December 10, 2022 • 25 mins
OUTWEIGH: Amy's guest today is Bobbi Giudicelli. After successfully transitioning from being out of control around food to learning to love eating again, Bobbi is now on a mission to teach and support others in their journeys to understand the emotional relationship with food, to create a new healthy lifestyle, and ultimately - get their lives back.
Drawing on her personal journey and how she successfully overcame food-related issues, Giudicelli is proud to announce the release of her book, “Freedom from a Toxic Relationship with Food: A Journey That Will Give You Your Life Back.” Giudicelli is also the founder of Read the Ingredients, which offers super-clean, gluten-free, 100% plant-based SuperLoafs.
Best places to find more about Amy: RadioAmy.com + @RadioAmy
To contact Amy about Outweigh: hello@outweighpodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out out everything that I'm
made dope, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it's beautiful and then will always out with if you
(00:24):
feel it with your hands in the here, she'll love
to the boom. Let's say good day and did you
and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam Amy here and
my expert guest today is Bobby Judically. And Bobby, I
know you recently released a book and I'm obsessed with
(00:45):
the title because it seems like something that's right up
my alley. And it's freedom from a toxic relationship with food,
A journey that will give you your life back. And
literally that's how I felt once I truly got into recovery.
I got my life back, and one that who knows
that I hadn't had since I was a teenager. Yeah,
(01:06):
for sure. You know it's interesting you use the word recovery.
I don't think I've ever, in all my many years,
used recovery. I've used I hope one day to be cured,
and I never believed I would be, And I did
believe it would always be more recovery, although I never
used the word, but I will tell you I honestly
(01:28):
feel cured at this point in my life. But I'm
in my sixties and and I wrote my book for
those people that don't want to wait until they're in
their fifties and sixties to find what recovery and pure
feel like. Well, so for you, when did your disordered
behavior or you're eating disorder start? How many years were
(01:51):
you living with it? From age eighteen until age I
would say my journey to health be again ten eleven
years ago, so from age eighteen until age fifty six,
and it was excruciating. And I had always said, and
(02:12):
to this day, I am fully committed to fiding being
with supporting anybody to prevent them from having to live
that many years with the struggle that it is. And
so I know one of the things you're passionate about
is dieting and why it doesn't work. Diets are in
(02:32):
our face, and even diets and disguise are in our
face all the time. But in your opinion, why do
you think diets don't work? Well, First of all, they
don't address the problem, and the problem is our relationship
with food. The problem is our relationship and our perspective
(02:53):
on ourselves, our bodies, how we feel, and then separately,
we all live a life with a relationship with food
because food is a necessity in our life. I always
say that if you're an alcoholic, that is an easy,
easier recovery. I believe I was never an alcoholic, but
(03:15):
I believe it's an easier recovery because you can eliminate
alcohol from your life and be healthier and sustain and
so on. When your issue as a relationship with food,
you cannot remove food from your life and be healthy.
You just can't. I mean, anorectics fry that and they
either die or they go down the path of some
(03:38):
sort of re entering a relationship with food or or
bringing food into their life. But diets don't work because
that's one of the reasons they don't address the relationship
with food. Number two, we constantly feel deprived. We look
at a diet as a short term solution. Let me
(03:59):
just lose the pounds and then I will be fine,
and then I don't have to deprive myself anymore. So
that's reason number two. We cannot keep food in our life.
With constant deprivation. Number three, They don't work because the
foods that we that are the majority of foods in
(04:22):
our supply system, especially the ones that are packaged that
say they are healthy, are not, and they create an
addiction to the food that the ingredients, the way food
is made, the processed food is addicting. Whether it's sugar,
it's salt, it's the chemicals that are introduced. We get addicted.
(04:48):
And so therefore you go, Okay, I'm going to diet,
which means for the next X number of weeks, I
can't eat cake. Well, okay, you're not eating cake, but
or eating continuing to eat sugar. When you decide to
stop dieing ing, the sugar itself is driving It was
(05:08):
driving your cravings, it's driving your addiction, and you go
right back to not just eating the unhealthy foods, but
consuming them even in greater quantity. Well, so for me,
I started dieting at a very young age, and my
brain wasn't fully developed, and I wired it to binge
(05:32):
on food because it was so deprived that it didn't
trust me. So when I would allow myself to eat,
it was uncontrollable. I would just find myself eating and
eating and eating because my brain was like, oh, I
better eat all that I can right now because I
don't know when this person is going to feed me again.
And so it was my survival brain kicking in, so
(05:53):
that deprivation I definitely can relate to, and then how
my body and my brain responded to that, and then
the types of foods. I feel like for me, the
pendulum has swung. When I first started to eliminate my
eating disorder and work towards my recovery, I feel like
I was allowing all kinds of foods because that's what
(06:15):
I needed to sort of rewire my brain, like, oh,
that as if method, Like oh, I'm going to act
as if this is normal and I can eat whatever
I want and allow it. And the pendulum swung so far,
and I feel like that's what we see to a
lot on social media, which can be a dangerous place
for recovery because you can get information that's not very helpful.
(06:36):
But then I just want your thoughts on this pendulum thing,
like I swung all the way to the other side
where every food was on the table, and really it
still is, but I think that the pendulum has leveled
out because I also have knowledge of food and what
is in it and the wisdom to want to nourish
my body. Well, if I were to just allow all
(06:57):
foods at all times, I know I'm not going to
wake up and feel my best. And I also want
to take care of all my organs and know the
foods that are going to be nourishing to them and
foods that are gonna be toxic to my organs. So
while everything is allowed, I do think that there's there's
this balancing act that kind of happens. So wherever you
are on this journey, just know that I think it
(07:18):
it might swing, But it's true sometimes when I swung
too far, I kept craving that stuff more and more
and more because I was having it all the time.
So so one of the things most people don't understand
is that that is not happening in your brain. Actually,
it's initiated in your gut. It's initiated in your microbiome,
your entire what they called dys biosis. But it's the
(07:42):
imbalance of the proper bacteria in your gut, which controls everything.
It controls our digestion, it controls our immune system, it
controls you know, It controls everything that happens in our
body that is so critical, and we are constantly feeding
it either good things that will promote the good bacteria
or bad things that will promote the bad bacteria. And
(08:05):
so that when you say the pendulum swings all the
way to one side, what's really happening is you've created
an environment in your gut that the bacteria itself is
telling you and signaling you to eat that particular thing,
be it sugar. Sugar is an easy example because most
of us can relate. What most people don't know is
(08:27):
dairy and cheese specifically are also extremely addictive. So you'll
hear people say a lot of times, I can't give
up cheese, I can't give up sugar, I can't give
up salt. What they don't understand is, yes, indeed they
can't because their body is constantly craving that because they've
set up the environment. When I started my journey twelve, eleven,
(08:52):
whatever years ago, I did not believe that I would
ever be recovered, I that I would ever have a
healthy relationship with food, to look forward to going to
a grocery store, look forward to preparing a meal which
I hadn't done for years. I married a man who
loved to cook, and so he cooked, and we raised
three boys with him doing all the cooking because I
(09:14):
was petrified to be in the kitchen. Food and eating
and meals and eating outside of meals was a very
chaotic experience for me. Um And I think one thing
that's really important for your audience. I know I'm straying
kind of from the original question that you asked me,
but I think one thing that's really important for your
(09:36):
audience to understand is if there is chaos in your
relationship with food, you have disordered eating, minimally disordered eating,
I mean eating disorders from technically what's considered an eating
disorder is more complex than that. If it's noisy, I
can only explain it as very noisy in my head
(09:59):
every time I would eat. So I would eat, and
it would be a constant balance of oh my god,
how many calories, Oh my god, there's too much fat.
I can get more calories if I get less batty foods.
If I'm going to eat that chocolate cake, that means
I can't eat for two more days. If I want
to fit in that dress in two weeks, that means
I better stop eating completely. I mean it's noisy. So
(10:22):
something that I would tell you, like when people say,
I can't give up X y Z, let's take ice cream.
I can't give up ice cream. You know. You hear
people say that all the time. And the thing is
that then they'll eat the ice cream and there's noise
in their head because they know they shouldn't be eating it.
But okay, they've made an agreement with themselves. They'll only
(10:45):
eat one scoop. Okay, they'll only eat two spoon spoonfuls.
Now what are they going to have to do? Run
three extra miles tomorrow to counterbalance the impact of that. So,
if you have that kind of noise in your head,
there is disordered eating it. You know, if you're constantly
looking for what's the answer, what's the next book, what's
(11:06):
the next support group, what's the next whatever. Because I
can't live like this anymore. I can't live with three
sizes of clothes in my closet. I can't live with
feeling like I have no energy. I just can't live
like that anymore. You have disordered eating and there is
as the title of my book, the subtitle of my
(11:26):
book says, there is a journey that gives you your
life back. I am here to tell you I never
believed I would be saying this, but I love food.
I have no negative impact when I eat, when I
think about eating, when I plan what I'm eating. I'm
sixty seven years old. I never believed I would ever
(11:49):
be able to say that, and I don't want other
people to wait until they're in their sixties to say that.
I don't either, And you know, at forty one, I
feel so gosh, so many years were wasted, but I
want to say that, like something there was some benefit
for that in my life, of like what is this
(12:09):
made possible for me now? I don't want to look
back and focus on the past like I want to
see maybe it's so that I could come alongside and
help others that are going through this and have this podcast.
I don't know, So I don't want to harp on
the past at all, but I do wish I would
have entered or been exposed to this type of thinking
(12:30):
or recovery or knowing that there's hope for it when
I was thirty one, because there's so many family meals
that I missed, or memories to be made or times
where I could have been engaging in conversation with someone,
but like you said, my brain was full of all
kinds of noise and other thoughts, so I wasn't fully present.
And Lisa, who is a registered dietitian in front of mine,
(12:53):
Lisa Haymond, she's the one that originally co founded Outweigh
with me. She has a whole program called Fork the Noise.
So I love you called it noise because that's exactly
what it is. And when we started this podcast, it's
Outweigh a life without disordered eating, outweighs everything. But we
also were very adamant of like the we're covering the
gray area, Like this whole topic is not black and white.
(13:21):
There's so much happening here, and there's so many different
types of people that can be coming to the table here.
And I love having people on, especially that have amazing
resources like you do with freedom from a Toxic Relationship
with food. I love that title so much, And then
I love the journey that will give you your life
that because that's truly what happens once you can have
(13:42):
a cure or into recovery, whatever you want to call it,
and it doesn't happen overnight. Mine. It was a journey,
and I feel like I'm still working on it, but
the noise is less and less and less and less.
And I like the ice cream example too that you
gave because I was talking king about the pendulum and
it's like, when I wasn't allowing it, I wanted it
(14:04):
more and more and more, and then I allowed it,
and then the pendulum evens out because then it's less desirable,
and you're like, oh, my pendulum evened out, and now
I can keep ice cream in the fridge for weeks
and months and I don't feel like I have to
throw it away or eat it all in one night.
It will literally be there for months at a time.
Isn't that amazing? Yes? I I so relate to what
(14:26):
you're saying. For me, it's I explain it a little differently,
and I am kind of a I'm going to say
and I use this term loosely, not technically, not medically,
but I'm an O C D person. I work better
when I build tight boundaries around something that's important to me.
So you know, like no going back and what I
(14:47):
found in my journey, So I did, I did change,
I did take a lot of foods out of my
day to day eating. So I am now whole food,
plant based. I eat very little of anything processed. I
eat no animal products whatsoever. And that's changed my life
(15:08):
in other ways outside of food. But for me, there
was no discussion about am I going to eat it?
Am I going to eat that chocolate bar? No, because
it's processed. If not, say I don't eat. I make
my own dark chocolate with nuts snail and I like
love it. But yes, like you said, now I can
eat one piece and I and it lives in my
(15:31):
freezer all the time, and I don't you know, I
don't have to eat it. So for me, I needed
to to really eliminate certain foods. But what happened for
me by eliminating animal products, by eliminating any processed food,
is it completely changed my taste buds. And now processed
foods don't taste good. Animal products I used to love
(15:55):
me and animal products I can't even imagine eating like
I just look at it and it does not look appetizing.
That's me. That's how it worked for me. I don't
believe for anybody to recover UM that they really need
to be as extreme but for me, I did. The
(16:18):
other one thing point that I really really want to
make is we all, especially women, grow up believing that
our weight is critical, like what we look like, how
much we weigh, how are close fit? We are told
by society, and now it's even worse because of social media.
We are told thin is it? I mean you, we
(16:41):
are driven by our weight, and at the end of
the day, we're compromising our health. Diet and compromises our health,
eating disorders and disordered eat and compromise our health. And
for me, I will tell you I kind of resign
myself to the fact that I would always carry ten
more pounds than I want to to until I changed
the way I ate, and it was absolutely not motivated
(17:05):
by weight. It was motivated by health. And my sister
died of cancer, my father last ten twelve years of
his life were horrible, and both of them I believe
would due to diet. I really do believe that the
outcome or their life quality of life would have been
different had they eaten differently. And I was experiencing extreme,
(17:29):
extreme fatigue, and that's when I said, this has to
do with how I'm eating, and I'm here to tell
you that I have more energy now in my late
sixties than I had at forty, and that is a
result of using food as medicine, as what sustains me,
and not as the crutch and the numbing agent and
(17:52):
the drug that I used it as my mom actually
passed away from cancer, and that's when my eating just
sort of came back with the vengeance and it was
literally two numb out and it's stuck around for a while,
even while my dad was diagnosed with cancer. So I
I appreciate you writing this book and giving it as
a guide too, so that those of us that are
(18:16):
in recovery are looking to get rid of that noise
in our head, but also be mindful of what we're
putting in our body for overall health, because disease does
scare me because I watched I was a caregiver for
both of my parents, and it was I don't know
for sure if their diet would have played a different role,
but I know that I'm still young enough to where
(18:38):
maybe if I start to do certain things for my
body and my organs and feed it a certain way
or feed at certain things that I can, I can
be as proactive as possible. No it's not guaranteed to
eliminate chronic disease, absolutely not. However, your overall quality of life,
your energy. I mean, if you are somebody that's eating
(19:00):
a lot of processed food, I guarantee you your energy
is impacted. It just is. It has to be. It's
the way your body works. If you're getting sick frequently,
if you're getting colds frequently, it has to do with
the way you are eating. And yes, it doesn't mean
that you can eat however you want. Then you start
to get a cold and you get a plug yourself
(19:21):
with vitamin C. No, that's not taking care of yourself.
Your overall immune system is impacted. And this is only
recently that they understand this all comes from what you
put in your body. So and I truly believe this.
Everything you eat is either helping you have a better
quality of life or negatively impacting your quality of life
(19:45):
and your overall health. And I really really believe that.
And the other thing I really want to stress though,
is what I mentioned about your taste buds. What people
don't get is not only can you give it up
and and I really go through the steps in my
book of what that journey looks like it's not only
(20:06):
can you give it up, but you're not going to
miss it at some point because food takes on a
whole new look. Like I couldn't walk past chocolate without
eating it in my earlier days. It doesn't do anything
for me now looking at it doesn't do anything. If
I decide I want to have a piece of the
(20:27):
chocolate that I make, which probably happens once a month,
I get a piece of chocolate that is good for
me because it's first of all, very healthy chocolate. It's
dark chocolate, it has minimal sugar, and the kakal is
very healthy for you. It's an antioxidant and it has
nuts in it, so that's more protein and healthy fats.
I know, like just because I roll up my sleeves
(20:49):
and learn about things in detail, I know everything that
I eat what it's doing for me, and it helps
me have an appetite for it. And I said, my
taste buds are different. I couldn't eat milk chocolate now
if you wanted me to. It's just doesn't taste right.
I can't eat processed food. If I eat something processed,
(21:10):
sometimes I'll go to a restaurant. I'll go oh, I
can taste that. That does not taste good to me,
and I don't need it. Do you have a different
recipes anywhere? There's some in the book or on your
website or this I'm curious about this chocolate recipe. No,
I don't have recipes. I'm more than happy to share
it with you. Um, I don't have recipes because I
don't like cooking with recipes. What I do is I
(21:34):
uh and I had to learn it because I've never
cooked before and my husband not did not change the
way he eats. So now I do cook every single night,
but I throw things together like I know foods that
I like, and I and I just experiment with stuff
that I know is healthy, different herbs and spices, and
(21:55):
and only recently started loving tofu because I throw it
together with something and put it in my air fryer
and I went, oh my god, this. I used to
really dislike tofu for a vegan. That's a problem. Um,
now I you know, really like it. It's like I
just I love the exploration and yet so no, and
(22:16):
I'll never write a cookbook because I'd be the worst
person in the world to write a cookbook. I would
just have to say, well, throw that and throw that,
And I do look at recipes online and go, oh,
that's a good idea. And I don't follow the measurements.
I just throw that in and throw that in. But
it's fun. And I'm telling you, I'm somebody who used
to be petrified to walk into a grocery store, or
(22:38):
petrified at the prospect that I had to make dinner
that night because my husband wouldn't be home and I
had three kids that needed to eat. That ended up
being pizza night. Um, I couldn't handle it any other day,
and pizza was one of my weak food, so that
would mean a night I was over eating. So yeah,
it's it's just a different world. But I do want
(23:00):
to leave you with I wrote the book to support anyone,
anyone who wants the support and would like the support
for exploring a different way. And I make myself very
available to anybody who reads the book or sees this
podcast or whatever to support them, because I probably have
(23:22):
a lot of knowledge that even some standard nutritionists don't have. Well,
Freedom from a toxic relationship with food, A Journey that
will Give Your Life Back is available on Amazon. I'll
link it in the show notes, but you can visit
Food Freedom Advocate dot com for more about Bobby. But
(23:43):
thank you so much for sharing some of your story
with us. I know that everybody's on a different journey,
but I think ultimately we want to get our lives back,
whatever that that looks like. So thank you for sharing
your journey with us and what it's looked like for you,
the tools that have worked for you and helping us
(24:03):
get rid of the noise. Everybody's got their different ways,
and yeah, if you're thinking you've got the noise and
this sounds like something that you would be into, I
personally am going to order the book because I'm very
interested in nourishing my body with different types of food.
I think that I've kind of gotten in a little
bit of a rut, but that's okay. I also don't
(24:25):
have any shame with that or guilt, like I'm doing
the best that I can with life right now, but
I'm open to all different kinds of things. So thank
you Bobby for sharing your book with us. Oh You're
so welcome and it was such a pleasure to be here.
And I just I think food should be a joyful
part of our life and for many of us. That's
a challenge, but that's what my goal is for anybody
(24:48):
else because it is joyful. And thank you again for
having me. Absolutely
I won't let my body out out everything that I'm
made dope, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it's beautiful and then will always out with if you
(00:24):
feel it with your hands in the here, she'll love
to the boom. Let's say good day and did you
and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam Amy here and
my expert guest today is Bobby Judically. And Bobby, I
know you recently released a book and I'm obsessed with
(00:45):
the title because it seems like something that's right up
my alley. And it's freedom from a toxic relationship with food,
A journey that will give you your life back. And
literally that's how I felt once I truly got into recovery.
I got my life back, and one that who knows
that I hadn't had since I was a teenager. Yeah,
(01:06):
for sure. You know it's interesting you use the word recovery.
I don't think I've ever, in all my many years,
used recovery. I've used I hope one day to be cured,
and I never believed I would be, And I did
believe it would always be more recovery, although I never
used the word, but I will tell you I honestly
(01:28):
feel cured at this point in my life. But I'm
in my sixties and and I wrote my book for
those people that don't want to wait until they're in
their fifties and sixties to find what recovery and pure
feel like. Well, so for you, when did your disordered
behavior or you're eating disorder start? How many years were
(01:51):
you living with it? From age eighteen until age I
would say my journey to health be again ten eleven
years ago, so from age eighteen until age fifty six,
and it was excruciating. And I had always said, and
(02:12):
to this day, I am fully committed to fiding being
with supporting anybody to prevent them from having to live
that many years with the struggle that it is. And
so I know one of the things you're passionate about
is dieting and why it doesn't work. Diets are in
(02:32):
our face, and even diets and disguise are in our
face all the time. But in your opinion, why do
you think diets don't work? Well, First of all, they
don't address the problem, and the problem is our relationship
with food. The problem is our relationship and our perspective
(02:53):
on ourselves, our bodies, how we feel, and then separately,
we all live a life with a relationship with food
because food is a necessity in our life. I always
say that if you're an alcoholic, that is an easy,
easier recovery. I believe I was never an alcoholic, but
(03:15):
I believe it's an easier recovery because you can eliminate
alcohol from your life and be healthier and sustain and
so on. When your issue as a relationship with food,
you cannot remove food from your life and be healthy.
You just can't. I mean, anorectics fry that and they
either die or they go down the path of some
(03:38):
sort of re entering a relationship with food or or
bringing food into their life. But diets don't work because
that's one of the reasons they don't address the relationship
with food. Number two, we constantly feel deprived. We look
at a diet as a short term solution. Let me
(03:59):
just lose the pounds and then I will be fine,
and then I don't have to deprive myself anymore. So
that's reason number two. We cannot keep food in our life.
With constant deprivation. Number three, They don't work because the
foods that we that are the majority of foods in
(04:22):
our supply system, especially the ones that are packaged that
say they are healthy, are not, and they create an
addiction to the food that the ingredients, the way food
is made, the processed food is addicting. Whether it's sugar,
it's salt, it's the chemicals that are introduced. We get addicted.
(04:48):
And so therefore you go, Okay, I'm going to diet,
which means for the next X number of weeks, I
can't eat cake. Well, okay, you're not eating cake, but
or eating continuing to eat sugar. When you decide to
stop dieing ing, the sugar itself is driving It was
(05:08):
driving your cravings, it's driving your addiction, and you go
right back to not just eating the unhealthy foods, but
consuming them even in greater quantity. Well, so for me,
I started dieting at a very young age, and my
brain wasn't fully developed, and I wired it to binge
(05:32):
on food because it was so deprived that it didn't
trust me. So when I would allow myself to eat,
it was uncontrollable. I would just find myself eating and
eating and eating because my brain was like, oh, I
better eat all that I can right now because I
don't know when this person is going to feed me again.
And so it was my survival brain kicking in, so
(05:53):
that deprivation I definitely can relate to, and then how
my body and my brain responded to that, and then
the types of foods. I feel like for me, the
pendulum has swung. When I first started to eliminate my
eating disorder and work towards my recovery, I feel like
I was allowing all kinds of foods because that's what
(06:15):
I needed to sort of rewire my brain, like, oh,
that as if method, Like oh, I'm going to act
as if this is normal and I can eat whatever
I want and allow it. And the pendulum swung so far,
and I feel like that's what we see to a
lot on social media, which can be a dangerous place
for recovery because you can get information that's not very helpful.
(06:36):
But then I just want your thoughts on this pendulum thing,
like I swung all the way to the other side
where every food was on the table, and really it
still is, but I think that the pendulum has leveled
out because I also have knowledge of food and what
is in it and the wisdom to want to nourish
my body. Well, if I were to just allow all
(06:57):
foods at all times, I know I'm not going to
wake up and feel my best. And I also want
to take care of all my organs and know the
foods that are going to be nourishing to them and
foods that are gonna be toxic to my organs. So
while everything is allowed, I do think that there's there's
this balancing act that kind of happens. So wherever you
are on this journey, just know that I think it
(07:18):
it might swing, But it's true sometimes when I swung
too far, I kept craving that stuff more and more
and more because I was having it all the time.
So so one of the things most people don't understand
is that that is not happening in your brain. Actually,
it's initiated in your gut. It's initiated in your microbiome,
your entire what they called dys biosis. But it's the
(07:42):
imbalance of the proper bacteria in your gut, which controls everything.
It controls our digestion, it controls our immune system, it
controls you know, It controls everything that happens in our
body that is so critical, and we are constantly feeding
it either good things that will promote the good bacteria
or bad things that will promote the bad bacteria. And
(08:05):
so that when you say the pendulum swings all the
way to one side, what's really happening is you've created
an environment in your gut that the bacteria itself is
telling you and signaling you to eat that particular thing,
be it sugar. Sugar is an easy example because most
of us can relate. What most people don't know is
(08:27):
dairy and cheese specifically are also extremely addictive. So you'll
hear people say a lot of times, I can't give
up cheese, I can't give up sugar, I can't give
up salt. What they don't understand is, yes, indeed they
can't because their body is constantly craving that because they've
set up the environment. When I started my journey twelve, eleven,
(08:52):
whatever years ago, I did not believe that I would
ever be recovered, I that I would ever have a
healthy relationship with food, to look forward to going to
a grocery store, look forward to preparing a meal which
I hadn't done for years. I married a man who
loved to cook, and so he cooked, and we raised
three boys with him doing all the cooking because I
(09:14):
was petrified to be in the kitchen. Food and eating
and meals and eating outside of meals was a very
chaotic experience for me. Um And I think one thing
that's really important for your audience. I know I'm straying
kind of from the original question that you asked me,
but I think one thing that's really important for your
(09:36):
audience to understand is if there is chaos in your
relationship with food, you have disordered eating, minimally disordered eating,
I mean eating disorders from technically what's considered an eating
disorder is more complex than that. If it's noisy, I
can only explain it as very noisy in my head
(09:59):
every time I would eat. So I would eat, and
it would be a constant balance of oh my god,
how many calories, Oh my god, there's too much fat.
I can get more calories if I get less batty foods.
If I'm going to eat that chocolate cake, that means
I can't eat for two more days. If I want
to fit in that dress in two weeks, that means
I better stop eating completely. I mean it's noisy. So
(10:22):
something that I would tell you, like when people say,
I can't give up X y Z, let's take ice cream.
I can't give up ice cream. You know. You hear
people say that all the time. And the thing is
that then they'll eat the ice cream and there's noise
in their head because they know they shouldn't be eating it.
But okay, they've made an agreement with themselves. They'll only
(10:45):
eat one scoop. Okay, they'll only eat two spoon spoonfuls.
Now what are they going to have to do? Run
three extra miles tomorrow to counterbalance the impact of that. So,
if you have that kind of noise in your head,
there is disordered eating it. You know, if you're constantly
looking for what's the answer, what's the next book, what's
(11:06):
the next support group, what's the next whatever. Because I
can't live like this anymore. I can't live with three
sizes of clothes in my closet. I can't live with
feeling like I have no energy. I just can't live
like that anymore. You have disordered eating and there is
as the title of my book, the subtitle of my
(11:26):
book says, there is a journey that gives you your
life back. I am here to tell you I never
believed I would be saying this, but I love food.
I have no negative impact when I eat, when I
think about eating, when I plan what I'm eating. I'm
sixty seven years old. I never believed I would ever
(11:49):
be able to say that, and I don't want other
people to wait until they're in their sixties to say that.
I don't either, And you know, at forty one, I
feel so gosh, so many years were wasted, but I
want to say that, like something there was some benefit
for that in my life, of like what is this
(12:09):
made possible for me now? I don't want to look
back and focus on the past like I want to
see maybe it's so that I could come alongside and
help others that are going through this and have this podcast.
I don't know, So I don't want to harp on
the past at all, but I do wish I would
have entered or been exposed to this type of thinking
(12:30):
or recovery or knowing that there's hope for it when
I was thirty one, because there's so many family meals
that I missed, or memories to be made or times
where I could have been engaging in conversation with someone,
but like you said, my brain was full of all
kinds of noise and other thoughts, so I wasn't fully present.
And Lisa, who is a registered dietitian in front of mine,
(12:53):
Lisa Haymond, she's the one that originally co founded Outweigh
with me. She has a whole program called Fork the Noise.
So I love you called it noise because that's exactly
what it is. And when we started this podcast, it's
Outweigh a life without disordered eating, outweighs everything. But we
also were very adamant of like the we're covering the
gray area, Like this whole topic is not black and white.
(13:21):
There's so much happening here, and there's so many different
types of people that can be coming to the table here.
And I love having people on, especially that have amazing
resources like you do with freedom from a Toxic Relationship
with food. I love that title so much, And then
I love the journey that will give you your life
that because that's truly what happens once you can have
(13:42):
a cure or into recovery, whatever you want to call it,
and it doesn't happen overnight. Mine. It was a journey,
and I feel like I'm still working on it, but
the noise is less and less and less and less.
And I like the ice cream example too that you
gave because I was talking king about the pendulum and
it's like, when I wasn't allowing it, I wanted it
(14:04):
more and more and more, and then I allowed it,
and then the pendulum evens out because then it's less desirable,
and you're like, oh, my pendulum evened out, and now
I can keep ice cream in the fridge for weeks
and months and I don't feel like I have to
throw it away or eat it all in one night.
It will literally be there for months at a time.
Isn't that amazing? Yes? I I so relate to what
(14:26):
you're saying. For me, it's I explain it a little differently,
and I am kind of a I'm going to say
and I use this term loosely, not technically, not medically,
but I'm an O C D person. I work better
when I build tight boundaries around something that's important to me.
So you know, like no going back and what I
(14:47):
found in my journey, So I did, I did change,
I did take a lot of foods out of my
day to day eating. So I am now whole food,
plant based. I eat very little of anything processed. I
eat no animal products whatsoever. And that's changed my life
(15:08):
in other ways outside of food. But for me, there
was no discussion about am I going to eat it?
Am I going to eat that chocolate bar? No, because
it's processed. If not, say I don't eat. I make
my own dark chocolate with nuts snail and I like
love it. But yes, like you said, now I can
eat one piece and I and it lives in my
(15:31):
freezer all the time, and I don't you know, I
don't have to eat it. So for me, I needed
to to really eliminate certain foods. But what happened for
me by eliminating animal products, by eliminating any processed food,
is it completely changed my taste buds. And now processed
foods don't taste good. Animal products I used to love
(15:55):
me and animal products I can't even imagine eating like
I just look at it and it does not look appetizing.
That's me. That's how it worked for me. I don't
believe for anybody to recover UM that they really need
to be as extreme but for me, I did. The
(16:18):
other one thing point that I really really want to
make is we all, especially women, grow up believing that
our weight is critical, like what we look like, how
much we weigh, how are close fit? We are told
by society, and now it's even worse because of social media.
We are told thin is it? I mean you, we
(16:41):
are driven by our weight, and at the end of
the day, we're compromising our health. Diet and compromises our health,
eating disorders and disordered eat and compromise our health. And
for me, I will tell you I kind of resign
myself to the fact that I would always carry ten
more pounds than I want to to until I changed
the way I ate, and it was absolutely not motivated
(17:05):
by weight. It was motivated by health. And my sister
died of cancer, my father last ten twelve years of
his life were horrible, and both of them I believe
would due to diet. I really do believe that the
outcome or their life quality of life would have been
different had they eaten differently. And I was experiencing extreme,
(17:29):
extreme fatigue, and that's when I said, this has to
do with how I'm eating, and I'm here to tell
you that I have more energy now in my late
sixties than I had at forty, and that is a
result of using food as medicine, as what sustains me,
and not as the crutch and the numbing agent and
(17:52):
the drug that I used it as my mom actually
passed away from cancer, and that's when my eating just
sort of came back with the vengeance and it was
literally two numb out and it's stuck around for a while,
even while my dad was diagnosed with cancer. So I
I appreciate you writing this book and giving it as
a guide too, so that those of us that are
(18:16):
in recovery are looking to get rid of that noise
in our head, but also be mindful of what we're
putting in our body for overall health, because disease does
scare me because I watched I was a caregiver for
both of my parents, and it was I don't know
for sure if their diet would have played a different role,
but I know that I'm still young enough to where
(18:38):
maybe if I start to do certain things for my
body and my organs and feed it a certain way
or feed at certain things that I can, I can
be as proactive as possible. No it's not guaranteed to
eliminate chronic disease, absolutely not. However, your overall quality of life,
your energy. I mean, if you are somebody that's eating
(19:00):
a lot of processed food, I guarantee you your energy
is impacted. It just is. It has to be. It's
the way your body works. If you're getting sick frequently,
if you're getting colds frequently, it has to do with
the way you are eating. And yes, it doesn't mean
that you can eat however you want. Then you start
to get a cold and you get a plug yourself
(19:21):
with vitamin C. No, that's not taking care of yourself.
Your overall immune system is impacted. And this is only
recently that they understand this all comes from what you
put in your body. So and I truly believe this.
Everything you eat is either helping you have a better
quality of life or negatively impacting your quality of life
(19:45):
and your overall health. And I really really believe that.
And the other thing I really want to stress though,
is what I mentioned about your taste buds. What people
don't get is not only can you give it up
and and I really go through the steps in my
book of what that journey looks like it's not only
(20:06):
can you give it up, but you're not going to
miss it at some point because food takes on a
whole new look. Like I couldn't walk past chocolate without
eating it in my earlier days. It doesn't do anything
for me now looking at it doesn't do anything. If
I decide I want to have a piece of the
(20:27):
chocolate that I make, which probably happens once a month,
I get a piece of chocolate that is good for
me because it's first of all, very healthy chocolate. It's
dark chocolate, it has minimal sugar, and the kakal is
very healthy for you. It's an antioxidant and it has
nuts in it, so that's more protein and healthy fats.
I know, like just because I roll up my sleeves
(20:49):
and learn about things in detail, I know everything that
I eat what it's doing for me, and it helps
me have an appetite for it. And I said, my
taste buds are different. I couldn't eat milk chocolate now
if you wanted me to. It's just doesn't taste right.
I can't eat processed food. If I eat something processed,
(21:10):
sometimes I'll go to a restaurant. I'll go oh, I
can taste that. That does not taste good to me,
and I don't need it. Do you have a different
recipes anywhere? There's some in the book or on your
website or this I'm curious about this chocolate recipe. No,
I don't have recipes. I'm more than happy to share
it with you. Um, I don't have recipes because I
don't like cooking with recipes. What I do is I
(21:34):
uh and I had to learn it because I've never
cooked before and my husband not did not change the
way he eats. So now I do cook every single night,
but I throw things together like I know foods that
I like, and I and I just experiment with stuff
that I know is healthy, different herbs and spices, and
(21:55):
and only recently started loving tofu because I throw it
together with something and put it in my air fryer
and I went, oh my god, this. I used to
really dislike tofu for a vegan. That's a problem. Um,
now I you know, really like it. It's like I
just I love the exploration and yet so no, and
(22:16):
I'll never write a cookbook because I'd be the worst
person in the world to write a cookbook. I would
just have to say, well, throw that and throw that,
And I do look at recipes online and go, oh,
that's a good idea. And I don't follow the measurements.
I just throw that in and throw that in. But
it's fun. And I'm telling you, I'm somebody who used
to be petrified to walk into a grocery store, or
(22:38):
petrified at the prospect that I had to make dinner
that night because my husband wouldn't be home and I
had three kids that needed to eat. That ended up
being pizza night. Um, I couldn't handle it any other day,
and pizza was one of my weak food, so that
would mean a night I was over eating. So yeah,
it's it's just a different world. But I do want
(23:00):
to leave you with I wrote the book to support anyone,
anyone who wants the support and would like the support
for exploring a different way. And I make myself very
available to anybody who reads the book or sees this
podcast or whatever to support them, because I probably have
(23:22):
a lot of knowledge that even some standard nutritionists don't have. Well,
Freedom from a toxic relationship with food, A Journey that
will Give Your Life Back is available on Amazon. I'll
link it in the show notes, but you can visit
Food Freedom Advocate dot com for more about Bobby. But
(23:43):
thank you so much for sharing some of your story
with us. I know that everybody's on a different journey,
but I think ultimately we want to get our lives back,
whatever that that looks like. So thank you for sharing
your journey with us and what it's looked like for you,
the tools that have worked for you and helping us
(24:03):
get rid of the noise. Everybody's got their different ways,
and yeah, if you're thinking you've got the noise and
this sounds like something that you would be into, I
personally am going to order the book because I'm very
interested in nourishing my body with different types of food.
I think that I've kind of gotten in a little
bit of a rut, but that's okay. I also don't
(24:25):
have any shame with that or guilt, like I'm doing
the best that I can with life right now, but
I'm open to all different kinds of things. So thank
you Bobby for sharing your book with us. Oh You're
so welcome and it was such a pleasure to be here.
And I just I think food should be a joyful
part of our life and for many of us. That's
a challenge, but that's what my goal is for anybody
(24:48):
else because it is joyful. And thank you again for
having me. Absolutely
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Amy Brown
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