Introduction to Food and Body Awareness

Summary

Podcast Summary: Feminist Survival Project
Episode: Introduction to Food and Body Awareness
Release Date: March 20, 2025

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1. Introduction

In the inaugural episode of the Feminist Survival Project, hosts Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski delve into the intricate relationship between food and body awareness. Aimed at feminists feeling the weight of societal expectations and personal pressures, this episode sets the foundation for a series exploring how to navigate food choices amidst overwhelming external advice and internal signals.

2. The Challenge of Listening to Your Body

Amelia kicks off the discussion by highlighting the fundamental rule when it comes to eating: "listen to your body, period" (02:06). While seemingly simple, this practice poses significant challenges for many, including herself. The struggle lies not only in deciphering the body's messages but also in resisting the urge to adhere to external dietary advice.

Amelia (02:06): "Listen to your body, period. Which sounds so. Oh, it's so simple. But some of us find it really difficult to listen to our body."

3. Conflicting External Advice vs. Internal Cues

The conversation quickly shifts to the conflict between societal food rules and personal bodily responses. Amelia shares her ordeal of adhering to popular health advice during her COVID-19 recovery, only to find that following external guidelines exacerbated her digestive issues.

Amelia (02:17): "I'm recovering from COVID which, again, trashed my liver again, which means that my appetite is broken. I can't eat, really, any fat or protein or fiber without having pain in my stomach and severe digestive distress."

Emily supports this by discussing the variability in food science and how conflicting studies contribute to the confusion about what constitutes healthy eating.

Emily (04:30): "This is because they will say literally opposite things. And the reason that happens is.... food science is incredibly complicated."

4. Personal Experiences with Food and Health

Amelia provides concrete examples of how external advice conflicted with her bodily needs. She recounts her experience with kombucha and lemon water—both touted as health elixirs—only to find them detrimental due to her high histamine levels.

Amelia (05:58): "Turns out kombucha... is also high histamine, and I have a problem with histamines. And so, like, it was actually really bad for me."

Emily relates by sharing her unique food cravings post-migraine, emphasizing the body's specific needs over generalized advice.

Emily (08:24): "I want to start by helping people understand.... you have to listen to your body."

5. The Importance of Doing Your Best

Both hosts emphasize the concept of "doing your best" with the resources at hand, acknowledging that perfect adherence to dietary rules is neither feasible nor necessary. They draw parallels with smoking cessation, illustrating how short-term discomfort often outweighs long-term benefits in motivating behavior change.

Emily (13:09): "This is a harm reduction strategy... I'm trying to get through the day."

Amelia echoes this sentiment, reinforcing that listening to one's body and adapting to its signals is paramount, even when it diverges from societal expectations.

Amelia (20:40): "Believe me, let my suffering not have been in vain, that I can teach this lesson. Listen to your body."

6. Resources and Recommendations

To support listeners in their journey toward intuitive eating, Emily and Amelia recommend various YouTube channels that offer relatable and non-prescriptive content. They caution listeners to view these resources as entertainment rather than concrete advice.

• Future Canoe: A comedic channel that satirizes food culture and societal norms around eating.
• Black Forager: An informative channel focused on foraging and understanding edible plants.
• Internet Shaquille: Offers practical cooking tips aimed at simplifying food preparation without diving into nutritional dogma.
• Tasting History: Combines culinary exploration with historical narratives.

Amelia (40:07): "This is just a pretty much neutral, like, in terms of diet culture and whatever. Like, this is a pretty much a neutral site."

7. Conclusion

Wrapping up the episode, Emily and Amelia reiterate the three core principles for navigating food choices:

1. Listen to Your Body: Prioritize internal signals over external advice.
2. Do Your Best with Available Resources: Consider time, money, energy, and current health status when making food decisions.
3. Shorten Decision Timeframes: Focus on what feels right for the present moment rather than long-term perfection.

They underscore the importance of self-compassion in the struggle to align food choices with personal well-being, reminding listeners that perfection is neither attainable nor necessary.

Emily (46:04): "Fold in the cheese. This is the Schitt's Creek. We don't know how to cook, but we're pretending that we do."

Amelia (46:14): "Don't Lordy Lord, the self-compassion required just to. Just to like, eat food and be a person in the world."

The episode concludes with a hopeful message: "You're an omnivore, like a goat. You're gonna be all right."

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Notable Quotes

• Amelia (02:06): "Listen to your body, period."
• Emily (04:30): "Food science is incredibly complicated."
• Amelia (05:58): "Kombucha... is also high histamine, and I have a problem with histamines."
• Emily (08:24): "I want to start by helping people understand.... you have to listen to your body."
• Emily (13:09): "This is a harm reduction strategy... I'm trying to get through the day."
• Amelia (20:40): "Listen to your body instead of what people say you ought to be eating."
• Emily (46:04): "Fold in the cheese. This is the Schitt's Creek."
• Amelia (46:14): "Self-compassion required just to eat food and be a person in the world."

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Key Takeaways

• Individualized Nutrition: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to eating. Personal bodily responses should guide food choices over generalized advice.
• Navigating Conflicting Information: The complexity of food science and varying bodily needs can make dietary guidelines confusing and sometimes contradictory.
• Self-Compassion and Flexibility: Embracing self-compassion and adapting to current resources and health status are essential for sustainable and stress-free eating habits.
• Community and Support: Understanding that food choices are influenced by societal structures and community support can help in making informed and compassionate decisions regarding eating.

Looking Ahead

This episode lays the groundwork for future discussions on various aspects of food and body awareness. Subsequent episodes are expected to explore specific topics in depth, providing listeners with strategies and insights to further develop a healthy and intuitive relationship with food.

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Note: This summary excludes non-content sections such as advertisements, intros, and outros, focusing solely on the substantive discussions between Emily and Amelia Nagoski.

Transcript

[Amelia]

Hi, everybody. This is Amelia. I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be trying something new on Fridays at 4. I'm going to be going live on our YouTube channel. That's YouTube.com feministsurvivalproject. I'll be going live Fridays at 4 Eastern Time. And from February 21st through the end of March, we'll be answering questions, singing songs and generally just having a nice time. I hope you'll join me. I am drinking peppermint tea and it genuinely helps.

[Emily]

Yeah, peppermint tea is the bomb.

[Amelia]

It's a known soother for the digestive system.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

So we're talking about food today.

[Emily]

We're going to talk about food. We're going to talk. It's a really big topic.

[Amelia]

We're going to talk about food in multiple episodes, different aspects of it. But today we're going to lay the one foundation, the one rule, really, that you need to follow when you eat food, which is listen to your body, period. Which sounds so. Oh, it's so simple. But some of us find it really difficult to listen to our body. Some of us. I mean, me and the struggle with listening to your body is twofold. There's one, hearing the messages and understanding them, and two, fighting the urge to follow advice you've been given by external sources. Yes, we're talking about this today. It's really relevant because I'm recovering from COVID which, again, trashed my liver again, which means that my appetite is broken. I can't eat, really, any fat or protein or fiber without having pain in my stomach and severe digestive distress, about.

[Emily]

Which we will go into no more detail.

[Amelia]

No more detail, but suffice it to say I've been eating simple carbohydrates for a month when ordinarily that's the opposite of how I eat. And I have been so tempted to, like, keep trying to expand my diet because the world says in your sick, you need nutritious food full of minerals and vitamins and fiber. And every time I try to do that because my brain's like, you should be doing this. So says the external world, my stomach rebels. And this fight between external rules and internal guidance is so much harder than I feel like it should be.

[Emily]

So here's us making, like, I guess, external guidance for food choices. But our external guidance is don't listen to us, listen to your body. Yeah, there's all kinds of things we could say. And I, you know, I taught college women. I have had to find ways to talk about nutrition, which matters In a way that includes everybody, without reinforcing diet culture.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

So, like, we could talk about specific nutritional choices. You might want to try and see if it works for your body. But that's. That's not what today is about.

[Amelia]

Nope, we'll probably do that.

[Emily]

We'll probably do that sometime when me mentioning foods does not make you feel physically unwell.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

[Emily]

You bet. So when. When we can talk about food, we will talk about different sort of ideas of how people are supposed, like, supposed to eat. Nutritional choices that may or may not be a good fit for your body. I want to start by helping people understand why, even though everybody listening to this has already heard a whole lot of advice and, like, news stories about a study that says that proves that X, Y, as a superfood and really healthy for you, and here's what you should do. The reason it's all because they will say literally opposite things. And the reason that happens is. Well, part of it is that food science is incredibly complicated.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And also, people vary from each other, and they change over their lifespan. So you might read a thing that's like, here, try this, and you try it, and it's great for you.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But also, you might try it, and, like, you're like, this is terrible. There must be something wrong with me, because this doesn't feel good, and it doesn't help me at all in any way.

[Amelia]

Can I give you an example of that?

[Emily]

Oh, please do.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Back when Covid first started and people were at home all the time and everybody was making sourdough bread, I started making kombucha. My. My digestive system had not been fantastic for the past year before COVID So when I had time, now, I was going to stay home and make my.

[Emily]

Own kombucha, which is so good for the gut.

[Amelia]

It's so good for the gut. And my gut needed some help because something was wrong. And I went. I made a lot of kombucha. I drank a lot of kombucha at home, like, as hearty. And as. You know, it's the thing that everybody was like, this is gonna be great. So that when I moved from western Massachusetts to Cape Cod, I moved my scoby like it was a pet, like, in its own container to keep it alive through the move. And. And so. And then I kept making kombucha, and I was like, why does my gut not feel better? My gut feels worse when I drink kombucha.

[Emily]

I should drink more kombucha. God, so much kombucha.

[Amelia]

Turns out. Turn kombucha. It's completely true about the microbiome stuff and all the, like, little yeasty beasties that.

[Emily]

Totally true. Yep.

[Amelia]

But. But it turns out it's also high histamine, and I have a problem with histamines. And so, like, it was actually really bad for me. And. But I was only following this advice because the world said it. Some external source, and my body had been telling me all along this is.

[Emily]

And your actual, like, gi doc was not against you drinking kombucha?

[Amelia]

Oh, no, no. Perfectly.

[Emily]

It's really good.

[Amelia]

It's good for you.

[Emily]

It's good for.

[Amelia]

And I wasn't even drinking, like, the high sugar, like, commercially produced kombucha, because they're like, oh, there's a lot of sugar. And. No, I was drinking at home. Like, I would put it with, like, prune juice, which.

[Emily]

Good gravy.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Now let's cut me saying good gravy in response to Amelia talking about prune juice.

[Amelia]

I don't think you should. Let's reduce the side.

[Emily]

How about I say, okay, wow. Instead. Okay.

[Amelia]

Yeah, this is. I would also drink wine. That was a delicious.

[Emily]

Oh, we made up a song about that.

[Amelia]

Kombucha and wine.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah, that was the song. Anyway, it turns out I followed this external advice for, like, a year and a half, and then it was, this isn't working.

[Emily]

There must be something wrong with me. I should try harder. I should drink more of it.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I was wrong. I did the same thing with lemon water. Lemon water was supposed to help increase my stomach acid. I had acid reflux because I had insufficient stomach acid. And that is true.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

But it turns out lemon water. Also super high histamine. And. Yeah, made me worse.

[Emily]

Amelia is what we call medically complex.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So, like, the advice that people give about things that are going to be good for you. This is going to help you in your situation. No, it turns out no one in the outside world knew, and my body had been trying to tell me, and it took so long for me to figure it out because I. I know I'm supposed to listen to my body, but it's so hard to do.

[Emily]

It is so much easier to listen to other people's opinions about how you should live in your body.

[Amelia]

It's so much easier to learn a rule and follow the rule. I love following a rule. But I have to listen to my body to find out what the rules are.

[Emily]

Yes. Because the only source of food rules. And if you started listening to this episode thinking that we were gonna like, give you, like, diet rules about what to eat.

[Amelia]

Yeah, that's.

[Emily]

That's not what this is.

[Amelia]

No.

[Emily]

I hope to provide some concrete, specific strategies for helping you to listen to your body. Because it's like, for me, as we all know by now, my body will not shut up about telling me what it needs in specifically after I have a migraine. It is a phenomenon that I can predict that I'm going to have some really specific food craving. That my body is just like, there is something you need to help you get over the finish line of this migraine. And it is chicken tikka masala. I'm sorry about mentioning a food.

[Amelia]

That's okay.

[Emily]

It is. It is some specific food and I know that that's going to happen and I'm going to listen to my body and I'm going to make sure it gets what it is asking for. And apparently, is it. Is it actually the case that people have, say that cravings are just emotional?

[Amelia]

Yeah. There's definitely an idea going around that when you have a craving for a specific food, that that's quote, unquote, just emotional eating. Whereas if you're just hungry and anything will satisfy your hunger, that's when you should really eat. That's real hunger.

[Emily]

Real hunger. So two things about that.

[Amelia]

It's a message that exists, which is untrue.

[Emily]

Yeah. One, if somebody is pregnant and they have specific cravings, I feel like people are pretty comfortable accepting that, like, your body is doing this very strange thing that it will do extremely few times in its life of growing a human. So you might have some really specific nutritional deficits that it's gonna tell you about.

[Amelia]

I think you have more faith in society than I do because I feel like if a pregnant person is having a specific craving, that there's going to be people around who say, like, oh, you don't need to eat that. You know what you. What you're going to. You're going to have to lose so much more weight after the baby.

[Emily]

Jesus God Almighty.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It's really. It's really gross out there.

[Emily]

So the second thing I want to say about the idea of a craving just being emotional. Emotions happen in your body.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Specifically, they happen in your literal gut. Yeah.

[Emily]

Actual literal.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

The food that you eat changes your mental state.

[Amelia]

Yeah. There's a dense network of neurons in and around your intestines.

[Emily]

Right. And food acts as like, it changes the neurotransmitters in your gut brain, essentially. So I struggle with the seasonal affective situ. I have a situationship with the dark and cold, where being cold makes me angry and being in the dark makes me despair.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So I spend a lot of the winter angry.

[Amelia]

And Massachusetts, and I live in Massachusetts.

[Emily]

So I spend like a chunk of time just like trying to get through. And ultimately our advice in addition to listen to your body is do your best.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And my best over the winter is going to include refined carbohydrates, which are known to increase serotonin, which helps just to soothe the pain. It is literally pain management for me. And now that here we are in March, my body's desire for those kinds of food is like, drifting away, like magic. Because my body's responses are. My body's really tuned into the environment and like, just is like always trying to let me know what's up with it. And the more I follow what it tells me to do, the better off I am. And like.

[Amelia]

But Emily, refined carbohydrates are bad for you. That's what the world says.

[Emily]

I'm but trigger warning for the next 30 seconds. You know, it's bad for me killing myself.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

This is a harm reduction strategy. It is not incorrect that many people have long term health consequences related to the regular consumption of refined carbohydrates, specifically sugar, especially sugar in liquid form.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I'm just trying to get through the day.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I'm trying to get through January.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And January is four months long.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It is. Truly, truly.

[Emily]

So I'm gonna go ahead and take that hit.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Of the potential for long term consequences. This is. Here's, this is my, like, practical tip. Listen to your body, do your best. And the reason people get so. Oh, jerk. I have so many feelings about food choices is that food choices. It's very rare that we're going to be in a circumstance like Amelia's where the food we choose to eat today is going to impact our health today.

[Amelia]

Today. Yeah, today.

[Emily]

Unless you have a food allergy, it is really unlikely that the food you eat today is going to impact your health immediately. It probably won't even impact it this week.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So in health behavior, we think about behavior change according to, like, timescale. The analogy here is smoking. Right. So the immediate effects of stopping smoking. I say this as a former smoker.

[Amelia]

Yeah. The immediate consequence in public health.

[Emily]

While I was getting my PhD in public health, I was absolutely smoking because we are all doing our best with the resources we have available. And I was really depressed while I was in grad school as are so many grad students. Anyway, so the short term consequence of stopping smoking, like the immediate today consequences are I am very uncomfortable and very unpleasant to be around as a human.

[Amelia]

What you.

[Emily]

The 40 year consequence of quitting smoking is probably, maybe, but not definitely reducing my risk of certain really appalling health issues.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like I didn't want emphysema or lung cancer. Those are not things I wanted. There is no guarantee that I would have gotten those things if I had kept smoking. There is no guarantee that I won't get those things even though I quit smoking so soon. We were talking about goals last time. Soon, certain positive. Like I know for sure certainly that I will immediately feel terrible.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Right. So like that's a lot of motivation not to quit smoking.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Whereas like, you gotta like really bear in mind long term, the long term consequences and, or like really focus on like what are the positive. Shorter term, like my asthma won't be as bad or I'll be able to like walk further and not wheeze and I won't laugh like a smoker. I won't smell terrible.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I will not be a profound hypocrite.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

I swear. One of the things that prevented me, like it took after I stopped smoking, it took me 10 years to stop craving nicotine.

[Amelia]

Wow.

[Emily]

Yeah. And I definitely would have started smoking again if I were not literally the director of wellness education on a college campus.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Where I lived less than a mile from the campus.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

Like students would definitely have seen the wellness director smoking a cigarette. That was the, the, that was like the, like soon, certain positive, like I definitely would have received that negative sense. It also gave me a lot of credibility when I talked about tobacco cessation. When we finally went tobacco free as a campus, I had a lot of credibility as a former smoker of being like, you know what if somebody were sawing through a piece of asbestos in the middle of Chapin Lawn? We would not accept that.

[Amelia]

Right, Right.

[Emily]

It's class A carcinogen.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Guess what's also a class A carcinogen. Right.

[Amelia]

Anyway, so in terms of food choices, this is a direct parallel because most food choices won't make you feel better or worse today necessarily. But long term food choices may. May or may not contribute to disease.

[Emily]

May.

[Amelia]

But your advice for choosing food.

[Emily]

So my advice is to like. So you take an existing sort of behavioral benchmark. If you grocery shop every day, you make a choice every day. If you grocery shop once a week, you make the choice once a week. If you Grocery shop. Once a month you go to Costco, you get one of those shopping carts that would fit two college students in it, and you put things in there so that by the time you look at the food you have accumulated in whatever size basket you have, you think, this, this is the food I'm going to be consuming for the next. Whatever the time period is. And I'm going to feel pretty good because of eating these choices. Instead of thinking about eating for, you know, when you're 70.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Eat for this week.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And then when you're 70, you can look back on the choices you made and be like, I did my best. I made the best choices I could with the resources I had available.

[Emily]

Right. And the resources you have available are going to change a lot. When I was in grad school, I was broke. My grocery budget was minuscule, but I had time and energy to cook.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So I was making sort of mediocre nutritional choices because nutritional choices are very much a rich person's game.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But I had time to cook, which helped a lot to increase the quality of the food. Now I have more money, but I don't have very much energy to cook it. Also, I really don't enjoy cooking like I wish I did. I have tried and I found a couple of things that I don't hate the experience of being in the kitchen, but mostly I really hate to cook, but also I don't have the energy for it. So the resources available to you are different. But through these changes, I have always been doing my best. When I worked on a college campus, I was pretty low paid, but the food on campus was really good. And I considered that part of my compensation I had on campus all the time.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Mostly my fridge at home was empty and I ate Hot Pockets.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Sorry about that. Sorry. Sorry. So we're all doing the best with the resources we have available. What resources you have is going to shift as your life changes. And when you get to an age at which you begin to experience the health consequences of the nutritional choices you've made over the course of your lifetime.

[Amelia]

You'Ll be able to look back and.

[Emily]

Be like, I was always doing the best I could.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I was listening to what my body wanted. And yes.

[Emily]

And I was acknowledging the reality of my circumstances.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So if my body needs sugar right now, even if it's just an emotional response. Emotional responses are valid responses.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Food is emotional experiences that happen in your body. You gotta listen to your body instead of what people say you ought to be eating. Believe me, Believe me, let my suffering not have been in vain, that I can teach this lesson. Listen to your body.

[Emily]

I actually feel like we're not gonna get into, like, what your experience has been, but truly on a day to day experience for over a month now.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You have been wrestling.

[Amelia]

I have immediate. I have immediate pain. I mean, that's. We can just say that there are other options for what might happen.

[Emily]

But if I go, pain is certain.

[Amelia]

But pain is certain. Yes.

[Emily]

And even though it has been all this time, every day I think every.

[Amelia]

Day I think I should eat some vegetables today because the world says I.

[Emily]

Should eat vegetables because they're good for me.

[Amelia]

I'm sick and I should be eating nutritious food that has lots of nutrients in it because it's good for me. Except that it's not good for me because my stomach says no.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Amelia]

I have done this so many times.

[Emily]

Over and over, every day, over and.

[Amelia]

Over, every day for a month. But also in my life with the kombucha and the lemon juice and so many other. So many other, like, things that people.

[Emily]

Say are good for you.

[Amelia]

Things that people say are good for me.

[Emily]

And you are good at following rules. You're very old.

[Amelia]

I love to follow rules. I love to follow rules. And no, it turns out that the one rule I should have been following was, hey, body, what do you need?

[Emily]

Which is so much harder for you. Hearing what your body needs is so much harder for you than hearing somebody say, here's what your body needs.

[Amelia]

I wish to God somebody could just say, amelia, eat this. And I would do it. I would do it.

[Emily]

You have done it. I would do it for a year.

[Amelia]

And a half until you felt so.

[Emily]

Terrible that started to occur to you that maybe somebody.

[Amelia]

Not the way some new rule I can follow, but the only rule is, listen to your body.

[Emily]

Yeah. And do your best with the resources.

[Amelia]

So, like, even today, even right now, sitting here, I know that I'm going to eat some rice cakes for lunch, because I know that rice cakes do me no harm. I feel okay after I eat.

[Emily]

You're literally choosing a food that doesn't hurt.

[Amelia]

That doesn't hurt. Yes.

[Emily]

Physical pain.

[Amelia]

And even now I'm like, okay, I could also have a piece of bread. I have two loaves of bread. I have a loaf of white bread, and I have a loaf of, like, very nutritionally dense, high fiber seed bread. And I look at these two loaves of bread and I know which one I should eat. I know which one I should eat.

[Emily]

You know which one Your body will feel comfortable with.

[Amelia]

And then. And then I.

[Emily]

Then there's, like, the morally just bread.

[Amelia]

There's the moral bread, and then there's the tolerable bread.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And. And it's not a flavored thing. It's not a preference.

[Emily]

No.

[Amelia]

It's a mandate. If I eat that seed bread, I'm gonna have pain and possibly worse. And if I eat this white bread, I'm gonna be fine.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And I think, well, at least I should put some cheese on that, get, like, a little protein. And, like, every part of me wants to, like, do what I'm supposed to do.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Instead of just being, like. Put, like, a bare scrape of butter and some honey on that bread, and that's as much nutrition as we can handle today.

[Emily]

I do believe that you and I have had this same kind of conversation about other. About, like, energy levels, for example.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, listening to your body and doing as much as your energy level says is good. And I said, you know what? Do less than you believe you can do.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Do, like, at least 50% less than good advice you want to do. Because it's not that your body is lying to you. It is that your body includes your prefrontal cortex, which has done a really good job of memorizing the rules for what you are supposed to eat.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And you are trying to hear the very muffled. It's like. It's like your body's in the basement, and it's, like, trying to yell at you.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It's pounding on the floor from underground. Yeah.

[Emily]

Hey. Whereas, like, the rules are, like, right there in the room with you.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Which live in the attic, but still they write a boat. And then when I eat the seed bread, my body is in the living room. Yeah. Your body destroying things.

[Emily]

Yeah. Right. So you know that, like, yes. I can hear. I can hear the rules up in the attic. But, like, I need to ignore that and listen carefully to what my body in the basement is trying to say, because, like, I know that the immediate consequences.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, if I do what the. What the voices in the attic are saying, I'm gonna spend the rest of the day in bed or in the tub.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And the accumulation of this has added up to. I have barely eaten any fat, protein, fiber.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

For a month. And, like, the thing that keeps occurring to me is that, like, this isn't good for me. This isn't nutritious. This isn't. And it's so hard to overcome that thought when actually, I need to remember the only other time we've done a food episode was during COVID when our message was, you're an omnivore, you're a goat, you can eat.

[Emily]

You are a goat, whatever.

[Amelia]

And you're going to be fine. And I need to remember that right now I'm eating what I have to eat in order to not suffer.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

So I'm going to be fine. I can eat bread and rice for a couple of months and I'll be fine. And it's what I have to do. And I swear to God, it's fine.

[Emily]

It's fine.

[Amelia]

I'll be fine.

[Emily]

It's fine.

[Amelia]

It's hard to remember.

[Emily]

It's. Does it help that it's just another example of doing the best you can with the resources you currently have available?

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Like the food you can afford, the food you have time to prepare, the food your body can currently tolerate.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah. Because my liver doesn't work.

[Emily]

Yeah, because your liver got busted up by Covid.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And your body's out of whack. So your nutritional intake is out of whack from what you would prefer because you do have a way of eating that, you know, helps you to feel more energized and helps your body to heal. And, like, you have rules. And we can. Like, when you are better.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

We can talk about, like, the experiments you've tried that have not been failures because there are things you've tried in place that you followed that has been like, oh, this is a really good fit.

[Amelia]

And part of the intensity of my struggle right now, as I'm sure, is everyone's struggle when they go through periods of not eating in a way that is ideal according to them or the outside world, is that I do know that if I follow this other set of rules, I feel better.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Right. So when you've discovered something that does work, but it conflicts with what the outside world says should work, it's intense.

[Emily]

Yeah. So not only are you not following the external rules, you're also not following the rules that you finally after discovered, after desperate search, after a lot of, like, trying shit that didn't work, continuing to try that shit way past the point, way, way longer than you should have tried it. Like, the thing is, you found a thing and now that thing is gone.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It is not currently available to you because you are sicker than you were.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So you're a goat. You can thrive on any food. It is fine. And listen to your body, not the outside world. Even though it's so much easier to be like, oh, they're going to talk about food on the podcast. Maybe they'll tell me what to eat.

[Emily]

Yes. How many grams of what and which food categories. And pesticide free. And what's our opinion on gmo? Nope.

[Amelia]

Nope. Listen. Your body. There.

[Emily]

There are a lot of resources that are required in order to make a choice about food. One of them is money. One of them is time. One of them is the state of your body. Because even when you are not limited because of disease. The advice. Right. We've all heard all of the advice about. Everybody's heard all the what we're supposed to freaking eat. And the confusing thing is you hear directly contradicting science about this. Right. And the reason for that, apart from the science being very difficult to do, is that people vary and they change.

[Amelia]

Over their lifespan such that you and I are genetically identical. Yes. Raised in the same household, have very different experiences with what works.

[Emily]

The what works that we have finally found for ourselves is very not. I mean there's like some overlap.

[Amelia]

Yeah. But it's.

[Emily]

But it's not the same.

[Amelia]

And we don't even have the same tastes in everything.

[Emily]

No. Not. Not even remotely. I have a totally different relationship with like food novelty compared to you.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I enjoy food novelty.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Quite a lot.

[Emily]

But you also enjoy eating the same thing every day for a week at a time.

[Amelia]

For way more than a week at a time. Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. So that's a strange contradiction.

[Amelia]

You know, what are you gonna do? The point is that if you and I don't have the same success in finding out like what we thrive on, food wise.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Then surely no one else can count on a set of rules that have been pre established by an outside system.

[Emily]

Yeah. You can try all kinds of things. There's all kinds of advice available for what you should do and of the only way you can know whether or not it is right advice for you is to listen to your body.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It will tell you whether or not this is a good fit for you.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

The other thing I wanted to make sure we talked about is wishing this were not true.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It would be so much easier. It'd be so much easier if we could just be like, here's what to eat. Go.

[Emily]

Yeah. Here's what to eat. And the outcome of eating exactly this is that your body will be everything you want it to be.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Your body will change and respond to food in precisely the way that you hope that it will change and respond to food.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And that's not true.

[Amelia]

Yep. There is no study. There's no research, there's no science in the world that demonstrates that certain kinds of eating has certain kinds of health outcomes for everybody.

[Emily]

Yeah. Significantly different from any other way of doing anything.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

I feel like it's really like when it comes to weight loss, the actual statistical reality, many, many, many studies over many years, over decades have shown that a person can lose between 5 and 10% of their starting weight and maintain that loss over the long term. Long term being five years. Yeah, that's it. That's what's realistic.

[Amelia]

So making food choices based on a desire to change your body, change your body to make it conform to an external expectation.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Is just not realistic.

[Emily]

Right. And that's just for like regular people. If you are an athlete, if you are working out hard for more than six hours a week, you should be working with a professional, giving you very specific advice for the very specific nutritional needs you have for using your body very hard for a lot of time. Intense physical activity for more than six hours a week. Talk to a professional nutritionist. Because no advice that is general is going to come remotely close to like making sure your bones heal and your muscles repair themselves and all the rest of it.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And sleep probably makes a bigger difference than nutrition anyway.

[Amelia]

Exactly. Yeah. So that's that, that's the rule number one that will underlie all our future conversations about food. And there's so many aspects of food that we will talk about because our relationship in the world is we are codependent. Right. We are an interconnected species. Our relationship with food depends on others. It depends on our relationships to others. It depends on other people growing our food. Like never in the history of human society has there ever been a time when everybody, each individual person, produce the food that they need to eat. Like no communities produce food for each other. That's how humanity thrives. Because other people are free to do other things like math and science, to advance culture and blah, blah, blah. Because other people are growing food and they share. Everybody supports each other in a community. So, like, all our food decisions are going to be based on what the world is like. And the world is a dumpster fire. So it's going to be, there's going to be a lot to talk about in terms of food choices. But today, thing number one is listen to your body. There, there is no perfect choice. Do the best you can with the resources you have available. And you're, you're, you're an omnivore, like a goat.

[Emily]

I actually really like the, in the Good place that can you Tell the apple story.

[Amelia]

Yeah, there's a. There's an episode close to the end of the Good Place where the judge who decides who goes to the good place and who goes to the bad place in the end.

[Emily]

Played by Maya Rudolph.

[Amelia]

Played by the hilarious Maya Rudolph. She goes to Earth and, like, talks about how she's. First of all, she's like, they really don't like black ladies down there. Like, no kidding, man. The.

[Emily]

She.

[Amelia]

She's like, even buying an apple. Like, where are the apples grown? What the pesticides are? Like, there's just no way to make a perfect choice. So even, like, this TV show figured it out. Like, there's just no way to make a perfect choice. Yeah.

[Emily]

So don't try.

[Amelia]

Rudolph can't make perfect.

[Emily]

Perfect should not be the goal. We talked recently about goals. Perfect should not be the goal. The goal is whatever the time scale is with which you purchase groceries.

[Amelia]

Yeah. You're gonna do your best for that.

[Emily]

Time or other ways. Yeah, you're gonna do rule number one. Listen to your body. That's going to be difficult for the people for whom their body is, like, just whispering like it's an ASMR video versus, like, having social rules be just crowding out your brain. Like, for some people, it's going to be really difficult to listen to their body, even when it's in contradiction with what they've been told they are supposed to do.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Especially when you're also explicitly told that when you have a craving, don't listen to your body because that's the wrong kind of cue to eat.

[Emily]

God. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Intuitive eating is complicated. There's whole books on intuitive eating. There's whole workshops on intuitive eating. When I was working on intuitive eating, the thing I discovered, this whole, like, listen to my body thing works really well until it comes to not eating right before bed.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

And it turns out the. The reason for that is we had food insecurity when we were very young children. And so the very young child in me notices an empty stomach at bedtime and panics and gets a slice of cheese.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Just so there is literally something in my stomach so that she can be calm so that I can go to sleep. Right. Like, my intuitive eating is not going to be fully about, like, what my body needs in order to feel great until I have, like, fully profoundly healed the food insecurity of our youth. And that's okay. That's fine. Like, that's a. That's a long process.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But, like, if that's valid, like, that's okay. For me to make the choice to just like, eat something so you can fall asleep. So I can fall asleep.

[Amelia]

Even though the research shows that my feelings are valid. Even though the research shows that when you eat closer to bed, you don't get as much deep sleep. And I have found that to be true for me according to my oura ring and my Fitbit, or Oura ring, however you pronounce it. And my Fitbit, like, I get more deep sleep when I don't eat close to bedtime. But you know what? Sometimes I can't go to sleep until I get up and take two bites of something and then like, that's the one thing that lets my body let go.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And fall asleep. Science says no.

[Emily]

Body says yes.

[Amelia]

Guess who wins when it comes to I need to fall asleep tonight.

[Emily]

Body wins every time.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And like, you can know that it's true that you get higher quality sleep when you change this behavior. And also, like, again, it's about like short term versus long term. This is, I need to fall asleep now.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

I need to fall asleep. And so I'm going to make this harm reduction choice.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So that I can get to sleep and. Yeah. I'm going to get less, a little bit less deep sleep tonight and I can try again tomorrow.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Harm reduction.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And for those who are younger than we are, they may not remember how drastically different diet advice was. Food choice advice was.

[Emily]

God, in the 80s.

[Amelia]

In the 80s, like it was literally opposite. Advice about what to eat has changed so drastically that when we are our age, we can look back and clearly see how meaningless this advice is. Because it changes. People don't know. And the reason people don't know is because, I mean, because it's because of a lot of reasons. Some of them have to do with corporate greed. Some of them have to do with corrupt lobbying and government policy. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that people are so different from each other and just there is no science can say a thing is true that can be true at a population level and not be true for you.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

And that doesn't mean that you are wrong or broken. And it doesn't mean that the science is necessarily invalid. It just means the thing that the science says is just not true for you.

[Emily]

And we don't even have to get into the part where the government's nutritional recommendations are written by the US Department of Agriculture.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Not Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture. Where's their vested interest?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Farmers.

[Amelia]

Yeah. So I have Two. To conclude this episode about food choices, I have two media recommendations.

[Emily]

Oh, oh, oh.

[Amelia]

The first One is a YouTube channel called Future Canoe. Future Canoe. He. He's a cook, and he makes funny short videos about cooking, and it's funny.

[Emily]

He.

[Amelia]

He repeats this theory of how the ruling class has conned the poors into eating horse food.

[Emily]

Fuck. Yeah. Fuck.

[Amelia]

Like, and he's saying it as, like, a joke of, like, how come we all think we need to eat, like, oatmeal? Because the ruling class has conned the poors into eating horse food.

[Emily]

I mean, if I have. Not yet. I think I have already on the podcast, done my we are the livestock, right? Yeah.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Oh, maybe not. But, like, this is just. This is a, like, pretty much neutral, like, in terms of diet culture and whatever. Like, he kind of skews toward diet culture because he's not, like, what? It's just a funny. It's just a funny channel about food. And, like, he has a series where he makes struggle meals from around the world, which is pretty entertaining. So I recommend.

[Emily]

Can you. I don't actually know what a struggle meal. Like, what does that phrase mean?

[Amelia]

It's a meal you make when you're. You got no money, you got no. Nothing cheesy.

[Emily]

Oh, it's a broke meal.

[Amelia]

It's a broke meal. It's a struggle meal. Yeah. Like.

[Emily]

Cause for me, a struggle meal is, like, I could barely get out of bed. Depression.

[Amelia]

Oh, no.

[Emily]

And that's why I'm eating. No, the thing in the fridge that's available, like, just slices of cheese out of the packet. Yeah.

[Amelia]

No, a struggle meal is, like, you try to cook something to turn it into a meal, but it's just rice and soy sauce. But, like, you're, like, pretending that it's a real meal.

[Emily]

Oh, I see.

[Amelia]

But people submit recipes of, like, how they've tried to turn, you know, trash groceries into a meal. It's entertaining and also, like, so relatable because, like, who hasn't been? I mean, probably there are lots of people, but I think a lot of us have been so broke that we tried to just like, turn flour and saltines into dinner. No.

[Emily]

I started training as a health educator, including nutrition, in my first year in college. I have always had a set of standards about, like, basic minimum nutrition. Okay, well, so even when I was broke. Broke as a grad student.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Well, you might enjoy the struggle meal series anyway. And there's also a second creator on YouTube. The channel is called Black Forager. Oh, yeah. I love her Nexus. Yeah. She's very informative. She just goes out in the woods and be like this, this is edible. This is an invasive species. But you know what? Edible. We could eat that whole thing. And she's very charming and endearing and pleasant to watch. So black forager for the.

[Emily]

And that's a skill people are gonna need when our food system collapses. We're not gonna talk about that this episode.

[Amelia]

No. But we'll talk about in the future anyway. To entertaining light. Don't take it. Especially future canoe. Don't take it seriously. It's just, you know, dry humor, food related entertainment. That is not diet advice.

[Emily]

I have a. I have a food YouTuber I follow.

[Amelia]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

Internet Shaquille.

[Amelia]

No, I don't know that.

[Emily]

Internet Shaquille is not a professional chef. He just really cares about, like cooking and motivating people to cook at home more by talking about, like, strategies for making it simpler. The first video I saw of his was like, what cooking is like for people who don't know how to cook compared to what cooking is like for people who know how to cook. And he's like, pinch of salt for someone who doesn't know how to cook versus a pinch of salt for someone who does. And it's like a snow shower.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's great. Fold in the cheese. I don't know.

[Emily]

Fold in the cheese.

[Amelia]

This is the Schitt's Creek. We don't know how to cook, but we're pretending that we do.

[Emily]

Ignore all. Any mention of nutritional anything. He's very sort of like regular, but he's.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Very good instructor.

[Amelia]

Oh, nice.

[Emily]

Of like how to do basic food preparation stuff. And I find him motivating.

[Amelia]

And of course, tasting history, that's not really about, you know. But yeah, everybody knows tasting history by now, right?

[Emily]

Everybody knows Max Miller.

[Amelia]

Yeah. He's embracing his curls lately and I find it adorable.

[Emily]

Internet Shaquille has a video called it's just a Steamer. It's a microwave. Microwave. Literally a steamer. What it says on the thumbnail is it's just a steamer. And the title of the video is Microwave Lobster is good, actually.

[Amelia]

Oh.

[Emily]

Like, that's. That's the kind of cooking that I want to learn about.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So some resources, some recommendations for being entertained if you needed a way to be entertained around food in a way that was like, less likely to be triggering of like. Oh, the cascade of bullshit.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And we've really just got these three rules. One, listen to your body. That's the most important one. Two, do the best you can with the resources you currently have available. Your resources, which includes time, energy, money, and the state of your body right now, are all gonna fluctuate over time. And so your choices are gonna change over time. And three, shorten the time span for which you are making decisions. Choose what to eat based on what's gonna feel good for you this month instead of worrying so much, I think.

[Amelia]

And also, you're a goat. You're an omnivore, plus you're a goat.

[Emily]

You're gonna be all right.

[Amelia]

You're gonna be all right. Go ahead and have compassion for what you need to eat right now and.

[Emily]

Don' Lordy Lord, the self compassion required just to. Just to like, eat food and be a person in the world. Yeah, I want to put self compassion first.

[Amelia]

And that's it for this week, is it?

[Emily]

This.

[Amelia]

Is that it for this week?

[Emily]

I think that can be. I think we like. That has to be the starting place. It is so complex. I didn't even want to do a food episode because there's just too many things.

[Amelia]

It's because we're going to have to do sticks food episodes in order to cover all the things.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

But this is the most important one and this is the foundation for all the others.

[Emily]

How to live in a body that requires food every day.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

Thank you all for listening. I hope some of that is actually useful. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna hope for feedback on this one. Like, yes, thank you for this very basic, yet not didactic permission. Really? This episode is about permission. You have permission to do your best. And for your best not to match somebody else's opinion about what your best is supposed to be.

[Amelia]

Your best almost certainly won't match anybody else's advice.

[Emily]

Absolutely. Okay. Thank you for listening. Talk to you again next week because this is what we do now. Cue a ukulele.

[Amelia]

It's so much easier to learn a rule and follow the rule. I love following a rule, but I have to listen to my body to find out what the rules are.