Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talksb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Sick of the diets that don't work, the constant fads
that fail you, Well, You're not alone. Nutritionist and founder
of Mission Nutrition gets it, and she's here to help.
A Clear Turnbull herself struggles with food, with her body
and with her mental health over twenty years. Using her
own personal experience as well as her expert knowledge, she's
created a guideline to true, lasting wellness. Claire's new book
(00:36):
is called End Your Fight with Food. It's Ours this week,
Clear Turnbull is with me in the studio. Good morning,
good morning, hang on, let me turn that on.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
There we go, pop it on.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Tell me first of all, Claire and we have spoken
about this on the podcast that we did together. Yes,
the little things. But how easy has it been opening
up and talking about your life and your difficult relationship
with food? Do you know? The weirdest thing?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I was actually fine about writing it for other people
to read. It was my mum that was really challenging, because,
like many people of my generation, we grew up with
our parents or particular mothers on diets weighing food, calorie count,
it's kind of normal. It was normal to shame bodies
that would look different. It was really normal if you
(01:25):
didn't fit in. And then there was all the things
around finishing everything on your plate, and you know, all
those food rules that existed as we kind of grew up,
and that played its part into my own struggles with
yo yo, dieting, binging, all of these different things. And
you know, obviously I knew I had to share the
story of what happened with her. She I didn't want
(01:46):
her to feel any blame for that. But actually, where
we've got to with it is after her crying a
couple of times reading the book, realizing that what she
has been through, what I've been through is so similar
to other people. This is actually, you know, by sharing
that journey, we can stop the pain or help other
people who've been through very simi experiences.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
You went through restrictive eating, to binging to bulimia over
decades of your life, which might surprise some people.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, I so. I mean my first I first started
dieting when I was nine, So I went to weight
watches with my mom. You know, she was not not
for me, but I was my dad was working, so
I kind of went along with the meetings and I
was just supposed to be listening, you know, like do
doing my own thing, but you're just absorbing all this
this stuff. And I picked up a diet book and
(02:36):
that's just the beginning of when it all went wrong,
you know. And I think this is the thing, you
know that I see day and day out in my
job that I've done for twenty years now, is people
with good intentions start following some kind of plan or
some rules or cutting this out or trying to restrict
in some way, trying to look at themselves and be healthy.
(02:57):
But then, like for me, it ends up with binging
or feeling like you're out of control and regaining weight
that you lost and it just all really really messy
and you end up feeling disappointed and hating yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And look, that hasn't changed. It's just the we we're
influenced or who influence us has changed. So you know,
these days, young people they only have to look online
to know that they are not good enough, that they
don't want right, that they don't you know that it's
not about your mum and what she was doing.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Well, it might still be yes, I mean, yeah, absolutely,
Like the people that you live with have a big
influence on the way that you eat. But you're it's
worse now. It's worse now than it was for me
because back then, you know, it was coming from one
or two sources. Now it is everything from everywhere, everywhere.
And one of the key things that I you know,
with the people that I work with and have worked
(03:48):
with over the years, is if you've got kids, or
if you've got grandkids or you know, in the house
and you're trying to help them have a healthy relationship
with food and stop them from getting into the dieting
things and following the TikTok Instagram trends, you have to
sort yourself out first, because they're watching you, Like if
you have got a disregulated relationship with yourself and your
(04:09):
body and you're just saying to them, oh, be more balanced,
Like you know, they can see what you're doing, they listen,
and they learn from what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
What impact do you hope sharing your story now is
going to hit on others?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I just want people to stop fighting with themselves, right,
Like so much of what fuels people's mental health challenges
is the conversation that they have with themselves about themselves.
And when people try to eat better, exercise more, drink less,
you know, live a healthier lifestyle, and then they the
(04:44):
approach that they have doesn't work. What happens is they
get annoyed with themselves. Oh I just needed to have
more will power, I needed to try harder. I'm the problem,
and that self sabotage, that self hatred actually fuels the problem,
because what do you do sot it. I'm going to
drink something, I'm going to eat the doughnut, I'm going
(05:05):
to do the thing with it. And when you erode
your self worth, you know, that has its own massive
impact on your well being.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
How do we get it into our heads that the
diet culture and the diet approach is designed to fail
to fail? So well, you know, we kind of all
deep down know it. We do, but you'll still get
swayed by someone who tells you this work for me,
or that work for me, or.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
You know, I mean, the evidence always speaks for itself.
All of the research shows that when people go on
restrictive diets that they end up regaining the weight. Right,
we kind of know this thing. I think it's kind
of changing the approach to taking care of yourself and
actually looking at the influence that on you, your friends, the
people around you. It's about adding positive things into your
(05:56):
life rather than always taking things away. So the book
very much focuses on when it comes to what you eat,
what can you add in to nourish yourself to make
yourself feel better, Because what that does is it ends up.
If you're eating foods that are nourishing and make you
feel good, you don't want so much of the sugary,
(06:16):
salty stuff, and you're coming at it from a different angle.
We also need to give ourselves permission to eat. If
you tell yourself you'll never allowed chocolate, cakes, wine, whatever
it is, that what happens like people just crave it
more and then they feel guilt and shame when they
have it. It doesn't help anybody, and we just need
(06:37):
to take a new approach that's a little bit more
self compassionate.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So we blame ourselves a lot for our unhelpful behavior.
And I love the way you take the words good
in bed and you replace them with helpful and unhelpful
in the book. I like that it softens it a
little bit. But we blame ourselves a lot for our
unhelpful behavior around food. It's important for us to understand
what's behind that behavior, isn't it for us to move forward.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
One hundred percent? So what are the analogies that I use?
Is like, you can, if you've got a house, you
can just paint the outside and make the house look pretty,
and then you're like, oh, I've kind of like made
the house look it's great, But you actually if there
is a storm and the foundations aren't solid, the house
will crack and fall down. Right. So one of the
(07:24):
things that we do often with changing the way that
we eat is we kind of follow something that's going
to make us look better or look different on the outside.
But to actually rewire the way that you are, rewire
the way that you eat, you've got to look at
what's actually driving your eating behaviors. So how you ate
as a child, how you were taught to feel about
(07:44):
your body, and how you look growing up, and from
the messages that we see all affect how you feel
about yourself and the choices that you make. So in
the book, I talk about really exploring who you are,
why you do what you do, from a place of
non judgment, So what do you believe? What are your values?
What do you think? How do you manage your thoughts?
What are your emotions? If we can unders stand a
(08:06):
bit more about ourselves, we are then in a position
to change based on who we are, because that's what
doesn't work. Following a list of rules doesn't solve the
fact that you might be a person that always rewards
yourself with foods or always always drink when you're stressed.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Right, it doesn't here, But it doesn't help when something
difficult and it happens in the day. No, and it
always will and there's always going to be a cap
isn't it always.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Going to be there's And I think the things with
food and alcohol, they are crutches for feelings that are
very challenging. And the world is busy, it's noisy, it's complicated,
it's more stressful, or it feels more stressful to a
lot of people than ever. And the crutch of you know,
readily available tasty food and alcohol as well are problematic
(08:53):
because they're so easily and so accessible, and then we
feel bad for not being able to control ourselves, and
then so goes on the cycle of judgment and shame.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So once you've done their work, is it quite easy
to reprogram those and helpful hibberts those bad hibbots.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's not easy, but it is absolutely achievable with consistent
kind of results. Like, it's not nothing. If you have
eaten a certain way for twenty thirty, forty fifty years
and you have got certain patterns about eating, I'm not
gonna lie and say like, you know, oh, you know,
in six weeks, this book's gonna like you're going to
be complete, Like that's I would be lying and saying
(09:30):
that because you can't change behavior that quickly. But if
you are consistent and you know you've got a pattern
that can work forward, you can absolutely change. And that
is what I did. I have gone from being a
person that used to eat three family sized bags of
maltesers liters of ice cream to being able to literally
bite a chocolate, put it and be like I don't
really like that, or give it away, or like eat
(09:51):
one chocolate at a time. I never believe that was possible.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Cravings are interesting, though, aren't they? They really? So it
took me ten days, yes, and I managed to kick
the sugar craving. Yeah, And there'll be different certain times well,
I'll think about it, but I've been able to then
think about something else to strike myself and move forward
and their cravings gone actually didn't exist. Yeah, the craving
is really interesting though, isn't it. They come from and
having work you can.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
You can get some you actually, so you can get
some quick wins here with with some of the strategies
that I've got like that, like if you are number
one with cravings when people are not sleeping properly, or
your hormones that regulate your appetite are just completely out
of whack. So for people that struggle with food cravings
or alcohol, sleep is a huge part of that. But
(10:34):
also understanding that your brain likes consistent patterns, and part
of what drives food cravings or cravings for alcohol is
when you are eating or drinking that food at a
particular the same time every day. Classic time for most
people is after dinner, right, you eat after dinner when
you get.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Home fronner while making dinner, Yeah, and those kind of times.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And what happens is you just walk into the kitchen,
you're hungry, and your brain goes, oh, this is when
we eat the biscuits, and it basically takes you through
that pattern without you even consciously going to the besket
ten or picking up the cheese and crackers or whatever.
And that's what the craving is. It's actually your brain
trying to push you towards something that it thinks is familiar,
because the brain doesn't understand the difference between something that's
(11:18):
helping you in something that's not. So that's what There's
a lot of kind of brain awareness and patterns in
the book that help people to understand and when you
understand yourself awareness, as I talk about, is the first
stage of change.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
There's a really amazing chapter in here all about nourishment
and I'm going to be honest with you, page one
hundred and seventy four, where you've got your little dad,
your little chat. I'm like, I'm just going to photocopy
that and give it to every member of my family
and go job done. Like there's some really fantastic, simple
kind of advice as to how to eat well, but
not just then. And this is what I really love
(11:51):
about the book. It's beautiful because it's filled with positivity
and possibility. But you don't just cover food. You talk
about all the things that contribute to our well being,
our stress management, our sleep, our relationships. Everything's covered in here,
isn't it, Because actually being healthy isn't just about going gosh,
I look hot in the mirror.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
You can't cover something, but you can't look at you
can't look at how them while being in isolation at all.
And to your point, all of those things play a
part because again, what I've seen over and over again
is that people think, oh, when I fit into those
pair of genes, when I look different, I will be happy.
That is not always the case, or not often the
case in a lot of times, because if your relationships
(12:33):
are broken, if you feel bad about yourself, even if
you look different in the mirror, people don't love themselves
just because they're in a smaller pair of gene.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
If you're still not sleeping and you're really tired, yes,
you're not going to handle life well.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
You know, you don't feel like your life has meaning
and purpose, So all of those things matter.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
It's a fabulous book, Clear, Thank you very much for
sharing your story and for all the great advice.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Clear's new book. End Your Fight with Food is installs.
This week, as I mentioned earlier, did a great podcast
episode with Clear last year on the Little Things. You
can get that at iHeartRadio where if you get your
if you want to hear more about Clear's story and
more on this topic.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio