Bonus: Mailbag with Isabel Foxen Duke!

your superpower? Oh? This is this is my jam. I love I love a Q and A more than anyone. Let's do it. Okay, so you're ready to show off your superpower? Yes, I'm ready. All right. So someone asks, where do you draw the line between healthy eating and eating what is pleasurable? And my right to think that the point you are making is not to not choose health, but to be allowed to feel and seek pleasure through food, if that is your decision. Yeah, this is a great question.

So I think that you know, again, this sort of comes down to the definition of health. Right, So we think of health is something that has just to do

with like my micronutrients and my physical body. Right, but right, but the reality is, right, health includes mental and emotional health and pleasure and joy and being able to get pleasure and enjoy specifically from foods is something that we're really designed for and that's very important for our mental health, important for satisfaction, satiation, all of these various different, you know, benefits that come from pleasure. Right, I mean, pleasure is

a health activity. Pleasure is health, pleasure is health. Promoting exactly, pursuing pleasure is a health activity. Right, So then when I think about health right as a giant pie of all sorts of different aspects of health that may include things like macro nutrients and wanted to a vegetable blah blah blah, but it probably also includes all of these

other things. A big challenge when my clients come up they think, like, if they have a salad that means they're by definition choosing a salad over you know, the macaroni or the hamburger or whatever. And I'm like, put your hands together, have them both, right, like, let's get it all in, you know, and really looking take looking at health from the attitude of like, how do I get it all in? You know, my health needs are changing.

Maybe one day my pressing need for a pleasure is just it's more pressing than my need for something else, and it's okay for that to be flexible and changing. I love, I love, I love Okay. Next question, what diet b as did you fall for when you were still stuck in diet culture? What I mean, I mean all of it. I mean, for me, the intuitive eating

diet was such a big one. It's amazing, Like, people will go through my whole program, we'll talk about we stepping theory, aged will go through all the stuff, and still I often hear people say there's just still this part of me that feels like somehow, if I get it right, I'm gonna lose weight. Right, And so if there's this part of you that's like somehow, if I get it right, I'm gonna lose weight, or like maybe

this legalization phase is just a phase. You hear that a lot with intuitive eating of like, well, I'm gonna eat a lot in the beginning, but then eventually I'll get to a point where I don't want brownies anymore. Right, Right, We've talked about talking about we were just talking about this where it's like this myth of like I'm into. It's like there's almost like an angelic like, oh, I'm an intuitive eater now, I don't even want anything that isn't vegetable. And I'm like, this a rival myth is

just it's just kind of poop garbage. I'm like, I don't think that that's a thing. I no longer Right, Not only do I not think that's a thing, I also don't think that's absolutely anything we should be striving for. I mean, it's only because of diet culture that that thing would even have any cachet or valor appeal anyway, right,

I mean a way. And I like the arrival language, the arrival fallacy language is it's like, really it's like if there's any part of you that's like thinking that in the future your food is going to be magically different or like you're like going to get somewhere that

you're not currently, that's a red flag, right. Really, Like diet recovery is just about my food is what my food is, and I'm cool with it today no matter what it is, right, And so if I'm still orienting towards food as like something that I'm going to achieve in the future, that is probably indication of some sort of underlying guyet mentality. Yes, yes, I love that. I love that. Okay, So next question, how do you avoid

turning intuitive eating into just another diet? Oh? Yeah, so I mean I letting go of narrow definitions of hunger and fullness would be like my number one thing, right, like recognizing that generally speaking, I think when people first learn about intuita eating, like, I did you know? I thought hunger was a growl in my stomach? Little did I know that hunger can literally just take the form of thinking about food. Right, let even the concepts of

hunger and fullness go. I prefer concepts like appetite and satiation. So like my definition of appetite would be I want food. I'm in the mood for food. I could eat then great eat, you know, And satisfaction is just I don't want to eat anymore. I'm done. I'm satisfied. And sometimes this is where people get tripped up with the difference between satisfaction and fullness. People think if I'm full, then like I must be satisfied, and if I go past

full that's bad. But actually sometimes you need to get really full to get satisfied. There are days where I could eat something and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm satisfied. I don't really need it anymore, and it's all like polite and cute and like not that full. And there are other days where it's like I'm to get stuffed right now, and that's my satisfaction point, like I need

to get it in now, and that's okay too. And so I actually really encourage people to just let go of the concepts of hunger and fullness in general and focus more on appetite and satiation, which my definitions of that would be I want food and I don't want food.

Love that. I love that, Okay, amazing, Okay, So this is I think that this question is a little bit about can you talk about what it was like sort of being in the depths of dieting and compare that to what it feels like now that you're not doing that. Oh you know, I say this a lot to my clients. I still get super anxious. I still have lots of life problems. I still have a lot of relationship problems. I still go into get triggered and go into trauma response.

I just do it about other things now, not about food as much, not about my body as much. You know, when I was dieting, like that became the epicenter, that became the place where all of my trauma energy, if you will, went. It was constantly all about controlling food and perfectionism and then this and then that, and the just constant fatigue of trying to hang on by my fingernails all the time, trying not to fall. That's every single day of dieting and then falling and hating yourself

or falling right. And today, you know, like, on the one hand, I'm like, you know, initially, especially I would say in the first couple of years and to really solid re card as I felt so free around food and it's so amazing. And then there was there's this like liberation right that I experienced that was so amazing. But I do like to remind people just to like kind of give a dose of reality that not dieting

anymore didn't actually solve my trauma. My trauma no longer attaches to food, but fundamentally, like I still am a human being who struggles with trauma and anxiety and like stress and relationship stuff, and so it's like food is just not one of them. And I actually think of it as like a privilege that I actually get to work on other areas of my life now because food is not constantly the thing that's distracting me from everything else.

I get to work on my relationships now, I get to like work on my career challenges now in a way that I couldn't be as present for when it was all about food. But yeah, I think that there's this idea that like, once we're in recovery, like life is going to be a magical unicorn, just kind of similarly to like how we feel like once I've lose the weight, my life will be a magical unicorn. And that's not true either, And so I kind of like

to like call that out absolutely. I mean, yeah, I think to that point, I love the idea of sort of getting to, you know, work on these other areas of your life, because if food is your number one way that you're coping with anxiety or unresolved trauma or any number of things, right, or like living in a fat phobic culture, like food is so immediate and constant and so connected to survival that you don't you don't

really get past that. That's sort of like the in the hierarchy of what you're dealing, like how you're making care of yourself. That one's always going to be on top if that's if that's one of your coping mechanisms, you know, right, right, Like every New Year's resolution was like about losing weight in the past, Like this year, my New Year's resolution was to be more kind to my boyfriend. Very different, you know, yeah, one hundred percent.

It was absolutely amazing. I'm so grateful for you sharing your time and your wisdom. I can't wait for our next encounter. I know what a street It is truly life changing when you stop worrying about food and you become free to use your mental energy and emotional bandwidth for other things, like helping a friend leave their toxic relationship, taking up macromay, creating elaborate zines about your favorite foods, or learning how to finally make a massive tower of

creampubs called a crocam bush. If you have thoughts on the conversation you just heard, or even if you just want to say hi, reach out DM me at Virgie Tovar, DM the show's producers at Transmitter Pods, or shoot us a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com. Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by Transmitter Media. This episode was produced by Shoshi Schmulevits. Sarah Knix is

Transmitters executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our managing producer, and Greta Cohen is our executive producer and I'm your host, Bergie Tobar Rick Kwana is our mixed engineer. And thanks to Taka Yazawa who wrote some of the music we use in the show. If you love Rubble Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by writing a review on your favorite podcast app.