Learning To Love Food Again (Outweigh)

my expert guest today is Bobby Judically. And Bobby, I know you recently released a book and I'm obsessed with the title because it seems like something that's right up my alley. And it's freedom from a toxic relationship with food, A journey that will give you your life back. And literally that's how I felt once I truly got into recovery. I got my life back, and one that who knows that I hadn't had since I was a teenager. Yeah, for sure. You know it's interesting you use the word recovery.

I don't think I've ever, in all my many years, used recovery. I've used I hope one day to be cured, and I never believed I would be, And I did believe it would always be more recovery, although I never used the word, but I will tell you I honestly feel cured at this point in my life. But I'm in my sixties and and I wrote my book for those people that don't want to wait until they're in their fifties and sixties to find what recovery and pure feel like. Well, so for you, when did your disordered

behavior or you're eating disorder start? How many years were you living with it? From age eighteen until age I would say my journey to health be again ten eleven years ago, so from age eighteen until age fifty six, and it was excruciating. And I had always said, and to this day, I am fully committed to fiding being with supporting anybody to prevent them from having to live that many years with the struggle that it is. And so I know one of the things you're passionate about

is dieting and why it doesn't work. Diets are in our face, and even diets and disguise are in our face all the time. But in your opinion, why do you think diets don't work? Well, First of all, they don't address the problem, and the problem is our relationship with food. The problem is our relationship and our perspective on ourselves, our bodies, how we feel, and then separately, we all live a life with a relationship with food

because food is a necessity in our life. I always say that if you're an alcoholic, that is an easy, easier recovery. I believe I was never an alcoholic, but I believe it's an easier recovery because you can eliminate alcohol from your life and be healthier and sustain and so on. When your issue as a relationship with food, you cannot remove food from your life and be healthy.

You just can't. I mean, anorectics fry that and they either die or they go down the path of some sort of re entering a relationship with food or or bringing food into their life. But diets don't work because that's one of the reasons they don't address the relationship with food. Number two, we constantly feel deprived. We look at a diet as a short term solution. Let me just lose the pounds and then I will be fine, and then I don't have to deprive myself anymore. So

that's reason number two. We cannot keep food in our life. With constant deprivation. Number three, They don't work because the foods that we that are the majority of foods in our supply system, especially the ones that are packaged that say they are healthy, are not, and they create an addiction to the food that the ingredients, the way food is made, the processed food is addicting. Whether it's sugar, it's salt, it's the chemicals that are introduced. We get addicted.

And so therefore you go, Okay, I'm going to diet, which means for the next X number of weeks, I can't eat cake. Well, okay, you're not eating cake, but or eating continuing to eat sugar. When you decide to stop dieing ing, the sugar itself is driving It was driving your cravings, it's driving your addiction, and you go right back to not just eating the unhealthy foods, but

consuming them even in greater quantity. Well, so for me, I started dieting at a very young age, and my brain wasn't fully developed, and I wired it to binge on food because it was so deprived that it didn't trust me. So when I would allow myself to eat, it was uncontrollable. I would just find myself eating and eating and eating because my brain was like, oh, I better eat all that I can right now because I don't know when this person is going to feed me again.

And so it was my survival brain kicking in, so that deprivation I definitely can relate to, and then how my body and my brain responded to that, and then the types of foods. I feel like for me, the

pendulum has swung. When I first started to eliminate my eating disorder and work towards my recovery, I feel like I was allowing all kinds of foods because that's what I needed to sort of rewire my brain, like, oh, that as if method, Like oh, I'm going to act as if this is normal and I can eat whatever

I want and allow it. And the pendulum swung so far, and I feel like that's what we see to a lot on social media, which can be a dangerous place for recovery because you can get information that's not very helpful.

But then I just want your thoughts on this pendulum thing, like I swung all the way to the other side where every food was on the table, and really it still is, but I think that the pendulum has leveled out because I also have knowledge of food and what is in it and the wisdom to want to nourish my body. Well, if I were to just allow all foods at all times, I know I'm not going to

wake up and feel my best. And I also want to take care of all my organs and know the foods that are going to be nourishing to them and foods that are gonna be toxic to my organs. So while everything is allowed, I do think that there's there's this balancing act that kind of happens. So wherever you are on this journey, just know that I think it it might swing, But it's true sometimes when I swung too far, I kept craving that stuff more and more and more because I was having it all the time.

So so one of the things most people don't understand is that that is not happening in your brain. Actually, it's initiated in your gut. It's initiated in your microbiome, your entire what they called dys biosis. But it's the imbalance of the proper bacteria in your gut, which controls everything.

It controls our digestion, it controls our immune system, it controls you know, It controls everything that happens in our body that is so critical, and we are constantly feeding it either good things that will promote the good bacteria

or bad things that will promote the bad bacteria. And so that when you say the pendulum swings all the way to one side, what's really happening is you've created an environment in your gut that the bacteria itself is telling you and signaling you to eat that particular thing, be it sugar. Sugar is an easy example because most of us can relate. What most people don't know is

dairy and cheese specifically are also extremely addictive. So you'll hear people say a lot of times, I can't give up cheese, I can't give up sugar, I can't give up salt. What they don't understand is, yes, indeed they can't because their body is constantly craving that because they've

set up the environment. When I started my journey twelve, eleven, whatever years ago, I did not believe that I would ever be recovered, I that I would ever have a healthy relationship with food, to look forward to going to a grocery store, look forward to preparing a meal which I hadn't done for years. I married a man who loved to cook, and so he cooked, and we raised three boys with him doing all the cooking because I

was petrified to be in the kitchen. Food and eating and meals and eating outside of meals was a very chaotic experience for me. Um And I think one thing

that's really important for your audience. I know I'm straying kind of from the original question that you asked me, but I think one thing that's really important for your audience to understand is if there is chaos in your relationship with food, you have disordered eating, minimally disordered eating, I mean eating disorders from technically what's considered an eating disorder is more complex than that. If it's noisy, I can only explain it as very noisy in my head

every time I would eat. So I would eat, and it would be a constant balance of oh my god, how many calories, Oh my god, there's too much fat. I can get more calories if I get less batty foods. If I'm going to eat that chocolate cake, that means I can't eat for two more days. If I want to fit in that dress in two weeks, that means I better stop eating completely. I mean it's noisy. So something that I would tell you, like when people say, I can't give up X y Z, let's take ice cream.

I can't give up ice cream. You know. You hear people say that all the time. And the thing is that then they'll eat the ice cream and there's noise in their head because they know they shouldn't be eating it. But okay, they've made an agreement with themselves. They'll only eat one scoop. Okay, they'll only eat two spoon spoonfuls. Now what are they going to have to do? Run three extra miles tomorrow to counterbalance the impact of that. So, if you have that kind of noise in your head,

there is disordered eating it. You know, if you're constantly looking for what's the answer, what's the next book, what's the next support group, what's the next whatever. Because I can't live like this anymore. I can't live with three sizes of clothes in my closet. I can't live with feeling like I have no energy. I just can't live like that anymore. You have disordered eating and there is as the title of my book, the subtitle of my book says, there is a journey that gives you your

life back. I am here to tell you I never believed I would be saying this, but I love food. I have no negative impact when I eat, when I think about eating, when I plan what I'm eating. I'm sixty seven years old. I never believed I would ever be able to say that, and I don't want other people to wait until they're in their sixties to say that.

I don't either, And you know, at forty one, I feel so gosh, so many years were wasted, but I want to say that, like something there was some benefit for that in my life, of like what is this made possible for me now? I don't want to look back and focus on the past like I want to see maybe it's so that I could come alongside and help others that are going through this and have this podcast.

I don't know, So I don't want to harp on the past at all, but I do wish I would have entered or been exposed to this type of thinking or recovery or knowing that there's hope for it when I was thirty one, because there's so many family meals that I missed, or memories to be made or times where I could have been engaging in conversation with someone, but like you said, my brain was full of all kinds of noise and other thoughts, so I wasn't fully present.

And Lisa, who is a registered dietitian in front of mine, Lisa Haymond, she's the one that originally co founded Outweigh with me. She has a whole program called Fork the Noise. So I love you called it noise because that's exactly what it is. And when we started this podcast, it's Outweigh a life without disordered eating, outweighs everything. But we also were very adamant of like the we're covering the gray area, Like this whole topic is not black and white.

There's so much happening here, and there's so many different types of people that can be coming to the table here. And I love having people on, especially that have amazing resources like you do with freedom from a Toxic Relationship with food. I love that title so much, And then I love the journey that will give you your life that because that's truly what happens once you can have a cure or into recovery, whatever you want to call it,

and it doesn't happen overnight. Mine. It was a journey, and I feel like I'm still working on it, but the noise is less and less and less and less.

And I like the ice cream example too that you gave because I was talking king about the pendulum and it's like, when I wasn't allowing it, I wanted it more and more and more, and then I allowed it, and then the pendulum evens out because then it's less desirable, and you're like, oh, my pendulum evened out, and now I can keep ice cream in the fridge for weeks and months and I don't feel like I have to throw it away or eat it all in one night. It will literally be there for months at a time.

Isn't that amazing? Yes? I I so relate to what you're saying. For me, it's I explain it a little differently, and I am kind of a I'm going to say and I use this term loosely, not technically, not medically, but I'm an O C D person. I work better when I build tight boundaries around something that's important to me. So you know, like no going back and what I found in my journey, So I did, I did change, I did take a lot of foods out of my day to day eating. So I am now whole food,

plant based. I eat very little of anything processed. I eat no animal products whatsoever. And that's changed my life in other ways outside of food. But for me, there was no discussion about am I going to eat it? Am I going to eat that chocolate bar? No, because it's processed. If not, say I don't eat. I make my own dark chocolate with nuts snail and I like love it. But yes, like you said, now I can eat one piece and I and it lives in my freezer all the time, and I don't you know, I

don't have to eat it. So for me, I needed to to really eliminate certain foods. But what happened for me by eliminating animal products, by eliminating any processed food, is it completely changed my taste buds. And now processed foods don't taste good. Animal products I used to love me and animal products I can't even imagine eating like I just look at it and it does not look appetizing. That's me. That's how it worked for me. I don't believe for anybody to recover UM that they really need

to be as extreme but for me, I did. The other one thing point that I really really want to make is we all, especially women, grow up believing that our weight is critical, like what we look like, how much we weigh, how are close fit? We are told by society, and now it's even worse because of social media. We are told thin is it? I mean you, we are driven by our weight, and at the end of the day, we're compromising our health. Diet and compromises our health,

eating disorders and disordered eat and compromise our health. And for me, I will tell you I kind of resign myself to the fact that I would always carry ten more pounds than I want to to until I changed the way I ate, and it was absolutely not motivated by weight. It was motivated by health. And my sister died of cancer, my father last ten twelve years of his life were horrible, and both of them I believe

would due to diet. I really do believe that the outcome or their life quality of life would have been

different had they eaten differently. And I was experiencing extreme, extreme fatigue, and that's when I said, this has to do with how I'm eating, and I'm here to tell you that I have more energy now in my late sixties than I had at forty, and that is a result of using food as medicine, as what sustains me, and not as the crutch and the numbing agent and the drug that I used it as my mom actually passed away from cancer, and that's when my eating just

sort of came back with the vengeance and it was literally two numb out and it's stuck around for a while,

even while my dad was diagnosed with cancer. So I I appreciate you writing this book and giving it as a guide too, so that those of us that are in recovery are looking to get rid of that noise in our head, but also be mindful of what we're putting in our body for overall health, because disease does scare me because I watched I was a caregiver for both of my parents, and it was I don't know for sure if their diet would have played a different role, but I know that I'm still young enough to where

maybe if I start to do certain things for my body and my organs and feed it a certain way or feed at certain things that I can, I can be as proactive as possible. No it's not guaranteed to eliminate chronic disease, absolutely not. However, your overall quality of life, your energy. I mean, if you are somebody that's eating a lot of processed food, I guarantee you your energy is impacted. It just is. It has to be. It's

the way your body works. If you're getting sick frequently, if you're getting colds frequently, it has to do with the way you are eating. And yes, it doesn't mean that you can eat however you want. Then you start to get a cold and you get a plug yourself with vitamin C. No, that's not taking care of yourself. Your overall immune system is impacted. And this is only recently that they understand this all comes from what you put in your body. So and I truly believe this.

Everything you eat is either helping you have a better quality of life or negatively impacting your quality of life and your overall health. And I really really believe that. And the other thing I really want to stress though,

is what I mentioned about your taste buds. What people don't get is not only can you give it up and and I really go through the steps in my book of what that journey looks like it's not only can you give it up, but you're not going to miss it at some point because food takes on a whole new look. Like I couldn't walk past chocolate without eating it in my earlier days. It doesn't do anything

for me now looking at it doesn't do anything. If I decide I want to have a piece of the chocolate that I make, which probably happens once a month, I get a piece of chocolate that is good for me because it's first of all, very healthy chocolate. It's dark chocolate, it has minimal sugar, and the kakal is very healthy for you. It's an antioxidant and it has nuts in it, so that's more protein and healthy fats.

I know, like just because I roll up my sleeves and learn about things in detail, I know everything that I eat what it's doing for me, and it helps me have an appetite for it. And I said, my taste buds are different. I couldn't eat milk chocolate now if you wanted me to. It's just doesn't taste right. I can't eat processed food. If I eat something processed, sometimes I'll go to a restaurant. I'll go oh, I can taste that. That does not taste good to me,

and I don't need it. Do you have a different recipes anywhere? There's some in the book or on your website or this I'm curious about this chocolate recipe. No, I don't have recipes. I'm more than happy to share it with you. Um, I don't have recipes because I don't like cooking with recipes. What I do is I uh and I had to learn it because I've never cooked before and my husband not did not change the

way he eats. So now I do cook every single night, but I throw things together like I know foods that I like, and I and I just experiment with stuff that I know is healthy, different herbs and spices, and and only recently started loving tofu because I throw it together with something and put it in my air fryer and I went, oh my god, this. I used to really dislike tofu for a vegan. That's a problem. Um,

now I you know, really like it. It's like I just I love the exploration and yet so no, and I'll never write a cookbook because I'd be the worst person in the world to write a cookbook. I would just have to say, well, throw that and throw that, And I do look at recipes online and go, oh, that's a good idea. And I don't follow the measurements. I just throw that in and throw that in. But

it's fun. And I'm telling you, I'm somebody who used to be petrified to walk into a grocery store, or petrified at the prospect that I had to make dinner that night because my husband wouldn't be home and I had three kids that needed to eat. That ended up being pizza night. Um, I couldn't handle it any other day, and pizza was one of my weak food, so that would mean a night I was over eating. So yeah,

it's it's just a different world. But I do want to leave you with I wrote the book to support anyone, anyone who wants the support and would like the support for exploring a different way. And I make myself very available to anybody who reads the book or sees this podcast or whatever to support them, because I probably have a lot of knowledge that even some standard nutritionists don't have. Well, Freedom from a toxic relationship with food, A Journey that

will Give Your Life Back is available on Amazon. I'll link it in the show notes, but you can visit Food Freedom Advocate dot com for more about Bobby. But thank you so much for sharing some of your story with us. I know that everybody's on a different journey, but I think ultimately we want to get our lives back, whatever that that looks like. So thank you for sharing your journey with us and what it's looked like for you, the tools that have worked for you and helping us

get rid of the noise. Everybody's got their different ways, and yeah, if you're thinking you've got the noise and this sounds like something that you would be into, I personally am going to order the book because I'm very interested in nourishing my body with different types of food. I think that I've kind of gotten in a little bit of a rut, but that's okay. I also don't have any shame with that or guilt, like I'm doing the best that I can with life right now, but

I'm open to all different kinds of things. So thank you Bobby for sharing your book with us. Oh You're so welcome and it was such a pleasure to be here. And I just I think food should be a joyful part of our life and for many of us. That's a challenge, but that's what my goal is for anybody else because it is joyful. And thank you again for having me. Absolutely