Speaker 1: the journey, like one of them being I mean, right,
Speaker 1: you can be eating in a way that where you
Speaker 1: do not feel controlled by food, and that could look
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways. Some days it can look
Speaker 1: like the drive to tell us. Some days it looks
Speaker 1: like whatever. Some days, you know, I mean, it can
Speaker 1: look a lot of different ways. The other thing is
Speaker 1: at the end of you know, creating a relationship with
Speaker 1: food that is peaceful and not adversarial, or that like
Speaker 1: it is as joyful and peaceful as possible, like in
Speaker 1: the context of such an anxiety written food phobic culture.
Speaker 1: At the end of that, there is no guarantee of
Speaker 1: what kind of body you're going to have. At the
Speaker 1: end of that, that can be complete. You can have
Speaker 1: this beautiful, wonderful I would use the word healthy relationship
Speaker 1: to food. And you could be a thin person, you
Speaker 1: could be a fat person. It's like all over that
Speaker 1: there's no guarantees on this, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: really scary for a lot of people, and I think
Speaker 1: for a lot of people it can be really liberating
Speaker 1: and normal. I think for me it felt really liberated like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the body I'm supposed to have. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think going back to sort of radical hopelessness can
Speaker 1: look like that moment, you know, where you're in the
Speaker 1: fetal position and you have to call out of work.
Speaker 1: It can also be the moment where you sort of
Speaker 1: have to come to terms with the fact that you
Speaker 1: ultimately can't control the size of your body pretty much
Speaker 1: unless you want to, unless you want this to run
Speaker 1: your entire life, right, And I'm curious about you, know,
Speaker 1: as a coach, I know you have brought people to
Speaker 1: the gift of hopelessness or help them usshered them to
Speaker 1: their And I'm curious, like, what is that like for people?
Speaker 1: Is that something I mean talk about the gift of hopelessness.
Speaker 1: I mean, the gift of hopelessness is the most it
Speaker 1: is the core of my teaching. I really think that. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're like number one goal is I just don't
Speaker 1: want to have an eating disorder anymore, Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to have this like crazy relationship with food anymore.
Speaker 1: Once you really get to the point where you're like,
Speaker 1: I just can't diet. I am hopeless on dieting. I
Speaker 1: am hopeless on trying to control my food, trying to
Speaker 1: control my body. That's when the real healing comes with food, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's when you're like, Okay, food's just gonna be food.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be what it's going to be. This is
Speaker 1: what we call acceptance body acceptance. I can still struggle
Speaker 1: with my body image. I can still struggle with fat
Speaker 1: phobia on any number of levels. But fundamentally, if you
Speaker 1: are hopeless on dieting saving you from that pain, that's
Speaker 1: your food is just going to be your food. Right now.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem I think with hopelessness is that hope
Speaker 1: grows back. If I'm really struggling with my body image,
Speaker 1: if I'm having pain around my body related trauma in
Speaker 1: some way, all of the sudden dieting seems like maybe
Speaker 1: it's a good idea. Maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe
Speaker 1: if I just do this, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go back to that crazy dieting. I'm just gonna be
Speaker 1: like a little dieting or I'm just gonna be like
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah, right, dieting is the real coping mechanism. Right.
Speaker 1: People talk a big game about emotional bleating or whatever,
Speaker 1: like you want to know what's really hard giving up
Speaker 1: dieting when you're in pain about your body, when you're
Speaker 1: having emotional pain about your body related trauma. This is
Speaker 1: the thing, and this is what I've been trying to
Speaker 1: you know, more and more tell people as I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, Isabel, like you're using the word hope, I
Speaker 1: might use the word you're triggered. Right. We think of
Speaker 1: dieting as like healthful behavior. We think of that moment
Speaker 1: when we want to get thin as optimization. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it's all just you being triggered when you restrict. It's
Speaker 1: it's a reaction. It's what you've been taught to do
Speaker 1: to cope when you are triggered. To your point around
Speaker 1: the pain that you have been taught that something's wrong
Speaker 1: with your body, something's wrong with how you eat. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know, and there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that. There's a biological reason for that. Actually, So
Speaker 1: when we are in fight or flight, when we are anxious,
Speaker 1: when we are in trauma's response, we literally our brains
Speaker 1: start to look for how do I get out of
Speaker 1: this pain? Right? What can I get control over? Biologically,
Speaker 1: part of what that is is you start to develop
Speaker 1: something called threat bias, which means you're looking for problems
Speaker 1: to solve. What can I control, What can I, you know,
Speaker 1: do to make myself safer? And so dieting is like,
Speaker 1: in the absence of an obvious solution to my problem,
Speaker 1: dieting is just this like always there in this corner
Speaker 1: of like, oh, this is something you can control, right, well,
Speaker 1: there's a little weight, you know, why you're bodying your
Speaker 1: body is always something you can try to control, right
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like I'm having difficult feelings and
Speaker 1: I'm just in them, and there's really nothing to be
Speaker 1: done about it other than just be with my feelings.
Speaker 1: If I'm trying to escape those difficult feelings, but I
Speaker 1: don't really have a real solution to that problem. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like any control mechanism out there will
Speaker 1: start to look feel like a good idea. And sometimes
Speaker 1: this could this could be you know, the pain might
Speaker 1: come from like actual fatphobia in the world. But you know,
Speaker 1: even if you're just an anxious person, right, it's this
Speaker 1: projection of all of my anxiety onto my body as
Speaker 1: the thing to control to take me out of this
Speaker 1: pain that I'm in. Does that kind of make sass
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah. Absolutely, It's like, you know, it feels
Speaker 1: unsafe to be in my body. What can I do
Speaker 1: to escape from this, get a sense of control over
Speaker 1: this feeling which feels very overwhelming. I mean absolutely, And
Speaker 1: I think again, there's this idea that you talk about
Speaker 1: this a lot, the idea of a lot of people
Speaker 1: think of an eating disorder as something that is sort
Speaker 1: of self contained, like there is something wrong with me,
Speaker 1: there is something wrong with my relationship to food or
Speaker 1: my relationship to my body, without understanding this is happening
Speaker 1: in an ecosystem where all of these things end up
Speaker 1: becoming inevitable for a certain percentage of the population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say that every diet of dieters
Speaker 1: by definition, are dealing with this up and down. This
Speaker 1: is most people's experience in some way or another, right.
Speaker 1: I think some people have more severe ups and downs,
Speaker 1: and they usually just match the degree to which we're
Speaker 1: restricting or making ourselves wrong or being perfectionistic with food
Speaker 1: or whatever. I call it. Diep In cycling physics, the
Speaker 1: farther I pull the bow back on the bow and
Speaker 1: arrow the farther it's going to fly in the other direction.
Speaker 1: In the second I let it go, and then it's like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, it flew in the other direction. Let mela
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, myself back right, and then it just
Speaker 1: keeps happening. And this is this is diep in cycling
Speaker 1: classically defined, and most people are experiencing this. The small
Speaker 1: group of people who are not experiencing this, who are
Speaker 1: successfully sitting on their hands and really you know, holding
Speaker 1: it down for years on end, that's when you start
Speaker 1: to really see symptoms of clinically restrict of eating disorders
Speaker 1: like anorexia. So you know, I always am like, I
Speaker 1: do not feel jealous anymore. I did I used to do.
Speaker 1: I used to feel jealous of people that could restrict,
Speaker 1: that had the capacity restrict. I'd be like, I would
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? I never I never thought I
Speaker 1: had an eating disorder because I wasn't capable of maintaining restriction,
Speaker 1: and I would be jealous similar soime too, Now I realize,
Speaker 1: actually the folks who are really capable of long term
Speaker 1: restriction are often in more pain than anyone else because that,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no relief. It's constant self denial and
Speaker 1: self harm with zero relief. Binges are fundamentally relieving, they
Speaker 1: are medicis and all. They're actually a healthy response to deprivation. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank God for my binges because they kept me alive,
Speaker 1: they kept me out of the hospital, And I mean
Speaker 1: I can feel that in my whole body. What you're
Speaker 1: talking about is binging is healthy responses, normal responses, self
Speaker 1: care in some way. You know. I think it's so
Speaker 1: it's so difficult in this moment to understand things like
Speaker 1: something like quote unquote binging, which is so deeply shamed
Speaker 1: and mythologized in our culture, to actually sort of see
Speaker 1: it as like, you know, as an act of self care.
Speaker 1: Is your body sort of coming in and taking over
Speaker 1: and helping you survive. And I don't think we have
Speaker 1: the space right now to even think of how amazing
Speaker 1: that is. It's a I mean, yeah, I have an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of gratitude now for that. And you know,
Speaker 1: really it's a massive shift of consciousness to think that
Speaker 1: my desires for food are good, that my desires for
Speaker 1: food are healthy and keep alive, that my desires food
Speaker 1: are fundamentally safety mechanisms. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I mean
Speaker 1: I've just been thinking. I mean, for me, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm always like, I don't like the quote unquote
Speaker 1: healthy quote unquote unhealthy eating binary. I'm like, anything fundamentally
Speaker 1: right when we're talking about the bare minimum, anything that
Speaker 1: is there to help you survive, that's going to keep
Speaker 1: you alive, I would say, is in the healthy camp, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely not eating right. I'm like, and so I think, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I always have trouble with those kinds of binaries.
Speaker 1: But you know, let's let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: um sort of fat phobia and what that looks like.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're working with a client who maybe
Speaker 1: is a thin bodied person versus a larger bodied person.
Speaker 1: You know, like a thin person can have an extremely
Speaker 1: high level of body dysmorphia, which is very unpleasant, but
Speaker 1: may not be dealing with you know, likely is not
Speaker 1: dealing with structural cultural fat phobia. I'm just thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: when you're working with a thin client versus a fat
Speaker 1: client who might be facing fat phobia. I mean, what, like,
Speaker 1: what's the difference in those two trajectories. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: the challenges that a fat person is facing in terms
Speaker 1: of externalized or institutional or interpersonal fat phobia are just
Speaker 1: going to be structurally and fundamentally different. They're just dealing
Speaker 1: with you know. So if you think about like fat
Speaker 1: phobia can be broken down into institutional, interpersonal, and intra personal. Right,
Speaker 1: if a thin person is not dealing with institutional fat phobia,
Speaker 1: they just do not. They're completely they have the privilege
Speaker 1: which is never having to deal with that particular set
Speaker 1: of challenges. The interpersonal fat phobia that they're dealing with
Speaker 1: is also probably quite reduced. That being said, I think
Speaker 1: what's complicated for thin people is that even thin people
Speaker 1: are not necessarily immune from having had fat phobic experiences
Speaker 1: in childhood and also witness fat phobia and seeing how
Speaker 1: people get treated differently on the basis of body size.
Speaker 1: It's like thin people still like see that and they
Speaker 1: like kind of internalize the fear of fat, even if
Speaker 1: they're not experiencing the fat phobia. So it is undoubtedly
Speaker 1: clear that larger people are dealing with way more shit
Speaker 1: than thin people in terms of the challenges that they
Speaker 1: need to overcome, because they're also potentially also dealing with
Speaker 1: the anxiety. That's the other thing about you know, living
Speaker 1: in a fat body, you're dealing with all of the
Speaker 1: institutional fatphobia, all the introversonal faphobia, all the stuff, and
Speaker 1: you may also have trauma and anxiety and things that
Speaker 1: predispose you to disordered eating even if you weren't in
Speaker 1: a fat body, right, so it's like a triple action
Speaker 1: threat potentially happening. But yeah, it just gets like really murky,
Speaker 1: like where the line is I guess between am I
Speaker 1: totally projecting something irrational onto my body? Is this like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have an eating disorder because it's really about something else.
Speaker 1: It's not really about fat phobia. It's just you know,
Speaker 1: you're projecting you know, your anxiety and your trauma onto
Speaker 1: your body. Or does having had experience of fat phobia
Speaker 1: and childhood or having a mother who was a diet
Speaker 1: or who was constantly you know, put putting yourself down,
Speaker 1: or having a mother who constantly put you down even
Speaker 1: if you were in a you know, thin body. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just the line starts to get really weird in
Speaker 1: terms of what's caused by quote unquote active external fat
Speaker 1: phobia and what's an anxious or trauma response projection, And
Speaker 1: like making a distinction between those two is really hard
Speaker 1: to do because no matter what body you live and
Speaker 1: you still live in a fatphobia culture, some kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense absolutely. I mean that's the thing where I
Speaker 1: use the I use them. I often use the metaphor
Speaker 1: of like breaking up and diet culture as your ex
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I think what's hard about diet culture,
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of other types of trauma, is that
Speaker 1: you know, some trauma is safely in your rear view mirror.
Speaker 1: You can deal with it, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: tell yourself, I'm never going to be like if it
Speaker 1: happened as a kid, I'm never gonna be five years
Speaker 1: old that you know, I'm never gonna be dependent on
Speaker 1: my parents that exact same way. But with that phobia
Speaker 1: and working through food issues and body anxiety, it's like
Speaker 1: running into your X every damn day, Like everywhere you go,
Speaker 1: your X is like there, and so you're trying to
Speaker 1: heal while also actively running into them when you're grocery shopping,
Speaker 1: when you're going to get coffee, when you're going to
Speaker 1: get your new tela, when you're trying to go on
Speaker 1: a date with someone else. Right, like right, I think
Speaker 1: exactly of the that's what's that's one of the biggest
Speaker 1: challenges I think right about the recovery is that the trauma.
Speaker 1: It's like my friend, my friend once told me, you
Speaker 1: can forgive someone who has slapped you in the past,
Speaker 1: but you cannot forgive someone who is still slapping you. Yes,
Speaker 1: this what's so hard. It's like we're still getting slapped.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to forgive, right solves, let alone anything
Speaker 1: right when we're still actively in this place where we're
Speaker 1: getting lambasted all the time, you know. Right. So this
Speaker 1: is where I mean a good portion of my work,
Speaker 1: and this is you know, with people of all body sizes, right,
Speaker 1: A good portion of my work is when it comes
Speaker 1: to just dealing with the culture. Right, is where can
Speaker 1: I realistically protect myself? Are there boundaries that I can
Speaker 1: realistically input to keep to protect myself from the culture, Right,
Speaker 1: Like maybe I don't talk to my faphobic mother, maybe
Speaker 1: I don't you know, follow the Kardashians on Instagram, Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there are what can I actively do? What is a
Speaker 1: realistic thing that I can do to divorce myself and
Speaker 1: take myself out of that kind of violent environment. But
Speaker 1: then realistically you're going to come up short there, right,
Speaker 1: So then what's the game plan then, And I mean
Speaker 1: I would argue probably, you know, a big part of
Speaker 1: it is like repair, right, like being able to like
Speaker 1: self soothe and like, you know, how can I self
Speaker 1: care after I'm harmed when harm is not avoidable. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of clients whose spouses are really fat
Speaker 1: phobic spouses who are you know, basically threatening them with
Speaker 1: you know, I need you to be losing weight. I
Speaker 1: mean that's a really different way of children you have
Speaker 1: a family. I mean that is a heartbreaking situation. It's
Speaker 1: like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, working with people around you know, what are
Speaker 1: the boundaries that you personally feel comfortable setting, Like what
Speaker 1: are your lines in the sand where you can remove
Speaker 1: yourself from toxicity and where you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: you may be deciding to stay in an environment that
Speaker 1: may be fat phobic because of these other things. Right,
Speaker 1: it just gets really it's a lot. But yeah, what
Speaker 1: can I do to change my environment? Where can I
Speaker 1: set boundaries and my environment? And where do I need
Speaker 1: to like how can I take care of myself when
Speaker 1: I am exposed to fat phobia in a way that
Speaker 1: harms me? Yeah, Okay, So actually I've just have one
Speaker 1: last question for you, Isabel. Are you ready, Yes, let's
Speaker 1: do it. Okay. I want you to pretend that you're traveling.
Speaker 1: You're in the future. If you're I don't know how
Speaker 1: long in the future, but it's a time when you
Speaker 1: can look back at what we're all living through around
Speaker 1: diet culture and food and bodies. It's you're safely that's
Speaker 1: safely in the past. We're no longer doing that. What
Speaker 1: is your future self saying about this very moment, like
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two that we're living in now when it
Speaker 1: comes to like how we deal with food and body
Speaker 1: and diet culture, you know, I think that honestly, I
Speaker 1: just have so much compassion. Like when I think about that,
Speaker 1: when I think about like looking back on history and
Speaker 1: thinking about that must have been so hard and so painful,
Speaker 1: and it makes me so sad, and I just it's
Speaker 1: like my heart breaks, and but there's like a real
Speaker 1: it's just compassion. Like I just feel so much compassion,
Speaker 1: and that's like one of the most important tools you
Speaker 1: could have, I think in this process on this journey
Speaker 1: is just really looking at your diet recovery journey through
Speaker 1: the lens of compassion, you know, looking at your body
Speaker 1: image challenges through the lens of compassion, of like, none
Speaker 1: of this is your fault. How can you just really
Speaker 1: like love yourself and be compassionate towards yourself through this
Speaker 1: like violence that we're experiencing as a collective. M Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I absolutely love that. I absolutely agree, Isabel.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. This is so special. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: feel like such a special kinship with you, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's just a treat. It's really a treat. Ah.
Speaker 1: Same same, And thank you for sharing some new tele
Speaker 1: banana business with me anytime you want to share a
Speaker 1: new telebanana. Wow. Okay, let's take a moment to contemplate
Speaker 1: radical hopelessness. Yes, that moment when you understand that dieting
Speaker 1: just doesn't work, that it will never work, that it's
Speaker 1: not your fault, and your body will just be the
Speaker 1: way that it wants to be. That is a moment
Speaker 1: of power. As Isabel just taught us, dieting is the
Speaker 1: real coping mechanism. Most of us need help coping. How
Speaker 1: can we trade out dieting for something that doesn't eat
Speaker 1: our souls, though, I personally recommend thrifting watercolors and perfecting
Speaker 1: your heckling skills. If you have thoughts on the conversation
Speaker 1: you just heard, or even if you just want to
Speaker 1: say hi, reach out via social media. DM me at
Speaker 1: Virgie Tovar, DM the show's producers at Transmitter Pods, or
Speaker 1: shoot us a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Transmitter Media. This episode was produced by showshe shol Events.
Speaker 1: Sarah Knicks is Transmitters executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our
Speaker 1: managing producer, and Greta Cohen is our executive producer. And
Speaker 1: I'm your host Virgie Tobar. Rick Kwan is our mixed engineer.
Speaker 1: And thanks to Taka Yazawa who wrote some of the
Speaker 1: music we use in the show. If you love Rubbel
Speaker 1: Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by
Speaker 1: writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See you
Speaker 1: next week