January 15, 2022 • 19 mins
When Lisa runs into trouble breast feeding, she looks towards her diet for the answers. For the first time in a long time, she cuts out lots of foods, gets consumed by the NOISE, and shares exactly what happened. PLUS the RED FLAGS to look out for when on any sort of experimental diet- for weight loss or health.
*Lisa does not give details, but instead shares on the emotional and mental experience of having food restrictions in place after a long time of not having them.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't lend my body out, be out everything that
I'm made do, 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
is beautiful, and I will always out way. If you
(00:24):
feel it with your hays in the air, she'll love
to the poet there. Let's say you one day and
time did you and die out? Welcome back out Way family, Lisa. Here,
I'm doing a solo episode sharing with you what happened
when I went on a restrictive diet. Now, heads up,
this was not a restrictive diet for weight loss or
(00:47):
anything related to the way my physical body looks. However,
I think that a lot of people go on other
types of diets, whether they're not for weight loss, maybe
there for health or some other reason, and they find
themselves in a bad spot without meaning to. I mean,
I think a lot of people that go on restrictive
(01:08):
diets for weight loss also find themselves in a bad
place without meaning to, and it happens very subtly no
matter what the reason for the restrictions are. Now, I
want to mention here that the reason that I went
on a restrictive diet was meant to be very short term.
It was meant to help me learn something, and most importantly,
(01:31):
I felt far enough away from my history of disordered
eating to do this with the understanding that if things
got murky, it would have to come to an even
shorter stop than it was intended for. So I think
that for anybody here who's in recovery or in the
thick of it, going on any sort of a restrictive
(01:54):
diet for any of those reasons that may not be
related to the way you look, should really be done
with proper assessment of where you are emotionally mentally with
your relationship to food and self, and getting really real
and honest with yourself, because I think those things can
get clouded sometimes and we can convince ourselves that we
have to do these things, when in reality it's just
(02:16):
the guys for wanting to control our bodies. So the
backstory here is that I won't I won't bore anybody
too much with the details, but I had a baby
four or five months ago. Hopefully you all know that
solely and um I have been nursing, primarily so breastfeeding,
but directly her to my breast and it's been amazing.
(02:37):
I had no idea how much I would love nursing
and how connected to it I would be from a
mindfulness perspective. It has been my saving grace in this
postpartum time that has been really difficult. Those carved out
many hours of the day where all I'm doing is
one thing. I don't think we have many times in
our life where we are able to carve out so
(02:58):
much time, too monotask to do one thing, and it's
so healthy for us and um this became my my
grounding point of the day. Amiss. The difficulty out of
the blue nursing became an issue and my daughter was
not responding to it the way that she normally did,
and it was upsetting because I felt to blame. I
(03:21):
felt that I had to figure it out, and I
also had no alternate ways of feeding her. Fed is best.
I think a lot of people run into breastfeeding issues
and turned to formula or donor breast milk or whatever
it is. But for me, I had zero stores of
breast milk and my daughter, for whatever reason, rejected the formula.
So I felt very stressed to figure out what this
(03:44):
issue was and the first place I wanted to look
was my milk, my diet. She was having reflex like symptoms,
and I wanted to see if there was anything in
my diet that could be causing that. Now, a lot
of people have told me, you know, eat anything when
you're when you're breastfeeding, it doesn't matter. It's all the same.
And as much as I really did kind of think
that that was going to be the case, I felt
like I had to explore that and exhaust that before
(04:09):
moving on from what felt really good for me and
what I thought is the best thing for her if
it would work for us. This requires a lot of
backstory because I I want to make sure that this
episode isn't triggering and you really understand where I was
coming from and the information that I had in my
mind as a registered dietitian when it comes to elimination diet. Now,
(04:32):
as registered dietitians, we oftentimes do help people figure out
what is the root cause of their digestive issues by
way of what's called the gold standard of the elimination diet.
So elimination diet, you work hopefully with a professional, and
you cut out a lot of food and then you
slowly reintroduce them so that you can figure out what
(04:53):
the issue is. It is intended to be very short
term to help you assess what the issue is, figure
it out, and then resume to hopefully having a normal
relationship to food and um a healthy and a happy
one as well. Granted, elimination diets are not my specialty.
I had to wherewithal to understand what they involve, that
(05:14):
they are short term and all of that. However, despite
um what I always tell you all to be really
cautious of the Internet and to use your own inner knowing,
I got swallowed up by the noise, and I think
we all kind of find ourselves there in times of desperation.
I was desperate to figure out what was wrong, and
(05:36):
so I looked towards experts. Google. How many times have
you googled how to lose weight or how to do
this or that and somebody, an expert comes up and
they gain your trust immediately, essentially, because you need that
rescue boat when it's coming by and you feel like
you're drowning. Right, So for me, I've started googling reflex
(05:58):
baby diet, you know whatever her and I found some
woman not even a registered dietitian. But keep in mind,
I don't think that only registered dietitians are the experts
when it comes to nutrition, So I am open minded
when it comes to that. But I didn't even look
into this woman's credentials at all or her training. But
she was offering a free master class on how to
figure out what's causing the reflux in your baby, and
(06:20):
so it was free. I was down. I took the course,
and wow, um, it basically was an even more restrictive
elimination diet than I could even imagine ever prescribing to
somebody because of the specific foods that could affect reflux.
The plan is kind of like there's there's foods that
you start with and then you introduce more and more.
But the original list was probably like ten to eighteen foods,
(06:44):
which might sound like a lot, but it's really not.
You know, first of all, a lot of the foods
I don't even enjoy or eat, and then the other
foods are just kind of random, and it was very
hard to assemble a meal or a snack given these guidelines.
So from this process, I got to really take a
(07:06):
trip down memory lane and remember what it was like
to be on these diets all the time, and what
I gained was invaluable compassion for myself, my younger self.
I gained compassion for people who do have to be
on restrictive diets for medical reasons, and an understanding of
how limiting that is and how effective it is to
(07:28):
the rest of your life, because when we restrict for
medical reasons or not, if your brain is like mine,
which if you're listening it, it may be uh, these
types of thoughts that start to happen and and behaviors
happen really quickly. So, like I said here, you know,
I think that it's great to rely on experts. You
should always check out their their credentials, but really take
(07:51):
note of when something doesn't feel right for you and
honor that. I want to share with you what happened
to me on this diet that were red flags that
you should look out for when you're on any type
of diet at all, because I think they're kind of uniform.
These are the things that happen when we restrict, whether
it's calories, whether it's food groups, whether it's for a
very short period of time as mine were intended to be.
(08:14):
So that you can be on the lookout for when
things turn south. I don't think this lasted more than
four or five days. And yet the amount of things
that started to arise for me and the notes that
I took to share with you all, it happened so quickly.
And I think that they're also really easy to miss,
especially when we're going for whatever it is we're trying
(08:37):
to fix or heal or figure out. It's easy to
to miss these signs. So I want to talk to
you about what happened for me so that you can
be on the lookout and really evaluate what's going on
and is this healthy or or really helping anymore if
you are on those sort of restrictive diet plans for
any number of reasons. So the first thing that happened
(09:04):
I want to talk about because it's it's very common
and disordered eating and eating disorders. It's it's probably one
of the biggest hallmarks of an eating disorder, true eating disorder. However,
I don't think we talked about this at all, and
it involves cooking for other people. Now, this is a
telltale sign of one sign. This is a telltale sign
(09:27):
in the context of any other signs of anorexia. A
lot of people with anorexia love to cook and create
food for other people, but they don't eat it themselves. Now,
for me, I was so hungry and frustrated and bored
with what I was eating that it did inspire me
to get back into the kitchen and start playing around
(09:49):
with the foods that I could have and seasoning them
in a way that actually inspired me in a positive way.
Where now I'm back in the kitchen after I don't
know this pandemic, I've just been eating lots of frozen
foods and not using my own imagination at all, and
cooking is very meditative for me. But aside from my
own meals, I just wanted to be in the kitchen
as much as I could to. I was cooking Evan
meals that he could eat and almost drooling over them.
(10:11):
And again, it sounds kind of fine, like what's the
big deal about cooking for other people, But I think
it's an important one to kind of have in the
back of your mind if you find yourself making all
these elaborate meals but then not eating them yourself. Uh.
And it was interesting because that is definitely something that
I used to do all the time when I was disordered,
the thoughts about food came in crashing like waves. I mean,
(10:33):
all I could do was think about food, order groceries.
I mean, I needed more groceries because I were so
little foods that I could eat. But my brain was
just occupied with thoughts of food pretty much at all times.
I started to make really strange combinations of food. I mean,
I was desperate for something to taste good, and I'd
come up with these strange things, and after a day
(10:54):
or two of eating them, they became my, Oh my gosh,
I'm so excited to eat them. And I'm not going
to say what the foods were because I don't want
it to be triggering to anybody in any way. But
I mean Evan would kind of look at me and
be like, that's your dessert, and I'm like, I know, buddy,
like you know, I have, I have. It was only
five days, so I wasn't fully entrenched in it to
know that this was normal. But I mean, your brain
(11:14):
just starts to come up with weird things to put
together to get any sort of satisfaction from the flavors,
and you start to really think that that's what good is,
and it reminded me of the disordered days when I
would only eat diet ice cream and eat a pint
of of the this, you know, guilt free ice cream
at night, and when my friends would come over, i'd
offer it to them and that I was so excited
(11:35):
for them to enjoy it the way that I did,
and they'd be like, that's not ice cream, Lisa. Um.
At the time, I was too in the thick of
it to really recognize how my mind or my taste
buds evolved to consider this to be delicious. But you know,
here out ten years of this and only doing this
for a couple of days, it was very obvious to
(11:56):
me that what I was eating was not a dessert,
and yet I was calling it a dessert. Another huge
one is that I was talking about this diet that
I was on at all times. Granted, we're in pandemic
mode over here. I know a lot of people traveled
for the holidays, but Um, having a baby and I'm
pretty afraid of COVID and all these things that we're
going on with her digestion, the last thing I wanted
(12:18):
to do was be around anybody. So I haven't been
around many people. So when I stay talking about my diet.
I mean mainly to Evan, and I don't think he
picked up on it, but I did because I'm able
to be really honest with myself about it. But I
was looking for validation for doing it, some sort of
an applause. Um. I wanted to let people know that
I was doing it, you know, And I caught myself
(12:40):
needing this external validation, this pat on the back, this
look at how much you know, discipline I have, look
at all that I'm doing for our baby. It kind
of translated to this time. And I certainly know that
in my previous disordered days, you know, I was always
telling people about what I was and wasn't eating. And
I know from being around lots of people now the present, Uh,
(13:01):
it's very noisy when other people are on diets because
they love to talk about it. They love to talk
about how it's working, or they love to talk about
how it's not working. But either way, they're talking about
it because that's what their mind is filled with. And
I think there's that validation factor. So that is a
huge red flag to look out for if you find
yourself doing that, to really ask yourself, why am I
(13:21):
doing this? Like, is it really working if it requires validation.
I found myself in really bad moods. I was hungry,
I was in hanger moods. Um, I was just frustrated
all the time. Like I kind of said with with
the desserts, I had an odd idea of what was
considered an indulgence, and it happened very rapidly in just
(13:45):
a few days of what I considered to be a
sweet or a dessert really changed into something that's definitely
not a sweet and definitely not a dessert. As mentioned,
this was only a couple of days, and to be honest,
on day one, I couldn't even do it. I broke
the rule on day one, and I started to feel
like a failure. I felt like I can't even do
(14:07):
this for a day, and it's for my daughter, and
you know, all those those that negative self talk just
came flooding back into my mind. And I think that
the fact that I had to break it because it
was so restrictive is the same feeling like we need
to break it no matter what we're on. And I
find it fascinating because you would think we can do
(14:28):
anything for a day, right, Like it would be easy
to just eat butternut squash and salmon plain grills for
one day, right, I could do that every day? But
I couldn't because of the frustrations that that I had
felt and the breaking of the rules, which is sometimes necessary,
like in my case it was it was too restrictive
(14:48):
and and too unsustainable even for a day. How quickly
that made me feel like a failure and I didn't.
I'm saying now that the diet was too restrictive and
that's it didn't work. But in that moment, I was
the failure, not the list of approved eighteen foods or
whatever it was that I could eat. And I think
(15:09):
it's really important to take a look at that negative
self talk, how quickly it comes in, and the conversations
that that you're having with yourself. As soon as we
start messing with our healthy relationship to food, the voice
in our in our brains, or in my brain at least,
really started to shift. And I think it's something to
look out for, because again, like I consider myself a professional,
(15:30):
I help people do this. I'm really good at noticing
the noise, and yet there it was seeping in. I'm
really proud of all the work that I've done in
the past to kind of know even after four days, like,
I don't think this is even helping my baby. So
I'm not going to stick with it because I'm not
going to be stubborn or you know, like I said earlier,
a lot of these diets start out for a reason
but morph into something else because of the control that
(15:51):
it gives us. I was able to say, this isn't
working for my mental health, it's not working for my
physical health. Uh. And if it is improving the milk
situation in any way, it's certainly um affecting everything else
far worse. My well being is very poor. I'm miserable,
I'm angry, and for what reason? Right, I'm trying to
(16:12):
make nursing a positive experience and yet here I am miserable.
At what cost? We really have to ask ourselves. So
those were some of the things that I noticed that
I wanted to share with you. I think it's not
so often that a professional like me or somebody that's
been through it, uh and it's really open with it,
goes on a restrictive diet, and I thought having this
(16:34):
opportunity to share with you all about it, UM was
really insightful for me um as a health practitioner, also
helpful for me as somebody who it's been many years
since I've experienced those types of thoughts and frustrations and
negative self talk around food, and I think it was
also really important to show my younger self compassion for
(16:57):
all those years that I lived that way. Years years, years,
and I lived that way, and I thought that's who
I was. I thought that negative voice was my voice.
I thought that was the only way to be healthy.
I had no idea how important mental health was, or
even that mine was hurting at the time, so it
was it was really an incredible opportunity that I just
had to share with you all. I also want to
(17:18):
just reinforce here the importance of working with a professional
if you do have digestive issues and you are looking
to consider an elimination diet. Even as a registered dietitian,
I should have been working with somebody. I should have
had somebody holding me accountable. I should have had somebody
helping me weed through the foods themselves. It's a very
(17:39):
complicated process. It's not as as straightforward as you know,
eating one food today, adding another one in. It takes
your body a few days to adjust to figure these
things out, and because it is emotionally taxing, having somebody
there to also hold your hand through it, through anything
difficult is incredibly helpful. So do not do that I did.
(18:00):
Do not do a webinar and then take matters into
your own hands, no matter how competent you feel, work
with a professional and um I believe that the result
will be not only help you figure out what you're
trying to figure out much more quickly, but much more enjoyably.
And having that support system really is key. All right.
I just wanted to share that quickly with you. I
(18:21):
I hope that it was interesting and in the least
it was very interesting to me. And I think it's
really important to think about these red flags when we
go on any sort of diet for any sort of reason,
so that we can always pull the curtain back and say, Okay,
what's going on, be real with ourselves, and sometimes throw
that out the door and prioritize our mental health. All right,
(18:43):
thank you all for being here and allowing me to
share this personal story with you. I hope you found
it interesting or at least insightful. I hope you walk
away with some concrete things to look for if you
ever find yourself on a diet for some reason or another.
As you go through the life cycle, there could be
many reasons that your health takes a toy us to return,
and you do need to figure out what's going on
(19:03):
with certain foods um In my case, I think it
had nothing to do with diet, but I really had
to figure it out in order to get there, and
what came up for me was really interesting and I
hope that it helps you whenever you need it to
shine light on some strange things that you're doing and
helps you take a moment to evaluate where you are
and where you want to go so that you can
(19:25):
prioritize your mental health. Thanks everyone for being here, and
I'll see you next week. On that way,
I won't lend my body out, be out everything that
I'm made do, 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
is beautiful, and I will always out way. If you
(00:24):
feel it with your hays in the air, she'll love
to the poet there. Let's say you one day and
time did you and die out? Welcome back out Way family, Lisa. Here,
I'm doing a solo episode sharing with you what happened
when I went on a restrictive diet. Now, heads up,
this was not a restrictive diet for weight loss or
(00:47):
anything related to the way my physical body looks. However,
I think that a lot of people go on other
types of diets, whether they're not for weight loss, maybe
there for health or some other reason, and they find
themselves in a bad spot without meaning to. I mean,
I think a lot of people that go on restrictive
(01:08):
diets for weight loss also find themselves in a bad
place without meaning to, and it happens very subtly no
matter what the reason for the restrictions are. Now, I
want to mention here that the reason that I went
on a restrictive diet was meant to be very short term.
It was meant to help me learn something, and most importantly,
(01:31):
I felt far enough away from my history of disordered
eating to do this with the understanding that if things
got murky, it would have to come to an even
shorter stop than it was intended for. So I think
that for anybody here who's in recovery or in the
thick of it, going on any sort of a restrictive
(01:54):
diet for any of those reasons that may not be
related to the way you look, should really be done
with proper assessment of where you are emotionally mentally with
your relationship to food and self, and getting really real
and honest with yourself, because I think those things can
get clouded sometimes and we can convince ourselves that we
have to do these things, when in reality it's just
(02:16):
the guys for wanting to control our bodies. So the
backstory here is that I won't I won't bore anybody
too much with the details, but I had a baby
four or five months ago. Hopefully you all know that
solely and um I have been nursing, primarily so breastfeeding,
but directly her to my breast and it's been amazing.
(02:37):
I had no idea how much I would love nursing
and how connected to it I would be from a
mindfulness perspective. It has been my saving grace in this
postpartum time that has been really difficult. Those carved out
many hours of the day where all I'm doing is
one thing. I don't think we have many times in
our life where we are able to carve out so
(02:58):
much time, too monotask to do one thing, and it's
so healthy for us and um this became my my
grounding point of the day. Amiss. The difficulty out of
the blue nursing became an issue and my daughter was
not responding to it the way that she normally did,
and it was upsetting because I felt to blame. I
(03:21):
felt that I had to figure it out, and I
also had no alternate ways of feeding her. Fed is best.
I think a lot of people run into breastfeeding issues
and turned to formula or donor breast milk or whatever
it is. But for me, I had zero stores of
breast milk and my daughter, for whatever reason, rejected the formula.
So I felt very stressed to figure out what this
(03:44):
issue was and the first place I wanted to look
was my milk, my diet. She was having reflex like symptoms,
and I wanted to see if there was anything in
my diet that could be causing that. Now, a lot
of people have told me, you know, eat anything when
you're when you're breastfeeding, it doesn't matter. It's all the same.
And as much as I really did kind of think
that that was going to be the case, I felt
like I had to explore that and exhaust that before
(04:09):
moving on from what felt really good for me and
what I thought is the best thing for her if
it would work for us. This requires a lot of
backstory because I I want to make sure that this
episode isn't triggering and you really understand where I was
coming from and the information that I had in my
mind as a registered dietitian when it comes to elimination diet. Now,
(04:32):
as registered dietitians, we oftentimes do help people figure out
what is the root cause of their digestive issues by
way of what's called the gold standard of the elimination diet.
So elimination diet, you work hopefully with a professional, and
you cut out a lot of food and then you
slowly reintroduce them so that you can figure out what
(04:53):
the issue is. It is intended to be very short
term to help you assess what the issue is, figure
it out, and then resume to hopefully having a normal
relationship to food and um a healthy and a happy
one as well. Granted, elimination diets are not my specialty.
I had to wherewithal to understand what they involve, that
(05:14):
they are short term and all of that. However, despite
um what I always tell you all to be really
cautious of the Internet and to use your own inner knowing,
I got swallowed up by the noise, and I think
we all kind of find ourselves there in times of desperation.
I was desperate to figure out what was wrong, and
(05:36):
so I looked towards experts. Google. How many times have
you googled how to lose weight or how to do
this or that and somebody, an expert comes up and
they gain your trust immediately, essentially, because you need that
rescue boat when it's coming by and you feel like
you're drowning. Right, So for me, I've started googling reflex
(05:58):
baby diet, you know whatever her and I found some
woman not even a registered dietitian. But keep in mind,
I don't think that only registered dietitians are the experts
when it comes to nutrition, So I am open minded
when it comes to that. But I didn't even look
into this woman's credentials at all or her training. But
she was offering a free master class on how to
figure out what's causing the reflux in your baby, and
(06:20):
so it was free. I was down. I took the course,
and wow, um, it basically was an even more restrictive
elimination diet than I could even imagine ever prescribing to
somebody because of the specific foods that could affect reflux.
The plan is kind of like there's there's foods that
you start with and then you introduce more and more.
But the original list was probably like ten to eighteen foods,
(06:44):
which might sound like a lot, but it's really not.
You know, first of all, a lot of the foods
I don't even enjoy or eat, and then the other
foods are just kind of random, and it was very
hard to assemble a meal or a snack given these guidelines.
So from this process, I got to really take a
(07:06):
trip down memory lane and remember what it was like
to be on these diets all the time, and what
I gained was invaluable compassion for myself, my younger self.
I gained compassion for people who do have to be
on restrictive diets for medical reasons, and an understanding of
how limiting that is and how effective it is to
(07:28):
the rest of your life, because when we restrict for
medical reasons or not, if your brain is like mine,
which if you're listening it, it may be uh, these
types of thoughts that start to happen and and behaviors
happen really quickly. So, like I said here, you know,
I think that it's great to rely on experts. You
should always check out their their credentials, but really take
(07:51):
note of when something doesn't feel right for you and
honor that. I want to share with you what happened
to me on this diet that were red flags that
you should look out for when you're on any type
of diet at all, because I think they're kind of uniform.
These are the things that happen when we restrict, whether
it's calories, whether it's food groups, whether it's for a
very short period of time as mine were intended to be.
(08:14):
So that you can be on the lookout for when
things turn south. I don't think this lasted more than
four or five days. And yet the amount of things
that started to arise for me and the notes that
I took to share with you all, it happened so quickly.
And I think that they're also really easy to miss,
especially when we're going for whatever it is we're trying
(08:37):
to fix or heal or figure out. It's easy to
to miss these signs. So I want to talk to
you about what happened for me so that you can
be on the lookout and really evaluate what's going on
and is this healthy or or really helping anymore if
you are on those sort of restrictive diet plans for
any number of reasons. So the first thing that happened
(09:04):
I want to talk about because it's it's very common
and disordered eating and eating disorders. It's it's probably one
of the biggest hallmarks of an eating disorder, true eating disorder. However,
I don't think we talked about this at all, and
it involves cooking for other people. Now, this is a
telltale sign of one sign. This is a telltale sign
(09:27):
in the context of any other signs of anorexia. A
lot of people with anorexia love to cook and create
food for other people, but they don't eat it themselves. Now,
for me, I was so hungry and frustrated and bored
with what I was eating that it did inspire me
to get back into the kitchen and start playing around
(09:49):
with the foods that I could have and seasoning them
in a way that actually inspired me in a positive way.
Where now I'm back in the kitchen after I don't
know this pandemic, I've just been eating lots of frozen
foods and not using my own imagination at all, and
cooking is very meditative for me. But aside from my
own meals, I just wanted to be in the kitchen
as much as I could to. I was cooking Evan
meals that he could eat and almost drooling over them.
(10:11):
And again, it sounds kind of fine, like what's the
big deal about cooking for other people, But I think
it's an important one to kind of have in the
back of your mind if you find yourself making all
these elaborate meals but then not eating them yourself. Uh.
And it was interesting because that is definitely something that
I used to do all the time when I was disordered,
the thoughts about food came in crashing like waves. I mean,
(10:33):
all I could do was think about food, order groceries.
I mean, I needed more groceries because I were so
little foods that I could eat. But my brain was
just occupied with thoughts of food pretty much at all times.
I started to make really strange combinations of food. I mean,
I was desperate for something to taste good, and I'd
come up with these strange things, and after a day
(10:54):
or two of eating them, they became my, Oh my gosh,
I'm so excited to eat them. And I'm not going
to say what the foods were because I don't want
it to be triggering to anybody in any way. But
I mean Evan would kind of look at me and
be like, that's your dessert, and I'm like, I know, buddy,
like you know, I have, I have. It was only
five days, so I wasn't fully entrenched in it to
know that this was normal. But I mean, your brain
(11:14):
just starts to come up with weird things to put
together to get any sort of satisfaction from the flavors,
and you start to really think that that's what good is,
and it reminded me of the disordered days when I
would only eat diet ice cream and eat a pint
of of the this, you know, guilt free ice cream
at night, and when my friends would come over, i'd
offer it to them and that I was so excited
(11:35):
for them to enjoy it the way that I did,
and they'd be like, that's not ice cream, Lisa. Um.
At the time, I was too in the thick of
it to really recognize how my mind or my taste
buds evolved to consider this to be delicious. But you know,
here out ten years of this and only doing this
for a couple of days, it was very obvious to
(11:56):
me that what I was eating was not a dessert,
and yet I was calling it a dessert. Another huge
one is that I was talking about this diet that
I was on at all times. Granted, we're in pandemic
mode over here. I know a lot of people traveled
for the holidays, but Um, having a baby and I'm
pretty afraid of COVID and all these things that we're
going on with her digestion, the last thing I wanted
(12:18):
to do was be around anybody. So I haven't been
around many people. So when I stay talking about my diet.
I mean mainly to Evan, and I don't think he
picked up on it, but I did because I'm able
to be really honest with myself about it. But I
was looking for validation for doing it, some sort of
an applause. Um. I wanted to let people know that
I was doing it, you know, And I caught myself
(12:40):
needing this external validation, this pat on the back, this
look at how much you know, discipline I have, look
at all that I'm doing for our baby. It kind
of translated to this time. And I certainly know that
in my previous disordered days, you know, I was always
telling people about what I was and wasn't eating. And
I know from being around lots of people now the present, Uh,
(13:01):
it's very noisy when other people are on diets because
they love to talk about it. They love to talk
about how it's working, or they love to talk about
how it's not working. But either way, they're talking about
it because that's what their mind is filled with. And
I think there's that validation factor. So that is a
huge red flag to look out for if you find
yourself doing that, to really ask yourself, why am I
(13:21):
doing this? Like, is it really working if it requires validation.
I found myself in really bad moods. I was hungry,
I was in hanger moods. Um, I was just frustrated
all the time. Like I kind of said with with
the desserts, I had an odd idea of what was
considered an indulgence, and it happened very rapidly in just
(13:45):
a few days of what I considered to be a
sweet or a dessert really changed into something that's definitely
not a sweet and definitely not a dessert. As mentioned,
this was only a couple of days, and to be honest,
on day one, I couldn't even do it. I broke
the rule on day one, and I started to feel
like a failure. I felt like I can't even do
(14:07):
this for a day, and it's for my daughter, and
you know, all those those that negative self talk just
came flooding back into my mind. And I think that
the fact that I had to break it because it
was so restrictive is the same feeling like we need
to break it no matter what we're on. And I
find it fascinating because you would think we can do
(14:28):
anything for a day, right, Like it would be easy
to just eat butternut squash and salmon plain grills for
one day, right, I could do that every day? But
I couldn't because of the frustrations that that I had
felt and the breaking of the rules, which is sometimes necessary,
like in my case it was it was too restrictive
(14:48):
and and too unsustainable even for a day. How quickly
that made me feel like a failure and I didn't.
I'm saying now that the diet was too restrictive and
that's it didn't work. But in that moment, I was
the failure, not the list of approved eighteen foods or
whatever it was that I could eat. And I think
(15:09):
it's really important to take a look at that negative
self talk, how quickly it comes in, and the conversations
that that you're having with yourself. As soon as we
start messing with our healthy relationship to food, the voice
in our in our brains, or in my brain at least,
really started to shift. And I think it's something to
look out for, because again, like I consider myself a professional,
(15:30):
I help people do this. I'm really good at noticing
the noise, and yet there it was seeping in. I'm
really proud of all the work that I've done in
the past to kind of know even after four days, like,
I don't think this is even helping my baby. So
I'm not going to stick with it because I'm not
going to be stubborn or you know, like I said earlier,
a lot of these diets start out for a reason
but morph into something else because of the control that
(15:51):
it gives us. I was able to say, this isn't
working for my mental health, it's not working for my
physical health. Uh. And if it is improving the milk
situation in any way, it's certainly um affecting everything else
far worse. My well being is very poor. I'm miserable,
I'm angry, and for what reason? Right, I'm trying to
(16:12):
make nursing a positive experience and yet here I am miserable.
At what cost? We really have to ask ourselves. So
those were some of the things that I noticed that
I wanted to share with you. I think it's not
so often that a professional like me or somebody that's
been through it, uh and it's really open with it,
goes on a restrictive diet, and I thought having this
(16:34):
opportunity to share with you all about it, UM was
really insightful for me um as a health practitioner, also
helpful for me as somebody who it's been many years
since I've experienced those types of thoughts and frustrations and
negative self talk around food, and I think it was
also really important to show my younger self compassion for
(16:57):
all those years that I lived that way. Years years, years,
and I lived that way, and I thought that's who
I was. I thought that negative voice was my voice.
I thought that was the only way to be healthy.
I had no idea how important mental health was, or
even that mine was hurting at the time, so it
was it was really an incredible opportunity that I just
had to share with you all. I also want to
(17:18):
just reinforce here the importance of working with a professional
if you do have digestive issues and you are looking
to consider an elimination diet. Even as a registered dietitian,
I should have been working with somebody. I should have
had somebody holding me accountable. I should have had somebody
helping me weed through the foods themselves. It's a very
(17:39):
complicated process. It's not as as straightforward as you know,
eating one food today, adding another one in. It takes
your body a few days to adjust to figure these
things out, and because it is emotionally taxing, having somebody
there to also hold your hand through it, through anything
difficult is incredibly helpful. So do not do that I did.
(18:00):
Do not do a webinar and then take matters into
your own hands, no matter how competent you feel, work
with a professional and um I believe that the result
will be not only help you figure out what you're
trying to figure out much more quickly, but much more enjoyably.
And having that support system really is key. All right.
I just wanted to share that quickly with you. I
(18:21):
I hope that it was interesting and in the least
it was very interesting to me. And I think it's
really important to think about these red flags when we
go on any sort of diet for any sort of reason,
so that we can always pull the curtain back and say, Okay,
what's going on, be real with ourselves, and sometimes throw
that out the door and prioritize our mental health. All right,
(18:43):
thank you all for being here and allowing me to
share this personal story with you. I hope you found
it interesting or at least insightful. I hope you walk
away with some concrete things to look for if you
ever find yourself on a diet for some reason or another.
As you go through the life cycle, there could be
many reasons that your health takes a toy us to return,
and you do need to figure out what's going on
(19:03):
with certain foods um In my case, I think it
had nothing to do with diet, but I really had
to figure it out in order to get there, and
what came up for me was really interesting and I
hope that it helps you whenever you need it to
shine light on some strange things that you're doing and
helps you take a moment to evaluate where you are
and where you want to go so that you can
(19:25):
prioritize your mental health. Thanks everyone for being here, and
I'll see you next week. On that way,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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