Nutrition Nonsense with Parker Nelson

Music. And welcome to Change Your Relationship with Food, the podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley.

With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. Today, I have a guest and he's written a book, which is what really inspired me to ask him to come and chat to me today. The book is called Nutrition Nonsense, which I love the title.

It gets straight to the heart of this rubbish that we're told sometimes in the nutrition world. Let me tell you a bit about him first. His name is Parker Nelson. He is a registered dietitian with a bachelor's in business marketing and a master's in applied nutrition. He currently works as a dietitian in an eating disorder treatment center and works one-on-one with individual clients seeking weight management advice and general nutritional counselling.

He joins us all the way from Northern California, where he is married. He has a lovely wife called Alexis and two beautiful boys called Colin and Max. So welcome, Parker, and thanks so much for joining us today. I know. I'm so glad we can make this work all the way across the world. And in different time zones as well. I think it's the afternoon. No, it's the morning for me, but it's the afternoon for you, isn't it?

That's right. I know. We had to kind of configure the right timing for both of us. It's getting easier for me because I'm interviewing more and more people from the States. It's become our biggest audience over there. This started off as a tiny little podcast in Australia. Then we got a little bit of a UK audience because of my personal background. And then suddenly the States went boom in about September last year.

Everything just went crazy, and now the highest number of listeners are over there. That's interesting. I know that podcasts are really people's main source of information now, so I can see how people are looking towards this, and I'm so glad that you have one that we can share our information with today.

Fantastic. Now, first of all, let's get into your book. Let me tell everyone the sort of subtitle of the book. So it's Nutrition Nonsense, How Social and Psychological Biases Sabotage our eating habits. That's a big subject. That's right. Yeah, there's a lot of psychosocial things going on in the book. So it's not just nutrition related, but there's a lot to unpack with it. Now, before we get into the content of the book, tell me what inspired you to write it.

What was the builder to you feeling that that had to be written? Yeah, so this, I think we could have a whole podcast just on the inspiration, but I'll kind of give a brief summary. So I myself in college was my highest weight. I was 60 pounds heavier in college and slowly over the years I had lost that weight and I wasn't entirely sure why I lost the weight. Because a lot of people, they do it intentionally.

They try a diet where they change their exercise habits, and they kind of get themselves to a new weight. But I hadn't done anything intentional to get there. So I was wondering what led me there. And of course, this made me question, how does everyone else do it? So I wanted to know a lot about weight loss and weight management in general. But also an experience that I think a lot of people have is family health issues.

So I know that I've had my fair share of family health issues, like my mom several years ago in battling cancer. I started my nutrition journey and in getting my education, I kept thinking to myself, what can I do to kind of like change her cancer trajectory? And I knew that all of the things you see online promise these solutions of you can cure cancer, you can change all of these chronic health conditions with just one product off the shelf at the store or a new diet.

And I just kept thinking that there's got to be something wrong with that. It can't be true because why are there so many problems and health issues? If all of these things were true, then we wouldn't have these problems. So kind of going through that journey with her and with my family opened up the floodgates of why is there so much myth and misinformation in the nutrition world, especially compared to other subjects?

Because I think there are many other subjects that we deal with where we kind of just take for granted. We just trust that this makes sense to us. But in nutrition, people are so confused. And so I think the world we live in now, at least I was searching for answers. And I think I came up with some good ones, but it's definitely an ongoing search as well.

So why do you think that we've overcomplicated that whole relationship with food? Why have we lost sight of the basics? Yeah, that's a good question. My first chapter talks a lot about instant gratification and kind of the quick fix syndrome. And it's really a human, it's so natural to humans to want to look for the shortcut, the easiest way to find a solution. And in a lot of cases, it makes sense. If you don't have to take longer to do something, then why do it?

But in nutrition and health, especially, it really takes long-term habits to find success. It takes these really hard-earned efforts a lot of times. And that can be really challenging for people to put in the time, to put in the effort, especially with the schedules and the busyness and the challenges that some people face. It can be hard to instill these habits and make changes that are lasting.

So I don't think a lot of people are either willing or able to kind of make those long-term switches. And so we opt for these easier things, which might be grabbing a supplement off the store shelf and saying, I haven't felt good lately, but maybe this probiotic will save me. Or I haven't been doing well for my weight loss journey lately, but maybe if I try this new diet where I restrict all these foods, it'll help me. And a lot of these things can make us feel good for a little while.

But then months or years down the line, we go, wait, huh, I guess that didn't work so well for me. So I think the instant gratification that we're looking for doesn't pay off, but we continue to look for it because I guess we just have trouble forward thinking most of the time. And I think also, we as a society have changed a huge amount with. I mean, in my time, I'm a bit older than you.

So I've sort of seen the emergence of the internet, which when I was a child, I didn't have any of those influences. I didn't have that sort of, that demand, for instance, gratification, I suppose, that we've all learned to take for granted. I know myself, even now, if I'm trying to look at something and I'm trying to load a web page, if it takes longer than a few seconds, I'm like, I'm done. I haven't got time for this.

I'm out of here. And I suppose we're so used to this instant life where we can order something online and it arrives the next day, or we can find the answer to any question almost instantly, then it would make sense that people kind of go, okay, what's the quick fix here? Let's get it done. That is such a good perspective. I resonate with that because I grew up just long enough without a cell phone and then transitioned into the instant gratification culture.

And now my sons will grow up with chat GPT and AI things in their life. So it's getting harder and harder to steer away from that, but it'll become more and more effective and important to stick with it. So I do think my book, when I reveal some of those things and kind of talk about the underlying reasons why we choose those, especially in the chaos and business of our lives, I think seeing it from that perspective helps people to actually change.

Because I think you can even tell someone, you know, a diet won't work for you. And most people seem to kind of know that intuitively, but I don't think that people actually internalize it and practice it because they just don't know the underlying features of it and they can't see some of the problems that are lying ahead for it. So I think my book sort of addresses that and I think it'll help some people.

You do talk about the sort of social media influences. I mean, we've touched on that kind of briefly with the internet, but there's a whole new breed of people nowadays that have the job title influencer, which never used to happen. How do you think that kind of affects people's relationship with food when they see these images of these beautiful people drinking their green smoothies and living their best lycra-clad life?

How do you think that really influences particularly that younger audience. Yeah. I mean, you definitely nailed it that the social media life is kind of taking advantage of how it looks versus how it really is. And I talk about it briefly in one of my chapters that you can use so many things to sort of trick people into thinking you look better on social media.

So sometimes people might think, yeah, you're sucking your stomach to look thinner, but they also might be using different lighting where they might honestly be taking performance enhancing drugs where they might just be like taking out water for the day so that their body is kind of just depleted for that moment, for that one picture that they're taking.

So there's a lot of ways that people get clever and it's distorting reality of what you can really achieve day after day because you can make something different in one moment. But over time, that's a different story. And I see that a lot with the clients that I work at with in my eating disorder clinic because a lot of them struggle with body image issues.

And it may not all manifest from social media, but it definitely can make it worse because they might be thinking that they should look like their peers and they should be losing weight or look better because so-and-so looks better than what they think they look like. But then when they see it on social media over and over again, it kind of just reinforces that idea that they're not good enough, that they need to change their bodies.

But I think at this point, most people would probably think to themselves. You know, I'm not good enough and I need to change something. And there's probably, you know, some truth like we can still have, you know, goals to change ourselves. But I think a lot of us would do well to accept who we are and be okay with, you know, a healthy diet and healthy lifestyle and not chase after kind of these idealized fantasies on social media.

That's a really difficult sell though, you know, accepting who we are in a world where, I mean, does anybody really see that? The images that we do see online are so distorted. There's so many filters. There's so much AI, as you mentioned before, getting involved now. I think there's a real danger of us actually losing any authenticity that we've got.

And we'll just end up this kind of cloned version or this unrealistic version of perhaps what we would like to be or what we would like to portray as our kind of public image. That's right. And that's, I think, why you see these behaviors getting more and more extreme. Because I think at first, when we had social media start to pop up, we had some filters. And so you could change it a little bit. So you might change your diet just a tad because you can make it work and look like someone else.

But then over time, when people start using more and more enhancements, then you have to do more extreme measures to look like that. So it takes all of these really outlandish ideas and diets and cleanses to get to these places, that it starts to become really unhealthy and inappropriate for people.

So I think you're right that it's kind of pushing boundaries. And now because it's getting more extreme, we're starting to follow the extreme people on social media. And it doesn't really pay to look at the people who are well balanced, right? So look at some of the top podcasts or some of the top social media influencers. They're not the people who say, this is the balanced way to eat. Here's the five food groups. Make sure you eat the right portions and be okay with who you are.

I don't think a lot of people follow those. A lot of people, whether they know it or not, are kind of pushing the extremes by following these people who are eating only meat every day or eating only like a carb diet or something like that. So they're going to such extremes that those are the people we want to follow because they're kind of more fun to follow, but then it has a costly outcome in the end.

That's really bad news for me because I fall into that boring kind of, you know, let's do everything in moderation. Let's not go on diets type approach. What do you think is, what have you noticed recently is a big influence of all these sort of mad things that we've probably both seen over the last decade or so? What's kind of trending at the moment? Oh, gosh. The most extreme things are, I see a lot of diets that change over time, for sure.

So I see the keto diet is pretty popular still. Now we see a rise of a carnivore diet. Whole 30 was big for a while. And all of these are just restrictive to the point where, of course, you would lose weight. You're barely eating any food. So diets are pretty heavy in the extreme category. I see a lot of cleanses. So people continue to do only juices for 30 days or water fast for long periods of time. And again, it has the same effects as these diets.

You'll lose weight. You might feel different for a period of time, but you can never sustain it. So I kind of see no point in doing that because if you can't follow it forever, then eventually you'll revert back to what you were doing.

And then other things, one in particular that I have trouble with is supplements. So I think supplements are one of those things where they have value, but they become so extreme that people are really abusing them. So we can see periods of life where people could really use a multivitamin or magnesium or something to supplement a gap in their diet. But I think a lot of people are sort of gamifying it because they're so into this wellness culture. They're taking 40, 50, 60 supplements a day.

In fact, I worked with a patient, this was like a year and a half ago or so. And she came to me and said, you know, what can I change about my diet? And by the way, here's my list of 60 supplements that I take every day. Yeah, exactly. And so I told her, you know, well, it looks like, you know, we could take off a few things. You're taking vitamin C three times a day, these mega doses. So I think you can take off one of those and we'll see how we feel. And so she did that for two weeks.

And she went on a trip and came back and said, well, my arthritis got worse. So I think I need to put the vitamin C back in. And I said, well, you went on a trip on a plane. I think it might have been something else. Again, back to this bias, she wanted to see something different. And so I said, well, I think it might have been the trip. I think you can keep the vitamin C out. You're still taking it twice a day. And she was like, no, I really think I should keep it in. So what else do you

think I could take out? And at that point, I thought, well, I don't think you're really willing to see a new perspective here. I think what you want is sort of this game, this wellness culture game of what else can I add in? What else can make me better? And she really had a lot of difficulties in her health. And I think she thought that it could just keep getting masked by supplements or doing these new routines or protocols.

But ultimately, she got away from the fundamentals, which was a healthy diet, good sleep, rest, you know, stress management. And because she wasn't, you know, doing those things well enough, the supplements weren't going to fix anything for her. That's the question I was going to ask you, what was her diet doing in parallel to all those supplements?

Because it's one of those cruel ironies. I know you work in eating disorders, as do I. And quite often, patients that come to us with anorexia have a huge amount of supplement use. And it's almost as if they have this in some ways a real concentration and attention on what they deem as being health but on the other side they're sort of neglecting their health by not meeting their nutritional needs through actual food and it seems kind of a cruel irony to me.

That's right. And when I got into nutrition, I really got into it because I liked that food's first approach. And I think a lot of people do that as well. But then they start to kind of, as you get more and more into it, you start to get obsessed with and fixated on the nutrients and the specifics of the diet that you start to say, well, I can just get them all from different pills. And it's really not true because foods will make a bigger difference.

And so back to her diet, But she not only was getting enough vitamin C from food because she was kind of on a plant-heavy diet, which was funny that removing the vitamin C she thought was not helping. But her diet was really, it was lacking enough protein, which is something that a lot of people might get enough of, but she certainly was not. So I think that was probably leading to some health issues. She needed more protein in her diet.

And because of that, she was looking for other solutions, but she didn't want to switch the diet part of it. because she had built up all these certain restrictions within it of, well, I can't do this. And there's certain ethical limits, which was okay. But even when I would suggest supplements to kind of fix those, it was, well, those don't make me feel good. But apparently these other supplements made her feel good.

So again, I think those are kind of the biases that we're working against in a lot of clients and patients and people in the general population is, you know, they have these things that they want for themselves, but it kind of pushes away from the fundamentals that would serve them better.

Another thing you mention in your book, which is interesting, because when we talk about nutrition. What we're talking about, probably you and I, is kind of more of a sort of a whole food, as in just food as it comes naturally rather than processed foods. Because quite often with the processing of food, the nutritional factor slumps significantly. But obviously, the companies that make those foods still have to sell them to us.

And another thing that you mention in your book is those sort of deceptive marketing tactics that those food companies use. Tell me a little bit about that. What sort of things have you listed in the book? Yeah, that's right. So a big one is nutrition labels. So if you look at packages in stores, there are these brightly colored packages that promise metabolism boosting and gut healing and all these things where if you really stop to think about it,

they're not approved by anyone. No one gets to say like, that's not true. A lot of these labels can kind of say whatever they want. So these marketing deceptions are not regulated, really. They're not stopped by anyone. I've seen some changes. Even this year, I think in America, they changed what you could say is considered healthy or not. They have some guidelines now. But in general, you can almost say anything on a package. And so it's pretty.

They'll trust their favorite company or their favorite packaging as long as it looks good in the store. And so along with that, I think a lot of nutrition labels take advantage of what's trendy at the moment. So kind of talking back about like protein or even fiber, a lot of products will up their protein or fiber and promise and say, you know, we have a lot of protein and fiber in our product. And it's sort of true, but they also have a lot of added sugar and salt and

added fat. So they have kind of both things and people aren't really aware of the differences between, you know, a little bit more protein, but, you know, a healthier product overall. And so I think people, they just don't know how to navigate some of those marketing spaces. And even when they do, again, it comes back to like what they want to hear. So sometimes people, they might know that something has, you know,

a worse quality food item, but they like it so much. And back to your point about they need to sell these products, these products are designed to be much tastier than a lot of the foods that we can whip up in our kitchen. And that's kind of the battle that's going on with, you know, like these Ozempic, Trisepatide medications that we see. I don't know if it's as popular in Australia, but in America, it's a pretty big deal right now. And really food companies, I think they're scared.

And so they're kind of doing their own battle to work against this because a lot of people are eating less of those foods. And so they're kind of worried and they have to up their game, which they always do and do a good job of it, unfortunately. I have noticed as well with all those GLP-1 agonists coming on the market that a lot of the diet companies are quite scared at the moment.

I've seen more and more ads come up for diets that have been tweaked to incorporate somebody that's on one of those agonists with the idea that don't leave the diet completely. You can do this in conjunction with one of those.

So I think it's got a lot of people spooked that they might lose their income long-term. That's right. And they even take advantage of the fact that people know the word GLP-1 now. And so a lot of people will mark it with, try this new recipe. It acts like a GLP-1. It's a natural GLP-1. And so they're almost like just using food that is healthy for them. And they're saying it's like this medication, which it's nowhere near like those medications. They're very powerful.

And they should be used in appropriate spaces and not overused, but that's a whole separate discussion. But I think with kind of the trendiness of it, they're taking advantage of that and saying, look, we kind of have that too. So you can come over to us and we'll offer you the same thing, even when it's not true. And do you think those medications have got a bit of a limited life?

Because it's been the sort of the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry for decades to find something that works well for weight loss without significant side effects. So I think there's this belief that it's arrived. Hallelujah, here it is. But do you think time will tell? And if we had this conversation in 10 years' time, that everything would have moved on to another stage? That's a good question. We'll have to have a podcast in 10 years to follow up and figure that out.

I do think that coming back to the quick fix idea of it's not going to be the only thing you can change and see a difference in health. There's always so many factors to health. So I do think for some people in the right situations, it can be very powerful. But again, yeah, there's many factors that you would have to lean on as well, or else you'd be missing the full picture of health.

And I have quite a bit of patients who have been on these medications or are on them currently, and they've seen some noticeable results, like really life-changing things. But my job as working with a nutrition professional is not to say you should stop taking it or you should take more of it or take it forever. I always let the patient kind of patient-centered idea of what they want to do. But my job is to tell them how to do it appropriately if they're going to choose that.

So if someone's taking those medications, some of my job is to tell them, well, if you're going to experience significant weight loss, you need to do a lot of resistance training to make sure that muscle waste doesn't come with that. It's a lot of weight loss issues are, we see, you know, muscle wasting. So they have to do a lot of like exercise and resistance training.

They also need to develop healthy habits because if they don't stick with this, then they need to be able to do things in the future that sort of shift their mindset so that they can actually do it on their own. So I work a lot with patients on how can we actually continue this if we didn't have the medication.

So whether it's working with shifting their actual perspective on food or setting up boundaries in their home, whether it's removing things from their pantry or substituting in new foods that they actually like and will continue to eat long term, all of those things are really important considerations. And so it's definitely, there's a lot to unpack with those, but hopefully I can help people see kind of a holistic picture in that sense.

Which is a really valuable point, because unless you learn those new behaviors around food, because a lot of people are taking the medication in lieu of a good diet instead of a good diet, and believing that once they come off the medication and they've got this new smaller body. It'll just continue that way, which of course it won't. I talk to a lot of people about that's behavior and reward and how the brain connects the two.

And if we are getting a big reward, which for a lot of people, the biggest reward possible is weight loss. If we can do that in conjunction with those new behaviors and our brain goes, okay, new behaviors equal big reward and connects the two, we've got much more chance of that continuing long-term if we get in those good habits. So it is a really valuable point. We can't just take the medication and not change anything.

That's right. Well, I love that you said, you know, connecting that reward system to something else that they can kind of find motivation for in the future. I think that's like the mental health side of it. That's really important.

And that's what, you know, in our clinic that we work on probably 80% of, you know, getting over or at least like managing an eating disorder is the mental health side of it. because I can tell you to eat all the right things and make the changes to your habits. But if you don't believe it and you don't actually have those long-term habits that start to work into your brain, then it's not really going to last. And so I do see the mental health side of it being so important.

And that's a really big part of nutrition, which is why in my book, I address a lot of those things of like, these come from biases. It comes from the brain, really. Like this is affecting how we're eating and how we're making decisions. I think it's really undervalued that connection of nutrition and psychology. I mean, I see it every day because I work with dieticians. We don't call them nutritionalists over here, but it's a different landscape.

And it's equal, you know, with a lot of the patients we work with, there is, yes, they need the nutritional knowledge, but they also need the sort of psychoeducation around that. And also sometimes they need therapy, which is what I get into.

And we hopefully with the clinics that i work in we do a very tailored approach so some people lead a lot of nutritional help and really don't need much from me and other people that come to us or vice versa but we should definitely learn more to kind of nutritional professionals and psychological professionals work together and be way more cohesive over this because there's such a big connection between our relationship with food, which people deem to be nutritional,

and the psychology behind it. Yeah. And what you're describing is I think what a lot of people miss from what our healthcare model is over here, which is such a separated entity. And people are looking for that sort of holistic team effort where they can see nutrition and the person who's doing psychology talking to each other and working interventions that are paired and consider the person's individual needs.

But a lot of people are kind of bounced around from a therapist and then eventually they can see a dietician and then eventually they can see a doctor and all of them don't get to talk to each other because they're from different clinics based on insurance. And so that's really why a lot of people struggle getting the right healthcare over here is because they're just not getting the team approach or the holistic model that we really want for people.

And my wife is a therapist, so we're really hoping that our kids can grow up in a house that has both that mental health and the nutrition behavior aspect, but it remains to be seen if that will work out well for them. And how old are they now? How long have you got to form them into proper human beings? Yeah, good question. One of them is almost three and one of them is seven months. So they're definitely young enough still, but we face all the same challenges that other people have.

So kind of just from an encouraging standpoint, if anyone's having trouble with picky eaters or kids who throw tantrums, my wife and I are specializing in these things and our kids still do that regularly. So everyone will face that for sure. What a great combination of parents though.

That's fantastic. Now look, before we finish up with you, just give me the kind of elevator pitch for your book. I know we've talked a lot about it, but just sort of give us sort of two or three sentences that kind of summarize what it is and we'll put a link in the episode notes for it. Wonderful. Yeah. I mean, my book is all about overcoming the nonsense of nutrition.

And I describe nutrition nonsense as all of the behaviors, beliefs, and perceptions that we hold about nutrition that are just inappropriate or inaccurate. And so a great example at the beginning of my book is when Aunt Sue is talking to you at Thanksgiving dinner table and says, you know, that bread will make you fat because it's full of carbs. That's one example of it and is something that we all fall for every day still.

And I think we can overcome it if we know the underpinnings of why we're falling for that. Fantastic. Now, as I said, we will put details of you in the episode notes. We'll put details of the book. It really sounds like a fabulous book. I'm hoping one day to read it cover to cover. I know you've sent me a little snippet, but I would love to read the whole thing because it really does sound fantastic.

Thank you so much for coming along today. You've really given us an insight into a lot of the, as you so eloquently describe it, nutrition nonsense out there. Did it take you a long time to come up with that title? It did. I think that was a couple of months in the making because I knew that the title and the cover, those things are such the catching point for people, just like all of the nutrition things we see. You have to get it right on that first impression. So it took a while for that.

Well, I definitely think you've got it right. It definitely caught my eye. I remember seeing that type of the book and I thought, God, I have this guy. We've got to speak to him because it's just so simple, but it just says what it is. Well done on that one. Thank you. Yeah, and I've appreciated this so much. I love your podcast, Just Start a Following, so I'll have to recommend it to everyone I work with as well.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining me all the way from Northern California today.

We'll put those details in the notes for anybody that wants to get in contact with parker and find out more about what he does and there'll be a link to his book there so please go out and order that book from is it everywhere is it on amazon is it everywhere it's on amazon so there's paperback a hardcover a kindle version amazon it's on barnes and nobles website as well so yeah there's definitely several places you can find it and if you want to ask for a copy from me you

can find me on Instagram at nutritionadvocate as well. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Parker. And thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thank you. Don't forget to check the links in the episode notes to our six-week Change Your Relationship with Food course and to the Change Your Relationship with Food workbook and journal, which is available on Amazon. Music.