Lisa Goes On a Restrictive Diet

when I went on a restrictive diet. Now, heads up, this was not a restrictive diet for weight loss or 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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

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

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 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

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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 prioritize your mental health. Thanks everyone for being here, and I'll see you next week. On that way,