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Julie: It’s time to name the neglect from typical food advice. Welcome to the Find Your Food Voice podcast, hosted by me, Julie Duffy Dillon. I’m a registered dietitian with 20 years of experience partnering with folks just like you on their food peace journey. What have we learned? Well, cookie cutter approaches exclude too many people, and you don’t need to be fixed. It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s all of us. Only together we can start a movement and fix diet culture. And we will. Let’s begin with now.

Hey, there, welcome to episode 353 of the Find Your Food Voice Podcast. I am Julie Duffy Dillon. Thanks for joining me today and congratulations, you and I have both successfully survived the majority of everyone’s New Year’s resolutions. Yes. That’s right. By the third Monday of January every single year in international dieting month, most people have already either forgotten about their New Year’s resolutions or probably feeling a lot of shame because they just can’t continue on with them, especially when they’re diet related. Huh? So, it’s always a bit of a relief for me. And so I hope it is for you. And one of the things that I hope you can add to your find your food voice journey is considering the patterns of diets, uh whether it’s within ourselves or within people that are in our circles of friends or family. And maybe even like celebrities who diet, there are patterns that really can affirm rejecting diets and diet culture. 

Julie: So today’s episode is a listener question episode and I have a listener question that has to do with New Year’s resolutions. And as I’m like, considering how to answer this question from the listener, I’m thinking about like how this is something that you can also apply in other areas of your life because there’s going to be worksite weight loss challenges. There’s going to be big events where everyone is talking about losing weight, there’s gonna be summer time where people are talking about a beach body. So tuck this episode away for those times and every New Year. 

Julie: So I’m gonna read the question and then we’re going to take a quick sponsor break. But OK, let’s go to the question first. I don’t even want to get to that part yet. So the question is, “all of my friends seem to be cutting things out in January, but I know this doesn’t work for me. Do you have any tips and tricks to not get sucked back in when it feels like everyone is dieting?” So I have six things to tell you six recommendations. Some of them may feel really great for you and some may not fit at all. That’s ok. But I hope they help you navigate the New Year’s Resolution, International Dieting Month extravaganza or any other time where you feel like everyone around you is dieting. But like I said, we’re gonna do a quick sponsor break and we’ll be right back. 

Julie: Welcome back. Like I mentioned at the top of the show, we are answering a listener question. This listener said that all of their friends seem to be cutting things out in January and I know it just doesn’t work for them. And do I have any tips and tricks to not get sucked back in? I have lots of tips and tricks for sure. And if you are listening and this is not your question, I would love to know your questions. I have a segment every single month where I answer listener questions. So send your question over to info@juliedillon.com and we may just answer your question. All right, let’s get to this one though. All right. Like I said, I have six items to consider. And to me, as I was exploring these six different items, I kind of saw them in a linear fashion, but of course, you don’t have to apply it that way. Um But that’s just the way I kind of laid it out, the way they came to me. And the reason why is, this would be probably how I would answer it if I was talking to this listener who asked the question, how I would answer it in a session. So that’s why it kind of came out in the way that it did. 

Julie: So if you have everyone around you dieting or it just feels that way, one of the things that I would encourage you to do first is to notice your feelings and messages. So, being in the place where you’re kind of stuck at work and everyone’s talking about their diet or you’re catching up with a group of friends and they’re all bonding over their diet. What is like the, the feeling you get or maybe you have certain thoughts or messages in your brain. What are you noticing? Name them. I’m going to name a few here that often come up with folks, but it’s not like all inclusive for sure. You may have something completely different and you also may notice that they can be ambivalent or they can kind of clash that’s ok too. But a lot of people talk about feelings of fomo, you know, fear of missing out when people are talking about dieting and whether you are in a place where you’re like newly moving away from diets or in the early stages of recovering from your eating disorder or you’ve been doing those things for years and years, it’s really like easy to see how people bond over their food choices, especially when it comes to diet and food choices. So yeah, there’s like this missing out and that fear of future missing out. Other people have talked to me about feeling hurt or even something, a little bit more of a dig, like some resentment or anger. Some people have also talked about fear or abandonment, but certainly it’s also very common to feel like a disconnection. There may be some anxiety that happens, some, some mood kind of changes, maybe even depression that you are experiencing as you are in those moments. So let yourself have some time to really connect with what your body is telling you what it’s feeling. There’s no wrong answers. And again, you may come up with a big old like batch of different things that may not seem to align with each other. That’s OK because this is like convoluted uh shit basically. And uh diet culture is really messed up. Um And as you connect to any kind of uh feelings or messages, it just becomes really evident that dye culture is so pervasive and unavoidable. 

Julie: So the next part of this of like connecting to your own feelings and thoughts or messages is when you’d feel this way or you have that type of message outside of this situation, what do you know you really need? I hope this makes sense. So for example, when you’re feeling resentment, what do you know you really need? I know when I’m feeling resentment. I need to check in with that person that I may be experiencing that feeling with. I may be experiencing some kind of trigger that is, you know, I need to kind of connect with that person to see what’s going on. I need to kind of um peel back the onion to the different layers to it or maybe there’s fear. Uh maybe you’re experiencing fear and when you experience fear, what do you need? Do you need to find a safe space? Do you need to feel calm? Um Do you need calming activities? And again, this is something that only you will know. But I have noticed over the years whenever folks are experiencing feelings or triggers or messages, when it comes to uh being around people who are dieting or even the craving to diet, there are um needs unmet needs there. And some of these unmet needs may have not been met for a very, very long time. And some of these unmet needs are just because not just making it, making it smaller, but really um to take it outside of your own kind of control. A lot of times these feelings and messages are coming from you experiencing a microaggression from a system of oppression. Um That’s why we can’t minimize it with the word just but it rolls out that way because I want you to know that that’s not on you. Um Of course, as a collective, we can all work to dismantle these systems of oppression, but yet it’s not your individual burden. And so when you’re experiencing a microaggression, what do you need? You know, I would encourage you to explore that. All right. 

Julie: So after you noticing your own, like individual feelings or thoughts or messages, the next step that I would encourage you to do listener is to consider the bird’s eye view. You may have the ability in the moment when people are like in the throes of hardcore discussing their diet to be able to do this. And you may not, I find that that takes a lot of practice and distance from dieting behaviors to in order to do that. So be very gentle with yourself. If you find it just impossible in this moment to be able to, to take a bird’s eye view. Um You may be able to after some time passes or when you’re not in the moment, feeling all of those feelings that we were talking about earlier. But I would encourage you to practice with taking a bird’s eye view of the situation because not only does it help improve access to your own like self compassion, but it will also bring compassion to the people who are in the throes of dieting too because we all live in diet culture, you and I live in it, your friends live in it, your family, your health care providers, everybody who’s talking about dieting, we’re all living in diet culture and we’re all having to juggle different systems of oppression some more than others. And how diet culture is a layer in there can just make some of that different. Um It’s, again, it’s a very complex thing. But if you can practice this, you may find that eventually in the moment, like you may be sitting down to like a lunch with a group of friends and they’re talking about their diet and you may eventually be able to in the moment be able to do this bird’s eye view, which again, my number one concern is you listener and I want you to have more self compassion and more access to self compassion. But usually the outcome is also more self compassion for other human beings who are just surviving. And the only way they know how when you’re taking this bird’s eye view approach, the connection I would encourage you to explore is also trying to name the systems of oppression that you are rubbing, rubbing up against and the ones that your friends are too. Of course, it’s gonna depend on their uh lived experiences and yet being able to name it. Um That kind of approach comes from um intersectional feminism is to like name the systems of oppression that you may be experiencing in the moment. I find that it does help so many folks with taking away the blame and the shame and again, increased access to self compassion, which I’m all for. All right. So that’s the first two. 

Julie: Let’s go to number three. The third thing I would encourage you to, to discern is, are you gonna say anything? Are you going to have any kind of verbal or nonverbal reaction when your friends are discussing their diet? And I say this with a caveat, you have absolute permission to change your mind at any time. This is not an absolute thing, but you may decide for right now, you know, or just just this month or just today or just this moment that you are, you’re not gonna say anything and you may say it to one person like there may be someone, one on one you’ve had conversations with about your recovery or rejecting diets. Um or you may have, may have one person in your friend group or family group that has very similar lived experiences. And you’ve shared about that where you feel like you can share how hard this is. And also you may decide you want to say something to the group. And again, just to remind, you don’t have to say anything ever when you’re experiencing some kind of oppression, it’s not necessarily on your shoulders to do anything about it. Um And I also appreciate that some people do so have at it and the reaction is going to be mixed, of course, but every time someone does say something either verbally or uses some kind of non verbal communication it does chip away a diet culture. One of my favorite kind of things to say is just the word “oh”, whenever someone talks about, I don’t know, some kind of diet plan or weight loss goals, if my bandwidth is just zapped for the day, I love just saying, oh, it’s like my way of saying, like I heard what you said, I’m acknowledging it and I am not encouraging it. So um I’ve told some of my really close friends, if you ever hear me just say oh to you after something you say, you know what I’m saying now. So anyway, I hope that, I hope that’s helpful for you. 

Julie: Ok. So number four goes into actually 4, 5 and six, go into kind of what to do after um after these moments. And the fourth one is to have handy some tools to help you distract from those feelings or messages or to help you disassociate. I know disassociation or distraction is often discouraged when it comes to, I don’t know, maybe figuring out your relationship with food or mending your relationship with food. But I think they’re vital. I think they’re underrated. And I also think they end up getting kind of a shame-y vibe, but I don’t know anybody yet who has reconnected and repaired their food voice without these tools. So something that probably is really easy to think about uh that often people talk about our journaling, you know, writing down whatever is going on to help you to distract or process. And it may be also some tools that you have that help you just to again disassociate. So it could be watching some TV. Good old Bravo. Um Maybe one of those, it could be playing video games, it could be playing with a pet. Um Doug is one of my favorite disassociation tools because he gets so excited when I get his little ball out in the backyard and he’s like you actually want to play. That’s so awesome. And watching him jump with such glee is the best disassociation tool ever. Um And let’s see, there’s some other ones too. So there may be some other distracting or disassociating tools like even like meditation or um doing some knitting or a puzzle, something to just, just kind of distract your brain. And I would also say emotional eating is an another option too. And I don’t know if that freaks you out a little bit. It may, that’s ok. I am pretty much an anomaly in this area, but I know I’m not alone, but emotional eating is a really useful tool to help disassociate. It works instantly and it doesn’t alter like your ability to like drive or take care of your family or, you know, make choices that are safe, but it works really well. Um One of my favorite sweatshirts that I am wearing um pretty much every day. Now, it says legalize emotional eating it’s, I love it so much. I’ll put a link in the show notes to it. But um, if there’s ever a sweatshirt that I wear that gets the most comments from the public. It’s that one. It’s either absolute horror in their faces or someone grabbing my arm and like under their breath saying thank you. And so, um I love wearing it for that reason, but I do think um emotional eating is a wonderful disassociating tool that I would encourage you to just kind of keep in your self care toolbox and all those things I listed, those are things that I think could be great to have in this kind of either uh figurative self care toolbox or literally a box of tools that you can keep handy. It’s something that I’m talking a lot about in the find your food voice book, which if that is news to you, January 2025 be ready for it. Well, I talk a lot about filling your self care toolbox and I also have a whole chapter devoted to this concept of nesting. Nesting is doing the things that you need to do to help just stay connected to the healing rhythms of finding your food voice. And some of these self care toolbox items are a part of that nest experience. 

Julie: The other part of the nest experience goes to our number five on our list, which is seeking support. So, listening to podcasts like mine um such an honor that you have chosen to listen to this podcast today in any of my podcast episodes ever. But, you know, there’s a lot of podcasts that also will support you in rejecting diets. There are podcasts that are hosted by people with different identities that may align with yours. And I encourage you to find as many as possible to help you just to feel less alone and have better advice because they just align with your lived experience more than maybe mine would. And I would say the same for other online communities. Certainly seeking support post. I don’t know, 2010 is so much easier than when I was helping people with their eating disorder recovery in the early two thousands. You know, there was just not a way to have support unless you went to like an in person support group and living in a small town like I do where everybody knows everybody that was really hard. So I’m glad that we have online communities and then of course, other ways to support yourself is getting like a one on one support person, whether it’s a therapist, a coach or a dietician, whatever you can access, having that of course, can also help and be a part of your self care to walks. All right. 

Julie: So let’s go to our last one. Number six, this is one that kind of like the bird’s eye view. It can take practice. But once you find a rhythm with using this. It is fucking phenomenal. It is so helpful. And um yeah, people that I talked to who are in recovery, whether from diet culture or their eating disorder will talk about using this. That really helps to keep a consistent kind of uh recovery going. So at the top of this episode, I talked about how most people have stopped like their New Year resolutions by the third Monday of January. Something that you and I need to keep in mind is that dieting and anything that comes from diet culture, they’re very predictable outcomes. That’s why I know that diets don’t work for most people. It’s because research for the last 100 years has basically shown us that it doesn’t work for most people. Long term. It can work in the short term, which makes the process, especially in the moment really hard. But if you can remember the dieting timeline, then it’ll help you just to have some relief that it’s just a finite amount of time that these people around you are gonna be struggling. Yeah, they’re gonna, gonna go on and off diets. But still there is a timeline. So 3 to 6 months, I find like the 1st 3 to 6 months of starting a diet if someone gets through the first three weeks. Um You know, again, because the third week, third Monday of January is usually when people stop doing the resolutions. But if people kind of continue on those 1st 3 to 6 months tend to be the most, um, bonding, I guess you could say most bonding amongst groups of people to share about their diet. And then something happens around the six month to the one year mark for those who are still doing the diet. So for most people, they’ve quit by then, you know, most people, um, by the six month mark they’re no longer continue with the diet. For those who do at the six month mark to the one year mark, that’s when they tend to be the most loyal, the most like zealot, like and acting like it’s this religion or this cult and are just like wearing the brand t-shirts everywhere and trying to sell it to you. They’re talking about on Facebook. Um It’s probably an MLM at some point. So they’re probably trying to get you into it as well. If you can keep in mind, that’ll probably happen for six months to a year. What I’ve noticed is after one year with the start of weight regain, that’s predictable. For most people, the loyalty tends to become more hush, hush because of the impending shame. That’s where you, with your lived experience and your intentional move away from dieting if you’re willing and you have the bandwidth where you can provide support to that person because as a person starts to predictably regain the weight from the diet that they used to have such a loyal following to. There’s so much shame in it and no one with that diet company or know him around them that is also doing that diet is telling them that it wasn’t their fault. There’s so much blame and shame as we know, like that’s part of what makes finding your food voice so hard. So if you do have the bandwidth, that may be when you can kind of take them under your wing and be like, listen, it’s not your fault. What if this is just how it happens for most people? What if you are the norm, not the exception. And if you do that, not only is it helping them, but it does put another layer of certainty for you that diets don’t work and rejecting diets together is one of the most powerful things that we can do as a community as a collective. 

Julie: All right. So that is the answer to my question listener. And again, if you are listening and you have a question for me, send it over to info@juliedillon.com, I would love to answer your questions and that’s all I have for this week. I will be back next week with another episode and I look forward to sharing that with you. And as I say this January is almost over. So one thing I wanted to note for you about January, after this month, we are going to be moving to every other week episodes just to allow for enough time for other projects to get done, namely the Find Your Food Voice book, but we will continue to have episodes. It just won’t be weekly. It’ll be every other week and that is going to start in February. All right. So next week I will be in your ears again. Thank you for joining me and until next time, take care. 

Julie: Thank you for listening. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, and this is the Find your Food Voice podcast. Ready to join the anti diet movement and take the food voice pledge? Go to julieduffydillon.com and sign your name to the growing list of people saying no to diets and yes to their own food voice. The Find Your Food Voice podcast is produced by me, Julie Duffy Dillon, and my team of kick ass folks. I couldn’t make the show without Yeli Cruz, Assistant Producer and Resident Book Fiend. And Coleen Bremner, Customer Service Coordinator and professional Hype Master. Audio editing is from Toby Lyles at 24 Sound. Music is Fly Free by Hartley. Are you looking for episode transcripts? Get them at julieduffydillon.com, where you can also submit letters for the podcast, give us feedback, and sign the Food Voice pledge. We need your voice to end diet culture. We literally can’t do this without you. Subscribe to the Find Your Food Voice podcast to get weekly inspiration and education on how we can defeat diet culture and reclaim our own food voice. I look forward to seeing you here next week for another episode of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. Take care.