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Julie: Hey there, welcome to episode 368 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. Welcome to the summer minisode series, fellow voice finder. You’ll find there’s no music or editing, just content we are gravitating toward while in the summer chaos and fun. So this is part two of the Almond Mom series. Of course, check out part one where we dive into all of the nuance of like how it started and why it actually is a problem to be an almond mom. This is part two where we’re going to be talking about how to mend if you had one. So I was a child born in the 1970s. And so I know for many of you who are around the same age as me, you are brought up with an almond mom who was navigating parenthood while we were starting to name the epidemic on body size.

Julie: And those of you who are younger than me, millennials, Gen Z, also have parents who were being brought up during the time where we were so fixated, and we still are, on body size and eating a proper way and correctly. So if you had an almond mom and you realize, this really has impacted my relationship with food, I have eight things to recommend to you that you can do to help start mending your relationship with food. So number one, keep in mind that actually.

Julie: All right, so let’s get started. Number one, your foundation may be rocky. So you may want guardrails. What I mean by that is your foundation, your food voice may have lots of complicated layers on top of it, making it harder to access. This will take time to mend and tend to, but we have guardrails. Guardrails is something that I have written a lot about on my blog and also in my last series on food noise, I go through three particular guardrails that you can experiment with. These are basically ways to have, you know, when you when you go bowling and you are trying to

Julie: All right, let’s get started. Number one, your foundation, your foundation to your own food voice may be rocky. This is something that will take time to tend to and mend. And I highly recommend if you are someone who did have an almond mom to incorporate guardrails as you are attempting to use tools like intuitive eating or other non -diet strategies. Guardrails are some concrete type of recommendations that I have found that help people on this journey to reject diets. I talk a lot about guardrails in the food voice series that was last week, and I also have it in my blog. So you can go to my website or

Julie: This is the last one. All right, so let’s get to it. Number one, when you’ve had an Almond mom, your foundation to your relationship with food is going to be rocky. So you may want some guardrails. Guardrails are concrete tools that you can add to how you are making food choices as you’re maybe experimenting with tools like intuitive eating. And these are things that you can do to help just ease into relying on your body and getting to know the cues of hunger and fullness and other ways that our body and mind are connected to help us make food decisions. I dive deep into guardrails in the food noise series, which you can find on my podcast and YouTube and also on my blog. All right, number two, the first thought you may have about a food may be diet-y and this could go on forever. Yes, this is a hard one sometimes, but for many people that I’ve worked with who had a lifelong experience with an Almond Mom or another type of caregiver, whenever they see certain foods, the immediate first thought is a diet-y type of thought. It may be that this food is a quote, bad food, or this is a food that’s going to harm them in some way. And just know that if you always have a first thought that is diet-y that doesn’t mean you are doomed to always have to diet. What you can learn to do is to replace that first thought with what you want to think about that food. It may be something like, hey, all foods are good. I’m craving this right now. Or it doesn’t matter what time the clock says, my body is allowed to eat when it needs to be fed. There are ways that you can do this. And some people I find get really stuck when they are constantly hearing that first thought about of food that comes in because of their almond mom mom kind of foundation. And if you can give yourself compassion and permission to acknowledge that first thought, but then practice putting in what you want to think about that food or that food behavior, you will find that you are able to move forward. And that first thought, although it may still be there over time, it’ll be a lot quieter. All right, number three.

Julie: I encourage you to relearn what eating enough is for you. We have been conditioned, especially those of us who are socialized as girls and women, we have been conditioned that we don’t need to eat that much or that enough is really the amount that a toddler should be eating. We need to relearn what is eating enough. Summer Innanen is an anti -diet coach that I’ve gotten to know over the years. And I remember years and years ago when we were in a conversation probably on podcast or something. And she said, we need to eat a whole lot more than we think. And yes, we do. So keep that in mind. relearn what eating enough is for you. Part of the guardrails incorporates what eating enough may be for you helps you to experiment with different ways to figure that out. But it will take time and just know probably for the first year or so, you’re probably going to need need to eat more than you think and more than everybody else around you.

Julie: Number four, this one’s fun. Let’s start playing with your food. Like seriously, let’s have some fun. Let yourself go and eat something because it’s just pleasurable and make a mess, which is number five. It’s okay to make a mess. Play with your food, make a mess with it and let yourself be a kid. So much that happens with Almond Moms and other caregivers that are teaching dieting is that it takes a person away from just the joy of eating that is supposed to happen in childhood to help us in adult life. And so I encourage you, play with your food and make a mess. It’s something that will help repair your own food voice. Number six, spend some quality time in donut land. What the hell is donut land? And when can we go, right? Donut land is a concept that I read about in Jess Baker’s book and well, it’s in chapter four, my favorite chapter in her book. And she talks a lot about diet land and donut land. Diet land is where many of you probably are, especially if you are raised by an almond mom. And diet land is the place, of course, where diets are the ones making the decisions and you just have to follow the rules. As you start to reject diet land, what you’ll notice is that you’re moving towards the complete opposite, which is donut land.

Julie: And you may be eating lots of donuts and lots of other foods that are high in pleasure or otherwise told that they were bad or wrong for you. Many people that I talk to when they’re new to working against diets and diet culture are scared in donut land because it can feel like you’re there forever. And for some of you, you may need to have this experience of rejecting diets and eating lots of food that you can play with and make a mess. and lots of foods that have these negative connotations in order to repair a relationship with food, you may need to be there for years. That is not uncommon because you have spent decades in diet land. So give yourself the time you need to repair. In Land Whale, Jess Baker’s book, she mentions this craving to not always be a diet land, to kind of be in the middle. And when none of us are exactly in the middle because that’s just more perfect eating. but you’ll find as you spend enough time in donut land, you’ve spent enough time repairing your relationship with food. Your body has gone through nutritional rehabilitation and feels fed and your brain trusts that you’re gonna have access to enough food and enough pleasurable food. You’ll notice that not only are you craving donuts, but you’re also craving the foods that may have been associated with diets in the past, like salads, things that may have a diet kind of connotation.

Julie: That opens up a whole another can of worms. It’s something I talk a lot about in my book because of diet trauma. But just know as you go through that kind of pendulum swinging back and forth, eventually the pendulum will start to swing and be in the more of the middle. All right, number seven, prioritize healing. It is healthy eating. So much of donut land can feel unhealthy and many people tell me they feel like they need to get back to healthy eating. When healthy eating, the only way we know how to describe it is through dieting. When you already know diets don’t work for you, that maybe they worked in the short term, but in the long term they cause more harm, they hurt relationships, they cause an eating disorder, they made you feel out of control with food, they maybe have caused that food noise that we talked about. And prioritizing healing, recovering and spending time.

Julie: Having fun with food, making a mess with food, being in donut land, that is a part of healthy eating. Like repairing your relationship with food is a health promoting behavior. And this brings me to number eight, our last one. It’s important to keep the big picture rather than one meal, one snack, one food group or food choice. If you are eating a cookie, it may feel like it’s not a healthy choice because it’s a cookie.

Julie: And when we look at the bigger picture, how you’re repairing your relationship with food after decades and decades of being told that you are only gonna be worthy if you’re a certain size or you eat a certain way, that cookie is the healthiest choice. And I hope you give yourself permission to be able to continue to step back and see that bigger picture and to remind yourself, diets didn’t work for me. They may have done something in the short term, but all they did was bring me here. and now it’s time for me to repair. So if you had an almond mom, I hope you have the compassion and you also give yourself the space to heal. For many people who are raised by almond mom, the first question they have for me is how do I make sure I don’t do the same thing to my kids? And that is part three that’s coming up next. Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I really appreciate you.

Julie: I will be dropping part three in the series very soon. And until then, if you’re enjoying the series, I’m really, really happy. Again, this is the summer fun chaos time of life, but this mini episode is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. So we appreciate any feedback you have. And also, what do you want to hear us talk about? We will be getting back to regular episodes as we get closer to school starting again, when my schedule kind of opens up better. But until then,

Julie: If you left a rating or review, that always helps us independent podcasters to be able to be better found in the sea of all these podcasts now that are being professionally made. So we appreciate your support and giving that five star review. All right. I look forward to seeing you next time in part three almond the mom and mom series. But until then, take care.