The Extra Scoop: How to Build a Truly Healthy Relationship with Food

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0:59Welcome to The Extra Scoop, our expert-led bonus episodes, giving you the need to know on the topics everybody is talking about. That's right, from gut health to sleep, hormones to skin, we are cutting through the noise with top experts, so there is no fluff, just facts. Exactly, it's all quick, practical, evidence-based advice to fit into your busy lives. So this is The Extra Scoop, let's get started.

1:28So as you probably know by now, our Extra Scoop episodes are all about taking the topics that everyone's talking about, the things you're seeing online, that you're reading about, and quickly breaking them down for you so that you have got quick, concise, expert-led insights that leave you feeling informed and most importantly empowered when it comes to your health and well-being. Exactly. And as summer approaches and we're just seeing so many toxic trends emerge on social media, we want to explore the complexities of our relationship with food. So we're thrilled to dive into this conversation with the amazing Sarah Elder, who of course I know from the Retrition Clinic, but she's so, so well-respected, a registered dietitian and nutritionist with over a decade of experience.

2:11Sarah is warm, realistic. Her approach to nutrition is fantastic. And with a focus on gut health, hormonal wellbeing, and the connection between food and mood, she's definitely dedicated to cutting through diet culture and making her the perfect person really to have on this topic today. So hello, Sarah. Hello, thank you so much for having me today. It's honestly such a pleasure. I think this is such an inherently important conversation, probably something that we should be all replaying to ourselves and playing to women of all generations in particular. But I wondered, Sarah, before we get into the episode, could you just tell us in a nutshell, how do you actually define a healthy relationship with food?

2:51And what is good or normal body image and our relationship with body image? So I think this is quite a difficult one to answer because really a healthy relationship with food is so individual to every single person and I think that what you've got to think about is that what does healthy mean for me and I think sometimes we've got this term healthy that is kind of put out in social media and in the news that this is what healthy looks like this is what we should be doing if we are healthy but actually a healthy relationship is one where we're actually rooted in that respect for ourselves we're thinking about that balance we're thinking about self-compassion we're thinking about what is it that my body's needing right now and how am I individual compared to other people so it's thinking about listening to your body's hunger and fullness cues listening to actually what's your body needing in terms of its mental health what is it that it's needing in terms of movement getting out in nature what do I need to nourish myself to connect with others and to actually get pleasure out of food um and I guess that although we're talking about that healthy relationship with food I guess there's also that healthy relationship with body image like you said there as well and thinking a little bit about what can my body do rather than kind of punishing myself and to make my body fit an ideal that somebody else has thinks is an ideal so I guess I know you said in a nutshell I guess in a nutshell it's very much individual to you but you've got to be able to know that you are nourishing yourself for lots of different reasons so for your mental health your nutrition your kind of future health as well.

4:40It's a really, really incredible answer, actually. And it does just sum up why I think there is so much confusion everywhere online, and why it's so important to seek out individual advice and not just absorb the mainstream trends and media. Because, you know, Sarah will spend more than an hour with most people one to one and takes I'm sure it takes months, maybe years for some people to work through this sort of thing. But on a positive way, how do we then acknowledge our hunger and full cues? You said with a relationship with food, that's one key component of it to feel nourished, to be able to tune into that.

5:21In a society where we all work crazy hours, that's a difficult thing to do. It's not simple, is it? Absolutely. And I think that's one part of a healthy relationship with food is kind of thinking about understanding when you're hungry and when you're full but being kind of very mindful in terms of your eating is really really difficult to do because like you say we live in a very very busy world there's lots of external factors that are kind of coming in that are trying to tell us that you want this food or you should be doing this or or you should be trying this new diet or then you've got social media telling you that this is the new healthy thing and so I guess what we need to be able to think about is that how do we understand how these external triggers are affecting us and sometimes there's lots of things on social media and that can be an external trigger for someone to kind of help someone understand that actually I need to maybe improve my nutrition in one way or I need to improve my mental health or I need to get more sleep and that's great but actually when some of these external triggers are really negative they can kind of have this impact where where someone actually thinks well I can only be hungry if this is happening I'm only allowed to have food if x y and z is happening or I can only eat if it's a certain time and I guess the first step towards actually understanding those hunger and fullness cues is thinking about do I actually have any rules around food what are they and where have they come from so really starting to understand that pathway to how do you eat the way that you eat and why what are those influences on that and I think once you start to unpick that a little bit then you can start to actually understand what are my external cues that are telling me whether I'm hungry or full and which ones are my internal cues so am I actually realizing that I'm think that I'm thirsty all of the time but actually what my body's needing is it's needing I don't know some protein or it's needing some sugar or it's needing some carbs but I've been told over and over again that that's what thirst is so it's really kind of understanding those different cues where they've come from and I guess that history of why you eat the way that you eat and that's what I would say you need where you need to kind of start it sounds to me Sarah like what the kind of best place to start in a way is therefore stepping back from old habits and busyness and having a bit of a blank slate and a refresh and then bringing with it this self-compassion this view of how do I nourish myself?

7:57And one of the things I was really curious about, you spoke at the beginning about trying to move your mindset away from this external noise of like, this is the uniform aesthetic, which obviously is, you know, really always says it when we're on the podcast. And it's one of the things I love that she always says is like, everyone's body is just different. You know, where we store fat is different. Our height is different. Our just natural disposition is just fundamentally different. So the idea of a kind of cookie cutter approaches, it's just like fundamentally impossible because our bodies physiologically aren't built like that.

8:29And you talked about, which I think is so empowering, flipping your mindset from that to what does my body do for me? How do I feel great in my body? Again, how do you start going about that? Because I think diet culture is so pervasive. The media has been so pervasive. A kind of one size fits all has been so projected on people, even subconsciously for decades it feels like a very difficult thing to disentangle it can be absolutely and I think that it's it's really important to firstly think about how are you going to be really honest with yourself about what is your history around food and what does that look like because I think that if you're trying to really untangle this this kind of relationship with food you've got to be ready to be able to do that and ready to kind of let go of some of those food rules and also be ready to how do I put this really nicely to challenge other people's beliefs um because I think what we find a lot of the time is that our relationships with food come from a long history of social media import just media input in general before we had social media friends family the way we were kind of brought up around food and I think that we have to start in a place where we think right okay I'm ready to do this for myself I'm ready for something to be different but then we also need to be ready to actually challenge if we hear other people talking about like you say that cookie cutter approach that actually this is what I need to look like to be healthy this is what I need to look like to be successful this is what I need to look like if I'm going to be fit we need to be ready to actually say well do you know what exactly what what kind of reason saying on the podcast is when you say well people come in different bodies people come in different body shapes people need different types of food people need to fuel themselves differently everybody's an individual and actually start to challenge what other people are telling us as well because yes it's okay for us to start to identify that okay that's an unhelpful thinking style it's unhelpful for me to kind of and punish my body and for me to try and get my body to a place that other people think is acceptable I need to actually start to think about well what is it that I can do to nourish my body but then when other people do start to say well this is what you should look like try this diet why don't you do that to really gently start to challenge that and say why do you think that where's that information come from why is it that we're kind of saying that food is good and that food is bad and just be really inquisitive with other people so that what you can start to do is you can start to kind of think about changing your mindset but also questioning other people's mindset as well.

11:30Sarah it's perfect because I think it explains as well to everybody listening in a way why lots of health professionals are very anti what I eat in a day videos because of course you've got to challenge the mindset that just because that person eats that in a day a it doesn't mean they actually do why does it mean I should do that as well and you see lots of really unhelpful messaging around this and challenging your internal belief system is so difficult to do like you said because it's grounded in our our food world because of how we grew up but if I could ask you as well to explain very quickly why when you see headlines in the media that say I lost weight and developed a healthy relationship with food why that essentially like we say in the clinic doesn't really gel yeah and I think it's it's really hard and really difficult for somebody to have a healthy relationship with food and to be losing weight at the same time because I guess where you kind of end up is that when people go on things like crash diets or they follow a certain diet that they see in the media, all of that focus becomes around that food and your decision around your nutrition ends up being for a weight loss reason.

12:50It's not because you are eating out socially with friends and family it's not because that you enjoy that food it's not because the taste the texture that you like cooking it the primary reason ends up being I'm choosing this food because I want to lose weight so therefore when when you're trying to develop a healthy relationship with food it's not going to be possible because when you've got a good healthy relationship with food you're choosing food because of maybe a social situation because you like the taste because you're going out with friends and family all of that gets stripped back if you're trying to lose weight so what's really important is when you're thinking about that relationship with food if a weight loss diet is something that you are wanting to think about that firstly you've got to work on your relationship with food and understand how you've got to the point in which you're at now with your relationship and really understand that and make sure that you are in tune with your values and your needs.

13:56Because if someone's wanting to lose weight because there's a health reason and there's a specific reason why they want to do that, then we need to think about how you do it and if that person is ready to do that because we don't want to impact on their relationship with food. And the only way to be able to do that would be to think about, and I guess we kind of do this in the nutrition clinic as well, is that what can we add in rather than what can we take out? Because actually with a healthy relationship with food it's not about restriction it's about being able to choose do I want to have that today is that what I fancy it is okay let me have that it's not about oh I really fancy that ice cream today but I'm not allowed it because it might be I really fancy some ice cream today I'm going to have some ice cream and maybe have some fruit and a different topping with it I'm going to nourish my body properly so that's why it's really difficult to have a really a healthy relationship with food and be kind of on a weight loss diet because a lot of the weight loss diets are about restriction.

14:55I think that's so helpful. I know for me, like my consistent frustration has been in interviews and things like that. People say, what's your guilty pleasure? And it's like, that's an oxymoron. You know, you can't have a pleasure that makes you feel guilty. That's not a pleasure. There's nothing fun about it. And it's just silly. Anyway, it's driven me mad for a long time and you always get quite a lot of kind of, it's not really what people are expecting you to answer with them. Like that's a ridiculous question. Yeah. But that term guilty, why should I be guilty over something that I'm eating that is nourishing my body?

15:28No matter what that food is, it's nourishing me in some way, whether it's psychologically, whether it's nutritionally, whether it's socially, it's nourishing me. So I think that's brilliant that actually what you're already doing is that you're kind of going back and you're saying, that's ridiculous what you're actually asking me there yeah and I think what you're saying that's so important is that food is such a it's such an emotive and complex topic because it's so nuanced as you said like yes there's the nutritional benefit of things that help our bodies but there's also the psychological and social aspect of it and it's so multifaceted and you have to allow that to all exist together but one of the things I was curious about and you did mention it briefly at the start is we hear quite a lot about eating mindfully or intuitive eating and I'm sure that's something people have heard a lot it sounds really inherently positive but what does it actually mean?

16:22So again your intuitive eating is kind of like a self-care framework really and it's been developed by dietitians and a lot of people kind of think about oh intuitive eating it's about eating when I'm hungry and not eating when I'm full but there's much more to intuitive eating than that and it's based on I think it's 10 principles which is rejecting the diet mentality honoring your hunger making peace with food challenging kind of the food police that's out there respecting your fullness and discovering kind of the satisfaction within food honoring your feelings as well so actually understanding your emotions respecting your body and then kind of exercise and doing that in a mindful way and in kind of a well-being way and then also thinking about nutrition as gentle nutrition so thinking about it as yes I'm not going to be here with lots of strict rules that I need x amount of grams of this protein or I need x amount of grams of fat and it actually being more of a gentle approach around nutrition and what this kind of intuitive eating is around is is trying to really understand and connect with your body but what it needs is it needs you to have the ability to understand your kind of um what your body's trying to tell you so our bodies will try and tell us when we're low in vitamin a for example when we're low in iron it will try and get us to eat kind of foods that are high in iron or high in vitamin A, for example.

17:58So the framework kind of helps us to be able to really understand what our bodies are needing and to meet those needs. Whereas I think lots of people just think it's about hunger and fullness and it's just not at all. It takes into account everything in terms of your exercise, your feelings, your nutrition, but also that social aspect of kind of rejecting that diet mentality. But there are some people that would find eating intuitively really difficult. So for the majority of people, your ability to eat intuitively, it is possible. But for some people who might be extremely low weight, where their hormones aren't working and the hormones can't provide that feedback system and can't tell the body that actually I need more protein or I need more energy, they might not be able to eat intuitively.

18:47or if someone has lost their kind of intraceptive ability. So someone who might be neurodiverse might not be able to understand what it is that their body is trying to tell them. So they might not be able to eat intuitively. So although intuitive eating and kind of, I guess, mindful eating comes into that is really, really helpful. There will be some people that it just isn't possible for at all. So they might actually need to have regular meal plans and eat almost, I guess, what we'd call mechanically to be able to meet all of their needs. Yeah, I think the media picked up on intuitive eating and it kind of got blown out of what it actually was.

19:28But equally, it caused kind of a surge of different camps on the Internet. and it became a really toxic sort of place because you had all in their own entity. These different camps had a really nice underlying goal, a mission, but they were all kind of clashing with one another. And I remember seeing headlines like, I can eat whatever I want because I eat intuitively. And then you had the fitness world that might go, hang on a minute, that's not good because you now are not happy with your weight because you're eating intuitively, taking it back down to weight loss again, which wasn't what intuitive eating was about.

20:04And then you had some people being penalised for wanting to eat healthy. It all ended up in this vicious, horrible, complex cycle of misery around food and nutrition, which was really a shame because we see a lot of success, obviously, with certain clients who are able to explore intuitive eating. But it doesn't mean it has to be a part of your daily framework if it doesn't work for you, right? That's the main crux, I think. absolutely and I remember us having that conversation in one of our um kind of nutrition catch-ups of actually kind of thinking about wow the media has really blown this out of proportion and I think that intuitive eating that framework is about being able to respect your body and nourish it and it's really interesting that none of that is about weight loss or weight gain it's about being able to meet your nutritional needs being able to understand your own kind of feelings, being able to reconnect with your values and satisfy yourself in lots of different ways.

21:06And I love the one that's around kind of respecting your body. None of it's to do with weight gain, weight loss or anything like that, but it did get kind of blown up, didn't it, in the media that people were kind of jumping on it for that reason. So how do we protect the future generations? We're looking at young girls now, as young as I got to start here. It's really sad, Sarah. We hear of women who have been self-conscious of their body from as young as three years old. I mean, I cannot even imagine. And with body dissatisfaction starting as young as six, how on earth with the world of social media, can we protect children, Sarah, from this?

21:41I think we have to think about what's within our circle of influence. And I think that everybody's going to have a very different circle of influence, but what we can do and where we can start is looking after ourselves as an individual to start off with. And what I mean by that is thinking about, have you personally got any kind of negative cycles around maybe your relationship with food? Where has that come from? And the first step is kind of having an awareness around that and noticing any harmful beliefs and habits that might have come from maybe friends, family, dieting practices, anything like that.

22:20So it's noticing okay have I got anything that is unhelpful and being able to challenge them those beliefs and those habits yourself so it might be that people kind of catch themselves saying I'm being bad today or I'm on a cheat day or that's too many points or I can't eat that we need to be able to acknowledge that we're saying those things and think well what do I want to do differently actually can we change that instead of saying I'm being bad today change it to I'm nourishing my body differently today. Instead of saying I'm on a cheat day, it's kind of saying actually I'm allowed to have these foods and have different kind of nutrition today and that's okay.

23:00So we need to start off with ourselves and then we need to think about then creating that as that whole home environment to promote that body acceptance, that self-worth beyond that kind of appearance and then speaking really kindly about our own body to people and making sure that we are teaching kids that there isn't such things as good and bad foods there isn't such things as good and bad bodies that all bodies are good bodies and really encouraging that kind of media literacy to help them understand that lots of images online are often edited that people are jumping on kind of like these big headlines to be able to to gain kind of like your followers and and to be able to get messages across and just practicing that self-compassion and being able to challenge those I guess beliefs that people might have had for a long time so I guess it starts with yourself it then it kind of expands to the home environment and then when you're ready start challenging that wider environment as well and I think that's our only way because people don't tend to learn by you telling them they tend to learn by seeing other people accept their bodies and being able to eat freely and kind of intuitively.

24:14People learn by watching other people's behaviours. So I think that's the best way that we can go about this. Sarah, this is a nuanced question. And it's one that I find really, really interesting and have done for quite some time. Going back to that kind of hot debate about intuitive eating, however long ago it was now. I remember people saying things like, oh great, that means I can eat like McDonald's every meal. And it just got me thinking, while you were saying that it's this and we had a question the other day from a listener saying how do I talk to my children about you know healthy foods and to your point it's not about going out there and saying this is good this is bad let's put everything into a dogmatic camp and and that's the end of it and overthinking it and making it yeah very all or nothing but equally there are foods we want to be having more of you know we want to be having our five a day you know when we can we want to be having lots of fiber and nourishing foods and we we don't want to eat buckets of ultra processed foods, you know, and I think that's the thing that I find really interesting is taking it wider versus like a specific individual relationship is what's the right tone of really encouraging people to eat well and look after their bodies in that sense, but without feeling that to do that, it has to be all or nothing and deeply restrictive.

25:31And I think that's one of the tensions I certainly see all the time, which is that obviously like we do want to encourage broccoli and carrots and lentils and chickpeas and things and not mcdonald's every single meal but without making people feel guilty for treats you know the whole point when things are treats and you're adding them in they're not guilty pleasures they're pleasures it's such a difficult question a really difficult one to answer because i don't think anybody's got it right necessarily it's really hard because you have got public health messages that need to get across these foods are great um we need more of these but these foods aren't so great so let's have less of them your public health messages have to be quite black and white and to be able to get that across and for little kids as well that also needs to be quite black and white as well so i think we need to think about instead of um saying we can and we can't have these certain foods or like you say having these foods are treats and these foods are I don't know like everyday foods it might be thinking about okay yes we can have a McDonald's today but let's make sure that we've got some fruit with that or let's have the carrot sticks alongside that so actually building kind of the nutrition into it it might actually be that for some people that the only nutrition that they can get in for their kids is that McDonald's or it might be the only food so then if if that's being demonized at school and that's been that person's kind of outing with their dad or their mom and that's the only thing they've kind of been able to do and connect with the family that week which it is for some people then that's being demonized by people and people are being told that's bad so I think what we need to think about is how do we get a balance of food throughout the diet and this is where I freely struggle with the term healthy because healthy is so individual for everyone it's actually thinking more about is my diet balanced and that's where your gentle nutrition comes in so how do we gently bring in these foods that we know are really good for us how do we gently acknowledge that yes maybe some of these ultra processed foods some families are having really high amounts of those other families might not have them at all but we need to get that balance right so I think that it's a really really tricky one to give a really set answer but I think what we need to do as health professionals is really think about the individual that we're working with um on an individual basis and think what's best for them at this moment in time if we're thinking on a wider scale which I guess is where the question was kind of coming from we need to think about actually coming in and saying if you as a family are having a high amount of this or you as an individual having a high amount of this how do we think about swapping it for something else rather than taking it out completely how do we think about the frequency of this rather than saying we're not allowed or we shouldn't be having it's finding that kind of middle ground that that shade of gray between the black and white thinking you explain the nuance perfectly i know how on edge it can feel to be asked you know because these questions are the things that we field all the time because you want to be kind and compassionate.

28:54Let's face it, at the end of the day, everyone's in a different socioeconomic situation. Some of us in a position of privilege, some of us are not. But we can't deny the underlying factor that healthy to one person is having one piece of broccoli a week. Someone else is having one every day. It's just how do we get this conversation? And what sadly has happened is like you said, is there's a discrepancy between a public health media message versus a message that we are putting out to individuals inside clinic, which so many people don't have access to, but I wish they did. And that's what we're fighting for, right?

29:27We want that. But when you've got people online and social media that are selling plans saying, follow my diet plan, this will give you a healthy relationship with food, buy my book, this will give you a healthy relationship with food all these things kind of throw the level of confusion I mean don't even get Ella and I started on the trends we discuss every single week on this podcast I think what's been so reassuring Sarah is for you to say the one line you said in that was I don't think anyone's got it right because how can we there is no right for everybody but what we can do is empower ourselves with knowledge about ourselves and what we can do that day be that what Ella always says is if it's just that one can of beans I've got in the cupboard and I try and use it that day that's a good addition on top of whatever else I've done absolutely and I think that's the bit isn't it it's thinking about I don't need to be doing that every single time for every single meal it's fine for me to go and have the chocolate brownie but actually it's also fine for me to have a meal that's got lots of different types of vegetables in as well it's about that balance and thinking about if you do feel that you need to cut down on, say, ultra processed foods, and that's a need and that's a situation for your family that you need to do, how do you want to do this?

30:45And I think your example there in terms of the can of beans, brilliant, right? How do we do that? How do we add that into somebody's chili? How do we add some lentils into someone's bolognese? How are we doing those things to just twist it up a little bit to make sure that we are getting that nutrition from different sources but also getting stuck in and actually helping families and helping other people to find that enjoyment within food as well and it not be that punishment so really thinking about how do we get people in the kitchen how do we make it exciting and it really it upsets me when I work with people and they're just like I'm just not interested in cooking and I just think oh that's such a shame because actually you've got to feed yourself every day and you've got to meet kind of your nutritional needs you to live and to survive and to kind of meet your values you need to fuel yourself to be able to do this and and I just wonder if we can get more of that kind of cooking and nutrition aspect but from a fun level into kind of education I wonder if that's the direction we need to go in so it doesn't feel like it's a chore it actually feels like this is an enjoyment and I know that I used to do some nutrition education sessions on an inpatient ward and instead of doing a session about oh this is why you need a carbohydrate this is why you need that we just go make some bread and make it fun and I think that's where it needs to go rather than people just kind of being lectured on this is what you should be eating it needs to be how do we make some bread together how do we make the soup let's make these different foods and that's where your gentle nutrition comes in so I think we need to just flip the switch a little bit I love that I think it's we talked about this so much on the last episode that Ria and I recorded on the lens of the way that things are talked about and again this is such a prevalent topic but with clickbait and this kind of whole like promote a kind of emotive response from people it's so easy to make things feel so negative or so dramatic and as you said it's just It's like, let's just make cooking enjoyable and exciting and something that we look forward to.

32:53And we look forward to our meals. I just think it's so, so important and such gentle, wise advice. And I think all of this just feels so deeply and inherently positive and reassuring and such a long term view, which, again, I think that we lose too much in the way that we talk about nutrition and health with all the quick fixes. So I'm certainly very inspired by everything today, Sarah. So thank you. yeah absolutely Sarah thank you so much because the world is confusing enough and relationships with food it's not black and white there's no one right answer but if you just maybe get a little notepad go back through what Sarah said take a few little steps of what you can actually action that day and yeah Sarah thank you for coming on the extra scoop thank you so much thank you guys so much for listening to us on the extra scoop we are a community-based podcast we want this to be helpful for you.

33:44So any requests, we want to hear it. Absolutely. Let us know which experts that you went on the Extra Scoop and we will see you on Monday. Can't wait.

34:19We'll see you next time. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Lemu? Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Experian is your big financial friend, helping you explore credit card offers with confidence. Some cards are labeled no ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. See Experian.com for details. Applying for cards labeled no ding decline won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved.

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