If you’re curious about what it looks like to stop pursuing weight loss, click here for some fabulous freebies that will help guide you in your journey!

Click here to leave me a review on iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Find FREE food voice resources here.

Thank you for supporting Find Your Food Voice!

Julie Duffy Dillon (00:00)

Great news, the Find Your Food Voice book is ready for pre-order. You can get to it at julieduffydillon.com slash book. Again, the Find Your Food Voice book, the book you need to help you reconnect to your own innate eating wisdom and help you break free from diet culture. I have written this book for you and I’m so excited to bring it to you. Get to it at julieduffydillon.com slash book.

Julie Duffy Dillon (00:26)

Welcome to episode 400 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast with Elyse Resch the co-creator and co-author of Intuitive Eating. Let’s get to it.

Julie Duffy Dillon (02:07)

Hey there, Voice Finder. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and host of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. Looks like we were just joined by Doug, my dog, if you’re watching on YouTube, he’s right behind me on the green couch. And this episode I am thrilled to bring to you because we are going to have a chat with Elyse Resch, one of the co-creators and co-authors of Intuitive Eating. And I got a chance to ask questions directly from you, from fellow Voice Finders, people who have been reading my newsletter, ask them, what do you wanna hear? Like, what do you wanna know about intuitive eating from one of the creators? And so we get to unpack how intuitive eating can be also a tool while you are living with diabetes, PCOS, menopause, perimenopause. What about if you are not in a straight-sized body and you’re on a higher weight body? What about you? How is intuitive eating different, if at all? and we ask many other questions as well as get to hear some key pieces of the origin story that I had no idea about. I thought I knew all the things about how intuitive eating was built and no, I learned a lot from this interview. And before we get to the interview, I wanna also mention that this interview was just days after the Los Angeles fires were starting and Elyse lives in Southern California. So, you will hear at the beginning of the episode, the beginning of the interview rather, just a few mentions about the fire. So take care of yourself if that’s something you need to skip. It’s just in the beginning, but we wanted to make sure we talked about it. And the whole Find Your Food Voice team, we are thinking about everyone that is experiencing things like these fires or weather or just having a tough time as 2025 is beginning. We are reaching out in support. This is a time where community is even more important. So know that we are rooting for you. All right, we’re gonna get to my episode with Elyse after just a few announcements, kind of housekeeping. And the first one is, like I mentioned at the top of the show, the Find Your Food Voice book is in pre-order. So exciting for me. And I am ready for you to read this thing. I’ve been working for many years to birth this book and it will be out in March, but again, it’s ready for pre-order. You can get to it at julieduffydillon.com slash book. It’s a perfect book if you’ve read Intuitive Eating or another book that’s similar and are just wanting some more practical tools to help you to reconnect with your own internal wisdom to eat outside of diet culture. With that all being said, I’m also mapping out 2025 and beyond’s content calendar. So we have a survey to find out what you want to like hear about what you want to read about. We are in development, like I said, on new tools and products. So by taking the survey, it helps me and the team really build what you need. So get to the survey at julieduffydillon.com slash survey and there will be a lucky winner who wins a DoorDash gift card. So it might as well be you, right? So let’s make sure you get to it. So get to it at julieduffydillon.com slash survey. And we thank you in advance for taking these one to two minutes out of your life to be able to help us to build a better podcast, newsletter and products to help you to stay as far away as possible away from diet culture. All right, that’s all the announcements and we’re gonna get to my interview with Elyse Resch after a very quick ad break.

Julie Duffy Dillon (05:43)

Hey there, Elyse, thanks for coming on the show.

Elyse Resch (05:46)

Hi, Julie. I’m so happy to be here. It’s a bright light for the day in this darkness of LA right now. So,

Julie Duffy Dillon (05:54)

for those listening, you you live in Southern California. So yeah, tell us how things are going. What’s on your mind right now?

Elyse Resch (06:00)

Yeah, I actually live in Santa Monica and but the south part of Santa Monica and it’s the north part of Santa Monica that’s been on, you know, evacuation and fortunately, I think we’re far enough away, but it’s just horrifying. I have clients, have friends who’ve lost their homes and you just can’t believe that something like this is happening. I mean, I’ve been in LA for a long, long time. We’ve never had anything like this. So I’m just noting it and, you know, sending anybody who’s going to hear this and probably this will be a while from now, you know, all my love for what they’re going through. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (06:36)

Mm hmm. Well, thank you. And yeah, we, I just sent an email out today and I was that’s basically I was thinking I’m like, I’ve just been thinking about this. And I hope people are knowing how many people are thinking over on the East Coast and everywhere in between that we want you to know that we support you. And yeah, it just sounds really, really hard. And I also think about, I know we’re here to talk about intuitive eating, but like, when times are hard, I know food can be really hard and confusing, especially in January when everyone’s like, I got to make sure that I like stick to whatever resolution I have. And I hope people are experiencing some flexibility, especially now, you know.

Elyse Resch (07:14)

Well, I think an important part of intuitive eating that people don’t understand is that food can be comfort. Intuitive eating is not about you have to stick to perfect hunger and fullness signals, which it’s so misinterpreted. It’s become the hunger fullness diet for some people, which is not what it is. So if you need more food because you’re needing comfort, go for it. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t shame yourself in any way. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (07:20)

Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 100%. Yeah, you heard it right from the co-author here. I hope people can really let that sink in, like how important food is comfort. because yeah, it works. It helps. It’s coping. So I’m curious if you could even go back to when you and Evelyn Tripley were starting to think about this concept of intuitive eating. Like, do you remember when you started to build it? What was going on?

Elyse Resch (08:02)

Yes. Actually, it was well before I even met Evelyn that my son sent me and actually called me and he said, Mom, there’s this book I just read. He was in way of boarding school and I really think you’re going to love it. It was called The Tao of Pooh, Tao-T-A-O. And it was based on Winnie the Pooh. And I read this book and he was absolutely right. It was so I don’t know, just fundamental in terms of thinking about process. So what it was was that, and I hope I have the characters right, Winnie and Eeyore were going to go on this race. And they started out and Winnie started looking at the flowers, meandering around kind of back and forth to the path. Eeyore started racing straight through and then he stumbled over a rock and fell. And Winnie won the race. And I thought to myself, my goodness. So many people are eating in ways that they think have to be perfect, to, you know, some linear process, or not process, actually just linear way of eating, good, bad, you know, get to the end point, which in those days was probably these days too, always thought of as weight loss, which, you know, is unfortunate. And I thought, okay, so I started looking into Taoism a little bit and understood that it’s all about process and it’s all about staying present and it’s about you know, kind of enjoyment and as when he was enjoying looking at the flowers along the way. And I thought this is the way that we need to be eating. And so it was in my mind. It was brewing then. And then, of course, I was so troubled by clients that would come to me for weight loss. you know, in the very I’ve been in private practice 43 years now. So in the very longer than so many of your listeners are alive and You know, we learned in graduate school to put people on meal plans and were exchanges, diabetic exchanges, and people were struggling. You know, they’d stay on it for a while and they’d fall off and then feel bad about themselves. And I thought, I don’t want to do this. And doctors were sending me referrals for people with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes or whatever, telling me to help them lose weight. It just never sat right in. I’m a very intuitive person. It never sat right in me. So when I had this realization about process in that way, I thought this is it. And I started putting some chapter headings on my computer. then Evelyn had moved into, well, not moved in, but she had rented some office space for me because she lives an hour away. And she was coming up to LA once a week. And one day she was walking down the hall. And I was walking by her. And she didn’t look very happy. And I said, Evelyn, what’s the problem? And she said, oh, I’m trying to write this book with a psychologist. And that person can’t write. And I had this moment of being, the light bulb that went off. I said, I knew I was a good writer. And I knew, I mean, I had years of therapy already by then. And I was really into psychology. I’ll write it with you. And so we sat down together and put some of our ideas together. And that’s how it began. So I can’t speak for her. I don’t know where her head was then. But that’s where I was. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (11:08)

I have never heard that story. wow. That’s so great. Yeah, I’ve never heard that story before. So that’s so great to hear about where it started even with that book. And yeah, intuitive eating work does remind me so much of my work that I’ve done in therapy to like stay present. So it’s great to hear that it’s connected to that. And it’s like original form too. So so lovely.

Elyse Resch (11:27)

Yeah. Well, yeah, and another psychological piece, and I may talk about it later too, is the most important piece of intuitive eating is autonomy, honoring autonomy. And that’s something that when you’re in therapy and you realize that you spent your life following rules that maybe your parents have put out for you or too afraid to break them or whatever. yeah, so all the psychology part of this is so important for me.

Julie Duffy Dillon (11:46)

Yeah. Yes, yes, for sure. you know, the there was this experience that I had back in, let’s see, 2002, I started my master’s program in mental health counseling. And in 2003 is when I read intuitive eating for the first time. But in 2002, as I was leaving this job, I told this woman that I was training to take over my position. Her name was Alice, Alice Baker, in case you know her. But Alice, yes.

Elyse Resch (12:30)

Yeah, no, we’re good friends. Alice is lovely. In fact, she just texted me right before this because we were texting. She was asking how I was doing here. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (12:33)

No way. The world is small, especially eating disorder dietitian world is very small. yeah, so Alice was taking over my job as a clinical dietitian at this big hospital. And I mentioned to her, I hadn’t told anybody yet, but I said, Alice, this is the last time my last day as a dietitian ever. I’m gonna become a therapist.” And she’s like, why? And I told her, was like, I don’t think diets work. I think they’re stupid and that’s all we’re trying to do and I don’t wanna do this anymore. And she was like, well, before you quit, just make sure you read this book first. And so she had written down the title. And so it took me a year to actually read it. But I got the second edition and I was like, these are the dietitians who are more, like they’ve already done this. Like they already have like an option for me to get into. So I’m super grateful to Alice and to you and this book because yeah, it kept me from quitting. I very much pivoted back and I was like, nope, I’m gonna stay a dietitian now because I have an option.

Elyse Resch (13:29)

Thank you. That’s so great. Actually, I have a good friend who was my associate for years. She was my assistant when she was in college, and then she became my associate. And we had the same experience. We went out to dinner one night. She said, I can’t do this anymore. I’m quitting. I hate it. And this is many years ago. And I explained intuitive eating to her. And she said, there’s another way. And she continued working in this realm for many years. it has, yeah, it’s not only saving people out there who are, know, experiencing such diet culture misery, but it’s professionals too who changing their careers. So did you go to graduate school? Are you a therapist also? You’re both?

Julie Duffy Dillon (14:04)

Yeah. So I finished the training. So I’m not licensed as a therapist. I’m just trained as one and got all the supervision and everything. I really, wanted, in the end I was like, I wanted to be a better dietitian. And so now, and now I can do that. I’m curious too, cause I know that the editions over the years have continued to develop in Intuitive Eating. Is there something that you would say is like, what have been the biggest changes with all the editions

Elyse Resch (14:19)

Oh, absolutely. I think that the first book came out 30 years ago in 1995. And although we were very careful to say this was not about weight loss, there was some focus on weight. It was something like, find your natural weight, which we have to give a lot of grace to change. I mean, if we don’t change after we’ve learned some things, then we’re in trouble. It was never about weight loss, but there was a narrative that went around that people started thinking, you know, they were thinking about weight. So that’s been gone for a long time. We keep revising the book. In fact, I may not have told you this, we are going to start writing the fifth edition in May. So we are, we’re about to sign a contract with St. Martin’s. They want to publish another edition. So it’s evolving all of the time. So, you know, that’s a big piece of it.

Julie Duffy Dillon (15:15)

Yeah, yeah. wow. Okay, excellent. I’m so glad. I’m so glad.

Elyse Resch (15:32)

The awareness of oppression in the world, there are so many marginalized identities and so many people ignore the fact that there is an equal amount of stress and oppression for people in larger bodies, as there is in not discounting any of the other oppressions in the world. So we’re really taking a big social justice leap with it as well and helping people become aware of that and see that we’re all connected. And so the more that people focus on weight as a measure of somebody’s worth, the more that people are going to be hurt. So much of this is about helping people become aware of that and take a look at it and take a look at their own internalized fat phobia there and how they project outward and all of that. So there’s a lot of that in the book. Also, you read the second edition to begin with.

Julie Duffy Dillon (16:07)

I read the second and the fourth. some of the things you’re naming, I saw those changes for sure, yep.

Elyse Resch (16:31)

Okay, well good. Yeah, and the second edition was really a replication of the first edition with just a chapter on eating disorders that I wrote, because I’ve been working with eating disorders from even, I think, right after I was registered, I’ve been working with eating disorders. So that got included and has evolved. And I’m going to rewrite that chapter in the new fifth edition, because I have some more thoughts about it that are evolving. And I also wrote in the third edition. I think it was the third, I guess, lost on the third edition. I wrote a chapter on feeding kids, know, children and teens as intuitive eaters. And that I’m going to rewrite as well because it’s always evolving. And also awareness, you know, of yeah, I’m sorry, awareness of gender identity, you know, changing pronouns in the book, things like that. So constantly becoming, you know, present to what’s going on in our culture and including that in the books.

Julie Duffy Dillon (17:13)

Okay, yeah, well, mean, it’s Go ahead, go ahead. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. And I think as we get to know ourselves and we start to understand different cultures and we start to like describe things differently. So I’m glad that you continue to let it to evolve and like name, oh, I wish we would have done it differently. So now we’re going to write a new edition that has it the way that we want it to be. Yeah, I think that’s great. Yeah.

Elyse Resch (17:46)

Right. And then another interesting point about this is I work with a lot of teenagers and they’re so focused on their bodies and feeling proud of themselves for being thinner and all of that. And they are also, I’m lucky enough to work with teenagers who are very evolved psychologically. And when I talk to them about social justice, fact, one of my teenagers said to me, that’s your favorite conversation, Elyse’s, your favorite subject is social justice.

Elyse Resch (18:16)

It’s like, OK, you’re telling me that you believe that all people deserve equal treatment and respect. And yet you’re saying that it’s not OK unless you’re a smaller body. What is that saying to people in larger bodies? And there’s a light bulb that goes off for them sometimes where I’m not saying they immediately drop their pursuit, but they start thinking about it in a different way. So yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (18:21)

That’s something I have too. One almost teen and another teenager at home myself. so yeah, sometimes I think about am I laying it on in a way that maybe is too fast? But yeah, whenever my kids bring up bodies, body image, body concerns, I’m like straight to the point. like how this is connected to oppressive systems. And they do roll their eyes, but I’m hoping it gets to the point where it helps them to register of like, yeah, like they’re in a period of idealism. So let’s meet them where they are and talk about these oppressive systems and how it relates to their eating.

Elyse Resch (19:06)

Yeah, and the job of a teenager, the job of a teenager is to, you know, reject anything that a parent says. However, they do absorb it and eventually they come around. Yes, it will.

Julie Duffy Dillon (19:25)

Yeah. Yeah. So eye rolls and all it’ll get in. Well, so something else, we talked about the very beginning and I was like, I’m holding on to this one, Elyse, because you mentioned the hunger fullness diet. Like how many people talk about intuitive eating, it kind of makes us think about hunger and fullness is really the only ways to guide eating. so I wanted to ask you what what you wish everyone knew about intuitive eating or maybe some things that are often missed. Yeah, so tell us more about that.

Elyse Resch (19:58)

Well, that’s actually one of my favorite questions because I think many people don’t truly understand what intuitive eating is. And I’ll tell you a little story. Back when we were beginning to write the third edition, which you haven’t read, you don’t need to go backwards and wait for the fifth edition. I went to a conference, I won’t name names. There was a gentleman who was giving a talk on intuitive eating and I had contacted him, gosh, months before, because I was going to the conference and I said, huh, I noticed that you’re giving a talk on intuitive eating and I’m one of the co-authors. And he wrote back, he said, yeah, it’s going to be a great talk. If you’re going to be there, please come. Well, fast forward the night before the talk, this was a time at conferences we got flash drives to see some of the slides in advance. Lately, I don’t think they’re giving them out. I put this into my computer and I went, my God, this guy is bashing intuitive eating. I went to the talk the next morning.

Elyse Resch (20:54)

He just honored me. He introduced me as one of the esteemed authors of Intuitive Eating, had the picture of the book up on the screen. he then said, I looked for the definition of intuition, and it says instinct. And we all know that we can’t eat by instinct alone. So Intuitive Eating can’t work. It was a humiliating, horrible experience. However, I immediately called Evelyn afterwards. Ironically, she was going to be on a panel with this guy the next week, so she was happy to have the alert. And I said, you know what? I don’t think people really understand intuitive eating. So I came up with a definition, which you may not often hear, but I find it to be my favorite definition, which is intuitive eating is a dynamic interplay of instinct, emotion, and thought.

Julie Duffy Dillon (21:28)

Yeah, I’m gonna hear it.

Elyse Resch (21:41)

So he was right, we can’t just eat by instinct because so many factors affect our instincts. Whether we’re sick, maybe hunger signals go away, very emotional can affect hunger signals one way or the other, can affect fullness signals. And the instinct is the part of our brain that we call the reptilian part of the brain. It’s on the back of the, above the brain stem. And that’s the part of the brain that all dinosaurs had. And that was the only part that guided them to survive. was the survival part. And we have that. Mammals have that. Humans have that. We have survival. That’s where our instincts to eat come. That’s where our instincts to feel hunger and fullness and what we like and what we don’t like. However, things change. The mammals also have a part of their brain called the limbic or emotional or mammalian brain. And so we have to take into regard what are our emotions doing? Are they turning off our instincts? Are they turning them up? And then we have the neocortex, which is what differentiates us from our cats and dogs who can get mad at us and have feelings, but they can’t really, although I have some clients who think their dogs can talk, but in any case, we have different abilities because of our neocortex. So looking at it in this kind of triangle way, instinct, emotion, and thought,

Julie Duffy Dillon (22:42)

Yes. Ha! Yeah.

Elyse Resch (23:07)

It allows for one to say, okay, something’s going on. I’m not hungry or I feel extra hungry or whatever it is and use their cognitive part of their brain to soothe their emotions, to make the best decisions for themselves. In the beginning of the pandemic, I had clients who lost their taste and smell. And so they had no impetus to eat from noticing those things, but they had to make the decision to eat, to survive. And I think that that’s a helpful way of looking at it. And it takes it away from that hunger fullness quote diet thing. Also to add to that, one of my bugaboos is how there are people in the eating disorder community that say, you can’t use intuitive eating with people with eating disorder, especially in the beginning, because they can’t hear their hunger and fullness signals.

Elyse Resch (24:00)

Well, hello, intuitive eating has 10 principles. Certainly hunger and fullness are not going to be accurate until people are more nourished and heal. But let’s look at respecting the body. Let’s look at emotions. Let’s look at making peace with food and setting boundaries for the food police and all of that. So intuitive eating can, aspects of it can be used day one in terms of treatment of eating disorders.

Julie Duffy Dillon (24:03)

Yes. Yes. Yes, I agree. Agree. Okay, so I was at that talk. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yes.

Elyse Resch (24:33)

You were, you’re the only person I’ve told it to who is actually there. Wasn’t that awful?

Julie Duffy Dillon (24:40)

Yeah, and I had similar reactions. I mean, my reaction during this, talking about instinct, we can’t rely on instinct, was similar to yours, but also, I think so many people miss another part of intuitive eating about how it’s also centering the healing experience. So, even if we’re using instinct to help with healing. And that’s only when we’re relying on the moment, even though that’s not the case. But even if we were, it’s a vehicle to help someone heal. And I think, and especially eating disorder recovery, I want to prioritize that over all these other things because that’s what’s keeping them alive and that’s my priority. So that was something else that I was really I don’t know when it’s nice to hear different kind of constructive criticism, but also like, we’re also missing this other part of it that this is something that helps with healing. And yeah, it did also cater to the kind of popular belief of, in my opinion, of like that hunger fullness side of intuitive eating. I’m like, it’s missing all these other things. So yeah, it’s good to hear your, your response to it.

Elyse Resch (25:45)

Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you for that, for your thoughts on that. And it makes me feel really good that somebody else experienced a little bit of an ick with that.

Julie Duffy Dillon (25:57)

Mm-hmm, yeah, we all, I remember everyone’s jaw was on the floor with that one. But yeah, it was a very interesting experience something I want to turn to now is I sent an email out to my Voice Finder newsletter. And I had four people ask questions. And so I wanted to ask you these questions to hear what you have to say. And the first two I’ll, kind of put together because they’re similar. And one is about diabetes and the other one is about PCOS and menopause. So let me ask you the first one. So Janice asked, I have type 2 diabetes. Must I always watch my carbs? Any suggestions? How can I eat intuitively with type 2 diabetes? And then Jocelyn’s question was, has Elyse seen or heard of intuitive eating working differently for people with hormonal issues like PCOS or endo or anything else. What about a menopause or perimenopause? Maybe differently isn’t quite the right word, but are there extra challenges or is it harder for them to listen to their real needs versus the cravings their hormones might play a role in? So let me know if I need to break that down, but I kind of lumped them together because I feel like they’re kind of similar. Yeah.

Elyse Resch (27:09)

Okay, now that’s yeah, I have some really strong thoughts and feelings about it. First of all, I want to say that there is a new book coming out. did not write it, but I had the privilege of writing the forward for it. It’s called Intuitive Eating for Diabetes. And it’s coming out on April 1st written by Janice Dada, D-A-D-A, J-A-N-I-C-E, I think D-A-D-A.

Julie Duffy Dillon (27:16)

Ooh yeah! Fabulous.

Elyse Resch (27:34)

And it’s a wonderful book that addresses the damage that’s done by traditional diabetes recommendations to people. So let me use one word that I think is the key word here, and it’s stress. I think that the recommendations like lower your carbs or count your calories or whatever it is, lose weight, which is just ridiculous.

Elyse Resch (28:04)

Any medical professional will tell someone to lose weight. Actually, it’s against the Hippocratic oath as far as I’m concerned, since we know that there is no way to intentionally lose weight that is sustainable. In any case, what happens to people, especially when they’re newly diagnosed with diabetes, is they start to panic and they feel shame, they feel terrible about themselves. think they brought it upon themselves because they weren’t eating correctly or they had too much sugar or their weight wasn’t right. And what ends up happening is it increases their levels of stress, thinking that they’ve got to do everything perfectly. And we know that stress raises cortisol levels. We know that it’s going to lower insulin levels. And so there’s going to be you know, less insulin to bring sugar into the bloodstream, I mean, to bring sugar into the cells. So the sugar is all in the bloodstream and it raises, you know, it’s going to raise blood glucose levels. with intuitive eating, you recognize that.

Elyse Resch (29:10)

Listening to your body is going to help you feel the best having joy and satisfaction in eating eating enough food having you know Having sufficient amounts of food having some balance and meals eating regularly throughout the day is going to help manage blood glucose levels and There have been gosh. I remember reading studies many years ago about how you utilizing intuitive eating principles because remember it’s been around for 30 years has increased glucose, you know, regularity. And in fact, there was a couple of them recently that have shown that Intuitive Eating helps manage blood glucose levels and it can decrease blood pressure. I can’t remember the specifics, an increased satisfaction. So I think that listening to the idea that you should lower your carbs is absolutely wrong. We need carbohydrates, also with PCOS. mean, so many medical people are saying, no, get rid of your carbs. They don’t understand that if you’re not taking in sufficient amount of carbohydrate, what are you doing? I call it self-cannibalization. You start using up your own stores that can last you, your glycogen stores that can last you maybe a few hours, and then what? Then you’re breaking down muscle tissue to convert it to glucose. we need our carbohydrates. We need it with diabetes. need it with, well, we all need it no matter what our condition is. so I think if you think of it as, my goodness, if I’m going to try to follow some rigid guideline, it’s going to increase my stress and it’s going to make my diabetes management worse. So, and I would say that, you know, for any of these medical conditions, think that when I said we can listen to our bodies, I mean, a person’s not going to feel very good if they wait eight hours to eat, you know, as their blood glucose is dropping. If their blood glucose is high because they haven’t been eating regularly, moving their bodies in a joyous way, they’re going to feel it. And so intuitive eating is really the actually most efficient and best way to deal with type 2 diabetes. Even type 1, I had a client so many years ago, we would go to lunch and she would look at the menu and just think about what she really felt like eating. She would count her carbs because in type 1, at that time before there were insulin pumps and you had to know how many carb grams you were taking to know how much insulin to take. Then she would inject the insulin to match the amount of carbs. And it was about thinking about what would be pleasurable, thinking about what her body needed, what she felt like eating. So I guess the big answer is no, you do not need to restrict your carbohydrates. It’s going to be detrimental to you. in terms of people with, you were saying something about, I think, perimenopause or post-menopause or any of those. Yeah. And one of the things I want to say is that

Julie Duffy Dillon (32:02)

Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, but I think any of those, yeah.

Elyse Resch (32:25)

We seem to think that we can control our bodies size, shape throughout our lives. Guess what? Our bodies are going to do what they’re meant to do throughout our lives. Whether it has to do with puberty or menarche, menopause or not, or age, bodies change. And so, so much of, I remember so many people coming to me saying, my God, I’m going through menopause and you know, what’s happening to my body? I’ve gained weight, my clothes don’t fit. I haven’t changed anything that I’ve eaten. And I think the focus is on has to be on radical acceptance, has to be on the fact that we just need to have wonderful self-compassion, self-care, enjoyment, satisfying meals, and find ways to see that we aren’t the size of our bodies. Our worth is not based on the size shape of our bodies. So much of diabetes, by the way, PCOS, body size, it’s genetically programmed, so much of it.

Elyse Resch (33:24)

And then there’s so much stress. The other thing I wanted to say about, you know, about diabetes and the idea of weight loss, which is so counterintuitive actually, is that so many people do try to lose weight and then of course they fail, quote unquote, the diet fails them, they don’t fail. But then they gain the weight back and more and then there’s this weight cycling and there’s research to show that weight cycling, whether you gain more or you just gain it back, increases, it’s pro-inflammatory, increases your risks of cardiovascular events and diabetes. So we’ve got a very backwards mixed up, you know, message coming from many people in the medical community and they were very weight centric and yeah. So I don’t know if that answered your question.

Julie Duffy Dillon (34:05)

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, it’s really, it does. I’m glad that you mentioned that research because it’s something that I talk to a lot of people with PCOS about is how, you know, we have some short-term research, especially with PCOS. There’s lots of short-term, like six week to 12 week long research that you know, looks at calorie counting, cutting carbs, cutting sugar, intermittent fasting, keto, like they have all of them. And they show these like amazing sparkly things. But then when we look at longer term research in PCOS, well, no, we don’t have any because you know, the funding is not for that. But we look at the general population. Yeah, like these diets seem to raise blood sugar, raise blood pressure, raise inflammation, which is the things that with PCOS you don’t, you don’t, you want to find ways to lower insulin and lower inflammation because that’s the cause of the symptoms. So dieting may in the short term help, but the long term is just gonna make it worse. So it’s a hard sell because the world around is telling it different, but eventually I think so many people get there.

Elyse Resch (34:58)

It’s a hard sell, but I think if you put in the concept of stress and what stress does to the body and how stressful it is to try to follow something that most people are not going to be able to follow, in fact, the few that do typically have disordered eating or eating disorders, that I think it helps people look at it. You also want to be looking at social determinants of health and all the other factors in a person’s life thinking about what’s going on in here in LA. You know, there’s no safety security in the areas that are burning down. so why put something into our lives that’s going to increase our stress?

Julie Duffy Dillon (35:44)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s what dieting is going to do.

Elyse Resch (35:54)

Yeah, and we’re all told lower your stress meditate. You know look at the flowers But okay. Yes, those are all great. I’m not disputing that but how about just not creating situations where you’re increasing your stress because you’re trying to follow something. That’s not sustainable, so that’s Yeah, yes, yeah

Julie Duffy Dillon (36:00)

Mm-hmm. That’s probably not gonna work and make it worse. Yeah, yeah, I’m so glad that you mentioned all that. Thank you. Well, let’s move on to Lori’s question. So Laurie asks, were people of size consulted when intuitive eating was created? And as it has evolved since both authors are not people of size, there are many reasons that people of size struggle and will always struggle with the intuitive eating concepts such as social norms, health concerns, family reasons and so on. So what do you say? Yeah, yeah, it’s a good one, yeah.

Elyse Resch (36:39)

Well, that’s a two part question or maybe a 20 part question, but let me start with the fact. When we talk about the evolution of intuitive eating, in the early days, were not, if you want to use the word woke, we were just not woke enough to think about that. But in the newest edition of the workbook, which I’ll tell you about later, we had four different people and different marginalized identities sensitivity reading on the book so that we were getting in opinions in this case talking about people in larger bodies that could look at what we were writing and see if we were missing it in any way. Look, none of us can control certain things about ourselves and in fact as we were saying before, know, weight is genetically programmed typically, not that things can’t affect it of course. So we acknowledge that we can only have empathy and compassion for people who are living in this world not feeling safe because there, as I mentioned earlier, is so much oppression toward people in larger bodies, stigmatization and a world that isn’t made for people in larger bodies. I had a client who is a physician, she’s a surgeon, and we talked, she wasn’t in a larger body, so she had never thought about this, but after talking for a while, she said, we doctors have to change our tools so that they fit people, you know, the blood pressure cops and the scales and all of that, so that they fit people’s, you know, size, regardless the gowns. I went into have a dermatology appointment once and I couldn’t pull the gown around me. And I said, it was a new doctor, my doctor had retired. And I said, well, what about people who are in larger bodies? And she looked at me like, I don’t know. You know, I didn’t go back to her. found somebody else, but we, we live in a very unsafe world for people who have a marginalized identity, which includes being in a larger body. yes, I acknowledge I have had thin privilege my entire life. And it’s a gift to not be oppressed in that way. have other marginalized identities for which I have been oppressed, but not that. so

Elyse Resch (38:56)

That was the first part of the question. Yes, we are starting to become far more aware of having others who have those experiences give us feedback. The other part, the fact that you said that they’re having difficulty, that people in larger bodies may have difficulty with intuitive eating. And I would hope that they would look at intuitive eating as something that’s going to reduce their difficulties. Difficulties may be because they realize intuitive eating is not about weight loss and they’re maybe still focused on, I’ve got to change my body, I’ve got to lose weight. And so I don’t want to do this intuitive eating thing because it’s not going to help me lose weight. Maybe that’s what was implied in that. I don’t know. But the other aspects of intuitive eating in terms of enjoying food, feeding yourself enough, what I said in the beginning, allowing for comfort with food, finding communities that embrace intuitive eating and health at every size as a way to include into it, rather than think it’s a detriment to them. I would love to speak to that person and understand what was behind that question.

Julie Duffy Dillon (39:58)

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, I’m looking at it right now. And I think filling in some spaces within the question, what I think it’s talking about is that just that experience of rejecting diets and being that different person, having to reject diets when everyone around you is not, how that will be different for someone in a thinner body versus someone in a higher weight body or another type of marginalized identity which yeah, I mean, I think you spoke a little bit about that in the beginning. It’s gonna be a different experience. It’s gonna be harder because of the systems. Would you add anything onto that? Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, I think.

Elyse Resch (40:44)

Well, what I just said about communities, it’s like, if you are on social media, do not follow people that are encouraging weight loss or diets or anything like that. There are many, one of my favorite people to follow is Reagan Chastain, who puts out such incredible information for all people, but especially for people in larger bodies to learn about following people that are feeding you positive information rather than all this negative stuff, getting out of it and acknowledging, we all want to be included. And so if they’re rejecting diets because they really believe now that diets don’t work and they want to become intuitive eaters, yes, you may lose some buddies who have been dieting with, but you’re gaining such reduced stress and negativity and gaining increased know, pleasure and satisfaction and, and again, radical acceptance. But you know, it’s liberation. The word I really like to use is body liberation in that we stop thinking that we are defined by our bodies, we, you know, our body sizes and doing all that work, that body image work of, you know, looking at everything that makes a person who they are. And it’s not simply the size of their body. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (41:42)

Yeah, it reminds me of almost like an existential kind of experience of like, there’s freedom and there’s so much wonderful things that come from freedom, but then also that’s scary at the same time. So there’s a duality to it. So we need to wrap up. Of course, this went longer than I was thinking, but you know, we had so much to say, but I want you to tell us about the second edition of the workbook, the Intuitive Eating Workbook. Tell us about.

Elyse Resch (42:21)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (42:36)

I know you said it’s out, It’s out, ready to be, happy new year.

Elyse Resch (42:38)

It came out on January 2nd. If anybody sees any video of it, this is what it looks like. And it has two new chapters, one on social justice and one on incorporating intuitive eating into eating disorder treatment. And of course, all the way along the way, we edited and updated. so there’s changes, especially in the gentle nutrition chapter. There’s a few changes. Yeah. OK. So buy the book and you’ll read about it. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (43:07)

I know, I’m like, that’s exactly what was thinking, I’m I need to see what you guys were doing with that. Okay, and then the other thing I wanted to ask you about, I’m dying to know about, and I don’t know if the listener knows yet, but there is an intuitive eating app that’s happening. Can you tell me what this is, yeah?

Elyse Resch (43:12)

This is so exciting. It’s going to be called, or it is called already, Savvy, S-A-V-V-Y, Intuitive Eating Savvy, you know, the one who knows kind of thing. And I’ve been working on it with this incredibly wonderful co-creator who’s in the business world and understands technology. So she’s working with developers and I’m doing much more of the content. We’ve been working on it for a year. We hope to be in a soft launch in in March. And the purpose of the app is for more accessibility to intuitive eating for people out there in the world. Not everybody is going to find the book or be able to work with a counselor, and especially younger people who spend so much time on their phones. And they’re getting so much diet culture content on their phones that we want to have a different place for them to go. It’s going to have, you know, lessons and exercises to learn about intuitive eating, but mostly to dig deeply into their own psychology and look at their thoughts and their feelings and the disadvantages that have come to them from being in diet culture and what intuitive eating will offer to them. So it’s super exciting, super, super exciting. I think the main thing is the accessibility so more people can get involved with intuitive eating. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (44:32)

I can’t wait. Mm-hmm. But you’re right, like having it on your phone, that’s the way to go. Like even doing things like this over Zoom or like on video, like it’s just too much. We need to keep it on our phone. So that’s great.

Elyse Resch (44:41)

Well, you know, yes. Exactly. And especially for the young people who, you know, they’re just being so brainwashed. For some of them, teenagers, young adults, where they’re not, you know, executive functioning is not fully developed to get different input, you know, rather than just the diet culture input.

Julie Duffy Dillon (44:57)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. I love it. Well, if someone wants to know more about you besides, picking up this workbook, where can they find out more information about you?

Elyse Resch (45:11)

Yeah. So my website is just ElyseResch.com and I’ve got lots of stuff on there. I have words of wisdom for all the years I’ve been around, things that I want to share with people that have helped me get through life and studies and podcasts and just lots and lots of information. I am on Instagram only I don’t really know how to work it other than put things on people’s stories. So that’s @ElyseResch someday. You know, I keep getting people saying, let me teach you how to do more than

Elyse Resch (45:40)

Anyway, I am on that. That’s really the only the main place, you know to find me and then the books there’s Intuitive Eating fourth edition. There’s the new intuitive eating workbook I wrote the intuitive eating workbook for teens, which is still around and has gotten a lot of great response I wrote the intuitive eating journal, which is another one It’s a place to write more and then we have the intuitive eating card deck which is just a fun thing and use it like a tarot card deck pull out a card and go Okay, this is what I’m supposed to work on right now. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (46:13)

I love it. We’ll put everything, links to everything in the show notes. And thank you for your time and stay safe. Stay safe. Hopefully these fires will all be gone soon and thank you.

Elyse Resch (46:20)

Yes, thank you. We hope so. Thank you so much, Julie, for having me on. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Julie Duffy Dillon (46:30)

Thank you.

Julie Duffy Dillon (46:32)

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this interview with Elyse Resch. And because you’ve listened all the way through, I wanna say a very special thank you. Again, this is the 400th episode. I didn’t think I was gonna get to 100. So this is pretty amazing that this is a 400th episode. And I just wanna say thank you for listening. Whether you’ve listened since the beginning or this is your very first episode, I appreciate you so, so much. I love podcasting and writing. I hope that this is something that I can continue to do because seeing clients one-on-one is just not something I’m able to do anymore. And this is something that I’m able to do living with my chronic illness and like it makes me so energized. So thank you for allowing me to be in your ears. Thank you for trusting me and my team. And we look forward to the next hundred episodes, 200, 300, 400, whatever. We’ve been around for nine years now. What’s another nine, right? So again, thank you for trusting us as you’re navigating the diet industry and we look forward to continue to support you the years ahead need to end for today, but just as a reminder, the Find Your Food Voice book, you can get to the pre-order at JulieDuffyDillon.com slash book. And we look forward to being in your ears next week for another episode of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. Until then, take care.