February 5, 2022 • 25 mins
Fat is feared by most- but it’s not only HEALTHY but a KEY ingredient to finally end obsessive thinking about food. Learn which sources to add in and how, and its effect on digestion and blood sugar control. Plus, you’ll learn the difference between FEELING FULL vs. BEING SATIATED, and how to make choices that support your over all life.
P.S. Lisa is taking time off while “RESIDENCY ON OUTWEIGH” begins! She’ll see you soon :)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out out well 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 way if you
(00:24):
feel it with yours in the air, she'll love to
the boom. I am there. Let's say good day and
did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam Amy
and Lisa here, I'm coming to you from Nashville, um,
all the way from New York. Hello everybody. Yeah, and
(00:44):
Lisa was actually running a little late to the zoom
because I know you were running to get like chocolate
covered almonds, which is um one of your favorite batty
snacks and it's perfect for today's episode because we're going
to get into a conversation about fat. But before we do,
do you want to explain to everybody the fun residency
that we have coming up? For sure? Also, I don't
(01:05):
want to give shout out to chocolate covered almonds for
getting me through this postpartum experience in the most delicious
way possible. So we're coming up on almost two years
of outway when we kicked it off, and I want
to say how much I enjoy doing this with Amy
every single week. But I am going to be taking
a little break for a little bit of time and
(01:26):
give some other new voices in this space a chance
to educate and empower you with some new tools. As
I know some amazing people that I think could really
shine if brought to this space. So we're going to
be doing what's called a residency. So for the next
four weeks, we're going to have on registered dietitian Michelle Pillapesh.
(01:46):
You may remember her from a previous episode actually too,
She's been on Outwag and I absolutely love Michelle. She's
a registered dietitian. She's somebody who I think is fresh
to the space. She brings a unique lens. She has
experience with both disorders and disordered eating, and interestingly enough,
she hasn't personally suffered from an eating disorder or disordered eating,
(02:07):
So I think she brings this uniquely professional lens where
she's able to be incredibly compassionate but not so close
to it that allows her to really just shine in
the space. Awesome. Well, I'm excited about sitting alongside her
for the four weeks that we're going to be recording,
and um, yeah, I know it's just gonna be full
(02:28):
of a lot of helpful information, which is why this
podcast exists. Hopefully it's a weekly resource for you where
every Saturday you can use it to check in and
either not feel alone or learn something or grab ANUE
tool to keep in your toolbox to help you manage life.
You know, that's what we're all trying to do one
day at a time now. The inspiration behind this conversation
(02:48):
came from an Instagram post at Lisa put up that
we both think is an important topic, and the first
sentence in that post was fat, Why It's important? And
in food Obsessed of living. So I'm gonna throw the
reins to you, Lisa for this conversation. But I think
that growing up when I did in the nineties, I
(03:08):
was in my early early years, was basically told to
fear fat, so on learning that has been a very
difficult process, even all these years later. I think that
most of us listening, no matter what generation you're in,
has either a fear of fat or a lot of
confusion around fat. What is the truth behind it? Is
(03:31):
it unhealthy? Does it lead to wake in what is
the role in it in our life? I mean, I
I too grew up in the I guess the snack
Wells generation. I don't know what feels so archaic because
I don't even think they sell it anymore. I haven't
do they, Honestly, I don't know. But it's funny you
call it that because I remember getting snack Wealls all
the time, the Devil's Food cakes and the Vanilla way
for I'm sure they're at the store. I just don't
(03:52):
pay attention to that anymore. I don't know. I mean,
I think that the emphasis on other things has changed
so much it At the time that was certainly the
height of like what you should be doing and not doing.
Fat free was huge. Fat free still is huge in
some diet um in some diets it's the opposite, like
keto is a high fat diet. So I think again,
(04:13):
there's a lot of confusion cross between all generations. Here
are listeners who are twenty or younger to fifty plus.
We're all kind of like, wait, what is the role
of fat here? I'm super confused and I don't know
which way to go. So, you know, as a registered dietitian,
I feel like I could go on and on about
the benefits of fat for your vitamin absorption, for creating hormones,
(04:39):
for the nerves in your in your brain, all that stuff.
But when you're in the height of disordered eating, you
don't give a crop about any of that stuff. You
only care about what it's going to do to your physical,
aesthetic body. Do you agree with that, I'm guess nodding
my head in agreement, okay, And I think that that
you know is certainly when you're young, you're easier to
(05:01):
kind of put second. Okay, I don't really care what
fat does for my health because I want to look
a certain way and I can figure that out. But
as you get older, perhaps you begin to care about
your health in a different way and you are kind
of curious about it. So I do want to stay
away from the nutritional nuance of this conversation, but I
want to acknowledge it as well, because what I'm here
to do today is talk about why you need to
(05:23):
add fat to your diet to have a peaceful relationship
to food and the rest of your life. But I
don't want to dismiss that this is a really complicated
topic and therefore, don't engage with your grandma or your
mom about this conversation, because even as a registered dietitian,
there's so much nuance to the different types of fat
and even the breakdowns within that. Right, we've got saturated, unsaturated,
(05:46):
got poly unsaturated, mono unsaturated, we hear about omega three's.
There's so much that even as a registered dietitian, it's
really hard to distill into a conversation. Does that make sense? Okay? Cool?
So for me, you know, I grew up through many
different generations of dieting and for a long time the
fitness world where I really wanted to be like shredded
(06:08):
for a while. Like I was never like a competitor,
but I was very focused on body fat and and
looking lean and having defined abs during my college years,
and the information was simply like go protein. Like protein
ended up being like the only safe food that I
could eat. And I think a lot of people feel
(06:28):
that way, no matter what diet they've gone through. Is like,
most people are afraid of carbs in some way, most
people are afraid of fat in some way. That leaves
one macro nutrient left protein, and that leaves a very
bland diet, not much to be desired, not much to
be enjoyed, and it's super super limiting. But I feel
(06:50):
like for me, I don't know. I never cut out
carbs completely. I always have really enjoyed the way they
made me feel, and I could never give up fruit
or anything like that. So I never I ever had
too complex of a relationship with carbohydrates. Mindful of them,
for sure. But fat is this one that I think
crept up on me and stayed with me for a
(07:12):
very long time. And I think that understanding it and
learning what it feels like in my body and learning
how to work with it from both an outer wisdom
point of view, outer wisdom being what is this going
to provide to my meal? And an inner wisdom point
of view, how is this going to feel good for me?
(07:32):
Is kind of where the two come together for me
and a lot of the students that I that I
work with during disordered eating. I know this might sound
weird to you, possibly to you Amy, because you have
more of a restrictive past, But I considered myself a
foodie in the height of my disordered eating, like I
was obsessed with food. I loved going out to meals,
(07:54):
even though it caused me anxiety to do so. I
was always thinking about food, scanning, end use, trying different things,
although within the confines of what I could eat. But
I considered myself somebody who quote unquote loves to eat.
(08:14):
Let me ask you this, When you did eat at
a meal, did you really enjoy it? Did you extend
the meal time or did you try and make it
as like compact and short as possible so that you
could go back to restriction? And somewhere, I did not
enjoy it. You did not enjoy Okay, Yeah, So for me,
I I had these allotted times where I could eat
(08:34):
and I wanted to extend them for as long as
I could. But I was afraid of calories. So how
to make a meal extend and be long and you know,
get that release away from the restriction was to fill
myself up. And I put that in quotes because I
was very careful as to what I was filling myself
(08:55):
up with, knowing that certain foods would make me feel
full but not actually make me be full or you know,
tack on the calories. Again, I put that in quotes
because I didn't, you know, I was just afraid of
many foods. So you know, like volume eating is a
diet tactic of eating high volume foods, but it fails
(09:15):
to really address the necessary component of why we end meals,
which is not just feeling full, it's being full. And
that's an important distinction that we combed through in forth
the noise hunger fullness, because you can feel full but
not actually have enough energy to get you through the
next three hours. Right, if you ate one apple right
(09:36):
now for lunch, right, there might be a fullness to
you because it's a crunge, it takes you a while
to eat, it's high fiber, it's got water. Maybe not
one apple but two apples, right, you would feel full,
but in an hour you'd be like, wait, I'm hungry, right,
and you'd be thinking about food again. Yeah, I mean
I like that you went apple, and that's actually something
that But in my mind I'm having the vision of
(09:58):
how I used to treat rice as perfect thank you, okay? Perfect?
That that works? That works even better and perhaps is
more relatable to to a lot of people. Rice cakes
are a food that you could eat three or four of, right,
and you wouldn't feel guilty. They made you feel full,
but they might not actually be filling because they're low
in calorie, they're low in fat. Yeah, they're low in
(10:20):
really any type of nutrients, right right, they're low in nutrients.
But I mean, I guess it's rice, so it has
some carbohydrates in it, but it will be pretty pretty low,
low calorie, So it'll make you feel full for an hour.
It'll it'll get you through, but then you'll be hungry
again and be thinking about food. So for me, I
was thinking about food all of the damn time, and
(10:40):
yet I was eating a lot. And again, eating a
lot is in quotes here because I wasn't actually eating
a lot. I was eating a lot of volume, but
I wasn't actually eating enough calories per meal or using
fat to balance my blood sugar. So I just want
to clarify before we even go further here, is that
feeling full and being full are not the same exact things. Satiation,
(11:05):
your hormones changing your blood sugar having going up and
down is different than your stomach distending because you put
a rice cake in it and your body saying okay,
food has arrived. So we have different levels of fullness
as food makes its way down the digestive process. And
if we stop with just the physical fullness. I had
(11:26):
a rice cake, My stomach feels a little bit distended.
There's that immediate feeling of fullness. We don't get to
satiation where food makes its way to the gut, and
the gut then send signals back to the brain. Hey,
food's coming. We can start to decrease your appetite hormones
and your blood sugar is leveling out and all this
good stuff is happening. That makes sense. Yeah, I'm sitting
(11:47):
here as you're talking, thinking about how it's some one
my time, and I as when we're recording this, and
I have not satiated my body today or my brain
my mind, Like I just haven't. Like I'm sitting here
thinking like I should have planned further ahead, but I'm
stuck at the office. So anyway, this is me having
this moment and this self awareness to know that I
(12:08):
want to give my body that this isn't something I
did in a disordered way. Totally. I think how it
can happen to us too, And now I'm very self
aware of it because you're talking about it. Well, the
cool thing about that is that's probably gonna happen again. Right.
So things that you could do, also if you have
a busy day at work, is to prepare the first
meal of the day, if it's your breakfast, to make
(12:28):
it a little bit more well rounded, to carry you
out a little bit further. So going back to fat,
fat is going to make you feel fuller for longer.
But here's the key here with fat is it takes
longer to feel full. So when you eat that rice cake, right,
or if you eat four rice cakes, let's say you
might feel full in the moment, but you're hungry in
(12:49):
an hour or two. Whereas let's say you had half
of an avocado, you might not feel that physical fullness
immediately because of the volume of the food compared to
a car bohydrate, right, compared to the rice cake. But
you're going to feel a more level feeling of full
for longer because it takes longer to digest, and because
(13:10):
whatever you're pairing it with, let's say you have the
rice cake and the avocado, it's slowing down that digestive
process as a whole, which is helping you to absorb
nutrients as it makes its way down your body. I'm
trying to illustrate that because it's it's one of those
things that's kind of hard to to picture here. Well,
even as you're saying that, I just had a flashback
to some disordered days where I wouldn't have paired certain things. Honestly,
(13:34):
I don't even know right now if I would have done,
you know, a fat with the carbohydrate. All I know
is I had this little chart that I printed out
and I would carry it around and so thankful to
be free of that. Yeah, So exactly there we've had.
There's so many rules and noises that we've picked up
along the way, whether you can't eat this food with
that food, or this food at that time, or don't
(13:54):
eat at that time in general, only eat at this time.
So there's so much to unpack here. What is really
much more simple when we come back down to the
science of how food works in the body, and that
is what I want to equip and empower people to have,
because free of that that bs you have an inner
(14:15):
wisdom that says we I don't want just this plain
rice cake, I want to pair it with avocado, right,
and and we're not tuning into that because we have
these rules happening here. So when you're not actually trying
to trick your body, and when you're not following these
outside rules arbitrarily that seemingly make no sense, your body
(14:37):
actually works perfectly to let you know when you've had
enough food. And I want to say that again, when
you're not trying to trick your body, your body signals
will work perfectly to let you know when you've had enough.
And that might be really unbelievable to somebody now who
finds themselves getting constantly painfully full after every meal, even
(14:58):
though they're working so hard to trust their body. I've found,
in the height of my eating disorder two things I
would never know when I was full, But I also
never knew when I was actually really hungry. And I
feel like what is characteristic of all eating disorders is
that noise. So very few people, regardless of disordered eating
or not, are very attuned to what gentle hunger and
(15:21):
gentle fullness should feel like. They might know what being
starving feels like, and they know what being painfully full
or stuffed is. But where's that gentle place of needing food,
where you're you're not, you know, thinking about chewing off
your arm. Where's that place of ending a meal that
feels comfortable for the next few hours but doesn't feel
like you need to unbutton your pants, and fine tuning
(15:42):
that getting to know your own body signals. I'm going
a little off track here to the fat thing, but
I think it's important conversation. Nonetheless, fine tuning those signals.
Going into a meal a little bit hungry and ending
it a little bit full is going to drastically change
how much your mentally thinking about food. And that's what
(16:03):
really changes the game for me and for a lot
of people. So adding fats to your meal. If you're somebody,
if you're listening right now and you're like, well, I'm
still terrified of fat, I don't even know where to begin.
I don't even know where to to to start with
this whole thing. I want to give you a couple
of tips and tricks to start integrating it into your diet.
And the reason I wrote this post was because right
(16:25):
now I am craving a lot more fats than general.
I am really in the mood for salmon and avocado
and snacking on nuts and seeds and nut butters and
all that stuff right now, and finding myself craving a
lot more high fat foods, and I realized recently that
old me wouldn't have been able to honor this out
of fear. And me now is actually noticing what's happening
(16:48):
because I'm adding them on so consistently and eating them
throughout the day. And however many quantities or servings I want,
how level I feel, And that's a freedom that I
think everybody deserves to have. It will drastically change how
much you're thinking about food, because it's going to change
(17:09):
how you feel inside your body. Now. I know in
the post you said to try to add at least
one fat source in each meal. Would you encourage people
that are just like dipping their toe in this water
because of the fears there too? Maybe just maybe it's
not every meal, but you just start at least trying
once a day or um. I think that if you're
just dipping your toe in the in the water, a
(17:29):
better strategy here, because that should really be in your
diet consistently throughout the day. A better strategy might be
to introduce smaller amounts but still bring them in at
every meal. So maybe if you're having oatmeal for breakfast,
you're sprinkling um. Maybe not two tablespoons of nut butter,
but maybe one tablespoon or whatever you're comfortable with at lunch,
(17:49):
maybe on your salad, let's say, if the salads of
food that you're comfortable with. I always love pairing something
super safe with something that feels scary, throwing something like
um while uts or dressing on. I'm a huge fan
of dressing after years of you know, thinking that dressing
was the enemy for for so many reasons. But dressing
is usually a great source of fat, and it also
(18:12):
provides what's called satisfaction. It can help you actually enjoy
what you're eating and end the salad if it is
feeling content rather than reaching for more. For dinner, can
you cook with different oils or think about adding fatty fish.
I'm a huge fan of fatty fish, like salmon. Salmon's
my personal favorite. I don't really love a lot of
the other fattier ones, like mackerel or sardines. But if
(18:34):
that's your thing, go for it. If that's your thing,
go for it. I don't think gave you like sardines either. Yeah,
I'm not. I'm not a fan, but people love sardines.
You can buy them in the tin. They're very affordable,
you know, all all that kind of stuff. So again,
adding one fat source to each meal and or snack
is a great way to kind of begin this journey.
Nut butter is one that everybody kind of is excited
(18:55):
to add back into their life after years of doing
powdered peanut butter, you know, all those sorts of things.
Can I say something about that. I used to be
a powdered peanut butter junkie. Um. I thought it was
like the greatest invention known to man. And this was
years ago, and then I stopped using it. I don't
even remember for whatever reason. And then I guess after
(19:16):
a few years of not having it, I decided to
give it a go again. Yeah, I should retry it too.
Oh No, we should, Well you should if you want to.
For me personally, I know this might not happen to everybody,
but my stomach was so upset. It caused so much
discomfort honestly that I don't know if it truly was
(19:37):
from that. I mean, my hypothesis is that it is
from that, because it's the only thing I did different.
But maybe it was a fluke and it was something else.
But it was so uncomfortable that I won't even dare
even try it again just for the sake of testing it. Well,
I'll say this, which is interesting. You know, I'm a
big fan of real foods and whole foods, and what
you're doing in a powdered peanut butter is you're taking
(19:57):
peanuts the whole food or a powdered and butter. You're
taking that whole food which contains the fatty acids, the nutrients,
all that good stuff, and you're they remove the fat,
so all your left is with the protein. So that's
a high level form of food processing. And yet we're
glorifying that as the healthy alternative. So just to kind
of play with the mind game here and then putting
(20:19):
it in plastic to sell for five dollars, you know,
just to kind of play with the mind game here.
So what we call healthy when it's so far from
the source, right, the same thing with snack wells, something
that can sit on the shelf for probably five years
without end. We've removed the fat, we've removed everything. But
this is a health food because it's fat free. So
just to kind of play with that for for a minute. Yeah, No,
(20:42):
I mean, it's just it's something to think about in
two and maybe what my body. What I didn't notice
about my body when I was using it, Like who
knows where I was with all different kinds of foods
that I ate because I found that to be true
with other processed things. And I'm not anti processed foods
by any means, but these were other things I was
specifically eyeing because quote unquote I thought they were going
(21:02):
to be healthier for me, and I consumed them regularly.
So either a my body was just used to it,
or be I lived in discomfort and didn't really know it,
And so the problem is now. And the powder peanutter
is just one example I could give others where I
sometimes see things at the grocery store, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I used to buy those, and then I'm like, I
don't know that I want to buy it because I
(21:22):
don't want to risk the discomfort for sure. And now
you're listening to your body rather than just saying this
is healthy, so I'm going to eat it. I was
in the same exact vote of constant discomfort. I just
want to also just ask Tori Scure that a lot
of people who are struggling with let's not even call
it disordered eating, but disordered behaviors around food are also
subject to a lot of gastro discomfort. Like you and
(21:45):
I are discussing, and we see that a lot on
Instagram and on TikTok, this obsession with bloating and guess
and how to get rid of it and all these solutions,
when I think for a lot of people, the solution
is also moving away from the things that are causing
the discus emfort rather than adding these food these foods
in that are quote unquote healthy. Okay, So the other
(22:05):
thing I want you to know is to use your
outer wisdom. Knowing that fats take longer to digest is
going to help you go into a meal knowing that
a you need to eat a little bit slower, and
you need to know that this The feeling of fullness
might kick in a little bit later because of that.
So when adding fats to your diet, they don't work
as immediately as carbohydrates, which are broken down immediately and
(22:29):
provide us with energy. They still provide us with energy
and a good amount of it, but it takes a
little longer to know that. So work with that info,
go slower. Take notes as fifteen minutes go by, thirty
minutes go by, sixty minutes go by, so that you
can really study how your body is working off of
that food. Take note of what you feel like immediately
after eating meal that now contains fat. Really think about
(22:52):
what it feels like in your body. Is there a
physical discomfort with that fullness? Or is there I'm full,
but I feel comfortable. Think about that to distinction. And
then I want you to notice what happens mentally as
your body is digesting the meal a little bit more
slowly now that fat is involved. Is your brain free
to think about other things because you're not immediately going
(23:14):
back to thinking about your next meal from the hunger
coming on shortly thereafter. And just a little pro tip
here and getting started with this, is to shorten your
meal or snack windows. So like Amy and I mentioned earlier,
or the biggest mistake I see people make is going
into a meal or a snack on empty or waiting
until as long as they possibly can to eat. Your
(23:36):
blood sugar is not meant to be a roller coaster
shooting up and down, up to the sky and into
the ground. It is supposed to be like a seesaw leveling, um,
staying level, just dipping a little and then um coming
back up, dipping a little, coming back up. And the
best way to do that is to eat consistently and
eat balanced meals. And I love that you ended your
(23:57):
post with fat is satisfying, filling great for blood sugar
and amplifies the flavor for overall satisfaction, and then you
ask people to share their favorite fat sources. So I
just want to encourage people to go check out at
Lisa Hame, which is your Instagram where this post is
and Haime is h a y I am. And it's
got beautiful flowers on there because I think your husband
(24:19):
Evan orders some edible You ordered edible flowers and I
was l O l ng when you put that in
your Instagram stories. But you know, people are commenting with
their favorite fats like wild salmon, all nut, butters, avocado,
some that we obviously mentioned, but you can read through
and see if anybody posts something that you maybe need
try out. Tahani is another interesting one that has great
(24:40):
flavor and can add something interesting to dishes and so good.
It's full of fatty acids that come from sesame sea.
It's a fantastic one. I also just want to lastly
say before we head out for the week that in
my Instagram stories, I asked people what their relationship to
fat was and so on my Instagram post, which is
public where you might see everybody throwing out their favorite
(25:01):
sources and how much they love fat, it got real
all my stories when I asked people what their favorite um,
what their relationship to fat was, and you had a
lot of people that are doing a lot of unlearning,
a lot of people that are still really afraid of fat.
So if that's you right now, just know that you're
not alone. And there's millions women and also men working
through this as we bring fat back to our plate
(25:22):
so we can live healthier, happier, more fulfilled and satisfied lives.
Boom drop the mic. Alright, well, we hope you'll have
a great rest of your day. Bye bye, everybody. I'll
see you real soon,
I won't let my body out out well 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 way if you
(00:24):
feel it with yours in the air, she'll love to
the boom. I am there. Let's say good day and
did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam Amy
and Lisa here, I'm coming to you from Nashville, um,
all the way from New York. Hello everybody. Yeah, and
(00:44):
Lisa was actually running a little late to the zoom
because I know you were running to get like chocolate
covered almonds, which is um one of your favorite batty
snacks and it's perfect for today's episode because we're going
to get into a conversation about fat. But before we do,
do you want to explain to everybody the fun residency
that we have coming up? For sure? Also, I don't
(01:05):
want to give shout out to chocolate covered almonds for
getting me through this postpartum experience in the most delicious
way possible. So we're coming up on almost two years
of outway when we kicked it off, and I want
to say how much I enjoy doing this with Amy
every single week. But I am going to be taking
a little break for a little bit of time and
(01:26):
give some other new voices in this space a chance
to educate and empower you with some new tools. As
I know some amazing people that I think could really
shine if brought to this space. So we're going to
be doing what's called a residency. So for the next
four weeks, we're going to have on registered dietitian Michelle Pillapesh.
(01:46):
You may remember her from a previous episode actually too,
She's been on Outwag and I absolutely love Michelle. She's
a registered dietitian. She's somebody who I think is fresh
to the space. She brings a unique lens. She has
experience with both disorders and disordered eating, and interestingly enough,
she hasn't personally suffered from an eating disorder or disordered eating,
(02:07):
So I think she brings this uniquely professional lens where
she's able to be incredibly compassionate but not so close
to it that allows her to really just shine in
the space. Awesome. Well, I'm excited about sitting alongside her
for the four weeks that we're going to be recording,
and um, yeah, I know it's just gonna be full
(02:28):
of a lot of helpful information, which is why this
podcast exists. Hopefully it's a weekly resource for you where
every Saturday you can use it to check in and
either not feel alone or learn something or grab ANUE
tool to keep in your toolbox to help you manage life.
You know, that's what we're all trying to do one
day at a time now. The inspiration behind this conversation
(02:48):
came from an Instagram post at Lisa put up that
we both think is an important topic, and the first
sentence in that post was fat, Why It's important? And
in food Obsessed of living. So I'm gonna throw the
reins to you, Lisa for this conversation. But I think
that growing up when I did in the nineties, I
(03:08):
was in my early early years, was basically told to
fear fat, so on learning that has been a very
difficult process, even all these years later. I think that
most of us listening, no matter what generation you're in,
has either a fear of fat or a lot of
confusion around fat. What is the truth behind it? Is
(03:31):
it unhealthy? Does it lead to wake in what is
the role in it in our life? I mean, I
I too grew up in the I guess the snack
Wells generation. I don't know what feels so archaic because
I don't even think they sell it anymore. I haven't
do they, Honestly, I don't know. But it's funny you
call it that because I remember getting snack Wealls all
the time, the Devil's Food cakes and the Vanilla way
for I'm sure they're at the store. I just don't
(03:52):
pay attention to that anymore. I don't know. I mean,
I think that the emphasis on other things has changed
so much it At the time that was certainly the
height of like what you should be doing and not doing.
Fat free was huge. Fat free still is huge in
some diet um in some diets it's the opposite, like
keto is a high fat diet. So I think again,
(04:13):
there's a lot of confusion cross between all generations. Here
are listeners who are twenty or younger to fifty plus.
We're all kind of like, wait, what is the role
of fat here? I'm super confused and I don't know
which way to go. So, you know, as a registered dietitian,
I feel like I could go on and on about
the benefits of fat for your vitamin absorption, for creating hormones,
(04:39):
for the nerves in your in your brain, all that stuff.
But when you're in the height of disordered eating, you
don't give a crop about any of that stuff. You
only care about what it's going to do to your physical,
aesthetic body. Do you agree with that, I'm guess nodding
my head in agreement, okay, And I think that that
you know is certainly when you're young, you're easier to
(05:01):
kind of put second. Okay, I don't really care what
fat does for my health because I want to look
a certain way and I can figure that out. But
as you get older, perhaps you begin to care about
your health in a different way and you are kind
of curious about it. So I do want to stay
away from the nutritional nuance of this conversation, but I
want to acknowledge it as well, because what I'm here
to do today is talk about why you need to
(05:23):
add fat to your diet to have a peaceful relationship
to food and the rest of your life. But I
don't want to dismiss that this is a really complicated
topic and therefore, don't engage with your grandma or your
mom about this conversation, because even as a registered dietitian,
there's so much nuance to the different types of fat
and even the breakdowns within that. Right, we've got saturated, unsaturated,
(05:46):
got poly unsaturated, mono unsaturated, we hear about omega three's.
There's so much that even as a registered dietitian, it's
really hard to distill into a conversation. Does that make sense? Okay? Cool?
So for me, you know, I grew up through many
different generations of dieting and for a long time the
fitness world where I really wanted to be like shredded
(06:08):
for a while. Like I was never like a competitor,
but I was very focused on body fat and and
looking lean and having defined abs during my college years,
and the information was simply like go protein. Like protein
ended up being like the only safe food that I
could eat. And I think a lot of people feel
(06:28):
that way, no matter what diet they've gone through. Is like,
most people are afraid of carbs in some way, most
people are afraid of fat in some way. That leaves
one macro nutrient left protein, and that leaves a very
bland diet, not much to be desired, not much to
be enjoyed, and it's super super limiting. But I feel
(06:50):
like for me, I don't know. I never cut out
carbs completely. I always have really enjoyed the way they
made me feel, and I could never give up fruit
or anything like that. So I never I ever had
too complex of a relationship with carbohydrates. Mindful of them,
for sure. But fat is this one that I think
crept up on me and stayed with me for a
(07:12):
very long time. And I think that understanding it and
learning what it feels like in my body and learning
how to work with it from both an outer wisdom
point of view, outer wisdom being what is this going
to provide to my meal? And an inner wisdom point
of view, how is this going to feel good for me?
(07:32):
Is kind of where the two come together for me
and a lot of the students that I that I
work with during disordered eating. I know this might sound
weird to you, possibly to you Amy, because you have
more of a restrictive past, But I considered myself a
foodie in the height of my disordered eating, like I
was obsessed with food. I loved going out to meals,
(07:54):
even though it caused me anxiety to do so. I
was always thinking about food, scanning, end use, trying different things,
although within the confines of what I could eat. But
I considered myself somebody who quote unquote loves to eat.
(08:14):
Let me ask you this, When you did eat at
a meal, did you really enjoy it? Did you extend
the meal time or did you try and make it
as like compact and short as possible so that you
could go back to restriction? And somewhere, I did not
enjoy it. You did not enjoy Okay, Yeah, So for me,
I I had these allotted times where I could eat
(08:34):
and I wanted to extend them for as long as
I could. But I was afraid of calories. So how
to make a meal extend and be long and you know,
get that release away from the restriction was to fill
myself up. And I put that in quotes because I
was very careful as to what I was filling myself
(08:55):
up with, knowing that certain foods would make me feel
full but not actually make me be full or you know,
tack on the calories. Again, I put that in quotes
because I didn't, you know, I was just afraid of
many foods. So you know, like volume eating is a
diet tactic of eating high volume foods, but it fails
(09:15):
to really address the necessary component of why we end meals,
which is not just feeling full, it's being full. And
that's an important distinction that we combed through in forth
the noise hunger fullness, because you can feel full but
not actually have enough energy to get you through the
next three hours. Right, if you ate one apple right
(09:36):
now for lunch, right, there might be a fullness to
you because it's a crunge, it takes you a while
to eat, it's high fiber, it's got water. Maybe not
one apple but two apples, right, you would feel full,
but in an hour you'd be like, wait, I'm hungry, right,
and you'd be thinking about food again. Yeah, I mean
I like that you went apple, and that's actually something
that But in my mind I'm having the vision of
(09:58):
how I used to treat rice as perfect thank you, okay? Perfect?
That that works? That works even better and perhaps is
more relatable to to a lot of people. Rice cakes
are a food that you could eat three or four of, right,
and you wouldn't feel guilty. They made you feel full,
but they might not actually be filling because they're low
in calorie, they're low in fat. Yeah, they're low in
(10:20):
really any type of nutrients, right right, they're low in nutrients.
But I mean, I guess it's rice, so it has
some carbohydrates in it, but it will be pretty pretty low,
low calorie, So it'll make you feel full for an hour.
It'll it'll get you through, but then you'll be hungry
again and be thinking about food. So for me, I
was thinking about food all of the damn time, and
(10:40):
yet I was eating a lot. And again, eating a
lot is in quotes here because I wasn't actually eating
a lot. I was eating a lot of volume, but
I wasn't actually eating enough calories per meal or using
fat to balance my blood sugar. So I just want
to clarify before we even go further here, is that
feeling full and being full are not the same exact things. Satiation,
(11:05):
your hormones changing your blood sugar having going up and
down is different than your stomach distending because you put
a rice cake in it and your body saying okay,
food has arrived. So we have different levels of fullness
as food makes its way down the digestive process. And
if we stop with just the physical fullness. I had
(11:26):
a rice cake, My stomach feels a little bit distended.
There's that immediate feeling of fullness. We don't get to
satiation where food makes its way to the gut, and
the gut then send signals back to the brain. Hey,
food's coming. We can start to decrease your appetite hormones
and your blood sugar is leveling out and all this
good stuff is happening. That makes sense. Yeah, I'm sitting
(11:47):
here as you're talking, thinking about how it's some one
my time, and I as when we're recording this, and
I have not satiated my body today or my brain
my mind, Like I just haven't. Like I'm sitting here
thinking like I should have planned further ahead, but I'm
stuck at the office. So anyway, this is me having
this moment and this self awareness to know that I
(12:08):
want to give my body that this isn't something I
did in a disordered way. Totally. I think how it
can happen to us too, And now I'm very self
aware of it because you're talking about it. Well, the
cool thing about that is that's probably gonna happen again. Right.
So things that you could do, also if you have
a busy day at work, is to prepare the first
meal of the day, if it's your breakfast, to make
(12:28):
it a little bit more well rounded, to carry you
out a little bit further. So going back to fat,
fat is going to make you feel fuller for longer.
But here's the key here with fat is it takes
longer to feel full. So when you eat that rice cake, right,
or if you eat four rice cakes, let's say you
might feel full in the moment, but you're hungry in
(12:49):
an hour or two. Whereas let's say you had half
of an avocado, you might not feel that physical fullness
immediately because of the volume of the food compared to
a car bohydrate, right, compared to the rice cake. But
you're going to feel a more level feeling of full
for longer because it takes longer to digest, and because
(13:10):
whatever you're pairing it with, let's say you have the
rice cake and the avocado, it's slowing down that digestive
process as a whole, which is helping you to absorb
nutrients as it makes its way down your body. I'm
trying to illustrate that because it's it's one of those
things that's kind of hard to to picture here. Well,
even as you're saying that, I just had a flashback
to some disordered days where I wouldn't have paired certain things. Honestly,
(13:34):
I don't even know right now if I would have done,
you know, a fat with the carbohydrate. All I know
is I had this little chart that I printed out
and I would carry it around and so thankful to
be free of that. Yeah, So exactly there we've had.
There's so many rules and noises that we've picked up
along the way, whether you can't eat this food with
that food, or this food at that time, or don't
(13:54):
eat at that time in general, only eat at this time.
So there's so much to unpack here. What is really
much more simple when we come back down to the
science of how food works in the body, and that
is what I want to equip and empower people to have,
because free of that that bs you have an inner
(14:15):
wisdom that says we I don't want just this plain
rice cake, I want to pair it with avocado, right,
and and we're not tuning into that because we have
these rules happening here. So when you're not actually trying
to trick your body, and when you're not following these
outside rules arbitrarily that seemingly make no sense, your body
(14:37):
actually works perfectly to let you know when you've had
enough food. And I want to say that again, when
you're not trying to trick your body, your body signals
will work perfectly to let you know when you've had enough.
And that might be really unbelievable to somebody now who
finds themselves getting constantly painfully full after every meal, even
(14:58):
though they're working so hard to trust their body. I've found,
in the height of my eating disorder two things I
would never know when I was full, But I also
never knew when I was actually really hungry. And I
feel like what is characteristic of all eating disorders is
that noise. So very few people, regardless of disordered eating
or not, are very attuned to what gentle hunger and
(15:21):
gentle fullness should feel like. They might know what being
starving feels like, and they know what being painfully full
or stuffed is. But where's that gentle place of needing food,
where you're you're not, you know, thinking about chewing off
your arm. Where's that place of ending a meal that
feels comfortable for the next few hours but doesn't feel
like you need to unbutton your pants, and fine tuning
(15:42):
that getting to know your own body signals. I'm going
a little off track here to the fat thing, but
I think it's important conversation. Nonetheless, fine tuning those signals.
Going into a meal a little bit hungry and ending
it a little bit full is going to drastically change
how much your mentally thinking about food. And that's what
(16:03):
really changes the game for me and for a lot
of people. So adding fats to your meal. If you're somebody,
if you're listening right now and you're like, well, I'm
still terrified of fat, I don't even know where to begin.
I don't even know where to to to start with
this whole thing. I want to give you a couple
of tips and tricks to start integrating it into your diet.
And the reason I wrote this post was because right
(16:25):
now I am craving a lot more fats than general.
I am really in the mood for salmon and avocado
and snacking on nuts and seeds and nut butters and
all that stuff right now, and finding myself craving a
lot more high fat foods, and I realized recently that
old me wouldn't have been able to honor this out
of fear. And me now is actually noticing what's happening
(16:48):
because I'm adding them on so consistently and eating them
throughout the day. And however many quantities or servings I want,
how level I feel, And that's a freedom that I
think everybody deserves to have. It will drastically change how
much you're thinking about food, because it's going to change
(17:09):
how you feel inside your body. Now. I know in
the post you said to try to add at least
one fat source in each meal. Would you encourage people
that are just like dipping their toe in this water
because of the fears there too? Maybe just maybe it's
not every meal, but you just start at least trying
once a day or um. I think that if you're
just dipping your toe in the in the water, a
(17:29):
better strategy here, because that should really be in your
diet consistently throughout the day. A better strategy might be
to introduce smaller amounts but still bring them in at
every meal. So maybe if you're having oatmeal for breakfast,
you're sprinkling um. Maybe not two tablespoons of nut butter,
but maybe one tablespoon or whatever you're comfortable with at lunch,
(17:49):
maybe on your salad, let's say, if the salads of
food that you're comfortable with. I always love pairing something
super safe with something that feels scary, throwing something like
um while uts or dressing on. I'm a huge fan
of dressing after years of you know, thinking that dressing
was the enemy for for so many reasons. But dressing
is usually a great source of fat, and it also
(18:12):
provides what's called satisfaction. It can help you actually enjoy
what you're eating and end the salad if it is
feeling content rather than reaching for more. For dinner, can
you cook with different oils or think about adding fatty fish.
I'm a huge fan of fatty fish, like salmon. Salmon's
my personal favorite. I don't really love a lot of
the other fattier ones, like mackerel or sardines. But if
(18:34):
that's your thing, go for it. If that's your thing,
go for it. I don't think gave you like sardines either. Yeah,
I'm not. I'm not a fan, but people love sardines.
You can buy them in the tin. They're very affordable,
you know, all all that kind of stuff. So again,
adding one fat source to each meal and or snack
is a great way to kind of begin this journey.
Nut butter is one that everybody kind of is excited
(18:55):
to add back into their life after years of doing
powdered peanut butter, you know, all those sorts of things.
Can I say something about that. I used to be
a powdered peanut butter junkie. Um. I thought it was
like the greatest invention known to man. And this was
years ago, and then I stopped using it. I don't
even remember for whatever reason. And then I guess after
(19:16):
a few years of not having it, I decided to
give it a go again. Yeah, I should retry it too.
Oh No, we should, Well you should if you want to.
For me personally, I know this might not happen to everybody,
but my stomach was so upset. It caused so much
discomfort honestly that I don't know if it truly was
(19:37):
from that. I mean, my hypothesis is that it is
from that, because it's the only thing I did different.
But maybe it was a fluke and it was something else.
But it was so uncomfortable that I won't even dare
even try it again just for the sake of testing it. Well,
I'll say this, which is interesting. You know, I'm a
big fan of real foods and whole foods, and what
you're doing in a powdered peanut butter is you're taking
(19:57):
peanuts the whole food or a powdered and butter. You're
taking that whole food which contains the fatty acids, the nutrients,
all that good stuff, and you're they remove the fat,
so all your left is with the protein. So that's
a high level form of food processing. And yet we're
glorifying that as the healthy alternative. So just to kind
of play with the mind game here and then putting
(20:19):
it in plastic to sell for five dollars, you know,
just to kind of play with the mind game here.
So what we call healthy when it's so far from
the source, right, the same thing with snack wells, something
that can sit on the shelf for probably five years
without end. We've removed the fat, we've removed everything. But
this is a health food because it's fat free. So
just to kind of play with that for for a minute. Yeah, No,
(20:42):
I mean, it's just it's something to think about in
two and maybe what my body. What I didn't notice
about my body when I was using it, Like who
knows where I was with all different kinds of foods
that I ate because I found that to be true
with other processed things. And I'm not anti processed foods
by any means, but these were other things I was
specifically eyeing because quote unquote I thought they were going
(21:02):
to be healthier for me, and I consumed them regularly.
So either a my body was just used to it,
or be I lived in discomfort and didn't really know it,
And so the problem is now. And the powder peanutter
is just one example I could give others where I
sometimes see things at the grocery store, I'm like, oh, yeah,
I used to buy those, and then I'm like, I
don't know that I want to buy it because I
(21:22):
don't want to risk the discomfort for sure. And now
you're listening to your body rather than just saying this
is healthy, so I'm going to eat it. I was
in the same exact vote of constant discomfort. I just
want to also just ask Tori Scure that a lot
of people who are struggling with let's not even call
it disordered eating, but disordered behaviors around food are also
subject to a lot of gastro discomfort. Like you and
(21:45):
I are discussing, and we see that a lot on
Instagram and on TikTok, this obsession with bloating and guess
and how to get rid of it and all these solutions,
when I think for a lot of people, the solution
is also moving away from the things that are causing
the discus emfort rather than adding these food these foods
in that are quote unquote healthy. Okay, So the other
(22:05):
thing I want you to know is to use your
outer wisdom. Knowing that fats take longer to digest is
going to help you go into a meal knowing that
a you need to eat a little bit slower, and
you need to know that this The feeling of fullness
might kick in a little bit later because of that.
So when adding fats to your diet, they don't work
as immediately as carbohydrates, which are broken down immediately and
(22:29):
provide us with energy. They still provide us with energy
and a good amount of it, but it takes a
little longer to know that. So work with that info,
go slower. Take notes as fifteen minutes go by, thirty
minutes go by, sixty minutes go by, so that you
can really study how your body is working off of
that food. Take note of what you feel like immediately
after eating meal that now contains fat. Really think about
(22:52):
what it feels like in your body. Is there a
physical discomfort with that fullness? Or is there I'm full,
but I feel comfortable. Think about that to distinction. And
then I want you to notice what happens mentally as
your body is digesting the meal a little bit more
slowly now that fat is involved. Is your brain free
to think about other things because you're not immediately going
(23:14):
back to thinking about your next meal from the hunger
coming on shortly thereafter. And just a little pro tip
here and getting started with this, is to shorten your
meal or snack windows. So like Amy and I mentioned earlier,
or the biggest mistake I see people make is going
into a meal or a snack on empty or waiting
until as long as they possibly can to eat. Your
(23:36):
blood sugar is not meant to be a roller coaster
shooting up and down, up to the sky and into
the ground. It is supposed to be like a seesaw leveling, um,
staying level, just dipping a little and then um coming
back up, dipping a little, coming back up. And the
best way to do that is to eat consistently and
eat balanced meals. And I love that you ended your
(23:57):
post with fat is satisfying, filling great for blood sugar
and amplifies the flavor for overall satisfaction, and then you
ask people to share their favorite fat sources. So I
just want to encourage people to go check out at
Lisa Hame, which is your Instagram where this post is
and Haime is h a y I am. And it's
got beautiful flowers on there because I think your husband
(24:19):
Evan orders some edible You ordered edible flowers and I
was l O l ng when you put that in
your Instagram stories. But you know, people are commenting with
their favorite fats like wild salmon, all nut, butters, avocado,
some that we obviously mentioned, but you can read through
and see if anybody posts something that you maybe need
try out. Tahani is another interesting one that has great
(24:40):
flavor and can add something interesting to dishes and so good.
It's full of fatty acids that come from sesame sea.
It's a fantastic one. I also just want to lastly
say before we head out for the week that in
my Instagram stories, I asked people what their relationship to
fat was and so on my Instagram post, which is
public where you might see everybody throwing out their favorite
(25:01):
sources and how much they love fat, it got real
all my stories when I asked people what their favorite um,
what their relationship to fat was, and you had a
lot of people that are doing a lot of unlearning,
a lot of people that are still really afraid of fat.
So if that's you right now, just know that you're
not alone. And there's millions women and also men working
through this as we bring fat back to our plate
(25:22):
so we can live healthier, happier, more fulfilled and satisfied lives.
Boom drop the mic. Alright, well, we hope you'll have
a great rest of your day. Bye bye, everybody. I'll
see you real soon,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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