If you are a woman who feels like you;’ve done all the things in the name of health, but you still can’t get it right this episode is for you!
Healthy-ish with Dr. Jillian Murphy
Dr. Jillian Murphy is a naturopathic doctor with over 16 years experience in the field, and 10+ years in the Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size space.
She helps women ditch divisive AF one way approaches to health and tap into their dreamy, vibrant feel-good lifestyle and body.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- What the heck is healthy-ish and what does it mean?
- What Jillian has learn in 10 year in practice
- How she is looking at her medical practice now
Mentioned in the show:
Non-Diet Coaching Certification
Connect with our guest:
Join the Healthyish Newsletter
Transcript
Going Beyond The Food Show Ep384-Healthy-ish with Dr. Jillian Murphy
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This is episode 384 of the beyond the food show. And today we're going to discover the word healthy ish together with our special guest Dr. Jillian Murphy. Stay tuned.
Hello, my sisters and welcome back to the podcast. Today is a fun episode. And it's a return back in memory lane, I have invited a guest who's been on the podcast in almost all of my special event I've hosted, Dr. Jillian Murphy, she is a naturopathic doctor with 10 plus year of experience in the world of the non diet approach intuitive eating health at every size.
And this is why she's been on the podcast for so many times because we're both oh geez, in the non diet spheres of talking about health. So we've collaborated many times. And about four months ago, I was doomscrolling Instagram and it came across this post from Jillian talking about this concept called healthy ish.
And I read the post, I'm like, Ooh, she piqued my curiosity. So as a good podcast host, I thought instead of having the conversation about what the heck is healthy ish in my DM with her, I thought let's invite her on the podcast today for I think it's the fifth time on the podcast. So we can have a public conversation about what the heck is healthy ish or new philosophy or new program or new way of talking about the non diet approach.
And let's all discover healthy ish together. She surprised me in inviting me back on her podcast so that I can talk about my health and how I'm approaching my health at the personal level and I did that. So, we decided to combine releasing our podcast in the same week. So I'm releasing this podcast, the last week of November and she will be releasing her podcast the last week of November as well.
So you can opt between my podcast and her podcast, which her podcast is. Quote unquote, coincidentally named 100 percent Healthyish. So you can hop between my podcast and her podcast to get to know both of us. So since you are a listener of mine for a long time, I invite you to go and check out 100 percent Healthyish.
Dr. Jillian's Murphy's podcast and hear me talk about like, let's take an inside, completely behind the scene view at my health and how I'm approaching my health today, live in 2023. Also, to discover more of Jillian's content. So with that being said, I'm very excited to share this podcast. And also, I want you to take a note on something really important in my eyes, is that me and Jillian don't agree on everything.
We don't. And that's okay. She has her perspective. I have my perspective. But and should I say and we respect each other. I think that's the level of conversation we need to have more often with people. And I think we were able and we are able to have that conversation on many other topic which we've had.
Many time, not only on the podcast, but in our DMs, and defer opinion while still respecting, hearing, listening to each other's opinion. But that in mind, a return on the podcast, Dr. Jillian Murphy, and let's deep dive into this concept of 100 percent healthy ish.
Dr. Jillian: Welcome back to the podcast, Jillian.
Dr. Jillian: No, thanks for having me back. I'm excited.
Stephanie: It's funny because I was preparing for the podcast and I was like, I Googled my name and your name to see how many times you've been on the podcast.
Dr. Jillian: Oh, how many times is this? The three times.
Stephanie: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this podcast has been going for seven years, so you've been on it in 2017. 2018 and 2020. Isn't it crazy to think that?
Dr. Jillian: That's wild. Love it. Love it.
Stephanie: And, the reason why you're here today for everybody. the latest podcast was podcast two 35, where you were talking about integrating intuitive eating in a family setting.
Dr. Jillian: Yes. Yes.
Stephanie: That was the last time 2020 was at the pandemic state. I think we had just started the pandemic. Wow. And you're here today because I still follow you on Instagram. And I saw This post a few months ago that talked about healthy ish, I'm like, what is she up to? And the podcast is the place where I have conversations, so what the heck is healthy ish?
Dr. Jillian: Well, a podcast is a perfect place for the conversation as well, because it's a pretty nuanced conversation, right? I'm always very Wash with with it. And if I'm honest, it was like several years in the hopper before I fully rebranded and came out with it. So, you know, just a teeny bit of background and I won't go too far because probably I go further into it in other episodes. I've clearly talked about this before, but I'm a naturopathic doctor. I was trained as a naturopath. I graduated in 2006. I was working as I would say, uh. Fairly standard general naturopath for many years. I was always sensitive to sort of things about food and weight because of my own history with an eating disorder. But I was still very much steeped in a lot of fat phobic health beliefs, etc. 2011, I have my second daughter. I am. confronted with a different body than I'd had in the past. And so I very quickly found, I shouldn't say quickly, but like within the year found a body image coach who introduced me to health at every size and intuitive eating. And it opened up a whole new world for me.
Dr. Jillian: And so I spent a couple of years, deep in the personal side of the work, really freeing myself up from a lot of limiting beliefs and problematic health beliefs. And then I did extensive professional training. I studied under Ellen Satter for several years. I like, you know, through my own work, and my own study brought this into my practice and very slowly.
Dr. Jillian: This is the majority of the work that I do, right? So I do, I do like intuitive eating, some disordered eating and eating disorder work, which I still continue to this day and feel really, like it's just so deeply important. I'm very proud of that work. but then, you know, and this was early days, like I remember even coming on your podcast for the first time and being nervous. To really fully lay out some of the truths that, that was 2017, you're telling me, I thought it was even earlier because when I started doing this work and sharing it on Instagram, there was nobody really talking about this. Like a very small percentage of people were talking about this. It was very new. every day I had people like, Either saying, wow, this is amazing. It's the first time I've ever heard of this or like you're nuts. what are you even talking about? That's not real. So it was really new. Now, fast forward to a few years ago, I had been doing this work for 10 years, you know, a little less than that. I guess it's 10 years now. So seven years, my community had evolved. I had evolved as we all do as human beings. And this. Field had evolved. Now, everyone is talking about intuitive eating. You know, are they talking about it in the right way? I mean, who knows? But the point is, it's well understood, there are many people doing a fabulous job of promoting this work and talking about it.
Dr. Jillian: There are many people who, if I'm being like perfectly bluntly honest, are in bigger bodies than I am doing this work that I feel like have more space to some extent. I was like re figuring out. I'm going to talk about my role in this world of sort of body acceptance, health at every size, and intuitive eating. And through the work that I did with Ellen Sater, and then through the work that I was doing in my community and one on one, I started to bump up against This space in place where women were free, I don't want to say free because, you know, we're all in process, but free from a lot of the really problematic health stories and weight stories and food stories that had been crushing them for decades.
Dr. Jillian: but they were now I, you know, 40 at that time. Many of the women in my community were in their mid thirties and up to mid fifties. We're encountering. perimenopause were, starting to find little health concerns popping up that they hadn't had before, or were getting to a place with intuitive eating where they felt like they were quote unquote quasi intuitive eating.
Dr. Jillian: Meaning, yeah, I'm intuitive eating. But it just, I still don't feel great. I don't feel right. And at first I sort of poo pooed it like, Oh, you just haven't sunk in far enough, you know, but then, you know, eventually you have to start listening to the people that you're working with. And I realized like I was, I had been there a little bit as well and had worked my way through, but the difficulty at that time, again, I'm going to just be really blunt and really honest is that the social media world, as we know, is so.
Dr. Jillian: All or nothing, this or that, you're in or you're out. and when it comes to this work, I get it because we were pushing back against such pervasive weight and toxic wellness beliefs. We had to push back really hard at first, but then it got to the point where I felt like, it felt like I couldn't talk about eating well or putting any kind of intention or thoughtfulness or like getting back to this idea that I was working with.
Dr. Jillian: People who did have diabetes and needed to, like, just strategically sometimes watch their carb or sugar intake, that's just a real thing. and then also just evolving into this understanding that, Yes, we want to be connected to our bodies. Of course, we want to be connected. We want to be considering our bodies, but there are many things in the way that we live our daily lives that interfere with the information that our body's giving us sometimes. So, I guess when I'm, if I was going to, land the plane here, You know, when women often first start this work, as you well know, they've been in no's for a really long time, right? saying no to everything, restriction, no's,no. Then I felt like this bulk of my work was helping them learn how to say yes.
Dr. Jillian: How do we reclaim yes? How do we find the liberation and empowerment in yes? And then Healthish evolved when I realized that even though it's part of intuitive eating, I don't feel like there's a strong enough framework for gentle nutrition. I don't feel like there's a strong enough framework for managing health conditions for most people.
Dr. Jillian: And I really felt like the next phase was how do we teach discernment? So how do we even teach people to say no again? With a better perspective, with the right motivation, staying in connection with their body. How do we do that? What does that look like? And so for many years I felt like I couldn't talk about that because I felt like it would be misunderstood.
Dr. Jillian: So I was just kind of quietly doing it in private. And then, I don't know, there was something about the post COVID world where all of a sudden I felt like people were ready and looking for a more nuanced conversation in all areas.
Stephanie: and I would just want to say it's the way you're describing. This is almost like a Stage two of intuitive eating.
Dr. Jillian: Yeah, and I always am quite careful because I know I genuinely believe That when they wrote that intuitive eating book, this is actually what they envisioned But again, I think in order to not negate all of the important work that has to happen first I don't think they could go that deep Into this, because people would have latched on to that, they would have ignored all the rest, they would have gone to that chapter, they would have latched on to the lessons without having done the deep deprogramming work, and they would have just used it like a diet, because people did that anyway, right?
Dr. Jillian: So, I'm always careful because I think to a certain extent, like the other way that I sometimes describe this is that. When people start the work, their mind is running the show, right? Mind is fully, they're often completely disconnected from the neck down.
Stephanie: Bubble head, I called. Great. You remember the bubble that in the 80s and 90s? We're just bubble head.
Dr. Jillian: Exactly. And their brains are so diet culture trained and it's running the show and it's making bad decisions and it's out of alignment with the body. And then again, the second part of the work, we reconnect to the body. And then again, this third piece of the work is how do we reintegrate, how do we bring the brain back in?
Dr. Jillian: Because, you know, when I started this healthy ish work. It was because my body was asking for chocolate multiple times a day, and that's cool. I am, I, there's no moral story I have about that. I still eat chocolate multiple times a day sometimes, but there was a point where I was like needing a nap every day and having headaches and feeling exhausted and I had done all the other work and finally I was like, I think maybe I just need to not eat chocolate through my heavy work days, just my heavy work days and experiment with that. Yeah. So I did and I felt better, but there was like, there was brain blocks. There was mental, like there was all kinds of resistance to that. am I dieting again? Where is this coming from? And this is what I was hearing from the women that I work with. there are certain things that I know are making me feel bad, but I don't know how to manage that yet.
Dr. Jillian: So healthy ish is this attempt to provide a framework, a kind of part two or like senior level ninja level intuitive eating. So I, it's I'm always, the reason I like the, I was saying with the podcast is I always like to be sure people know like they need to have done some of this other work first.
Dr. Jillian: This is not. for everyone. And if even listening to us talk about me reducing the chocolate in my day, pulls up big triggers in your body, there's probably more work to do before you're ready to make that decision. Yeah,
Stephanie: totally. It's stage two. It's where for me, what I, when you're talking about, you know, the pendulum of health coming in the middle. So it's great. Yeah, right. Because I do a lot of mindset work, as you know, in cognitive behavioral, and there's patterns of thinking. And one of the pattern I literally see with every woman is black and white thinking. it's so ingrained, we're going to one side, there's no gray side. So most of the mindset work is teaching people to be in the gray and how to be in the gray. And when I hear you talk about healthy ish, I hear the gray side of health.
Dr. Jillian: It's gray. Yeah. It's very gray. it's still, the intuitive eating is a bit messy too. This is also just, it's it's messy to learn how to say yes. And then it's a little bit messy to learn how to integrate no's again and to have a framework for. So for instance, one of the reframes that I sometimes use is Again, foundation is always, our motivation is not manipulating our body. Our motivation is not disconnection or shutting ourselves down. Our goal is to feel the way we most want to feel in our body. Are there things, because you know, restriction is such a hot button word, but are there things that if you limited it, if you restricted it, and I don't like that word, but let's just say that's the word they're thinking of, it might actually open up something new and better for you. And so there are times when I have to limit my Netflix consumption. There are times when I have to put my phone down and there is discomfort in some of those things. But I know that, you know, I'm gonna put my phone away from 4 to 7 because I want to be present with my children when they're home.
Dr. Jillian: That doesn't mean that I don't think about my phone or reach in my back pocket 17 times, you know. And then I learn how to manage that. And we can do the same with food without it being dieting or restricting at our own expense. If it is opening up something like Managing blood sugar in a really positive way or energy levels or migraines
Stephanie: or, yeah,
Stephanie: is it true to say it's the intention that's most important?
Dr. Jillian: Yeah, yeah, and it's, and it's messy. Sometimes women will say, well, I just finished this 3 week healthiest reset. So we did like a reset, which is basically. I feel like it's a fun way to experiment with putting some parameters for a very short period of time when you're eating. Again, there's lots of education about the motivation and how we're going to set the parameters.
Dr. Jillian: And, one of the things that I build into my resets is flexibility. So they have to set some parameters and then they have to practice breaking them and coming back to their, you know, like that is also a skill I feel like most people don't have, you know, it's No rules or all rules and they have zero ability to move back and forth comfortably.
Dr. Jillian: And when I say rules, you know, I just mean like intentions and parameters, but, you know, one woman said, well, how do we, anytime I start to put some effort and thought back into my food, I immediately start thinking about my body all day long. How do I manage that? And so same, it was like, I used the phone analogy, like it's going to be, there's going to be this association. We have to practice retraining ourselves, reminding ourselves that's not what this is about. I can see why my brain wants to go there. How does my body feel? How do we continue to pull our attention back to the thing that really matters? and yeah, a year or two ago, that woman may not have been able to do this, but she was ready for it.
Dr. Jillian: And so it was like, okay. Yeah, I can do this. How do we, another thing that we work through in, the reset is like managing feelings of being a victim when we say no to something. So, so let me just see if I can, say this properly, butUm, we practice figuring out what our longer term goals are for how we want to feel in our body.
Dr. Jillian: And when we're setting parameters, we're thinking about are there some simple tweaks that we could flexibly make to our eating to achieve these longer term goals? But in the process of doing that, we need to learn how to manage the discomfort of not having instant gratification all the time. And part of learning to eat intuitively is part is like I encourage people to give in to instant gratification because they've been so cut off from that, you know, but now we have to reel ourselves back just like we do with so many highly concentrated experiences in life, right?
Dr. Jillian: TV, social media, caffeine. Alcoholic. These are all concentrated experiences that, you know, with no moral judgment around them can be used really well or can be problematic. And how do we start to define where we sit best with these things? We can do the same with food, but we have to learn how to manage.
Dr. Jillian: you know, there's like a whole exercise that I work through of like, Me saying no to ice cream one night on vacation because dairy actually upsets me a lot like not dairy ice cream specifically. And so I had set a parameter that I would like only eat ice cream X number of times on holiday and like again, I'm not talking like, instead of eating it 14 times I had it like 4 times or 5 like I wasn't deprived.
Dr. Jillian: I was well fed. I was well nourished. I was just limiting the amount of times that I ate. this specific food that really upsets me, you know? So I said no to it one night at dinner, then I immediately fell into I'm not fun. I'm so deprived. I'm such like, poor me. And then I had to, you know, we go through this whole example of reworking ourselves out of those thoughts into am I deprived?
Dr. Jillian: no, I made sure that I had enough to eat. And if I want more, I can have more dinner if I want it. If I want, there was like strawberries and a few other dessert things. if I want those things, I can have them. Am I a victim? no, I'm an adult. I'm making a choice. I want to feel better when I go to sleep tonight.
Dr. Jillian: I don't want to feel better in the morning. I'm choosing to do this because it's going to allow me to feel the way I want to feel in my body and not get back from this holiday a complete wreck, which has happened to me before. And soit's just exploring that, right? It's exploring the feelings and the thoughts that come up when we consider making a choice.
Dr. Jillian: That isn't an automatic yes for our health and learning from it. And there's no right answer. There's no right answer.
Stephanie: How do you work through associating, I'll use the example of being a wreck after the holiday with it being more than just a food that made you a wreck? Do you know, like people often go to Oh, it's the high screen. Like it's just didn't have the ice cream. I would have been a wreck. Meanwhile, they like their sleep cycle change because they're on holiday. They walked more if they're doing tourists. there's so many other factors that change the food.
Dr. Jillian: Well, yeah, and so, you know, with the three week reset, we're focused a little bit more on food just because, it's three weeks and we just got to play with one thing, but I always talk about this in the program, even if it's a short program, about if we're, like, hyper fixated on the food, we're already in the wrong spot.
Dr. Jillian: if your only consideration for how your body feels is what you ate, then you're getting stuck back in some old diet mentality stuff, because you're absolutely right. later nights. I mean, I drink way more. I drink way more coffee and alcohol, right? Like sleeping different. having no alone time to recharge.
Stephanie: Uh, simulated all the time with new stuff. And
Dr. Jillian: yeah, yeah, yeah. So remembering always that when it comes to health, when it comes to managing health, even when it comes to managing health conditions, we're never going to get hyper fixated. On just food and movement or supplements, you know, but sometimes within this world, that's what I'm working on. But we're always, of course, considering like there's a whole, even in the three week reset, there's a whole lesson on cycles. And like, where are you in the world as you do this reset? What is the season? If you have a cycle, where are you at in your cycle? And how can you stay connected to that, you know, and considerate of it, without feeling like you are a victim to it, to your body and every whim and urge and craving.
Dr. Jillian: So, yeah, to me this is just an evolution. the work that we've all been doing, yeah,
Stephanie: but more specifically you because I want to emphasize the fact that we had a DM conversation a few months ago around that, that you're licensed to practice medicine, you're not just I'm saying that and I'm a nutritionist, but yeah, I'm a nutritionist, but I'm not licensed to practice medicine.
Stephanie: Hmm. Do you see what I'm saying? there's a difference because you have different caseload that I have that need a different lens.
Dr. Jillian: that's it. And so, for me, when I finally stepped out of this was owning the fact that just because this work isn't right for everyone doesn't mean it's not right for or needed by anyone.
Dr. Jillian: Right. And me being able to, that I'm really good at it because I've done it for a long time. Now, if someone's ready for this or not ready for it. You know, like it's pretty apparent based on even how they talk about what's happening with them, how they, and I will say, as a naturopath, even throughout all my intuitive eating years, there were definitely people that were coming to me who were further through the spectrum already.
Dr. Jillian: You know, and they were ready for this work, and I just wasn't ready to give it to them yet. So I mean, you were in your
Stephanie: own
Dr. Jillian: black and white. Yes. Yeah. And I was in my own, everybody's in diet mentality. And we have to be very afraid if somebody is like, cutting out gluten or whatever it would like it. I was like, I was exercising this muscle of Permission and trying to teach that and again, I've just evolved into this space of like, we can be accepting of the bodies that we're in. We can be accepting of some of the health challenges that we have without being ambivalent. That's 1 of the biggest things Ellen Satter taught me.
Dr. Jillian: We don't need to be ambivalent. We can consider what's happening. So ambivalent is. Ignoring or going unconscious or not caring about it. So, you can accept your body and be like, Okay, this is my body, this is the weight that I'm at. maybe you have diabetes or you have high, what, high blood pressure or you're going through perimenopause.
Dr. Jillian: I can be accepting of that and I don't need to fight it. But I don't need to just ignore it or not care about it either. I can put some intention into taking care of this body that I'm in. And that's not a negative thing. It's a great thing. You just want to make sure you know, of course, that you're led by someone who isn't going to pull you back into hyper fixating on a single food or whatever
Stephanie: supplement cleanse or I'll take the most recently I've been sharing a lot of story about a knee injury and I'm in, I live in a larger body. So traditional medicine, the first thing they went to is your weight and I had to set my boundaries. So the K team. All of you listen. I'm going to do everything you want me to do except go on a diet and lose weight. So give me a protocol for somebody that is a normal size for a knee injury and I'll do it all.
Stephanie: Like I won't just wait for it to be fixed. I will be actively working towards my health. So I have now, six months later, still a regimen of stretching and strengthening and all of that. I'm doing what I need to be doing for the health of my knee, except one thing, which is to lose weight. But that doesn't mean because I don't want to lose weight that I don't do anything. That would be the right thing.
Dr. Jillian: Right. Yeah. Or you don't care about your knee or you're just going to ignore it and be like, well. let go and let God or whatever they say, you know, no, you don't have to do that. Right. And so again, I think my work has focused a little bit more on the food movement side of things because it's trickier.
Dr. Jillian: Like I felt like for many years I did add ins right. So just like supplements, the things that we can add in. and then again, I just felt like there was just this next little thing that, that there was a group of people who really needed to be able to explore. But you know, again, always within context, like if somebody has, I had lunch with a friend, earlier this week and, she did this whole hypnotherapy program for IBS and like, amazing.
Dr. Jillian: If there's a way to control IBS without needing to be on a highly restrictive diet, like I'm always looking for multifaceted approaches. And you know, if someone has blood sugar that's out of control and their doctor saying you're diabetic or pre diabetic, how's your sleep? We know that terrible sleep leads to out of control blood sugar, like always, always, always, like I feel obviously like all of this other work that I've done for years has landed me in this place where I can have a great perspective while helping people, be a little bit more intentional with their food and movement and supplement protocols. Yeah,
Stephanie: and the intention, like I, like we were saying in the beginning, not being losing weight. But supporting your body more,
Dr. Jillian: that's it. That's literally it. It's like we just take that one thing out of the equation and we learn to manage all of the feelings that pop up that want to pull us back into that and also the feelings that kind of were developed or came about as people learn to say yes to themselves.
Dr. Jillian: Like they had to really sometimes be like, I'm allowed. I deserve it. I'm worth it. But How could we bring those phrases into discernment instead of just yeses? Like you're allowed. Yes. You're allowed. Of course. You're always allowed as an adult. You can do whatever you want to do. What would you like to do?
Dr. Jillian: Right? If we bring the body and the mind back together, what would you like to do? You know, I love caffeine. My body would happily have caffeine all day, every day, but my sleep. is not good. So I make choices around that, right? Sometimes I set a parameter on my caffeine intake. It doesn't mean it's always easy because I'm Irish and we want to drink black tea after everything, all hours of the day and night, you know, but it doesn't serve me.
Dr. Jillian: So I make choices about that. It's just trickier when it comes to certain foods because the thought processes get messy for people and they need help. Sifting through it,
Stephanie: I think for me, the word you said here is key is the thought process because as you were talking, I often talk about rebellious eating and often the risk, like eating, and you eat whatever emotionally eating and response because you're angry, but emotional rebellious eating can swing the other way where there's no more nose.
Stephanie: It's just yes. Now you're rebelliously eating. In another way, still the answer is no rebellious eating either way, it's the middle.
Dr. Jillian: Well, I talk about this all the time because, women will say, if someone even merely suggests that I might need to look at my food, I'm eating it, it's that, you know, that saying which is like cutting off your own nose to spite your face. And if this food actually makes you feel bad and you're kind of aware of it, like you're not rebelling against diet culture at this point. You're rebelling against yourself. Yes.
Dr. Jillian: Right. And there's like a level of safety that we need to create or find so that you don't need to rebel. That you feel safe enough that you can just make choices. Like you're not constantly worried that someone's about to crush your safety.
Stephanie: Yeah, you're rebelling against yourself because you're being inconsiderate of supporting your body with food with and it's the same thing. If we were to talk about movement, I mean, yeah, how many women are stuck in the no phase of movement because they use the too much to shrink their body. So now they're stuck in and I was there for 5 years of not moving your body. And that has side effects.
Dr. Jillian: Yeah. Yeah. It's we have to get clear on the fact that sometimes there are pros to taking a break from exercise, but there are also side effects to not moving our body.
Dr. Jillian: And it's not diet culture to be aware of those things and consider them and learn how to work our way through. Right. So, I feel like it's a really exciting conversation. And like I said, I think that if there's anyone who listens to this. And it pulls up negative feelings. That's okay. set the episode aside and get, there'll be a moment where you're like ready and then you're like, what was that? Okay. Who are those two women talking about this thing? Because there are rare cases where I think people are never ready for this. Like maybe there's just been too much trauma around their body or food or whatever. And that's fine because the healthiest thing that people can be doing is just getting enough food, like bottom line, you know, eating enough and eating regularly and all of that. So they're already nine tenths of the way there. This is like the cherry on the icing on the cake. You know what I mean?
Stephanie: how would you to the person listening who's triggered by this and not ready for this? What would you say is the thing they can do to be ready for that healthiest conversation?
Dr. Jillian: Well, what that always pulls up for me is that they're feeling pressure. So, something about us talking about this is making them feel pressured to do something. And so, just reminding themselves that they're not pressured to do anything. They can always make choices. And if this feels like too much pressure, then what I tend to redirect people back toward is like neutralizing their relationship with food, feeding themselves right, just get back into that, like neutralizing their own. moral judgments about food, like there must be some in there for them still.
Dr. Jillian: Because like internalized sexism, internalized misogyny. Like you are now applying it to yourself. I mean, there's also the possibility that people outside of you are applying it to you. Fine. Fair enough. But often, like if people are in a situation where this is interesting, but oh my God, I can't.
Dr. Jillian: It's like, where have you internalized? Stories about your own body, about food, about movement, is there a way for you to start challenging that, creating more and more safety within yourself, knowing that, you know, the outside world is always going to be putting weird pressures on us, awful pressures that we can't necessarily mitigate, you know.
Dr. Jillian: but I feel like most often when people have that triggered reaction, it's like we're finding the wound. That's what we're finding. A trigger is the wound. So what healing needs to happen there? What do you need to happen so that you are, because this is interesting actually, because what I would hear from most women is that this quasi eating phase that they would find themselves in still didn't fully feel like liberation or control or agency.
Dr. Jillian: Right. And so when we find the wound, it's like, what do we need to heal up so that you can actually reclaim full empowerment, like at first it felt like empowerment and agency to say yes, but then eventually it starts to be like, but if I can't also say no to something that really doesn't feel good in my body and affects me negatively.
Dr. Jillian: That doesn't really feel like freedom either, you know? So what do we need to heal up? that's the wound. What do we need to heal up? Where do we need to create more safety? Where do you need to feel like you are fully in control of the decisions that you're making? What thoughts? What behaviors? What understandings? What do we need to shift so that you can trust yourself to make the right choices for you?
Stephanie: What would you say to the person who's listening to this? Been around intuitive eating for a while perhaps in the journey and she says, oh, that's the way of doing intuitive eating So I don't feel out of control
Dr. Jillian: because she's feeling out of control right now Well, there's a couple of different ways of looking at that. So the first is the other thing I really learned from Ellen Satter, which I didn't get, what, because she does competent eating, which is a little different, right? We talked about this from intuitive eating, is that she does always provide some structure for the people that she works with.
Dr. Jillian: And I have found along the way through eating disorder work, as well as just disordered eating work, that there are some people who need some structure right out of the gate. they just cannot, there are some people who need no structure, like even the mere mention of structure. They've been, the other analogy I use for this, which might be helpful for your clientele, I'm not sure, is, Barbara Colaroso is a parenting expert, so she writes parenting and, she'd talk about the brick wall parent.
Dr. Jillian: Sometimes, you know, the dictator parent, the brick wall parent, right? They have the rules. They never bend them. They never consider the cut. That's the dieter, right? The brick wall. That's the plan. I'm sticking with it. I don't care if I'm nearly passing out or I have a headache I'm sticking with. Then there's the jellyfish parent often born from a brick wall parent who has no rules and no parameters and stare as late as you want.
Dr. Jillian: And Children don't actually feel particularly safe in either of these households, because they don't feel safe if they're not heard or considered, and they don't feel safe, there's zero structure, and it feels like nobody's caring for you, it's like a 24 7 party, that doesn't feel good to a kid either, and so what we're trying to do as parents is become these, she calls them backbone parents, where there's this flexible backbone, where there's some structureAnd this is the analogy I use as well, like sometimes when we leave dieting, we become jellyfish and we've got to come back to this.
Dr. Jillian: So I'd say, actually you could experiment with it, but if it makes things worse, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
Stephanie: I'll say this, meet the gray space, you have to have gone to the black and white space. Yeah, like to be able to be flexible, you have to know both and say, I don't want this and I don't want this.
Stephanie: And I want something here in the middle, but completely avoiding this, you're missing out building safety for being in all part of life.
Dr. Jillian: I'm thinking about I'm seeing like. big splotches of paint, right? And you can't make gray if you haven't dipped your hand into the black and into the white. So, right. So yeah, like I'll say yes and no's are flip sides of the same coin.
Dr. Jillian: So if you can't own a yes, you cannot properly own a no. they're limited by the extent to which you can explore each one of those things. So I would agree with you. I love this, like taking these splotches of color. If you want to create gray, you know, you can't just have been a dieter who's been really reacting negatively to dieting and then think all of a sudden you can just be in gray.
Stephanie: You know? You have to have both. Yeah. And the exploration is born out of safety. For you to be able to explore the both side, you need to be able to have the safety within yourself from yourself to yourself and that's built. By trusting yourself through every phase of eating. I love that. Is there anything else you would like people to know about Healthish? And where can they find out more about Healthish with you?
Dr. Jillian: Well, the link that I've given you is healthishnewsletter. com. And there's like a two week series, which is kind of fun. Because some of it may be familiar. It's it's like breaking down sayings that I hate in the wellness culture, but it's fun because some of them are really diety and some of them are not.
Dr. Jillian: Some of them are kind of anti diety and I'm like, well, let's look at what I don't love about this either, you know? so that's a really great way to get introduced to the concept and to me and to find out more about this work. I don't know if there's anything else I want people to know, but just that.
Dr. Jillian: You have your podcast. Oh, yes. I have a podcast. Yeah. It's 100 percent healthy. It used to be food, freedom, body love, but it's 100 percent healthy ish. And Stephanie, you're going to come be on as well in a couple of weeks. and there's all kinds of great conversations there as well. as I've moved from where I was into this, I think there's lots of interesting conversations around reintegrating wellness.
Dr. Jillian: In a less toxic way because there's good stuff in there if we come at it with a really good critical thinking mind and we're clear on what we value and how we want to feel in our bodies. There's so much goodness in there.
Stephanie: Anybody that's listening to this that have a medicalized condition or diagnosed condition, I will just say you can work with them. And often people from my world are not equipped for that. They need to refer out. So yeah, you're the resource within intuitive eating health at every size for people with conditions.
Dr. Jillian: Yeah. Hello at healthyish. ca. there's a dash healthy ish. ca. You can email me. Yes, we can work with it.
Stephanie: Yeah, and that's the conversation we had on DM, like if I had the need for a health condition, you'd be the first person I would go to because I would know you have all these principles in this baseline. I wouldn't be served what I don't need to be served.
Dr. Jillian: No, you don't need to be super restrictive to manage diabetes. You don't need to be super restrictive to manage high cholesterol. that is not true. It backfires. It's bad. But we can be intentional and thoughtful at the same time.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. That was a beautiful conversation. I'm happy we had it. And I love to be able to introduce people to my listener who have a great view. It's not dichotomy on the one side to the other is disability to be in the middle safely.
Dr. Jillian: Thank you. I love it. Thanks for having me.
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Episode 384-Healthy-ish with Dr. Jillian Murphy
This is episode 384 of the beyond the food show. And today we’re going to discover the word healthy ish together with our special guest Dr. Jillian Murphy. Stay tuned.
Hello, my sisters and welcome back to the podcast. Today is a fun episode. And it’s a return back in memory lane, I have invited a guest who’s been on the podcast in almost all of my special event I’ve hosted, Dr. Jillian Murphy, she is a naturopathic doctor with 10 plus year of experience in the world of the non diet approach intuitive eating health at every size.
And this is why she’s been on the podcast for so many times because we’re both oh geez, in the non diet spheres of talking about health. So we’ve collaborated many times. And about four months ago, I was doomscrolling Instagram and it came across this post from Jillian talking about this concept called healthy ish.
And I read the post, I’m like, Ooh, she piqued my curiosity. So as a good podcast host, I thought instead of having the conversation about what the heck is healthy ish in my DM with her, I thought let’s invite her on the podcast today for I think it’s the fifth time on the podcast. So we can have a public conversation about what the heck is healthy ish or new philosophy or new program or new way of talking about the non diet approach.
And let’s all discover healthy ish together. She surprised me in inviting me back on her podcast so that I can talk about my health and how I’m approaching my health at the personal level and I did that. So, we decided to combine releasing our podcast in the same week. So I’m releasing this podcast, the last week of November and she will be releasing her podcast the last week of November as well.
So you can opt between my podcast and her podcast, which her podcast is. Quote unquote, coincidentally named 100 percent Healthyish. So you can hop between my podcast and her podcast to get to know both of us. So since you are a listener of mine for a long time, I invite you to go and check out 100 percent Healthyish.
Dr. Jillian’s Murphy’s podcast and hear me talk about like, let’s take an inside, completely behind the scene view at my health and how I’m approaching my health today, live in 2023. Also, to discover more of Jillian’s content. So with that being said, I’m very excited to share this podcast. And also, I want you to take a note on something really important in my eyes, is that me and Jillian don’t agree on everything.
We don’t. And that’s okay. She has her perspective. I have my perspective. But and should I say and we respect each other. I think that’s the level of conversation we need to have more often with people. And I think we were able and we are able to have that conversation on many other topic which we’ve had.
Many time, not only on the podcast, but in our DMs, and defer opinion while still respecting, hearing, listening to each other’s opinion. But that in mind, a return on the podcast, Dr. Jillian Murphy, and let’s deep dive into this concept of 100 percent healthy ish.
Dr. Jillian: Welcome back to the podcast, Jillian.
Dr. Jillian: No, thanks for having me back. I’m excited.
Stephanie: It’s funny because I was preparing for the podcast and I was like, I Googled my name and your name to see how many times you’ve been on the podcast.
Dr. Jillian: Oh, how many times is this? The three times.
Stephanie: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this podcast has been going for seven years, so you’ve been on it in 2017. 2018 and 2020. Isn’t it crazy to think that?
Dr. Jillian: That’s wild. Love it. Love it.
Stephanie: And, the reason why you’re here today for everybody. the latest podcast was podcast two 35, where you were talking about integrating intuitive eating in a family setting.
Dr. Jillian: Yes. Yes.
Stephanie: That was the last time 2020 was at the pandemic state. I think we had just started the pandemic. Wow. And you’re here today because I still follow you on Instagram. And I saw This post a few months ago that talked about healthy ish, I’m like, what is she up to? And the podcast is the place where I have conversations, so what the heck is healthy ish?
Dr. Jillian: Well, a podcast is a perfect place for the conversation as well, because it’s a pretty nuanced conversation, right? I’m always very Wash with with it. And if I’m honest, it was like several years in the hopper before I fully rebranded and came out with it. So, you know, just a teeny bit of background and I won’t go too far because probably I go further into it in other episodes. I’ve clearly talked about this before, but I’m a naturopathic doctor. I was trained as a naturopath. I graduated in 2006. I was working as I would say, uh. Fairly standard general naturopath for many years. I was always sensitive to sort of things about food and weight because of my own history with an eating disorder. But I was still very much steeped in a lot of fat phobic health beliefs, etc. 2011, I have my second daughter. I am. confronted with a different body than I’d had in the past. And so I very quickly found, I shouldn’t say quickly, but like within the year found a body image coach who introduced me to health at every size and intuitive eating. And it opened up a whole new world for me.
Dr. Jillian: And so I spent a couple of years, deep in the personal side of the work, really freeing myself up from a lot of limiting beliefs and problematic health beliefs. And then I did extensive professional training. I studied under Ellen Satter for several years. I like, you know, through my own work, and my own study brought this into my practice and very slowly.
Dr. Jillian: This is the majority of the work that I do, right? So I do, I do like intuitive eating, some disordered eating and eating disorder work, which I still continue to this day and feel really, like it’s just so deeply important. I’m very proud of that work. but then, you know, and this was early days, like I remember even coming on your podcast for the first time and being nervous. To really fully lay out some of the truths that, that was 2017, you’re telling me, I thought it was even earlier because when I started doing this work and sharing it on Instagram, there was nobody really talking about this. Like a very small percentage of people were talking about this. It was very new. every day I had people like, Either saying, wow, this is amazing. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of this or like you’re nuts. what are you even talking about? That’s not real. So it was really new. Now, fast forward to a few years ago, I had been doing this work for 10 years, you know, a little less than that. I guess it’s 10 years now. So seven years, my community had evolved. I had evolved as we all do as human beings. And this. Field had evolved. Now, everyone is talking about intuitive eating. You know, are they talking about it in the right way? I mean, who knows? But the point is, it’s well understood, there are many people doing a fabulous job of promoting this work and talking about it.
Dr. Jillian: There are many people who, if I’m being like perfectly bluntly honest, are in bigger bodies than I am doing this work that I feel like have more space to some extent. I was like re figuring out. I’m going to talk about my role in this world of sort of body acceptance, health at every size, and intuitive eating. And through the work that I did with Ellen Sater, and then through the work that I was doing in my community and one on one, I started to bump up against This space in place where women were free, I don’t want to say free because, you know, we’re all in process, but free from a lot of the really problematic health stories and weight stories and food stories that had been crushing them for decades.
Dr. Jillian: but they were now I, you know, 40 at that time. Many of the women in my community were in their mid thirties and up to mid fifties. We’re encountering. perimenopause were, starting to find little health concerns popping up that they hadn’t had before, or were getting to a place with intuitive eating where they felt like they were quote unquote quasi intuitive eating.
Dr. Jillian: Meaning, yeah, I’m intuitive eating. But it just, I still don’t feel great. I don’t feel right. And at first I sort of poo pooed it like, Oh, you just haven’t sunk in far enough, you know, but then, you know, eventually you have to start listening to the people that you’re working with. And I realized like I was, I had been there a little bit as well and had worked my way through, but the difficulty at that time, again, I’m going to just be really blunt and really honest is that the social media world, as we know, is so.
Dr. Jillian: All or nothing, this or that, you’re in or you’re out. and when it comes to this work, I get it because we were pushing back against such pervasive weight and toxic wellness beliefs. We had to push back really hard at first, but then it got to the point where I felt like, it felt like I couldn’t talk about eating well or putting any kind of intention or thoughtfulness or like getting back to this idea that I was working with.
Dr. Jillian: People who did have diabetes and needed to, like, just strategically sometimes watch their carb or sugar intake, that’s just a real thing. and then also just evolving into this understanding that, Yes, we want to be connected to our bodies. Of course, we want to be connected. We want to be considering our bodies, but there are many things in the way that we live our daily lives that interfere with the information that our body’s giving us sometimes. So, I guess when I’m, if I was going to, land the plane here, You know, when women often first start this work, as you well know, they’ve been in no’s for a really long time, right? saying no to everything, restriction, no’s,no. Then I felt like this bulk of my work was helping them learn how to say yes.
Dr. Jillian: How do we reclaim yes? How do we find the liberation and empowerment in yes? And then Healthish evolved when I realized that even though it’s part of intuitive eating, I don’t feel like there’s a strong enough framework for gentle nutrition. I don’t feel like there’s a strong enough framework for managing health conditions for most people.
Dr. Jillian: And I really felt like the next phase was how do we teach discernment? So how do we even teach people to say no again? With a better perspective, with the right motivation, staying in connection with their body. How do we do that? What does that look like? And so for many years I felt like I couldn’t talk about that because I felt like it would be misunderstood.
Dr. Jillian: So I was just kind of quietly doing it in private. And then, I don’t know, there was something about the post COVID world where all of a sudden I felt like people were ready and looking for a more nuanced conversation in all areas.
Stephanie: and I would just want to say it’s the way you’re describing. This is almost like a Stage two of intuitive eating.
Dr. Jillian: Yeah, and I always am quite careful because I know I genuinely believe That when they wrote that intuitive eating book, this is actually what they envisioned But again, I think in order to not negate all of the important work that has to happen first I don’t think they could go that deep Into this, because people would have latched on to that, they would have ignored all the rest, they would have gone to that chapter, they would have latched on to the lessons without having done the deep deprogramming work, and they would have just used it like a diet, because people did that anyway, right?
Dr. Jillian: So, I’m always careful because I think to a certain extent, like the other way that I sometimes describe this is that. When people start the work, their mind is running the show, right? Mind is fully, they’re often completely disconnected from the neck down.
Stephanie: Bubble head, I called. Great. You remember the bubble that in the 80s and 90s? We’re just bubble head.
Dr. Jillian: Exactly. And their brains are so diet culture trained and it’s running the show and it’s making bad decisions and it’s out of alignment with the body. And then again, the second part of the work, we reconnect to the body. And then again, this third piece of the work is how do we reintegrate, how do we bring the brain back in?
Dr. Jillian: Because, you know, when I started this healthy ish work. It was because my body was asking for chocolate multiple times a day, and that’s cool. I am, I, there’s no moral story I have about that. I still eat chocolate multiple times a day sometimes, but there was a point where I was like needing a nap every day and having headaches and feeling exhausted and I had done all the other work and finally I was like, I think maybe I just need to not eat chocolate through my heavy work days, just my heavy work days and experiment with that. Yeah. So I did and I felt better, but there was like, there was brain blocks. There was mental, like there was all kinds of resistance to that. am I dieting again? Where is this coming from? And this is what I was hearing from the women that I work with. there are certain things that I know are making me feel bad, but I don’t know how to manage that yet.
Dr. Jillian: So healthy ish is this attempt to provide a framework, a kind of part two or like senior level ninja level intuitive eating. So I, it’s I’m always, the reason I like the, I was saying with the podcast is I always like to be sure people know like they need to have done some of this other work first.
Dr. Jillian: This is not. for everyone. And if even listening to us talk about me reducing the chocolate in my day, pulls up big triggers in your body, there’s probably more work to do before you’re ready to make that decision. Yeah,
Stephanie: totally. It’s stage two. It’s where for me, what I, when you’re talking about, you know, the pendulum of health coming in the middle. So it’s great. Yeah, right. Because I do a lot of mindset work, as you know, in cognitive behavioral, and there’s patterns of thinking. And one of the pattern I literally see with every woman is black and white thinking. it’s so ingrained, we’re going to one side, there’s no gray side. So most of the mindset work is teaching people to be in the gray and how to be in the gray. And when I hear you talk about healthy ish, I hear the gray side of health.
Dr. Jillian: It’s gray. Yeah. It’s very gray. it’s still, the intuitive eating is a bit messy too. This is also just, it’s it’s messy to learn how to say yes. And then it’s a little bit messy to learn how to integrate no’s again and to have a framework for. So for instance, one of the reframes that I sometimes use is Again, foundation is always, our motivation is not manipulating our body. Our motivation is not disconnection or shutting ourselves down. Our goal is to feel the way we most want to feel in our body. Are there things, because you know, restriction is such a hot button word, but are there things that if you limited it, if you restricted it, and I don’t like that word, but let’s just say that’s the word they’re thinking of, it might actually open up something new and better for you. And so there are times when I have to limit my Netflix consumption. There are times when I have to put my phone down and there is discomfort in some of those things. But I know that, you know, I’m gonna put my phone away from 4 to 7 because I want to be present with my children when they’re home.
Dr. Jillian: That doesn’t mean that I don’t think about my phone or reach in my back pocket 17 times, you know. And then I learn how to manage that. And we can do the same with food without it being dieting or restricting at our own expense. If it is opening up something like Managing blood sugar in a really positive way or energy levels or migraines
Stephanie: or, yeah,
Stephanie: is it true to say it’s the intention that’s most important?
Dr. Jillian: Yeah, yeah, and it’s, and it’s messy. Sometimes women will say, well, I just finished this 3 week healthiest reset. So we did like a reset, which is basically. I feel like it’s a fun way to experiment with putting some parameters for a very short period of time when you’re eating. Again, there’s lots of education about the motivation and how we’re going to set the parameters.
Dr. Jillian: And, one of the things that I build into my resets is flexibility. So they have to set some parameters and then they have to practice breaking them and coming back to their, you know, like that is also a skill I feel like most people don’t have, you know, it’s No rules or all rules and they have zero ability to move back and forth comfortably.
Dr. Jillian: And when I say rules, you know, I just mean like intentions and parameters, but, you know, one woman said, well, how do we, anytime I start to put some effort and thought back into my food, I immediately start thinking about my body all day long. How do I manage that? And so same, it was like, I used the phone analogy, like it’s going to be, there’s going to be this association. We have to practice retraining ourselves, reminding ourselves that’s not what this is about. I can see why my brain wants to go there. How does my body feel? How do we continue to pull our attention back to the thing that really matters? and yeah, a year or two ago, that woman may not have been able to do this, but she was ready for it.
Dr. Jillian: And so it was like, okay. Yeah, I can do this. How do we, another thing that we work through in, the reset is like managing feelings of being a victim when we say no to something. So, so let me just see if I can, say this properly, butUm, we practice figuring out what our longer term goals are for how we want to feel in our body.
Dr. Jillian: And when we’re setting parameters, we’re thinking about are there some simple tweaks that we could flexibly make to our eating to achieve these longer term goals? But in the process of doing that, we need to learn how to manage the discomfort of not having instant gratification all the time. And part of learning to eat intuitively is part is like I encourage people to give in to instant gratification because they’ve been so cut off from that, you know, but now we have to reel ourselves back just like we do with so many highly concentrated experiences in life, right?
Dr. Jillian: TV, social media, caffeine. Alcoholic. These are all concentrated experiences that, you know, with no moral judgment around them can be used really well or can be problematic. And how do we start to define where we sit best with these things? We can do the same with food, but we have to learn how to manage.
Dr. Jillian: you know, there’s like a whole exercise that I work through of like, Me saying no to ice cream one night on vacation because dairy actually upsets me a lot like not dairy ice cream specifically. And so I had set a parameter that I would like only eat ice cream X number of times on holiday and like again, I’m not talking like, instead of eating it 14 times I had it like 4 times or 5 like I wasn’t deprived.
Dr. Jillian: I was well fed. I was well nourished. I was just limiting the amount of times that I ate. this specific food that really upsets me, you know? So I said no to it one night at dinner, then I immediately fell into I’m not fun. I’m so deprived. I’m such like, poor me. And then I had to, you know, we go through this whole example of reworking ourselves out of those thoughts into am I deprived?
Dr. Jillian: no, I made sure that I had enough to eat. And if I want more, I can have more dinner if I want it. If I want, there was like strawberries and a few other dessert things. if I want those things, I can have them. Am I a victim? no, I’m an adult. I’m making a choice. I want to feel better when I go to sleep tonight.
Dr. Jillian: I don’t want to feel better in the morning. I’m choosing to do this because it’s going to allow me to feel the way I want to feel in my body and not get back from this holiday a complete wreck, which has happened to me before. And soit’s just exploring that, right? It’s exploring the feelings and the thoughts that come up when we consider making a choice.
Dr. Jillian: That isn’t an automatic yes for our health and learning from it. And there’s no right answer. There’s no right answer.
Stephanie: How do you work through associating, I’ll use the example of being a wreck after the holiday with it being more than just a food that made you a wreck? Do you know, like people often go to Oh, it’s the high screen. Like it’s just didn’t have the ice cream. I would have been a wreck. Meanwhile, they like their sleep cycle change because they’re on holiday. They walked more if they’re doing tourists. there’s so many other factors that change the food.
Dr. Jillian: Well, yeah, and so, you know, with the three week reset, we’re focused a little bit more on food just because, it’s three weeks and we just got to play with one thing, but I always talk about this in the program, even if it’s a short program, about if we’re, like, hyper fixated on the food, we’re already in the wrong spot.
Dr. Jillian: if your only consideration for how your body feels is what you ate, then you’re getting stuck back in some old diet mentality stuff, because you’re absolutely right. later nights. I mean, I drink way more. I drink way more coffee and alcohol, right? Like sleeping different. having no alone time to recharge.
Stephanie: Uh, simulated all the time with new stuff. And
Dr. Jillian: yeah, yeah, yeah. So remembering always that when it comes to health, when it comes to managing health, even when it comes to managing health conditions, we’re never going to get hyper fixated. On just food and movement or supplements, you know, but sometimes within this world, that’s what I’m working on. But we’re always, of course, considering like there’s a whole, even in the three week reset, there’s a whole lesson on cycles. And like, where are you in the world as you do this reset? What is the season? If you have a cycle, where are you at in your cycle? And how can you stay connected to that, you know, and considerate of it, without feeling like you are a victim to it, to your body and every whim and urge and craving.
Dr. Jillian: So, yeah, to me this is just an evolution. the work that we’ve all been doing, yeah,
Stephanie: but more specifically you because I want to emphasize the fact that we had a DM conversation a few months ago around that, that you’re licensed to practice medicine, you’re not just I’m saying that and I’m a nutritionist, but yeah, I’m a nutritionist, but I’m not licensed to practice medicine.
Stephanie: Hmm. Do you see what I’m saying? there’s a difference because you have different caseload that I have that need a different lens.
Dr. Jillian: that’s it. And so, for me, when I finally stepped out of this was owning the fact that just because this work isn’t right for everyone doesn’t mean it’s not right for or needed by anyone.
Dr. Jillian: Right. And me being able to, that I’m really good at it because I’ve done it for a long time. Now, if someone’s ready for this or not ready for it. You know, like it’s pretty apparent based on even how they talk about what’s happening with them, how they, and I will say, as a naturopath, even throughout all my intuitive eating years, there were definitely people that were coming to me who were further through the spectrum already.
Dr. Jillian: You know, and they were ready for this work, and I just wasn’t ready to give it to them yet. So I mean, you were in your
Stephanie: own
Dr. Jillian: black and white. Yes. Yeah. And I was in my own, everybody’s in diet mentality. And we have to be very afraid if somebody is like, cutting out gluten or whatever it would like it. I was like, I was exercising this muscle of Permission and trying to teach that and again, I’ve just evolved into this space of like, we can be accepting of the bodies that we’re in. We can be accepting of some of the health challenges that we have without being ambivalent. That’s 1 of the biggest things Ellen Satter taught me.
Dr. Jillian: We don’t need to be ambivalent. We can consider what’s happening. So ambivalent is. Ignoring or going unconscious or not caring about it. So, you can accept your body and be like, Okay, this is my body, this is the weight that I’m at. maybe you have diabetes or you have high, what, high blood pressure or you’re going through perimenopause.
Dr. Jillian: I can be accepting of that and I don’t need to fight it. But I don’t need to just ignore it or not care about it either. I can put some intention into taking care of this body that I’m in. And that’s not a negative thing. It’s a great thing. You just want to make sure you know, of course, that you’re led by someone who isn’t going to pull you back into hyper fixating on a single food or whatever
Stephanie: supplement cleanse or I’ll take the most recently I’ve been sharing a lot of story about a knee injury and I’m in, I live in a larger body. So traditional medicine, the first thing they went to is your weight and I had to set my boundaries. So the K team. All of you listen. I’m going to do everything you want me to do except go on a diet and lose weight. So give me a protocol for somebody that is a normal size for a knee injury and I’ll do it all.
Stephanie: Like I won’t just wait for it to be fixed. I will be actively working towards my health. So I have now, six months later, still a regimen of stretching and strengthening and all of that. I’m doing what I need to be doing for the health of my knee, except one thing, which is to lose weight. But that doesn’t mean because I don’t want to lose weight that I don’t do anything. That would be the right thing.
Dr. Jillian: Right. Yeah. Or you don’t care about your knee or you’re just going to ignore it and be like, well. let go and let God or whatever they say, you know, no, you don’t have to do that. Right. And so again, I think my work has focused a little bit more on the food movement side of things because it’s trickier.
Dr. Jillian: Like I felt like for many years I did add ins right. So just like supplements, the things that we can add in. and then again, I just felt like there was just this next little thing that, that there was a group of people who really needed to be able to explore. But you know, again, always within context, like if somebody has, I had lunch with a friend, earlier this week and, she did this whole hypnotherapy program for IBS and like, amazing.
Dr. Jillian: If there’s a way to control IBS without needing to be on a highly restrictive diet, like I’m always looking for multifaceted approaches. And you know, if someone has blood sugar that’s out of control and their doctor saying you’re diabetic or pre diabetic, how’s your sleep? We know that terrible sleep leads to out of control blood sugar, like always, always, always, like I feel obviously like all of this other work that I’ve done for years has landed me in this place where I can have a great perspective while helping people, be a little bit more intentional with their food and movement and supplement protocols. Yeah,
Stephanie: and the intention, like I, like we were saying in the beginning, not being losing weight. But supporting your body more,
Dr. Jillian: that’s it. That’s literally it. It’s like we just take that one thing out of the equation and we learn to manage all of the feelings that pop up that want to pull us back into that and also the feelings that kind of were developed or came about as people learn to say yes to themselves.
Dr. Jillian: Like they had to really sometimes be like, I’m allowed. I deserve it. I’m worth it. But How could we bring those phrases into discernment instead of just yeses? Like you’re allowed. Yes. You’re allowed. Of course. You’re always allowed as an adult. You can do whatever you want to do. What would you like to do?
Dr. Jillian: Right? If we bring the body and the mind back together, what would you like to do? You know, I love caffeine. My body would happily have caffeine all day, every day, but my sleep. is not good. So I make choices around that, right? Sometimes I set a parameter on my caffeine intake. It doesn’t mean it’s always easy because I’m Irish and we want to drink black tea after everything, all hours of the day and night, you know, but it doesn’t serve me.
Dr. Jillian: So I make choices about that. It’s just trickier when it comes to certain foods because the thought processes get messy for people and they need help. Sifting through it,
Stephanie: I think for me, the word you said here is key is the thought process because as you were talking, I often talk about rebellious eating and often the risk, like eating, and you eat whatever emotionally eating and response because you’re angry, but emotional rebellious eating can swing the other way where there’s no more nose.
Stephanie: It’s just yes. Now you’re rebelliously eating. In another way, still the answer is no rebellious eating either way, it’s the middle.
Dr. Jillian: Well, I talk about this all the time because, women will say, if someone even merely suggests that I might need to look at my food, I’m eating it, it’s that, you know, that saying which is like cutting off your own nose to spite your face. And if this food actually makes you feel bad and you’re kind of aware of it, like you’re not rebelling against diet culture at this point. You’re rebelling against yourself. Yes.
Dr. Jillian: Right. And there’s like a level of safety that we need to create or find so that you don’t need to rebel. That you feel safe enough that you can just make choices. Like you’re not constantly worried that someone’s about to crush your safety.
Stephanie: Yeah, you’re rebelling against yourself because you’re being inconsiderate of supporting your body with food with and it’s the same thing. If we were to talk about movement, I mean, yeah, how many women are stuck in the no phase of movement because they use the too much to shrink their body. So now they’re stuck in and I was there for 5 years of not moving your body. And that has side effects.
Dr. Jillian: Yeah. Yeah. It’s we have to get clear on the fact that sometimes there are pros to taking a break from exercise, but there are also side effects to not moving our body.
Dr. Jillian: And it’s not diet culture to be aware of those things and consider them and learn how to work our way through. Right. So, I feel like it’s a really exciting conversation. And like I said, I think that if there’s anyone who listens to this. And it pulls up negative feelings. That’s okay. set the episode aside and get, there’ll be a moment where you’re like ready and then you’re like, what was that? Okay. Who are those two women talking about this thing? Because there are rare cases where I think people are never ready for this. Like maybe there’s just been too much trauma around their body or food or whatever. And that’s fine because the healthiest thing that people can be doing is just getting enough food, like bottom line, you know, eating enough and eating regularly and all of that. So they’re already nine tenths of the way there. This is like the cherry on the icing on the cake. You know what I mean?
Stephanie: how would you to the person listening who’s triggered by this and not ready for this? What would you say is the thing they can do to be ready for that healthiest conversation?
Dr. Jillian: Well, what that always pulls up for me is that they’re feeling pressure. So, something about us talking about this is making them feel pressured to do something. And so, just reminding themselves that they’re not pressured to do anything. They can always make choices. And if this feels like too much pressure, then what I tend to redirect people back toward is like neutralizing their relationship with food, feeding themselves right, just get back into that, like neutralizing their own. moral judgments about food, like there must be some in there for them still.
Dr. Jillian: Because like internalized sexism, internalized misogyny. Like you are now applying it to yourself. I mean, there’s also the possibility that people outside of you are applying it to you. Fine. Fair enough. But often, like if people are in a situation where this is interesting, but oh my God, I can’t.
Dr. Jillian: It’s like, where have you internalized? Stories about your own body, about food, about movement, is there a way for you to start challenging that, creating more and more safety within yourself, knowing that, you know, the outside world is always going to be putting weird pressures on us, awful pressures that we can’t necessarily mitigate, you know.
Dr. Jillian: but I feel like most often when people have that triggered reaction, it’s like we’re finding the wound. That’s what we’re finding. A trigger is the wound. So what healing needs to happen there? What do you need to happen so that you are, because this is interesting actually, because what I would hear from most women is that this quasi eating phase that they would find themselves in still didn’t fully feel like liberation or control or agency.
Dr. Jillian: Right. And so when we find the wound, it’s like, what do we need to heal up so that you can actually reclaim full empowerment, like at first it felt like empowerment and agency to say yes, but then eventually it starts to be like, but if I can’t also say no to something that really doesn’t feel good in my body and affects me negatively.
Dr. Jillian: That doesn’t really feel like freedom either, you know? So what do we need to heal up? that’s the wound. What do we need to heal up? Where do we need to create more safety? Where do you need to feel like you are fully in control of the decisions that you’re making? What thoughts? What behaviors? What understandings? What do we need to shift so that you can trust yourself to make the right choices for you?
Stephanie: What would you say to the person who’s listening to this? Been around intuitive eating for a while perhaps in the journey and she says, oh, that’s the way of doing intuitive eating So I don’t feel out of control
Dr. Jillian: because she’s feeling out of control right now Well, there’s a couple of different ways of looking at that. So the first is the other thing I really learned from Ellen Satter, which I didn’t get, what, because she does competent eating, which is a little different, right? We talked about this from intuitive eating, is that she does always provide some structure for the people that she works with.
Dr. Jillian: And I have found along the way through eating disorder work, as well as just disordered eating work, that there are some people who need some structure right out of the gate. they just cannot, there are some people who need no structure, like even the mere mention of structure. They’ve been, the other analogy I use for this, which might be helpful for your clientele, I’m not sure, is, Barbara Colaroso is a parenting expert, so she writes parenting and, she’d talk about the brick wall parent.
Dr. Jillian: Sometimes, you know, the dictator parent, the brick wall parent, right? They have the rules. They never bend them. They never consider the cut. That’s the dieter, right? The brick wall. That’s the plan. I’m sticking with it. I don’t care if I’m nearly passing out or I have a headache I’m sticking with. Then there’s the jellyfish parent often born from a brick wall parent who has no rules and no parameters and stare as late as you want.
Dr. Jillian: And Children don’t actually feel particularly safe in either of these households, because they don’t feel safe if they’re not heard or considered, and they don’t feel safe, there’s zero structure, and it feels like nobody’s caring for you, it’s like a 24 7 party, that doesn’t feel good to a kid either, and so what we’re trying to do as parents is become these, she calls them backbone parents, where there’s this flexible backbone, where there’s some structureAnd this is the analogy I use as well, like sometimes when we leave dieting, we become jellyfish and we’ve got to come back to this.
Dr. Jillian: So I’d say, actually you could experiment with it, but if it makes things worse, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
Stephanie: I’ll say this, meet the gray space, you have to have gone to the black and white space. Yeah, like to be able to be flexible, you have to know both and say, I don’t want this and I don’t want this.
Stephanie: And I want something here in the middle, but completely avoiding this, you’re missing out building safety for being in all part of life.
Dr. Jillian: I’m thinking about I’m seeing like. big splotches of paint, right? And you can’t make gray if you haven’t dipped your hand into the black and into the white. So, right. So yeah, like I’ll say yes and no’s are flip sides of the same coin.
Dr. Jillian: So if you can’t own a yes, you cannot properly own a no. they’re limited by the extent to which you can explore each one of those things. So I would agree with you. I love this, like taking these splotches of color. If you want to create gray, you know, you can’t just have been a dieter who’s been really reacting negatively to dieting and then think all of a sudden you can just be in gray.
Stephanie: You know? You have to have both. Yeah. And the exploration is born out of safety. For you to be able to explore the both side, you need to be able to have the safety within yourself from yourself to yourself and that’s built. By trusting yourself through every phase of eating. I love that. Is there anything else you would like people to know about Healthish? And where can they find out more about Healthish with you?
Dr. Jillian: Well, the link that I’ve given you is healthishnewsletter. com. And there’s like a two week series, which is kind of fun. Because some of it may be familiar. It’s it’s like breaking down sayings that I hate in the wellness culture, but it’s fun because some of them are really diety and some of them are not.
Dr. Jillian: Some of them are kind of anti diety and I’m like, well, let’s look at what I don’t love about this either, you know? so that’s a really great way to get introduced to the concept and to me and to find out more about this work. I don’t know if there’s anything else I want people to know, but just that.
Dr. Jillian: You have your podcast. Oh, yes. I have a podcast. Yeah. It’s 100 percent healthy. It used to be food, freedom, body love, but it’s 100 percent healthy ish. And Stephanie, you’re going to come be on as well in a couple of weeks. and there’s all kinds of great conversations there as well. as I’ve moved from where I was into this, I think there’s lots of interesting conversations around reintegrating wellness.
Dr. Jillian: In a less toxic way because there’s good stuff in there if we come at it with a really good critical thinking mind and we’re clear on what we value and how we want to feel in our bodies. There’s so much goodness in there.
Stephanie: Anybody that’s listening to this that have a medicalized condition or diagnosed condition, I will just say you can work with them. And often people from my world are not equipped for that. They need to refer out. So yeah, you’re the resource within intuitive eating health at every size for people with conditions.
Dr. Jillian: Yeah. Hello at healthyish. ca. there’s a dash healthy ish. ca. You can email me. Yes, we can work with it.
Stephanie: Yeah, and that’s the conversation we had on DM, like if I had the need for a health condition, you’d be the first person I would go to because I would know you have all these principles in this baseline. I wouldn’t be served what I don’t need to be served.
Dr. Jillian: No, you don’t need to be super restrictive to manage diabetes. You don’t need to be super restrictive to manage high cholesterol. that is not true. It backfires. It’s bad. But we can be intentional and thoughtful at the same time.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. That was a beautiful conversation. I’m happy we had it. And I love to be able to introduce people to my listener who have a great view. It’s not dichotomy on the one side to the other is disability to be in the middle safely.
Dr. Jillian: Thank you. I love it. Thanks for having me.
