Episode 6: Breaking Down Diet Culture: A Conversation on Body Image, Self-Compassion, and Balanced Nutrition with Gillian
Diet culture, body image, and the way we perceive ourselves and food are complex and multifaceted issues deeply rooted in our upbringing, society, and personal experiences. Our latest podcast episode with Gillian, a nutrition and body image coach from the Bite Size Nutrition podcast, takes an insightful look into these matters, revealing the profound influence societal messages have had on our adult lives and choices.
The conversation opens with a discussion about the profound impact our childhood experiences have on our relationship with food and body image. It is during these formative years that messages about food and dieting from parents and society shape our views and behaviours around food, often leading to a complicated relationship with eating and body image in adulthood.
An essential aspect of breaking free from these damaging narratives is self-compassion. Understanding and internalizing the concept of self-compassion is key to moving past the harmful messages we may have internalized about food and our bodies. It plays a crucial role in learning to trust our food choices again and overcoming the guilt often associated with certain foods or eating behaviours.
Understanding the concept of metabolic health can also greatly impact our decisions about nutrition. We also delve into the power of physical activities such as powerlifting in fostering a healthier body image. These activities help us appreciate our bodies for their strength and capabilities rather than just their appearance.
The dialogue further extends into the territory of setting focused goals, normalizing hard work, and harnessing motivation in a healthy way. A key takeaway is the power of values in changing our body image and the process of rebuilding trust with food. We explore the concept of stages of change and how to narrow down goals to focus on one thing at a time.
The episode wraps up with a thoughtful exploration of the concept of a fat loss phase with the understanding that it does not define our self-worth. We discuss how to combine internal and external knowledge when it comes to food choices, and how to find equilibrium in our relationship with food and our body image.
In conclusion, the conversation with Gillian underscores the power of self-compassion, trust, and balance in our relationship with food as potent weapons against diet culture. By changing the way we perceive food and our bodies, we can revolutionize our self-image and overall well-being.
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Jess: 0:01
Hello, friend, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. Hello, my Sturdy friends, and welcome to episode 6 of Sturdy Girl Today. Before we dive into this awesome interview, I want to take a moment just to introduce who you're going to be listening to. Jillian is from the Bite Size Nutrition podcast. She is a nutrition, body image and mindset-focused coach who supports clients in rebuilding trust with food and their bodies. Listen, she is our kind of girl. I'm so stoked for you to listen to this interview, for our rambles, for the moments where she and I both at the same time, were like, yes, we understand, we're going to hear more on self-compassion, like you do in every episode, moments of yeah, this is the Sturdy Girl mindset, but Jillian focuses on clients or women who want to live full, meaningful, fun lives and want to focus on health and well-being. That doesn't rely on macros, restrictive diets or progress photos. Jillian spent most of her life wishing she could fix her body and sound familiar, and many years jumping from diet to diet until she realized that her health was suffering. She hadn't had a period in years and her life revolved around her diet and her training schedule, and you'll definitely hear more about that inside this episode. Jillian works with a broad range of people amazing human. If you want to learn more about her, you can find her on Instagram, at Bite Size Nutry, or on her website, bitesizees. Once again, megan is not joining us for this interview. She is legitimately on a bike somewhere in the Pacific Northwest rainy weather getting real muddy. She will be back with us in a couple of weeks, not next week's episode, in fact. I'm going to do a little segue for a second before we dive into Jillian and my interview. I have a request from you, my favorite listener. I want to hear from you. I want to hear about things you had to learn or unlearn in your body image journey, your health journey, your fitness journey, whatever you want to call it. What were some of the crazy things that you believed or didn't believe? What things have you had to unlearn in the process? Was there something crazy? Did you only eat rice cakes or only eat green foods, or believe that white bread was bad for you or any of those things that we've had to unlearn. Was it something that you understood about your body or your appearance or how you were perceived by others? Because I'm going to be doing an entire episode about my journey of unlearning all the things about body image and self-confidence, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me a note on Instagram at SturdyGirl underscore, or an email Hello at SturdyGirlco. Okay, let's dive in friends.
Gillian: 3:00
You know, those memories that you have that are half-formed. We have flashes. I have this memory of being in a high school classroom or something, that it was a Weight Watchers meeting with my mom. I was born. I don't know if I'm an elder millennial or if I'm right in the middle. I was born at 87.
Jess: 3:17
Okay, yeah, you're an elder millennial, because I was born in 90 and I'm considered an elder millennial. What I don't know?
Gillian: 3:25
All right, whatever, I'm an elder millennial, I guess I'll own that. This was the early 90s and I was homeschooled, so my mom would take me everywhere with her, and that was, oh, homeschool kids. We'll probably have to touch on that later. I agree, yeah social skills. I mean, yeah, social skills. I'm a big nerd. Probably why I like science fiction and fantasy so much because it's just like creating whole worlds, because I wasn't exposed to like being with other kids in kindergarten. Really, yeah, yeah, wild, anyway continue story.
Jess: 3:56
Sorry to interrupt yeah no, no worries.
Gillian: 3:58
My mom passed away when I was nine and this is like come out in like stories. When I talked to my grandmother before she passed and stories that my dad would tell me, it came out that my mom had struggled with her weight her entire life and I was this like four year old kid. I didn't have any idea. So I would do all these fun things like go out to lunch with my mom and go to frozen yoga and have those amazing memories, but also have this very distinct memory of going and my mom got on a scale, because I think at Weight Watchers you used to have to get on the scale and weigh yourself, like in front of everybody. Yeah, that is a shame trigger. Yeah, I think so. There's a show I only watched a couple episodes, but this is us which was a really big show, and they show one of the characters who's in a larger body and she went to I don't know if it was overeaters or like one of those things and they weighed them in public too. I remember seeing that and it was funny because watching that episode of that show kind of triggered that memory of like, oh my God, I saw this happen and so it's like, okay, it makes so much sense why, as I got older and then at some point I started fixating on this very specific weight number, yeah, going to those meetings at four years old like were those.
Jess: 5:06
those are some of your earliest memories.
Gillian: 5:09
Yeah, but it was so interesting and I've done a lot of thinking about this because I actually launched my first body image coaching program three years ago and I didn't yet have the education or the experience like an understanding, the psychology behind it and all of that to like actually make it as effective as I wanted to. Then this year I launched another one and it's completely different, but as I was like delving into all of the content when I developed both of those programs, it was so interesting because I started to really understand the connection between hey, we've been told all of our lives that food is this thing that is supposed to be enjoyable you should be carefree, it's like fun and pleasure and all of this but it's also this thing that is meant to be a tool to control our bodies, and so it's no wonder that we all have these very on and off like huge pendulum swings from like fuck it, I just want to enjoy what I eat to like, oh my God, I need to heavily control everything that goes in my body. Because even as a kid, I remember going with my mom to restaurants and I always get grilled cheese and french fries and we enjoy food together and she loved desserts, but then it was also the flip side of it was she was constantly on a diet which as a four year old I couldn't fully imagine. But I do have that memory of the Weight Watchers thing. So it's wild because from a young age we're fed two very distinct messages.
Jess: 6:21
Yeah, did she ever say anything to you about food, or was this more like your observation?
Gillian: 6:27
I wish that I knew the answer to that because I think a lot of it. I was just too young to fully grasp but like I have these memories of so many holidays where we would bake sugar cookies and I'd be on the counter eating cookie dough and my dad was very much always the like sugar is bad for you, like sugar is going to make you fat, sugar is going to kill you. And my mom was very much like we need to enjoy food, like food is pleasure. But also she secretly had I guess not so secretly, I was just too young to get it but she also had this other side that was like but I need to control what I eat. Yeah, my body isn't good enough. And then, after my mom passed and my dad, of course, was like the main parent and he grew up in a very fat phobic household and was like overly obsessed with quote unquote health foods, Would be like no, you can't drink soda, that stuff's going to kill you. And criticizing overweight people on the street. So yeah, lots of crazy stuff going on there and I know the sad thing is this story sounds extreme and makes so much sense why I had body image issues, but it's also not unique. Like no, I was going to say it doesn't this sound?
Jess: 7:29
this tracks with other people's body image stories that I've heard and it's something to you know. You're talking about doing the research for your course, doing the research for the podcast. For me was looking at research on positive body image and finally understanding that positive body image definition wasn't what I thought it was, because social media kind of took over positive body image and pink washed everything. I love that term, that's the easiest way I can think to explain it, because it's like positive body image is an opposite of negative body image. And just looking at all of the research and looking at people breaking down what their body image story is and you know how, like you go to therapy and you talk through things in therapy that are big, like with your mom passing away or with all these big traumatic things or something that happened in elementary school or middle school or whatever and you're talking through all these like life changing things. And then when you go back and you look at your childhood from a frame of body image, it brings up such different things, such specific experiences, that people are like, oh my God, that's why I still can't put creamer in my coffee. This is why I still fear eating bagels, those things that don't tend to come to mind and you realize those are the experiences that help shape you. Or when you know so and so, said in elementary school that this was really bad for you, and you still took that with you into your adult life.
Gillian: 8:46
Yeah, totally. It's wild, the things that you latch onto as a kid or in those like formative years. Yeah, and you realize I have been avoiding like this brand of bread because someone told me it was higher calorie than that one, and I don't even know if that's true.
Jess: 9:02
So for me, a decade ago maybe a little over, when I first got into running, I was really into health food, right Of like what do you call it? Clean eating. I was a clean eater. You know, it's like fruits and veggies and you just shoot anything. That wasn't that right, and it was just this whole thing. I remember being so proud of myself and I'm pretty sure this was an Instagram post at some point. We could like scroll back to the archives and find it and it was like 10 random facts about me and one of them was I've never eaten white bread and I was like so it's like a proud thing. Yeah, it was like a point of pride, like I don't eat white bread. No, if I'm going to eat bread, it's going to have lots of fiber and grains, and it was just so cringy to think back on that. That wasn't even that long ago. That wasn't even like childhood shaping, it was adult life. This was, oh, I'm making healthy choices. No.
Gillian: 9:49
Yeah, and I think here is like hearing all of these stories. It's like, yes, we could dig into every single individual one. But then we want to also be able to see somehow, if I work on my body image, like how do I actually see a change in how I feel about myself in a relatively short period of time? Because that, I think, is the challenging thing, because we could go back with a fine tooth comb and look at every single instance of some comment or something that got me to where I am. But it's also like and this is maybe a controversial opinion, and I think that if you want to go back and overanalyze everything, it's fine. But also so much of this stuff. I think we can move past it when we actually really delve into a practice of self compassion.
Jess: 10:29
Absolutely Self compassion has been something in every single episode so far. It was like three tips to improve confidence, three tips to improve your body image and self confidence is like star, star, star on everything. I agree. I think that there is some importance in reflecting on how did I get here? Not in the intensity of going to therapy and working through traumatic events, right, but in the context of understanding like, oh, I do actually fear that food. Oh, I've actually been avoiding that. I was thinking about that. I have my coffee in hand and I was like I like drinking black coffee. And as I'm sitting there thinking about it, well, years ago I guess I used to drink coffee with creamer in it. And I was thinking about the people that I know that are like oh no, I only drink black coffee, but they don't actually like black coffee. It's because they fear the calories that go into creamer. I think that there's value in learning that and to also help you figure out your why. I think that there is a piece of that to understanding yourself. But I agree, I don't think you need to nitpick everything and go through experience by experience, but it does play into like for me. Growing up, my mom was anorexic for 20 plus years and I would say she's in recovery now. But that was my growing up, was she weighed herself three times a day, always had a full face of makeup on, was very, very particular about her food. And I have two sisters and like my mom and my two sisters were always very thin naturally and I'm more curvy and always have been, and so it always made for these like body shaped comments towards me growing up. So that helped me to kind of reflect back on like oh, this was the lens with which food was shaped was having a parent that was going through an active eating disorder.
Gillian: 12:11
I cannot imagine how challenging that must have been and also how confusing.
Jess: 12:14
Very.
Gillian: 12:15
Because you probably noticed a lot of things and you're like is this really what I'm noticing?
Jess: 12:20
Yeah, like grandma would take us to fast food every once in a while and you're like, oh, don't tell mom. Oh, my God, it was a whole thing. We had a huge garden and when we go to the grocery store it was always fresh fruits and vegetables, all of your whole grains, and if we had any packaged food at all hidden underneath the vegetables on the grocery belt, I think that for me, when I realized later on my whole obsession with clean eating, I'm like, oh, that's just kind of what continued for when I was a kid. So I have a question for you. Yeah, what?
Gillian: 12:47
Because I think about this a lot sort of like when I became aware that controlling my food could control my body. Because that sort of was the like spark that led down a road of essentially like I actively was dieting in some way what we refer to as like a diet mindset, pretty consistently for about 11 years, except for like a short period where I was traveling, and even part of that I still had a diet mindset because I was convinced that I needed to be gluten free, because I thought gluten was unhealthy Me too, yeah. And so I remember when I realized, oh my gosh, if I control what I eat, I can also control my body, and if I control my body, I can, to a certain extent, hopefully, control other people's perceptions of me. When did you notice or can you pinpoint? That's a great question.
Jess: 13:36
I don't know when I necessarily could pinpoint that. I think pinpointing that in two parts First one was probably like eighth grade and we had this is going to sound kind of woo and weird and this is just a glimpse.
Gillian: 13:49
I was raised by people who's literally like their name was Chelsea and they're like my name is Fern. Now, that was my upbringing Excellent.
Jess: 13:57
I was raised home of school and a Jehovah's Witness, so, okay, all right, same same, but different, yeah, yeah. So my mom was very anti-doctor and she totally listens to this podcast. I'm like I love you, mom.
Gillian: 14:08
I really do, but my childhood upbringing was weird but it made us the colorful humans that we are today.
Jess: 14:15
You know exactly, that is like all the experiences. There's no animosity towards any of these things. There's no negative Like you learn from it. I was 13 and we had moved into a new house about a year prior and we were all having very random colds and sinus issues and all of these things and we found black mold in the house. So we had to get rid of the black mold in the house and as a part of that, it was like oh, black mold is in your system, so we need to go on a diet. And that was my personal first introduction to like an actual diet, beyond like seeing my mom's struggles. That was when I got introduced to rice cakes. That's when I got introduced to like oh well, let's not eat Ritz crackers, let's eat Triskits because they're whole grain. Let's focus on these things. And then it was like actually we're going to cut out gluten, actually running, cut out all white flour. Actually we're going to cut out, you know, like, let's have a, let's have all these yes and no foods and help you feel better. I lost weight doing this diet. Now, the diet wasn't supposed to be to lose weight, it was to clear the black mold from my body. But I remember being like oh my gosh, my genes are loose and other people had made comments about how I look different and I'm like food makes my body look different. That was like the turning point was doing this eight week diet or whatever to get rid of black mold and then realizing like, oh, okay.
Gillian: 15:31
It's wild because I think that probably so many people listening can relate to this is that like the slippery slope into diet I don't want to say diet culture, because I feel like that word now is thrown around so much it's becoming kind of buzzwordy. Yeah, it is becoming very buzzwordy. I feel like the slippery slope from health into how do I control my body. It's really blurry where the line is, because for me it was like in college I realized I was like I'm living on all food. That is beige, because it was the first time that I was out of my dad's house and I didn't have anyone telling me that sugar was going to kill me. So I was like fuck, yeah, I'm going to live off of Starbucks coffee cake if I want to. I remember in my freshman year of college, someone worked at Starbucks and gifted us like an entire tray of Starbucks coffee cake and that was literally all I ate for like five days College life. Oh my gosh, exactly, exactly. And then I realized this might not be healthy. I should maybe eat some vegetables, and it was the first time I actually got to choose if I eat vegetables or not, instead of them being forced on me. And so I started experimenting and I was like, oh, I don't dislike them. I actually just didn't like people telling me what to do, like my dad trying to force it down my throat. And so, the first time I could really make autonomous decisions about what I ate, I started eating more fruits and vegetables and I also noticed oh my gosh. I remember one day I was like wearing an outfit that had fit me and all of a sudden I put the shorts on and they were like falling off and I was like, wait a minute, this is how. Like wow. And it went into like, at one point, all I ate, I would just eat five bananas a day. And it wasn't like it wasn't consciously a diet thing, it was just like I have connected eating vegetables and fruit makes me thin and I like that and that is healthy. And that went down the slippery slope of like, ok, well, how do I actually continue to do this? And I got really into all these fitness blogs and, like the mommy, lifestyle bloggers there was so many that I followed that would post every week. They'd post that what I eat in a day, right, and I would like compare what I eat in a day to them and look at their body type. That was the first thing that got the wheels turning of like how do I find the perfect diet to get my body to look like the way I never could? Because I got bullied for my weight. I got made fun of when I was 15. My dad asked me if I was pregnant once. I was like what are you even talking about? Just like wild stuff, but like four teenage me. And then it's like I'm sure that you probably have a similar point where it went from kind of dabbling and like how do I find the right diet to like I'm going to hardcore, do it.
Jess: 18:00
Yeah, from that portion of being a teenager and that initial dabbling into diving in was I ended up having a crush on a guy who was vegetarian and nothing wrong with being vegetarian or vegan, but I 100% became vegetarian because I realized it could allow me to control what I ate even more with a label on it. So people understood yeah, it was such an interesting for a and I mean that lasted three or four years.
Gillian: 18:28
That's so funny. I was vegetarian for a couple of years too, and then at one point I remember smelling chicken and being like I want to eat that and I just ate it. I was like I guess I'm not vegetarian anymore.
Jess: 18:37
That was exactly what happened to me too. I don't know Three or four years I don't remember how many exactly and we were grilling chicken outside. I'm like, oh my God, that smells really good. Ok, I'm going to eat it.
Gillian: 18:49
So I have a question. I don't know if you've covered this on the podcast before, but I know that sturdy girl came from like your uncles, making a comment about you being like a sturdy girl, and where were you in your body image at that moment and how did that comment make you feel?
Jess: 19:06
At that moment, I was in a pretty good place. I will say I spent about a decade running. I ran everything from five case to 50 case, like a full disclosure. My body image space when I first started running was when I run, I can control my body. That was also the second part to the whole. When did you realize you could equate food with controlling your body was in my early 20s. I was having some very weird health issues and decided to do like an elimination diet, take things out and then add back in and see how they affected things. And it was like oh, I have a gluten intolerance. Oh, I should be having dairy, oh I shouldn't whatever, and cut everything out except fruits, veggies and lean protein. And then had some beans and some nuts. But that was my like clean eating episode, right, and went into that. But that was also when I started running. She had this mind set of like well, runners need to be smaller, and I spent a lot of time in that space and started really working on body image stuff. A few years into that running journey, In 2020, I pivoted pretty hard and went from I ran a 50 K and then the next week I hired a powerlifting coach. So it was just like right turn and I'd lifted for years but not serious heavy lifting or anything and powerlifting was probably the best thing I ever did for my body image.
Gillian: 20:14
There is some really interesting research that, I have to admit, I have not read. I saw it came out and I was like I gotta read that on how power of powerlifting is effect on body image because it is so function based, yeah, and yet at the same time it's like very function based, but it's also a weight class sport and so it's like it's it is a mind fuck. Yeah, it is Olympic weight lifted for a while and it was probably one of the darkest times for my body image, maybe ever, and that's something too that, if I try to think as little as I can about the weight classes to be honest with you.
Jess: 20:47
But the rest of powerlifting I mean it was fantastic. But as far as that lunch with my great uncle, like making the comment about my body, I was in a decent place I will say that I went from running 40 ish miles a week on average to taking it down to running 10 to 15 miles a week and powerlifting and I love powerlifting but my body changed. It's that both and of. I love powerlifting, I loved getting stronger, but my clothes started to fit differently. The eating requirements shifted a little bit from running. Running will, like your body will scream at you that you are hungry. The hunger cues from running are so much different than the hunger cues from strength training. And so personally, I mean research says also, but like, personally for me it was hard to understand the fueling and like figure that piece out for myself for the body change and I was used to getting closer to having a quote unquote runner's body and then to start strength training and suddenly I'm like, oh my God, my scrubs, like scrubs, are meant to be loose, my scrubs are tight. Oh, I'm gaining muscle in my shoulders and my back, to the point that I have to go up a size in my scrub tops and that piece of it. And when that happened for me was when I was actively working through, like I'm OK with my body changing. I'm getting stronger, I love what I'm doing, I am metabolically healthy, but still that piece of I look in the mirror and I don't see the same body that I saw year prior.
Gillian: 22:10
Yeah, and no one really teaches us like in a real way. I think a lot of us say it and maybe see it on the internet. Well, I hope we see it on the internet. I'm realizing that we're very much in like a tiny little echo chamber and there is a lot of craziness on the internet that we just don't see it because you and I are in this bubble of people that kind of get it. But there's still some fucking wild stuff out there.
Jess: 22:34
Just get on TikTok. Just get on TikTok and search anything and you end up down that rabbit hole of like there are still so many crazies in this space.
Gillian: 22:44
Yeah, I think we're never taught that bodies are meant to change. That. Similarly to like, you learn new things and your brain changes and you now have new skills that you didn't have before. Like, your body also changes. And there's very much this rhetoric of you're supposed to find this ideal body and then somehow just like, preserve it forever. That doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, if you think about it, you wouldn't expect your relationship with your partner to stay the same forever. No, you wouldn't expect your hair to stay exactly the same forever.
Jess: 23:14
But somehow we expect, yeah, yeah. Nothing is static like that. It's insane to think about how much that is indirectly ingrained in us that we can achieve the perfect body or the dream body or the whatever, and get to that point and then it's just going to stay and you're going to stay away forever.
Gillian: 23:30
Exactly. I know we are going down so many rabbit holes here, but there's also this very much false belief that you're going to get your quote unquote ideal body and then, all of a sudden, everything's going to be great, you're going to reach this goal weight goal, body goal, physique whatever and your insecurities that you've held all of your life, that are probably something that started in childhood because of what you saw your parents do, or because of getting bullied in high school, or because of reading 17 magazine and like seeing all these completely unrealistic body types. It's like you're going to get this like quote unquote ideal body and then, all of a sudden, all of those insecurities, those are just gone.
Jess: 24:03
Right, think about movies. Think about how many movies were like they changed their face or their body or their whatever, and then they got the perfect life and the perfect guy. Yeah Well, I love the Princess Diaries growing up Like I read all the books.
Gillian: 24:18
My grandpa is in that movie, by the way. Sorry, that's so random. My grandpa's in that movie, that's awesome.
Jess: 24:24
So what you think about that? They gave her a makeover and then suddenly she looked like a princess. Yeah, yeah, you think about how many movies there are about making people change their bodies and then their life got better.
Gillian: 24:35
Yeah, and as millennials, like that is what we grew up with. We grew up with the skinny, good looking girl, like she was the one that got the super hot, muscular dude and all she needed was to not wear glasses or not have braces, or like all of a sudden she started working out and lost weight and even like mean girls one of my favorite movies ever. One of the things that they do to make Regina George like not hot anymore is feed her so that she gains weight. Definitely. What the fuck. I love that movie so much I know, but it's one of those things that, when we think about it, like I would imagine that probably a great bulk of the people listening are millennials. Like whether you're elder millennials like me or younger millennials like other people that are younger than us, you probably were exposed in a huge amount to the TV shows, to the movies, to the magazines, and I think this is where, like circling back to the self-compassion conversation we need to be really clear that self-compassion is not just being like it's okay that I don't need to change my body, so I'm just going to eat donuts all day, like that is absolutely not it. But I think that, especially for millennial women, we have a very big misunderstanding of what it means to practice self-compassion, and we also were brought up with this idea of like we need to be super hard on ourselves in order to shape our bodies, because that will get us what we want.
Jess: 25:55
I agree, and it's one of those things that self-compassion, it's not giving up. It's not saying like, oh well, I'm trying to be compassionate towards myself and I'm like, oh, I'm just not going to work out or I'm just going to eat all the foods. It's like, no, the self-compassion piece is taking care of you, it's making sure you're making the best decision for your entire being. And it amazes me too when I think about for myself and my fitness journey. Like, if you will, I was just safe and as loosely something like powerlifting, lifting, running, all of those things. So much of that journey was that I have to be disciplined, I have to be motivated. Like no days off. Because, reflecting back on my own point, I was dating a guy who is a total like meathead and end up getting super shredded and super low carb diet stuff.
Gillian: 26:37
But I have one of those in our past.
Jess: 26:40
Oh, absolutely. It taught me so many things. I was lifting six days a week, I was running four to five days a week my God, 30 to 40 miles, and I was eating a hundred grams of carbs a day.
Gillian: 26:52
Oh my God, I'm surprised you didn't break something I really am too. I mean, I guess well, never mind, did you have just one like crazy.
Jess: 26:59
I got a stress fracture in my right to be a. Absolutely not surprised at all, but it was always like oh, I'm so disciplined, I'm so motivated. Now I'm so proud of myself for being so motivated and getting up early on Saturday and Sunday, both for my runs and like yeah, well, but here's the thing is like.
Gillian: 27:17
I just wrote a post about this today that it was about like we need to stop normalizing all of these things that are actually not normal. We are glorifying the like. I need to work super hard, I need to be more disciplined, I need to be super consistent. We glorify this so much that there's no space left for context. And also two things can exist, like for some people, macro tracking is not a path to disorder and for other people, macro tracking is a direct route to disordered eating. Yeah, but I hear like the nuance is not. I think, one, it's not well understood by the individuals that are guiding people there, and two, I think that there's not a lot of understanding on how to gauge. Is this the right decision for me right now, at this point in time? Yep.
Jess: 28:09
I just signed on a client recently and we had this conversation because they were like I want to run, I want to lift, I want to work on my nutrition, I want to work on my body image, I want all the things, all the change, all the right now. And at this point the person was doing none of those things. So the excitement and the readiness to change right, we can go back to talking about like stages of change, the readiness to change and the excitement for that piece. That's all you need to get started. And then it was like all right, how do we narrow this down and focus on one thing at a time? Let's break down the nutrition piece, let's have a lot more conversations around that to decide where we're starting with that, where are we at with that, so that we're not giving you structured macro tracking. Because that was like. The first suggestion was like let's track macros and it's like that's not the place to start because we don't know if that's a trigger or not. Where do you go from there? But then when you have to be like, hey, you want to go from doing nothing, fitness wise or nutrition wise, I say nothing. That makes me feel bad, but like there's no focus on any of those things to.
Gillian: 29:13
I want to run and lift and do nutrition and I'm like, okay, okay, sorry, but my answer is no, we have to take it one thing at a time, yeah, and I feel like as a coach, one of the really challenging things is how do we harness this motivation to want to do things and also balance that with really clear expectations of what it looks like to build a skill, and anyone that follows me on Instagram or has heard any of my podcasts or anything knows that skill building is probably the thing that I talk about the most, and a lot of it, I think, when it comes to food and our body, comes from this idea of like I should know how to do this stuff already, so I should be able to go through it really quickly. Right, it's like, oh, I hire a coach for nutrition, but like I should know how to eat. I've been eating my whole life. I should be able to figure this out super quickly. And it's actually, if we look at it, any skill. If we look at it like learning a language, like even if you've, like, lived in Germany for six months, you would not go to one German class and expect to have a full conversation in German.
Jess: 30:10
And expect to have a husband who speaks fluent French and go to France multiple times and actually think you can speak French, yeah.
Gillian: 30:17
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And this is where I think it can be really, really frustrating. And again we go back to the self-compassion piece, because it's like when you believe that I should know how to do this already, that takes brain space and energy from I'm learning how to do this. It doesn't matter whether I should or should not, it literally doesn't matter because you don't.
Jess: 30:38
If we can accept that, you're setting yourself up for the frustration piece Exactly. You're setting yourself up for, instead of like I'm curious enough to go into building the skill I want to learn, it's like why can't I do this? And then you get into that shame piece, you guilt yourself. You look at suddenly, instead of being excited for whatever if it's focusing on the intrusion piece, and you're like why am I doing this? Right, you've come full circle. I love the thought of skill building.
Gillian: 31:08
I find that when I coach clients a lot of the time, it's easier to understand concepts when you can kind of like frame it into something that they understand. I talk about values all the time and I think that actually values are an incredible tool for changing your body image and for me, that was a huge catalyst was understanding, like what do I actually value, what's actually important to me, and I realized I'm not doing a lot of the things that are important to me because my entire personality is macro tracking and CrossFit Right. And so here I think where, when we look at like, one of the examples that I use for values is when clients are first understanding like the skill of making values, aligned decisions is I'll talk about it like like shoes, like you have certain shoes that work for certain occasions. You have some shoes that you like better, some shoes that you like less, but sometimes you'll put on a pair of shoes just because it really makes sense for like the thing that you're doing, right, yeah, yeah. And here this is like trying out values, aligned decision making. You might try on a pair of shoes and be like I don't know if they go with this outfit, but I'm going to give it a try, right, and you don't beat yourself up because you chose the wrong shoes one time. You're just like next time I'm not going to wear these. But some people do beat themselves up. They're like I chose the wrong shoes, I look terrible, everybody's judging me. That is not. That doesn't actually help you make a different decision. That just makes you feel bad for the decision that you made, which you already made, the decision. You can't do anything about it.
Jess: 32:23
Yeah, I like that and I love the values based living. That's something too that I have conversations with clients a lot in regards to like we're training for a race, you're getting ready to run a half marathon and you have kids and over the weekend you got in most of your long run but realize you were out of time because you had to make it to your kids soccer game. You feel guilty because you didn't get in all of your mileage and you're beating yourself up because you don't feel like you're going to be prepared for the race. You know, and you go into the spiral of like I didn't complete my planned runs perfectly Until. Then it comes back to the conversation of what are your values. One of your biggest values in life is family and you were there for your kids soccer game because that is what is most important to you. Missing a mile and a half off of your long run is not going to make or break your training. There's nothing you need to change. There's nothing you would have done differently. If you pull back and pull out of like I didn't execute perfectly on my training plan this week and look at what's most important to you when you put your number one value is family and the second one is connection. What are you doing? You are living your values based life Like that is the most important thing, and it has become such a cornerstone of coaching, is having those conversations, because at first I don't set it up necessarily for any education around values. It just comes up naturally through through coaching, right, and so at first, like clients are like my values, I don't, I don't know Like what are you talking about? Like their first thought, especially if they've worked in corporate before, is like mission, business values, like that kind of thing. And they're like corporate, what?
Gillian: 33:57
It's so funny Cause I was actually just talking to a friend of mine about this, because for me it's very much like a pillar for my life and this was understanding values I genuinely believe was like one of the big things, like a few different components of my life that got me out of the cycle that I was in with food and fitness and all of that. There were two main things. One was like one was values and recognizing that like I'm not living in alignment with my values at all, because all I'm ever thinking about is how I look. And then the second thing was also having people to talk to about it, and I actually just got this question recently on Instagram. It was like, how did you do it? And I talk about it a lot, but I guess I never really went into the fact that, like I had two other female coach friends who were going through the exact same thing I was going through. We got to talk about recovering our periods together. We got to talk about letting go of macro tracking. We got to talk about like hey, I used to be obsessed with peanut butter and now this is how I'm building it in, so I don't feel like I have to eat the entire jar anymore, and that is why I chose to do body image coaching as a group, because having people to talk to about the things that felt really challenging and knowing that other people thought the same thing was so fucking powerful. I love that.
Jess: 35:10
And I love that you had people going through it at the same time. They're so awesome.
Gillian: 35:15
And it's unique because most people don't have that opportunity. But that's why I think, as coaches, we can create that, and so it's like I'll get people that are like, no, I would rather do one on one. And I'm like you don't know how much more powerful and probably better this experience can go if you open yourself up to speaking to other people about it, Even if you start like with the least triggering things to share. I see this in my nutrition. That's why I have the confident eater, which is like my food mindset program, and I see the group and how they're interacting and it's like understanding that someone else is going through something very similar to you can be motivating for both of you.
Jess: 35:51
Well, isn't that one of the parts of the definition of self compassion is like, yeah, common humanity, knowing that you're not alone in your struggles and your experiences.
Gillian: 36:01
Yeah, and I think that one of the biggest factors for staying stuck in a cycle of negative body image or disorder eating, or even eating disorders like one of the things that perpetuates the cycle, is feeling like I don't have anybody that can understand what I'm going through and also I'm ashamed to share because there must be something wrong with me.
Jess: 36:17
Yeah, I'm like just nodding my head over here I agree.
Gillian: 36:20
Yeah, all of it. Yeah, I mean, I think probably, if anybody takes away anything from this, it would be to explore the idea that self compassion is not necessarily going easy on yourself, but you might need to be going a little bit easier on yourself to move forward, in a way that you can't hate yourself into change.
Jess: 36:39
Yeah, and here's the thing Restrain yourself into a motivation.
Gillian: 36:43
I think so many people would completely agree 100% with that statement and also be like yeah, but I don't know any other way, yeah, and so they can be like yeah, I know that I can't, but I also don't have any other tool or skill to use in this case.
Jess: 36:59
And this is where it's like it's such that all or nothing right. It's either like I'm disciplined and I'm motivated and I'm pushing myself, or it's I'm going to sit and eat the whole bag of chips in one sitting.
Gillian: 37:09
Yeah, which is also not self compassionate because, like, your future self is probably not sitting there, being like I'm so glad I ate that entire bag of chips, my body feels so great right now. Like maybe sometimes you do feel good eating the whole bag of chips. Maybe you're like oh my gosh, I'm traveling, I don't have access to food and eating the whole bag of chips is like the self compassionate decision because it's either I eat the whole bag of chips or I don't eat anything. Right, likely eating a handful of chips and then be like you know what, if I want some more later, I'll have some more later. That's probably, in most cases, the more self-compassionate decision.
Jess: 37:41
And that's another skill to Bob. I love that it's come back to self-compassion, because that has come up in every single episode of the podcast so far.
Gillian: 37:49
I think the common humanity element is, like, really, really important when it comes to body image, because the fact of the matter is, even though, like your body and my body probably look totally different, but like the thing that we have in common is, like our bodies are different and that's normal, right, yeah. And so it's like we feel like I need to look like this person. Like this person runs the lifts. I want to look like that person, and part of the self-compassion piece is recognizing that your body and her body can do similar things and they will never look the same, and that's a good thing.
Jess: 38:17
Absolutely, and I think that, too, the common humanity piece is really important, because we have media of all types that show you what the I would say common humanity, but what we're supposed to look like or what everyone else looks like everyone else like air quotes looks like. So, when you can form connections with other people who are working on their body image in a healthy way and you are able to connect and say we are working towards similar goals, but we look completely different, it helps you explore the idea of what a healthy body image looks like, what a healthy relationship with yourself looks like, because that's something, too, that I keep coming back to in every episode. It's not just body image, it's how you think and feel about your appearance, but it's also looking at your relationship with yourself, because that's 100% right. That's guiding your decisions in nutrition, in how you take care of your body, how you feed yourself, how you move your body, how you think about your body, how you talk about your body, what kind of relationship do you have with yourself. And that just comes full circle.
Gillian: 39:14
So I have to hop off in a minute, but there are two things. One, it has to do with the celebrity thing and then one other thing about how powerful like changing or working on your body image can be. So there was a post that I saw on Instagram a couple of months ago and it was like Megan Fox comes out and says that she hates her body, or like is insecure about her body, or whatever Something about Megan Fox having bad body image and like. If you're listening and you don't know who Megan Fox is, you would see a photo of her and she is sort of like the idealized body standard, right Like big boobs, flat stomach, looks, fit, claims she never works out, whatever. That's not the point. The point is is in the comments of that post, where people being like this is bullshit, like there's no way. This is true, she's just making it up. If she has bad body image, there's no chance for the rest of us. And I dove into the comments and I left a very lengthy comment being like look, this is actually something that we need to realize that body image and appearance are not related. You could look at someone that you think is objectively gorgeous and what is going on in their heads as far as their own body image maybe not congruent whatsoever, and so this is where I think part of like going back to that common handy humanity piece is we need to remember that everybody, what's going on outside, what's going on inside is very different, and we cannot assume that when you look at someone, they believe, like you could look at someone that you think is horribly ugly or someone that you think is incredibly attractive, and what is going on in their own heads as far as their body image is likely not what you expect. Nope, someone's outward appearance has nothing to do what goes on in the head, that's, but I think we have this belief of like yeah, but if my outward appearance was better, my body image would be better, and that's where it's like we end up with this. It's two separate things. No, no.
Jess: 40:56
I was just gonna say it's two separate things. Yeah, it's body image and it's physical appearance. They're, you know, they're obviously like our own body image and our appearance. Get there right. That's all body images. But like, working on your body image is a mental thing, working on your appearance as a physical right.
Gillian: 41:11
So it's a separate thing. So yeah, improving your appearance, your body, is not going to improve your body image, you have improving your body image can improve how you feel about your appearance, which is like I'm sure you've said that on every single podcast. Yeah, but the point that I wanted to make that I think was really interesting for me is I thought that I had social anxiety. I'm a fairly outgoing person. I have my introvert moments. Like an introverted extrovert, you never know what you're going to get really. But for a period of like three or four years I believed that I had social anxiety, like actually was telling people oh yeah, I have social anxiety. I didn't realize until I started actually doing specific work on my body image that my social anxiety was tied to how preoccupied with my appearance I was. So now I can easily go into a situation in which I do not know people or I don't necessarily feel comfortable around people, and I can still have a really good time in the situation, and so much of that is attributed to the fact that I am no longer sitting there wondering what other people think about my looks.
Jess: 42:10
That's amazing. It's wild, it's something for people to consider too. That will go into situations feeling like they have social anxiety, and you wonder how much of that is tied to how do I look?
Gillian: 42:20
I do know people that like it's not related. I have a friend who has generalized anxiety and her social anxiety didn't necessarily change when she worked on her body image, but for me specifically, as someone who does not have generalized anxiety, like that was just a manifestation of insecurities. The beautiful thing about that is like it's not some chemical imbalance in my brain. It is literally like I can change what I think, feel, do and believe about my body and in doing so I get to change my experience in the world.
Jess: 42:50
That's really powerful and something that I don't think is considered often enough that working on the skill building of improving your body image legitimately can improve your life and the way that you experience the world 100%.
Gillian: 43:01
I should go to improv class.
Jess: 43:04
Go you. That is awesome. I was gonna say this is probably a really good place to wrap things up, Blake. A couple years my husband did improv class and I went to like their performance or whatever.
Gillian: 43:14
Just props. It's so fun, it's like it's so fun and it's also it's so interesting because it's one of those things that, like, I knew that I wanted to get back into it, because I did it when I lived in San Francisco and I put it off, and I put it off. And I put it off because I was worried about how it would affect my eating schedule. Before the pandemic, which was like a lot of the work on my body image, started around like 2019. And so I probably looked at improv around like 2018. I remember thinking, oh, I can't do that because it interferes with my eating schedule.
Jess: 43:43
The priorities have shifted. Oh God, so much. That is awesome, Learning the power of yes and it's so much fun.
Gillian: 43:50
You show up and everybody is all awkward and by the end you're like I'm a chipmunk living in a gas station in the middle of rural Nevada, Like here's my story. It's just wild, the shit that people come up with.
Jess: 44:01
Okay, side note, the imagination that's required for that. I just finished a book about the science of play and how important it is, even as adults, to learn to play and use our imaginations Like. I love that so much. That's awesome. Well, thank you for this. This was awesome. This was so much fun. One question, and you can think about this answer later. I have been reading a book and I'm just curious to know your perspective. I'm reading a book called Regaining Body Trust. It's really interesting because it talks about undoing diet culture and reconnecting with our bodies and all of those things. But it's very, very, very anti-diet, it's very anti-changing your appearance and those things. And I like a lot of the learning to take care of your body, learning to re-listen to the cues that your body gives you on how to take care of yourself. But I'm curious your thoughts on how do you marry the unlearning diet culture and relearning body trust and all of these pieces with like, you don't necessarily have to be anti-diet, you don't have to hate all of those things, because basically they're trying to point research to this. They're like, yeah, there's nothing you can do to affect your body size, like it's all genetics, it's predetermined, it's all of these things. So, like you do, it feels good to you, it doesn't matter.
Gillian: 45:10
Yeah, I would say I'm anti-diet in the sense of the traditional diet, but I think that, like, it's all gray area right, and so anything that is on either end of the spectrum is probably something that we want to be a little bit skeptical of. I'll hear people being like you cannot trust your hunger. We live in an obese-genic environment, and I'm like that's not correct. But also, if you wake up every morning and you're like I guess I'll just eat what I feel like seeing like, even in intuitive eating, one of the principles is gentle nutrition. So gentle nutrition, you can apply that and simply being like I'm going to nourish my body in a way that I know feels really good. But I think also, when you reach a point of like being pretty neutral with food and also noticing, hey, I might prefer my body a little bit smaller, but like, I am totally fine with it if it's not, I think when someone reaches that point and you're like, hey, I'd like to approach a fat loss phase and just like see how it goes, but also not be tied to the outcome, yeah, I don't see any problem with that, and that's a conversation that I actually have with clients because they'll be like, look, I really want to lose weight. I'm like let's do work on body image, let's do work on mindful eating and finding a place of balance first, and then let's revisit this conversation, because if you're still like, hey, you know what, I'd really love to see a little bit more muscle definition, but you're also not like myself confidence hinges on this body change then I don't see any problem with it, with someone pursuing a body change when they have a clear understanding of this isn't affecting myself, worth at all.
Jess: 46:34
Yeah, no, I like that. Thank you. Yeah, it's just interesting. I don't feel like it feels like anti taking care of yourself. I'm like you can't just be like, oh well, genetics determine that this is what my body looks like, so I'm just gonna eat whatever I want and do whatever I want. I'm like that's not.
Gillian: 46:47
And here's the thing is that, like I do very firmly believe in choice where it's like hey, if you really don't want to put a lot of thought into what you're eating and you don't necessarily want very unbiased education on, like this is a protein, this is a carb, this is a fat, that feels damaging or like triggering to you in any way, like cool, that is 100% your choice. I think here is where and I talk a lot like in the confident eater I talk a lot about internal wisdom and external wisdom and finding the balance between the two of like hey, internally, if you do go into fat loss phase, like you're going to feel a little bit of hunger, that's your internal wisdom. And also externally, you can take it into consideration Chicken breast is a lower fat protein source than salmon. Like that's in. That is information, that is unbiased information. Now, can we take that information in and use it to make choices that don't make us feel like good or bad or superior or worse or whatever? Then great. But I think probably this book and this is something this is like a theory that I have is that usually with movements, things want to swing way to the other side before settling in the middle, and so I feel like the anti diet movement is like very heavily pushing for, like I want to snag all of the people that think that diets are killing them or whatever, but we don't necessarily have a really, really strong voice in the middle yet of. You can care about your physical health, you can care about your nutrition, you can want to see results in the gym or whatever it is, and also not hate yourself until you see those things.
Jess: 48:08
Are we going to become the strong voice in the middle? Yeah, I hope so. We're going to become the strong voice in the middle. I love it, I love it.
Gillian: 48:15
Well, I'm going to go eat my extraordinarily early dinner so that I don't get really hungry three hours into my improv class Sounds good.
Jess: 48:22
Thank you for this.
Gillian: 48:23
It was so nice to like see your face and chat with you.
Jess: 48:27
If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please feel free to follow, subscribe, like whatever the heck you do with podcasts. As always, stay sturdy, friends, and we'll talk to you next week.