Walk Together Fiercely
Walking Together Fiercely is a fun and bouncy podcast, hosted by Psychic Medium, Michelle Morrison and Naturopathic Doctor, Tara Drummond. Together, they bring forward numerous topics about well being, health, Spirituality and just being human in a diverse, busy and sometimes chaotic world. Celebrating our differences and the things we have in common, all with a sense of humor and compassion. With guest speakers bringing their amazing wisdom and talents forward, we are creating a safe space where we can talk about a variety of topics and learn and grow in positive and empowering ways. Being more in tune within, more intuitive and aware in all areas of life and living the best life you can live. Our intention is to create a beautiful community of amazing souls who want to hold one another up as we all walk our journey with kindness, laughter, compassion, love and joy. We are so glad you are here and we look forward to taking this journey with you!
Walk Together Fiercely
Empowering Your Relationship with Food: Intuitive Eating and Body Positivity with Jenn the Dietician
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Are you tired of the endless cycle of dieting and the guilt that comes with every bite you take? Feel the liberation as Jenn Messina, our vibrant anti-diet dietitian and wellness coach, joins us to share her empowering approach to intuitive eating. Our conversation will guide you through shedding the shame from your meals and learning to listen to your body's needs. Jenn's insights into how societal pressures can distort our self-image and our children's relationship with food are nothing short of a revelation.
This episode goes beyond simply what we put on our plates, delving into the psychological tango between our emotions and food choices. Imagine understanding your cravings without judgment, satisfying your hunger with kindness, and reshaping the narrative around food from a tool of punishment to one of nourishment. We'll unwrap the layers of food neutrality and tackle the 'all or nothing' mindset that so often sabotages our eating habits. Indulge in a serving of wisdom as we explore the balance between enjoying life's treats and meeting our nutrient needs, especially when it comes to guiding the little ones in our lives.
Lastly, prepare to challenge the deeply-rooted beliefs instilled by the beauty and diet industries that have long influenced how we perceive our bodies. Jenn illuminates the path towards body positivity and acceptance, encouraging us to embrace diversity and reject unrealistic standards. This conversation is an invitation to foster a supportive environment for our children, teaching them to grow in confidence and well-being, no matter their shape or size. Tune in for an episode that's not just about food, but about nourishing your whole self – body, mind, and soul. Let's Walk Together Fiercely through Empowering Your Relationship with Food and Intuitive Eating with the amazing Jenn the Dietician!
Check out Jenn's website and follow her on social media!
Jenn Messina
Instagram: @jennthedietician
Facebook: North Vancouver Dietician
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For more information about Dr. Tara, you can find her on Instagram at: @drtaradrummond
For more information about Michelle, you can find her on her website: www.thebalancedsoul.com
Instagram: @michellemorrisonmedium
Facebook: @Michelle Morrison Psychic Medium
Welcome to Walk Together Fiercely. We are just so glad to have you here. We invite and we also thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for choosing to spend some of your precious time with us. We know how valuable it is. I am Michelle Morrison. I am a medium and an intuitive and I support people to make beautiful spiritual connections with loved ones on the other side, with angels and spirit guides, and I love helping people tune into their own amazing intuition spirit guides. And I love helping people tune into their own amazing intuition.
Speaker 2:I am Dr Tara Drummond and I'm a naturopathic doctor and I'm passionate about empowering people in all aspects of health and well-being. Our intention is to create community and connection. We do that with open hearts, minds and a whole lot of love and laughter. The more we know ourselves, the deeper connection we can have within, which allows us to deepen connections around us.
Speaker 1:We feel so passionately about this, you matter, that you are so important and that you belong, and we are creating and connecting to the hearts and wisdom of our bodies, mind and spirits, nurturing and growing compassion, empathy and community. We know that we are so much better together, and so let's walk together fiercely through this beautiful, sometimes really challenging life as light warriors of love. Together, with open minds and hearts, we can create a community where we celebrate, play and thrive.
Speaker 3:Thank you for being here, Hi Jen. Hello, thanks for having me today.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, we're just both, tara and I, are just so, so happy that you have taken time out of your very busy schedule to join us and we've been this is the first time we've met today. But Tara and I were saying we feel like we know you because we've been following your platform for a bit of time and just loving your messaging, and I was saying to Tara I really wish that I had had this when my children were small. Mine are grown and flown, but this is like beautiful messaging particularly, I think well, not only for everybody but also parents with children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah so, jen, you are a wellness coach and a dietician and you help people to thrive in their bodies in their best way, meeting them where they are at and helping them with their food and nutrition needs. Do you want to speak to and share with our listeners a little bit more about what it is that you do exactly?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm. I call myself an anti diet dietitian, so I'm a registered dietitian. I've been a dietitian for 17 years, but I really focus on helping people remove guilt and shame around food and heal their relationship with food and their body. I think, unfortunately, the term dietitian has the word diet in it, and so some people think that I put people on diets. So I'm quite a different dietitian.
Speaker 3:I focus on intuitive eating, and so what I do is work on your relationship with food. I think many of us realize that, like a bag of chips, maybe not as nutritious as like a fruit salad, but why are we choosing certain things? So I really focus on more of the psychology around eating and how you know. Like you know, what we feed ourselves then influences how we feel in our body and how we show up in the world. The other area of specific interest for me is pediatric nutrition. So um is helping parents raise their kids to become intuitive eaters and have a healthier relationship with food than maybe they grew up with Um. So I help parents with with.
Speaker 3:You know, lots of different challenges selective eating, body image work, you know, questions around sweets and trying to navigate, you know, a world that tells us that we're always doing a bad job. So what is actually true in terms of messaging and what does the research show in terms of like exposure to certain foods? Like, for example, someone just asked me the other day, um, about sweets, and they said their partner is very restrictive around sweets. You know, trying to help their kids become healthy, um, but what the research is actually showing is that restrictive feeding practices actually increases the drive to want to eat some of these foods that are what we call like off limits and then can, in turn, have negative consequences in terms of the child actually gaining more weight, because there's other things going on like sneaking or hoarding or binge eating when they have the opportunity. So so I focus a lot on, like I said, that relationship with food and helping parents and most particularly women heal from the narrative that they've grown up with around food in their body.
Speaker 3:I think my page on social media has a lot of nutrition for families and kids, but I would say about half or maybe 40% of my page are people that don't have kids. But kids are grown, but they're looking to reparent themselves around food. So, looking at their own, how were they raised around food and how could things have been different if they had different messaging? And how can they work towards healing their relationship with food now, knowing that their body was never the problem? So that's kind of, in a nutshell, a little bit more about what I do and pushing back against societal narratives around the ideal body and where that comes from and who makes money off that. That's like another area that I I really like talking about. So I talk with schools, I talk with teachers, I talk with parent groups. Um, and that's kind of my area of passion is this um, food, body connection and relationship.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love teaching them that their body is not the problem. That's big.
Speaker 3:Imagine we learn that like. Imagine having someone tell you that your body was never the problem. It's these societal media messages that have told you from the earliest memories that your body is wrong and in order to fix your body, you need to buy all these products, right? So I think that's what I do in schools and often kids just like buy all these products right. So I think that's what I do in schools, and often kids just like look at me with these big saucer eyes when I tell them that body dissatisfaction is big business, right? Somebody makes money off of you, not liking your.
Speaker 1:I never thought of it that way. Boom yeah when you. You had me at hello FY, but, but when you said intuitive eating, could you speak to what that is and what it means?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely so. Intuitive eating on social media is different than what intuitive eating actually is. So I'm a certified intuitive eating coach. So, basically, intuitive eating on social media is like thin white women eating cupcakes, and what it is is actually healing your relationship with food, and there is a component. So there's 10 principles. One of the principles is, um, like all foods fit, or unconditional permission to eat. But there's all these other principles around there.
Speaker 3:So things like challenging the food police, like noticing when you have that narrative in your head telling you like that's good, that's bad, you know, rejecting diet culture and the diet mentality, rejecting the notion that you have to be thin in order to be healthy. So there's so many other components of it that aren't like and there is like. So people will say to me well, it's not healthy just to eat like junk food all the time. And I'll say, well, there is a component of intuitive eating which is called gentle nutrition. So gentle nutrition is like fueling yourself in a way, because it gets if you eat like. If any of us know, we go on holidays, we go to like an all inclusive, we feel like kind of sick afterwards and we're like ready to like have some, like fresh food, like have more protein, that's like not deep fried. So part of the intuitive eating process is that healing and allowing yourself all foods, unconditional permission. But as we move through the journey, we also look at like what, what do you need in your body in order to feel good? So for me, for example, like if I don't have enough protein or I don't have the fiber with my meals, I'm hungry, like pretty soon, and I don't have enough protein, or I don't have the fiber with my meals, I'm hungry, like pretty soon, and I don't have time to like eat every hour, right. So you know, in order for me to like feel my best, I need to be adding certain things in. But generally we leave the principles of gentle nutrition to the end, because what we find is that we don't want to turn intuitive eating into another diet.
Speaker 3:It's not the hunger and fullness diet, right? So intuitive eating is also tuning into your body's wisdom and cues around hunger and fullness. But many of us are disconnected from those cues because of years or decades of dieting. So I had somebody the other day and she said you know, jen, I don't know when I'm full, like I just stop eating when I'm either exploding or when I notice that no one else is eating anymore. So she didn't have those cues.
Speaker 3:So really is what we do is work towards like reclaiming those cues. What are your cues? And it's not always as straightforward. Like, many of us can recognize hunger, but we don't recognize more subtle cues of hunger. So we recognize like rumbling stomach but we don't recognize like irritability or brain fog or kind of that afternoon 3 pm slump, like those are cues of hunger too. So we reconnect with the body in terms of those internal cues. We were all born intuitive eaters. Like, if you think of an infant or a baby, the baby will breastfeed or have a bottle and then they're done. Right, they turn their head. You can't overfeed them, but along the line, along the way and this is where I work with families around, like you know, selective eating or picky eating is that along the way we lose those intuitive skills because the parent says three more bites until you're done right and then yeah, finish your plate, clear your plate or have have two more bites, or finish your broccoli or whatever.
Speaker 3:So the child learns that they can't trust their internal cues and like no shade if you've done this oh, I've done this as a parent yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 3:I think like we need to have also compassion, that like we're all doing our best, but I think, like, moving forward, we can change the narrative.
Speaker 3:Like, like, even if your kid is older, like if you have, like I have a six and an eight year old. Like, even if you're hearing this, you're like, oh man, I tell my kid to like have three more bites all the time. You can learn more about what we call the division of responsibility and feeding, and that's a feeding philosophy that focuses on different roles and responsibilities for the parent and the child, and the child decides how much they eat from the foods that you provide. So you know, we want to help preserve those intuitive eating skills, because when I have my clients that are in their late 30s and 40s, that's what I have to undo is like years of being told they have to like eat a certain amount or eat a certain way, or diets that are exactly the same. So you know we can preserve those intuitive eating skills from childhood and then I don't have to undo them later into adulthood, put me out of business. That would be the best right.
Speaker 2:We hope to help you do that.
Speaker 3:It's awesome. I love that message.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, there's so much and I don't even know which direction I want to ask to go in. What about you, Michelle? Oh, I have so much and I don't even know which direction I want to ask to go in. What about you, Michelle? Oh, I have so many questions I have so many questions, ah, get it.
Speaker 1:So there's so many things that you have said already that are just such jewels, and I just love to go deeper into just a few of those. And so earlier on in our conversation, you said why do we crave the foods that we crave? And I would really love to hear your thoughts on this. So I am a salty crunchy. I know this. Like, if you give me the choice of, you know, I'm going to choose the salty crunchy. You know, if I am, if I'm, you know, feeling stressed or I'm feeling, you know, like that, that restless feeling, or it's the witching hour, I go for that. Yeah, and I love one sweet bite at the end of my dinner. Why do we crave that? You know, just something, just little tiny, like it doesn't even have to be big, like it could even just be a strawberry, but like something that gives you sweet after dinner. Why do we crave weird things like that?
Speaker 3:So I think cravings are really complex. I feel like, like people are. I see some stuff on social media will be like you're low in magnesium or like something super simplistic, so be weary of like quick fixes or magic bullets or people that tell you to buy this supplement is going to fix your craving. So the first thing I think about when I think about cravings is like food is a coping strategy, right, so food when we're feeling like happy or sad or anxious or bored or tired or lonely or whatever the feeling is like food is a coping strategy. That's been with us since infancy. Again, back to that baby. Baby cries, it's sad.
Speaker 3:Breastfeeding, right so, and it might feed just for comfort. It might not even be taking in a large amount of milk. So I think we've been taught from infancy that food is a coping strategy and diet culture has demonized that that that's a bad thing. But when we think about all the different coping strategies out there, like we think about, you know, alcohol or online gambling, or shopping addiction or sex addiction or all of these other kinds of things, drug use, you know food is actually pretty benign in terms of a coping strategy, right Like, while I wouldn't say it's the one that we should always be turning to. I would say it's not that bad, like when we think about some of the other potentially worse options, that's a really great perspective, yeah.
Speaker 3:And to fine tune that. When we think about kids, think about how many of those coping strategies that I just talked about that kids can access None right. The only one they can access is food right. So from childhood many of us soothe ourselves using food. That becomes a learned response and I often think about coping strategies in our brains like a wiring, like think of a wagon wheel trail, like that's very deep, a deep groove right. So when we have a certain feeling, our brain goes towards that coping strategy because that's the wagon wheel track, that's the track that we always knew. So it's not easy to then be like just have a bubble bath right, Like that's quite challenging.
Speaker 3:So what I work on with a lot of my clients is like first are with cravings, like are you nourishing yourself regularly and consistently during the day? Are you eating enough? Are your calories sufficient, or are you in air quotes being good? You're having a smoothie for breakfast, a salad with vinaigrette for lunch, and then you come home and the gloves come off and you're eating a row of cookies right from the pantry. So I think we have to think about the larger context of things and like the first step is always around cravings, like regularly and consistently nourishing yourself. Um, and then I look at, okay, how, like, what are we using for coping strategies that are not food? Some of us will do things like we'll go for a dog walk, or some of us will call a friend or do knitting or coloring books.
Speaker 3:So first I want clients to identify the feeling that's going on for them around the craving. So I'm feeling like, what are you feeling? Are you hungry? Okay, we'll eat. Right, Put some of your craving food on the plate, right, but don't make that the only food. So if it's salty, crispy, like, I've got these amazing pretzels right now, so I might put a handful of those on there, but I'm also going to put like some Greek yogurt and some fruit. So I'm going to like feel more full and satisfied. So my craving is being met, because you know that's what I want.
Speaker 3:But I'm also like not using that. I'm that for taste, not for fullness. And then if I'm not hungry so that's the other time that I get here about cravings I'm, I'm craving this, but I'm not hungry then it's like identifying the feelings. So the feeling might be like loneliness or boredom. Okay, if the feeling is boredom, how can we do a distraction strategy for five minutes that helps you cope with that feeling without using food. But if you still want that food after five minutes, we're going to give you permission to eat right. But we're giving you a bit of a, we're giving your brain a chance to reroute those neural pathways so that you're not, like you know, boredom eat, boredom eat right. So that's kind of the. When you talked about those salty, crispy crunch cravings, the little bite of sweet after the end of dinner, like is there something?
Speaker 1:wrong with that? I don't think there is.
Speaker 3:You're not eating like two giant Easter egg bunnies from your kid's stack, right? So I don't think that there's like a physiological reason behind that. I think it's pleasure, right. So that signals the end of a meal, for whatever reason. Like your association with the end of the meal comes with a sweet bite, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I would say like, just go with it, like there's nothing. You know that I would say like oh, it's a, it's this, this causing that. But for the larger context of cravings, those are kind of the steps that I would look at to help in a food neutral way. So we're not like demonizing the craving, we're normalizing it and then we're looking at how we can help support you in other ways. It's still including food, if that's where it kind of it comes to.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I absolutely love this. This is just amazing. Wow, what, when you're encouraging people to shift their thoughts around eating, because this is so much of the work that you are doing, what is like? What are some of the biggest things that you have found that really help people to shift their thoughts, like in a short amount of time, so that they're approaching the refrigerator and looking at things a little bit differently? Or you know, what have you so like if you were to coach somebody who wanted you wanted to help them look at, maybe, what they were doing differently, just like you've done for me right now, and saying it's okay to have a sweet bite, like not the end of the world. What are the things that you suggest that people could start doing today?
Speaker 3:I think the first thing is we can't change thoughts if we don't recognize that where that they're coming up, right. So I think we need to be have awareness is, like, always, the first thing. So many of us like, every time we look in the mirror we're like oh, like, I look terrible, I look fat, I look ugly, I look this, I look that. And we talk to ourselves in a way that we would never talk to a friend and like if a friend was having a bad body image day, we wouldn't be like, well, yeah, you're disgusting, right, like, what would we say to a friend? So I often will say, like, start to recognize, like, what are the thoughts that come up? Or say, your thoughts are around food. Like I'm being so bad, right, I'm, I'm, I'm totally being bad, I'm, this is horrible. So then I want to, first we identify the thought. Okay, that's the thought.
Speaker 3:Now, where did it come from? Like, where was your earliest messaging that told you that eating a cupcake was bad? And is it bad? Like what? What is in a cupcake? Oh, okay, it's eggs, it's flour, it's sugar, it's butter. Like, are those bad? Like, because that's assigning a moral value to like different components of of food Right. So is it bad? Like certain food?
Speaker 3:Like I often talk about food neutrality, like food isn't, I would say, bad or good, um, food is just food, right. We assign these moralities and then what happens is is that we think, oh okay, I'm gonna eat this bad food. Then I'm bad. And then now I'm like, now I'm like you know this all or nothing, thinking I'm either on the wagon or I'm off. I'm like eating like perfectly clean, or I'm eating garbage, right. So when we have that really dichotomous thinking, um, it's really difficult for us to have a balanced relationship with food. So, recognizing the thought that's coming up, identifying where it's coming from, and then trying to ask yourself is this true, is this true for me, is this true for my kid, is this true for my best friend? Like, would I say this to them? And if the answer is no, then why is it true for you?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:So, and sometimes we need to do a bit of work with, like either a therapist, or like doing some journaling on it and like looking back at some of these like it's not as easy as you know, just that, but we have to kind of dig into that. But our mindset has been shaped by many, many years and decades of like messaging that we've received. So just digging into that a bit it can be really helpful to explore, like why do I feel this way? And like is it true, am I a bad person if I eat this, or am I actually a great person? That had a craving, and you know I'm doing my best, right? So kind of trying to reframe your thoughts around those body image moments or those food moments can be really supportive.
Speaker 2:I love that food neutrality. Like that it's not good food, bad food, because when we are making it that black and white, that good and bad, that's where all that guilt and shame comes in. And then like, what is the effect on our body when we're consuming all of this, in that energy of I'm bad, I'm doing something wrong, I'm indulging or I'm cheating or whatever these languages can be right. That's the energy that you're consuming, that food right. So food neutrality that's. I love that phrase.
Speaker 1:I do too.
Speaker 1:My confusion for myself, Jen, comes when I guess my recognition is is that all foods are not created equal, so I am vegetarian by choice and so right now one of the hot things on the market is all of these vegetarian meats and I'm like I think those are actually made for meat eaters. I don't actually think vegetarians like run to them because I don't miss the texture and taste of meat. It's not, I'm not like. I'm like meet me up. No, no, absolutely not for me anyway. I mean for others that might be different. But if you read the food labels and the packaging on some of these foods, I mean they're horrifying, like it's. They're not full of fantastic ingredients. How do you reconcile that? And you know, and kind of like, I guess come to your, to a better place with it. Do you avoid it? Is it like, is it good or bad? Do you? Can you have food neutrality with things like that? Good question.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I think like if we think of, like an Oreo, like what is the nutritional value of an Oreo? Or like I'll give you, for instance, my kids love Slurpees, oh sure, yeah. And like let's think of those types of foods because I cringe as a dietitian, like I'm still a dietitian, right, and so I still have the training and I was still raised in diet culture in the eighties and nineties. And when my kids it's a hot day and they're like I want a Slurpee, a little piece of me like cringes and like shrivels up a bit Right, and I'm like why would you want that? Like even in my brain. I'm like even a chocolate is like at least it's got some like fat in it. Right, it's not just like straight sugar.
Speaker 3:But I think we have to think about food is not just the nutrients it provides, but I think we have to think about food is not just the nutrients it provides. So food is so much more than nutrients and nutrition. Food is connection, it's celebration, it's tradition, it's our heritage, it's, you know, nostalgia. I can remember my own experience as a young child having a Slurpee on a hot day and how satisfying that was and how that just that cool, cool, refreshing taste like made me like feel good, right. And so I think you know food neutrality is more than just like looking at the nutrients. It's like what is that providing you outside of the nutrients that it provides? So if it's providing like we talked about the Slurpee or we talked about you know, the meat burger I mean, you're right, I would say that's more for meat eaters, like the plant-based meat burgers, um, and I would say like, are you eating it every day? Right? Like everything we look at we have to think about in a picture, right.
Speaker 3:So we, we talk about what we call pattern over plate. So one meal or snack is not going to be the be all and end all. It's like what is your pattern of eating over two weeks? And so, yeah, if you're eating a you know a meat analog three times a day, seven days a week, like that's going to be a problem.
Speaker 3:But if you had it say you're at a, you know you're at somebody's barbecue, and they're like, yeah, we're vegetarian, we're serving these, like that's probably not going to be the end of the world scheme of things, and also think about what are the other values of food that are not just the nutrition and the nutrients and recognize that those have a place too. So no, I don't get my kids slurpees all the time, like we have like a once a week we would go and they get to choose something that they want from the store. And this is as a dietician. I let them choose something because I also remember, like from my own childhood, that my parents every two weeks used to do this and let me have something sweet from the store, and that was like a real joy. And so again it's like neutralizing that relationship with sweets. That again it's not like good or bad, it's just something fun and something pleasurable and enjoyable and that's okay too, right.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of how I look at it from that food neutral standpoint I love that I do too and that's such a great point you make of look at what you're consuming over a two-week period and that gives such a nice zoomed out perspective of how it does balance out over if we're looking at a in that larger scale, opposed to judging ourselves on a day potentially like oh today I really oof right but over. If we zoom out and look over the two weeks, I think that's such a nice reminder for people.
Speaker 1:Uh, I really like that. Yeah, really good. What are some of the worst thoughts that people can have about eating, like? What are some of the ways we can sabotage ourselves that could really be doing more harm than we're aware of?
Speaker 3:I think the biggest one I see is the all or nothing mentality.
Speaker 3:So, people feel like they're ruining their plan when they eat. They have a day out where they eat things that they wouldn't normally eat. So you know, many of us have, like I said this, all or nothing thinking. So we're all in or we're all out. So I would say that that's the biggest like day to day. I think we want to be aiming for balance over the longterm and like healthy eating is is the long game, right? So trying to nourish and fuel our body isn't something that just like happens today. It's like what can.
Speaker 3:So I always say to people, like if you're you can't continue the way that you're eating on your birthday or when you're on vacation or when you're at a party, like it's probably not the right eating style for you. Like if it's so restrictive that you're not able to do the things you enjoy to do, that's a problem, right. So what I think about in terms of nutrition is like flexible eating. So if I go to a birthday party and I have a slice of cake, like that doesn't make me good or bad, that's just like I had a slice of cake and I could move on. And then tomorrow is not like why I've thrown it all away.
Speaker 3:Tomorrow I'm like, okay, how am I going to nourish myself today regularly and consistently? And I don't really like worry about or try to quote unquote, make up for what I did yesterday. It's like getting back to how we're eating today and not trying to shame or guilt, because the thing is that food guilt and shame. We think so there's interesting research around, um, you know, like smoking cessation and healthy eating. They look at like, you know, if we kind of make people feel bad about themselves around smoking, that actually does kind of work right around, like talking about the gross teeth or the, you know whatever, like the kind of totally, but it doesn't work with food.
Speaker 3:So if we make people feel guilt or shame over what they're eating so a person just recently emailed me and they're like I went to a dietician, I'm Filipino, they told me to eat two spoons of rice a day. So that person was made to feel ashamed of their eating style from their traditional heritage and they were told to highly restrict a food that's considered a cultural food in their in their life. So now that person feels guilt or shame around their eating and that doesn't make them eat better, it makes them eat worse. So that person is more likely to then overeat or binge eat, feel out of control around food when it's available. So we don't see the same kind of translation into healthy or to healthy eating. So what we want to do is look at more of the why, like why are we eating the certain way that we are? Are we eating that way Because we're mindlessly eating? Are we eating out of boredom? Are we eating out of stress? Are we not eating early enough, like? So I think we look more at the why. And there's so many other aspects in terms of like health, like if someone comes to me and they're like diabetic and they want some information on nutrition, like it's not just like, oh, we're going to restrict your carbohydrates. There's so many other factors that play into how someone eats, like their stress level, their sleep, their water Like, are they. So I focus on like a nutrition by addition approach. So what can we add in versus what do we always take out? And we find that that actually really helps people have like a healthier outlook on what they're eating and not have this dichotomous thinking around eating that if that person that I was talking about, the person who had the Filipino descent, ate like their traditional meal one night, now they've, quote-unquote, blown it, so they're just gonna like do whatever tomorrow, and so that's what happens when we have that all or nothing thinking and guilt and shame eating.
Speaker 3:So I would say that's the biggest kind of mistake. We also see it a lot in our, in our culture. Like we have like clean eating phenomenon and we have like cheat days, which is really a glorified binge eating occurrence, right. So we have these, these messagings which normalize that way of eating, which is actually very abnormal. And if we don't restrict for most people, like, unless someone has like an, an eating disorder, if you're, like you know, eating regularly and consistently. If you're working on healing your relationship with food and all foods are available, we see less incidences of overeating or binge eating right. So I think that's kind of where we go sideways is we think that we have to be perfect and in everything right In parenting, in our job and we end up just feeling like terrible with everything and then feel like overwhelmed.
Speaker 2:So good Wow.
Speaker 1:Gosh, gosh. I just feel like where have you been all my life? I can see so many ways that I have sabotaged my own self and I've been following you and I something just sunk within me big time here because the like the I just did it to myself the other day, michelle today just do a juice day, because you have absolutely gone off the wagon. I had some stressful news this week and you know, in my own head, made some poor food choices that probably weren't really that bad anyway. And and then I'm like Nope, you're on the juice girl, like that's it for you. And then I'm miserable, and then I I feel hangry and I feel exhausted and I don't feel like good.
Speaker 2:Well, we're like punishing ourselves for being bad yeah right like oh, I cheated, or whatever these ideas are around the good and the bad food right yeah, yeah oh, thanks for sharing that, michelle. I'm sure there's a lot of people that. Yeah, yeah to that for sure yeah
Speaker 2:and it really. It reminds me when I was in naturopathic medicine school in our first year. There was an elder dr, brave and rain, and he shared with our class that you're better to eat a hot dog with friends than kale all alone and in a room full of all these nds. Right, it was. It really stuck with me because it was more the energy behind the food. It's more the happiness and the joining and the culture that goes with eating and food. And I would say for myself and I would love to talk body types too with you, because that was such a highlight too is how we kind of view our body and then the food kind of stuff can follow.
Speaker 2:Because for me, I would have thought I was grown up with quite a healthy balance around food and my mom just cooked homemade meals and we ate as a family and I I gosh, if I could get my hands on a toonie. There was this little red store that we would walk to and I'd get myself a slurpee and fill it with 100 penny candies and I'd just dome that and it wasn't a thought like I never really had the hang ups and I still will do that. Um, it was more once I went into naturopathic medicine school and for people that know this medicine, there is a lot more of that restrictive eating and as a student they would have us trying everything that you would ever prescribe so that we knew what it's like to do a two-week elimination diet or to do a two-week detox or to fast or to, and you can feel how, like ostracizing, that is how you then don't go out for dinner with these people because they don't serve that kind of food there and it really is lonely and isolating. So after graduating as an ND, I have been teasing apart kind of what I've learned there around food and then finding more of this gentle mindset around it, whether it be for me and I'm raising young children around food or for my clients as well, because I can see how you can almost get into that disordered brain where it's it's a good food or it's a bad food, and even though it doesn't necessarily change my eating, like I would say, I am a balanced eater the thoughts are there of good or bad and it comes more around our food systems and just how we're doing big agriculture, how we're treating animals, how we're like all these things that like right spraying glyphosate and it's wrecking our gut lining and so my brain goes more around that stuff with food and it just feels like such a big thing and I this is where I remind myself to come back to gratitude Because, like you say, food is food and there's places where there's food deserts in the world, or people don't have access or can't afford food and so when my mind goes into those big thoughts and it is a it's a industry bigger than I'm ever going to solve.
Speaker 2:So, to take that pressure off, I think it is coming back to that simple gratitude for food and that we can feed our children and we can my hang up.
Speaker 2:I think in my life that I'd love to ask you about would be more around, and I'm going to call it treats as an umbrella for all all the sweets and treats that are available. How do you balance that as a mom? Because I find and I was talking to my sister before this and asking she's raising four kids and it's about there's just sweets and treats at every turn, like whether they're getting them in the classroom or birthday parties, like I would love to live a life of this balance, kind of this 80-20, like eat all the different colored foods, we grow a garden. We do that, and I would love to take my kids out for ice cream, and I do that. The pressure I feel sometimes is that there's so much of it from everybody else all over the place that then as a mom you aren't always the one that gets to do the indulging, because they've already had so much everywhere else always. How do you find balance in your home with that?
Speaker 3:So I would flip the question back and I would say tell me a little bit about your worry about the sweets and kids, like what is? Because when we have a worry, there's always a story that we're telling ourselves behind the worry. So what is the narrative? It's like okay, they're having lots of sweets, like what? Where does your mind go in terms of the story behind that?
Speaker 2:It would be that we're not getting in the nutrition that we need, that they're filling up on that and their appetite is satiated with that, and then I find that that also comes with like behavior stuff, like whining and wanting it and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Okay, and so just I clarify that, because I have other families and they'll say my worry is is that they're going to eat lots of sweets and then they're going to gain weight and then their body's going to change and they're not going to be accepted and they're going to be bullied and like the story goes all the way down the other way, right, so I think, not getting the nutrition that they need. So I think here's where we look at the division of responsibility in feeding. So what that means is that parents are responsible for the what, when and where feeding, and kids are responsible for how much they eat from the foods provided and if they eat anything at all. So here's where I know it's challenging because if someone else is providing the what, you don't have control over the what. But you can realize in your day, like okay, we have a birthday party, we have a spring fair, like what do we have going on for the day? And you can choose to decide if you want to provide sweets that day or not. So, for example, we have a baseball fair on Saturday morning. So I know there's going to be like cotton candy there. I know there's going to be probably lollipops and whatever else there's going to be. So that day at lunch and at dinner I might choose not to serve sweets or dessert at those meals. If they ask for it, I say yeah, I know you really want to have a cookie or a candy, or a pastry or pie or whatever it is, but that's actually not on the menu today because we need to have some other foods that fill our body and give us energy that we need to play. We already had, like you know, x, y and Z earlier, so we can again talk about it neutrally and decide, as the parents like, when we're going to be serving sweets.
Speaker 3:In my own family on a normal day I serve dessert twice a day. I serve something in their lunchbox that's small and I serve something at dinner every single day and I serve what we call a child-sized portion. So I might serve two like right now they're doing like two Easter eggs right Like two of those mini chocolate eggs for dinner. At lunch they might have some gummies or they might have some other type of like something from their Easter basket, or a cookie, a small cookie. You know that would be considered their dessert, so I serve it twice a day. A lot of people are shocked by that. If that doesn't feel comfortable for your family, I would encourage you to have a look at, like how sweets motivated or how sweets obsessed is your kid? If they're like, yeah, take it or leave it, not super obsessed, like, okay, you could probably get away with once a week, maybe every other day.
Speaker 3:What I usually recommend around sweets is deciding in advance when it's going to be served. So kids know. So say it's every night at dinner, that's dessert. Or like some people put on their calendar, like Monday, Wednesday, friday, sunday, those are dessert nights. And again, we're not talking about making something elaborate. We're talking about, like you know, three mini Oreos or like you know something small that's easy for you. You don't have to make like a pie and serve it to them.
Speaker 3:If we have leftover birthday cake, people often say to me, like how do you possibly have leftover birthday cake? Well, we always do, because our kids aren't sweet obsessed. Um, we will freeze it in little sections and I might give them like a sliver of cake at their dinner sometimes. Right? So whenever, like a lot of times, our sweets like rather than they go bad, we freeze them and then bring them out for another time. So I would say, like knowing that there are, like other things, other places where your kids are going to get sweets if it's a nutrient concern, like I'm worried that they're going to like fill up on this and not have room. I would just plan your day around what that day is going to look like, knowing there's going to be sometimes like, say, for example, like our hockey coach always gives like a lollipop at the end, so I know that that's my son's getting a lollipop at the end of his hockey. So I probably won't serve dessert and in fact I wouldn't at lunch, because I know he's already going to have a sweet at lunch and I want him to have room for the other foods and I would say that to him, like our body needs a variety of foods to grow and if he says, well, I want to have whatever I say, yeah, I totally understand. I'm really sorry. I know that that's hard for you and this is what I'm going to serve it next. So kids need to hear like when you're going to be able to offer it again If your child was very sweets obsessed, like I've had kids come to my house and we've been making cookies and they're stuffing handfuls of chocolate chips in their jacket pocket Right.
Speaker 3:So if you have children who are very sweets obsessed in their jacket pocket, right? So if you have children who are very sweets obsessed, a couple things could be going on. One could be restriction. Two could be they're using food as a coping strategy or it could be something like that they are dealing with. You know could be something metabolic or hormonal. So again, check that with your naturopath or with your family doctor. But there's a couple things to check out around like obsession.
Speaker 3:But most frequently I would say that it's related to is related to restriction. So children that feel restricted around sweets are the ones at the birthday party gorging themselves on all the candy and all the cake. Other kids like take it or leave it. They'll have a bit of their cake, they'll leave half of it, they'll go play. That's kind of where we want our kids to be Like. We want our kids to in a world filled with sweets. We want them to like, feel like they like it. It's delicious. And just to remind everybody, like a sweets preference is actually something that is innate in children. We know that children have a sweets preference. Breast milk is sweet from an early age and that's thought to be related to the high energy demands of childhood and the rapid growth. So many of us can reflect back on our own sweets that we liked as kids, like I would personally. We talked about my Slurpee earlier. I would never get a Slurpee now because I'm not not the nutrition, but like totally it's so syrupy Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or I think of the Cadbury cream eggs. I used to love those and I had one last year and I couldn't even eat half of it because it was so disgustingly sweet. So I think our sweets preference we think that for most people kind of settles around the twenties not everybody, but for children.
Speaker 3:That's kind of when a lot of children outgrow their sweets preference because growth at that point declines in speed, right? So, um, there's nothing wrong with your kid if they like sweets like I still serve sweets and my kids love sweets but they also like don't overeat or binge eat or gorge themselves on it when they have the chance, because they know that that's not the we call it the last supper mentality. It's not the last chance that they'll ever get that food at Halloween, because Halloween can't be in February, right, because my kids have been like eating it and they're just like so tired of it, but they just they knew that they would not be restricted in the future, so they didn't feel the need to overindulge.
Speaker 2:Such a good message.
Speaker 2:And dessert twice a day does not shock me. My kids, we do the same, and probably plus more, because right now they're working through their easter baskets and I think the biggest thing with my kids and then my hang-ups around food or my beliefs is that I do my best to check in with myself and then not put that onto that like they get unrestricted with their. Their candy buckets are in their room right now and they're not sneaking it. They ask if they want to take a couple pieces to school or whatever. So they probably are regulating fine around it.
Speaker 2:They just have a sweets preference and I love the way you speak to setting boundaries around your kids and that's probably where I just need to have that more calm, clear, boundary with that neutrality of it's, not like not making the sweets and treats like a bad thing, like we're going to restrict it. It's just like you're going to have it later or you've already had that you'll have more and just very neutral in the bantering around it. I guess, like my son, he's eight and he'll challenge oh, can I have more, can I have a little? And yeah, that's, it's just that sweet's preference. Of course, it tastes good and it gives some quick energy and I like that messaging a lot can we talk to? Like you mentioned before, we recorded and I was saying how, growing up, I think that we did a good, my parents did a good job around food and you mentioned like a straight body, so I was a household of three girls and we all have these straight bodies.
Speaker 2:My children have straight bodies. So when you ask about what my concern is about eating all this sugar to me, I'm going are they getting any protein and are they getting their vitamins? Are they getting all this good stuff to grow a really healthy body? And I could see that if my children were in different bodies that could probably change my mindset. So can you elaborate on that and how parents can kind of behave or look at it differently depending on the child they have in front of them.
Speaker 3:So we call. There's certain bodies we call straight size bodies and there's plus size bodies and then within the plus size body community they have their own designations, like there's a movement towards neutrality around the word fat. So some people will identify themselves as fat. Some people identify themselves as small fat, mid fat, super fat. There's a whole like group of fat activists that are pushing towards neutrality around the word. So I'm going to use, like, the word larger body because, as somebody in a straight size body, that feels the most comfortable for me. But different people will identify in different ways.
Speaker 3:So a straight size body is someone who has a body size that's between zero to 12 or zero to 14 in different instances. What a straight size body means is that you're able to shop at any store. You can walk in and pull something off the rack. You fit in every booth at every restaurant. You never have to ask for a seat belt extender on the plane when you go to talk to your doctor about your eye infection. You're not given a weight loss prescription. So there's a series of what we call thin privileges that are given to people in straight size bodies that are unearned, and we know that body size has over a hundred different factors and there's a large genetic component that has to do with body sizes. So when we look at like families of like say a family of all tall people we're like, oh wow, like that's like a genetic thing. But then we see people, a family of larger body people, and we're like we question it. Oh, maybe they're all eating junk food all day, or maybe that's actually their body size, their genetic predisposition of their family. So I think you know, from my perspective, when I consider someone, you know, when I talk about a family, when we talk about kind of what's going on with them with sweets, your mind immediately went to like nutrient quality, where other families I've talked to would say I'm worried about them gaining weight. I see myself in them. I was a larger body child, you know, and they kind of go down this pathway of like because I was in a larger body as a child. I remember the bullying, the teasing, this and that I don't want that for my kids. So these are, that's the story that they were telling themselves around, if their kid really likes sweets. So I'll often say to them, like would you have the same concerns if your child was in a smaller body, or if your child's in a thin body, straight size body, and they would say, no, right, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't be as concerned.
Speaker 3:So I think we need to, like you know, think about children and their body sizes, um, as not like a failure or a success story. Like children's bodies, children have a genetic body blueprint and their body is growing exactly the way that it should for them. So you know, if a child like I often will like interrupt people who say to my child like, oh, wow, like your legs are so long, or oh, like talking about children's bodies because that's, in my opinion, that's like an inappropriate thing to be talking about is mentioning children's body sizes. So, in general, like I don't recommend, even when you see a child and it's been, you know, you haven't seen them since like the end of last year If you say to them, wow, you've grown so tall, like that actually could be a sensitivity for a child, because I have a tall child and so she looks at me like, and then I'll say you know, actually she's growing exactly the way she should be, her body knows exactly what to do and she's a great friend and and she's great at baseball or and she, so I divert it to different ways.
Speaker 3:So I think our children need to hear us say that we think their body is just right for them regardless of their body size. Their body is just right for them regardless of their body size If they have a large body. We know that children in larger bodies that feel better in their bodies have more health promoting behaviors than children in larger bodies that feel poorly about their bodies. So children that feel even if they're the same body size. We know that children that feel better in their bodies raise their hand more in class, they participate more in extracurriculars, they do more physical activity, they eat more fruits and vegetables, they sleep more, they're less inclined to participate in risky behaviors. So we want our kids to feel like, regardless of their body size, that their body is just right for them and we think they're growing in a way that's right for them.
Speaker 2:Oh, you've got Michelle in tears.
Speaker 1:What a beautiful message.
Speaker 3:What's going on for you when you hear that?
Speaker 1:Just think that is just so beautiful. I just think that is just so beautiful and I really wish that more people had that message.
Speaker 3:And I wish that I had that message, yeah, and so I think many of us think back to our own childhoods and how our lives may have been different if our body changes were normalized. So that's a lot of what I do too in parent talks is I'll talk about puberty and how. For girls, it can start as young as eight, and typically little girls gain weight in their abdomen, and so I'll have parents come to me and say I'm worried, my daughter's like gained all this weight, her belly is getting really big. And I'll we'll talk about the normal changes of puberty and how, from the ages of eight into like, puberty for girls starts usually around 10 to 14, but it can start as young as eight for those early signs, and children can gain 50 pounds, right. So it's the second most rapid time of growth after the first year of life, and they need us to feel like they're sturdy leader Like.
Speaker 3:If we think about like, I often think of this metaphor of like. If you're on a plane and you're like a bit concerned and worried there's some turbulence, you're like, oh my God, like something's happening. And your pilot is like, oh my God, something's happening. Oh, we're going to die, you're going to freak out, right. But if your pilot is like you know what, this is normal, this is to be expected. It's just a rough patch. We're going to get through it, everything is fine. How are you going to feel about that trip?
Speaker 3:Right, and so think about that like puberty in that early, those early years, like if your parent is a sturdy leader you need them to be and is normalizing your body changes and telling you that some people are bigger, some people are smaller, some people are tall and some are short, and that doesn't mean there's anything right or wrong about bodies.
Speaker 3:They're just bodies and that's the way that they come.
Speaker 3:That is what our kids need us to say and to hear that message so that they can feel confident in whatever body they grow up in, because some of our kids are going to be fat and some of our kids are going to be thin and some are going to be short and some are tall, and neither is bad or good.
Speaker 3:What we want to focus on is like health promoting behaviors with our kids, like eating together as a family, moving our bodies for joy, you know, getting outside in the fresh air and sunshine, so that's what's going to help our kids in the long run, have more health promoting behaviors is actually helping with some of those Like, if we're always on our phones and we're always on our iPads and computers, we can't expect them to not want to use their screens, right, if we're always on that. So if we want our kids to use their screens less, we need to use our screens less and maybe get out in the garden and do some things with them. So I think that's how we help our kids have that more positive relationship with their bodies as well is starting to model that in ourselves.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I want that from the rooftops. Yeahops, yeah and oh. It just has this, like fierce love in me of like to not be commenting on kids bodies.
Speaker 1:gosh, and I've done this oh, and I, we don't. I've done it to your kids.
Speaker 2:Well, they are growing. But I've also had it like when my daughter was really young, a family member saying she's so petite, she's like frail and like I'll get that. Where people will say like oh, you're so thin, and it's like at the end of breastfeeding it was an unhealthy thin, like I was just not able to keep up with Right and it's more of a wasting and I'm like, and then I almost feel shame, like well, you've got the privilege of walking around in this small body. Like don't complain that.
Speaker 2:Oh, but that's such a beautiful thing that to not comment in any direction about any aspect of people's bodies because we don't know how they perceive that and it's just not our place. Like on this podcast, we've talked so much in the last six months about returning to our bodies and I think that that's where I am in my journey and just coming back to the magnificence of a functioning human body, like how miraculous is it that we can breathe and our heart beats and we can digest food and we can run and we can play and we can swim and we can like to celebrate the abilities of our bodies, and I think that when we can come back home to ourself and that's where our intuition lies and that's where our connection to ourself and I, just as I return home and you know, heal all those places where we've abandoned ourselves or we haven't listened to ourselves, and all that. Your message is just so beautiful and important that there's nothing wrong with people's bodies, they're not broken, and I think that's so powerful.
Speaker 3:And just for parents too, like you didn't break your children either.
Speaker 3:Like if you think, like, oh my God, I've done X, y or Z, even as having an adult child, you could say to them you know what, I'm really sorry.
Speaker 3:It's the, the, the healing power of repair, right, it's like absolutely, and I've actually learned that that maybe wasn't super helpful.
Speaker 3:And, going forward, I'm not going to comment on your body, I'm not going to comment on how you're eating, I'm not going to, you know, encourage you to go to the gym or whatever, because I have some of my clients that are young adults and they still have well-meaning parents like hoping to help them but inadvertently pushing them away because they're still making these comments about how they eat or their bodies, and so I think you know we're all doing the best we can, right. So I think we can heal and repair and realize that, like even for michelle, like you could see, like your inner child, like needed that message from it, needed to hear that, like you were not the problem, the societal messages that we receive that all bodies should reflect this. Quote-unquote. Idealized body is a product of diet. Culture is a product of a system of beliefs that say specifically that women's bodies are only valuable when their appearance fits the size too or yeah, yeah, and who I would, and we kind of talked about this off air before.
Speaker 3:But, like I often will say to my young students, like body dissatisfaction is big business. Someone makes money off you feeling bad about yourself, yes, and we talk about who makes money off that and they start naming all the different products and all the different services and all the cleanses and protocols and creams and straightening this and all these things. Right, I think we need to know, even as adults, that, like that thought that you have like I really don't like the way my ex looks in this shirt Okay, what are you going to buy now? Right now, you're going to buy a plan, a protocol, whatever keto cookies or this and that. Or you're going to buy a waist trainer from Kim Kardashian, or so somebody makes money off those thoughts. What happens if we, as women, stopped buying into the fact that our bodies are broken? How many products and services would go out of business if women decided that our bodies were just fine?
Speaker 3:just the way that they were right, yeah, and we didn't need to gain weight or lose weight or change or be younger or have longer hair or whatever. So I mean, not all of us can divest from this completely. But I think we can think about, like, where in our lives are we spending money and that is not serving us? So I mean, I used to get my eyebrows waxed and I thought you know what? I'm not paying for my eyebrows being waxed anymore, I'm going to just do it, I'm going to pluck a few hairs myself, right? So I think we can think about where we want to divest from the industries that profit off our body dissatisfaction and maybe it's not everything, but maybe it's something and the less money we spend, the less more industries grow and new ones show up, right, if there's not the money there, then then they're not going to thrive. So I think we can do that as women and also modeling that for our kids, like I'll even show with my. My kids will be at the store and we'll see an advertisement of like.
Speaker 3:One was like a brightening cream, and so we kind of talked about like, oh, like we're the you know, the shoppers drug mark. Oh, like, what is this advertisement saying? Oh, it's saying that only white skin that's poreless and has no acne and no freckles, and this and that we start talking about. Oh, that's what they're trying to share. Is that that's the right way to have skin like? Is that true? Is that the way that our skin looks of all of our friends? Oh no, we have all different colored friends, right? Oh, okay, like some kids have hairier faces than others, and some, you know, we start normalizing this body diversity and that helps our kids feel less alone in their journey in their own body.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm really grateful for this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could talk to you for hours, jen. I have so much more to say. I would actually I mean, before we end this, I hope that at one point in the future you'll come back and speak again At some point I'd have you back in a heartbeat. I want to make sure that people go and check out your website, because you have a phenomenal website full of great resources. Just like click and pick and you're immediately into some great thoughts, ideas and possibly support. If people are looking for that as well, and if you are not following Jen the dietitian on Instagram, I don't know what you've been doing, but please, uh, jump on her platform, because it's really fun and uplifting and every time after I watch one of your videos, I feel better. I don't feel like I'm making such bad choices.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I love there is a oh sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Sorry. I was just gonna say I love the gentle messaging and it just it keeps opening my mind and my heart when I see your posts. Yeah, and one thing that I say to my kids so often, if they ever are looking at somebody in a different body or commenting, or maybe people have like they're missing a leg, like we had my grandma had one leg, and ever since they were tiny it's. Isn't it so cool that we're all built different and I think that if we could have that like in our hearts, that we can have more acceptance and softness, and I just I love your gentle message.
Speaker 3:It's really heartwarming yeah, and I think, too, we can highlight, like natural differences in our community, like different size trees, different looking flowers, different fruit, like different dogs, mushrooms, like there's diversity in all different things. So I think we need to just we can point those things out and so if your child is noticing differences, rather than shutting them down and saying like, oh, let's not talk about that, you can say to them in a quiet voice, like, if you notice anything, I'm happy to talk to you, but, like you know, we don't like scream. Like my kid screamed that man's so bald. Like right. Like people might not like having their differences like announced, but you can always talk to me about your questions and so I think that's a normal. Like noticing difference is a good thing and kids can, and you can talk about that as well. Like, like, there's nothing wrong with having a bald head, is there? Like if he's cold, he could wear a hat. Like right. Like I think there's a normal, like we want to normalize those natural differences and so on the website, on under the resources section, there's a number of different things you can pull up Um, there's something for teachers, so like, um, early elementary, uh, elementary or preschool, there's like a kind of like an activity work worksheet for them.
Speaker 3:There's some resources for parents, which is like a body positivity handout with some book resources. There is a number of different things, like I've got like a poster that I had made so my daughter I was looking for a body, diverse art for her playroom and I couldn't find it. So I had one commissioned and I got permission from the author or, sorry, the artist to give it away. So if anyone wants that, you can download that. I just got it. You know I have it on there, you can. I printed it as staples and put it in a frame so you can do that for two bucks, right, so that's pretty good, um, but there's a number of resources you can check out for free.
Speaker 3:And then, obviously, if you're looking for individual support, I work with clients throughout the province of BC and I do school presentations, um, pretty much all over Canada, uh, us, as I've connected with them but haven't yet spoken in the US yet. Um, but please reach out. I'm happy to come talk with your parent group or your teacher's group or your classroom. And I'm also starting a new project with a body. It's more like a body image workshop for older kids, so grades five through nine and that's called Free to Be and that's a six week intensive workshop, uh program that I go into the classroom. So I've got three coming up in May. Um that I'll be talking with kids in those really like challenging years, the puberty years around body image. So you know, those are all resources that you can check out as well.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I am so grateful you're in the world. Yeah, me too. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Jen, this has just been a phenomenal conversation. I've loved it from start to finish.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad, Thank you so much for having me today and hopefully there's a few nuggets, a few kernels people can take away and, you know, integrate into their own lives.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today. For me, this conversation really hit home. I can see so many ways that I personally have not approached food or my own body image in the most healthy ways, somewhat broken open in the most beautiful ways, because this is such a beautiful conversation to tune into and to be a part of, and we need so much more of this. I believe that reprogramming our thoughts to be better, in alignment with a healthy mindset and perspective about food and our relationship to food and the judgment that we have of our bodies as a process and not something that necessarily changes overnight. But I absolutely am aware of how I want this to go and the things that I will be thinking about and shifting and changing, and so I'm just so grateful to have been a part of this conversation. I really want to encourage you to share this episode with your family and friends and to let this message spread and be a conversation that you have in your circles. I really want to remind you to check in on Jen's website and her social media so that you can give your day a really lovely little boost, and all links to this will be in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Let's take a moment for a breath of peace, if you're able, take a moment to just be still and let your eyes close and the weight and busyness of your day begin to fall away from your shoulders as you take a big, beautiful, deep breath, pulling that air in and pull it way down deep into your core, and then release with a beautiful sigh and let go. Ah, this is a beautiful signal to your body that this is a time for peace and relaxation and that, just for this moment, all you need do is be Take your awareness to your body, your feet, your legs, the calves, the thighs, the hips, your core, your arms, your neck, your back, your head, your eyes and your ears, the beautiful skin that you have covering and protecting your body, your body. Your body is so miraculous and does so many things without you really even thinking hard about it. You can move a limb if you want to move. You can move a limb if you want to move. You can take a deeper breath. You can flex a muscle. You can relax and soften your body, can hold another and hug and receive hugs. Your body can smell a beautiful flower and notice beauty in nature or the smile upon another's face. Your body nourishes you, gives you strength when you need it, helps you rest when you have worked hard.
Speaker 1:Your body carries your beautiful and amazing and enormous spirit. Your heart beats effortlessly. Your brain can solve problems and understand complex ideas. You are truly a miracle to be loved, to be seen, to be honored and to be cherished. Know that in this moment you are loved more profoundly than you can comprehend. You are cherished beyond measure. You matter and you are so, so important. Until next time, only love and light to you and only love and light from you at walktogetherfiercely. Here we can chat, have community, ask questions and lots of other extra information that you might not get on our podcast. For more information about us, you can find Dr Tara on Instagram at drtaradrummond. For more information about me, michelle, you can find me on Instagram at Michelle Morrison Medium. All other information about me is on my website, thebalancedsoulcom. This podcast is recorded by Michelle and Tara and is edited and arranged by Sammy Lucan.
Speaker 2:Any medical information provided is information only and is not to be used for diagnostic or treatment purposes. This information is not a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment. Please consult your health care provider before making any health care decisions or for guidance and treatment of specific medical conditions.