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Julie: Hey there, welcome to episode 373, Finding Your Food Peace. If you found me because you put food peace in the search bar, you just pushed play without even really realizing who you’re listening to or what they were all about, welcome. Thank you for trusting me to help you to understand food peace and the concepts around it. So this episode will give you some basic first steps and I also wanna help you understand how me as someone who used to call herself a food peace promoter doesn’t use that anymore. Like kind of why? If you are someone who has been following me for a while, thank you. You are the reason why I do the work I do. You’re the reason why I wrote a book that’s gonna be coming out in March of 2025. And it’s called, Find Your Food Voice.

Julie: So I wanna help you to understand also why I don’t say food peace anymore because you probably joined me when I did. And I really didn’t, I don’t know, I didn’t peel back the curtain and share with folks why I made the change. I kind of just made it and I probably did a disservice. But at the same time, I think I was still trying to define what it meant and was it really important? And yeah, it’s really, really important. But these things take time, especially for me. I’m someone, just to let you know a little bit about myself, I am an Enneagram Four. I’m someone who thinks in feelings, not words. So really coming to a place where I have words to share with you about your relationship with food, it takes a long time. It takes a lot of bandwidth and I have learned I can’t rush it. It just has to marinate for a long time. But if you are someone who has never met me before. 

Julie: Hello, my name is Julie Duffy Dillon. I am a seasoned dietitian. I’ve been a dietitian since 1999. And I help people with a complicated relationship with food, let go of the burden of food decisions to finally enjoy eating again. And if you’re struggling with feelings of failure with your relationship with food, I want you to know that you are not failing rather functioning as designed by all the diets you’ve tried and also all of the systems that created them and continue to push them. Those systems are the real villain and I call them the I should eat script. So this real villain, the systems and how to let go of all this burden, this is what I wrote about in my book. Again, it’s not out yet.

Julie: I’m actually in the middle of still editing it. I have a week off from editing, so I’m recording this right now while I have time, and I am so excited to bring it to you. But just know, you may notice me talking about it in a little bit of a different way than other people who use the word food peace or food freedom. And like I said, there’s a reason why, and I think it’s going to help your relationship with food even more and help better the world at the same time. So back to food peace. Did you know that I trademarked the phrase to food peace back in 2010? I started using that phrase when I was explaining to people what I did back in 2010. And let’s see, I think it was around 2004 when I decided I could no longer help people to diet, that I was gonna be a non -diet dietitian. What I called myself was an anti -diet zealot.

Julie: That was my, what I had on my Twitter profile. Twitter was one of the few kind of social media means we had back then. And yeah, I called myself an anti -diet zealot. And someone mentioned to me like, maybe it’d be helpful for you to describe what you do instead of as the negative, but as the positive. And so when I thought of anti -diet, the opposite or what I was hoping to be like the utopian experience is food peace. For people to feel like food was not only a neutral, like I wanted it to be more than that, not just weight neutral or food neutral, I want it to be positive, to be something where food was not only a way to fuel, but also a way to experience pleasure and connection. Because I know food is that, it’s a connector. I’m half Polish and every funeral or wedding I’ve been to on the Polish side of my family includes a ton of different foods like kielbasa and many other like Polish ones. Why am I forgetting about one in particular? my gosh, I feel like my Polish ancestors are gonna be so mad at me. There’s another one I can picture right now. Pierogies, that’s it. And the pierogies, those were also always there. And did I eat them when I was hungry? Yeah, but like, if I wasn’t hungry, I was gonna eat the kalbasa and pierogies because these were like the really well -made ones, you know? And also I was with my family that I didn’t get to see very often and we were celebrating our mourning. And I don’t think Polish traditions are unique in that way of using food in celebrations and in grief. I happen to know that that happens all around the world. And there’s many cultures that I’ve never heard of that probably also do this too. So why can’t we have a relationship with food that honors that first and foremost, and even takes a step further that honors healing, recovery.

Julie: So if you are recovering from an eating disorder or you are recovering from diet rock bottom, and maybe you live in a body that’s never gonna be thin, you deserve to have a peaceful relationship with food too. What if also you have diabetes and you have a diabetes that’s hard to manage? Do you also deserve a peaceful relationship with food? Hell yes you do. And I think having that first and foremost is priority.

Julie: And even as my way of helping people with their complicated history with food has evolved and changed, that is still the foundation. Healing is always priority when you work with me, when you read anything that I’ve written or listen to anything that I have recorded. I think that’s the most important thing. If you want to pursue health, yeah, you can do that alongside it, but I also think healing needs to come first. So food peace. Why did I like move away from it then if I actually went ahead and put that little TM next to the phrase food peace, the phrase food peace and you that little TM if you’re not clear on like trademarking and copyrights. If you’re the first person to use a phrase or you know have some kind of product, you can put that TM after it without having to hire lawyers and go through the expensive filing process to register a trademark, just to kind of like dog ear it and be like, hey, I’m using this and I want you to know that I’m using this and there’s a timestamp with it. And so over the years, when I was still using the phrase food peace, people would try to register the trademark food peace and all I had to do was send a screenshot of a blog post with me using the phrase food peace and the TM after it to their lawyer and they couldn’t register it. And when I first did this podcast, so the first many, years, think, and so this podcast started in 2016, January of 2016, until 2022, I called myself a food peace promoter. 

Julie: So I did start to appreciate how different people, depending on their particular history and set of circumstances, would define recovery differently. Peace would look different for different people. And I tried to hold on to food peace as the way I was teaching it. Because again, I was like, I trademarked this. is is kind of my branding in a sense. And I felt it would describe to me and my work and I probably was a little too loyal to actually the phrase be just because of how long I was connecting myself to it.

Julie: And there were a lot of things that I thought were important with FoodPeace that I will convey to you. Like I had these six Rs that I would often teach to help people go from this really complicated, messy relationship with food to one where they felt like they had permission and recovery. And the first step was always respecting their body, meaning acknowledging how many diets you’ve been on. And is that enough to know that it’s not going to work for you? but then also realizing that you’re not abnormal. Like diets don’t work for most people. So if they don’t work for you, it’s not that you’re a failure. You’re just this like textbook human being that’s being a successful human being. But after rejecting diets and doing the work of just turning away in the podcast episode that I recorded just before this one called, Finding Food Freedom, I talk about food freedom and food peace probably could be this too. As if you’re on this like super highway of dieting as the only way to know how to eat. And then you just take an exit ramp. For some people that’s food freedom and that food freedom may then turn into something like food peace. And as you take this exit, it doesn’t stop there. You basically get a new roadmap that is a completely nuanced, different way of experiencing food. And with Food Peace, think for me, it was like starting to chip away at moving from an individual experience. And as someone who is white and I have lots of privileges, you know I’m half Polish. And that Polish heritage also brought a Christian way of teaching and had a lot of like, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps kind of individualistic kind of way of living your life, you know, and. while that is enough for many people and that may be enough for you, the listener. And that’s why helping with food peace may be what you’re looking for. And while I won’t say that’s a bad thing, it just may be that I may not be the person for you. 

Julie: Same with food freedom, because what I have come to appreciate is repairing your relationship with food is gonna look one way Julie for people who have access to enough food, who are white and cisgender, heteronormative, of living that kind of life, which is the life that I live. And so no wonder it took me so long to kind of get to this. And again, that may be enough for you and you know, that’s fine. And if you are like me or not like me, and already aware of this because this is the life we’re rejecting diets personally also will cause this ripple effect to create more exit ramps for more people so they can also get the roadmap away from dieting. And doesn’t everybody deserve access to that roadmap so they don’t have to be tortured by diets anymore? I mean, I think everyone just said yes, everyone like once that. And if you don’t, that’s okay. Like, we’re just not probably meant for each other. But if you are, again, kind of maybe you are someone with similar lived experiences as me and wanting to reject diet culture, and you’re starting to appreciate how we are all connected. I know for me, I started to question the phrase food peace in 2020. I know very cliche, right? But as we’re having a racial reckoning in the country I live in, I started to really appreciate how we are all interconnected. And if we have access to food peace sooner than the majority of people on the planet, well then let’s work together so we can, what is that saying? Like we can raise all the ships. If we can all do this together, help people who don’t have as much access, why not? So that’s why I started to move away from food peace, because, you know, I told you about the six Rs for food peace, and I started to name them. Respect was one, then release, repair, rewire, reconnect and rally. rally was one of the last ones that I wrote about and really just let myself marinate on. And rally was what led me to reject the phrase food peace for how I describe my work because I’m reading the definition on my website. And if you are wanting this, this kind of document that now is I’ve outgrown, but that’s okay. It’s still good to keep on my website. If you go to julieduffydillon.com/sixkeystofoodpeace,  it’s on there, but rally is advocating for others not home in their own skin and allows you to add power to your food peace journey. So after learning these key steps, you want to spread the food peace message. This helps others not go down the path of diet rock bottom and also helps you in recovery. Picture a community circle allowing connections to the keys and permission, joining together to allow more people to take this journey toward healing and make the world a better place for more bodies.

Julie: And so many people are experiencing food insecurity or they don’t live in a safe place where they can actually access a grocery store or they are experiencing famine or starvation because of genocide. I want them to also have food peace, but it’s not going to come from peace. That’s why I moved to a food voice. And if you’re still with me, thank you. And if you want to learn more about what that actually means, I’m excited to share that with you. And that will be my next episode. But before we go, I encourage you to stay in touch again, especially if you this resonates with you. If you want to learn more ways to help find your food voice and help others find their own. You can join me in 8000 plus fellow voice finders and you can get to a way to join us in a link below. And if you would like to support this independent podcast, we always appreciate it because there’s a team of us that is behind this podcast and I wanna pay my team and I wanna pay my editor well. So any way of financially supporting this podcast helps us to continue to make episodes and support those who are behind it. And if you cannot financially support it, than sharing this episode, leaving us a five -star review that also helps more people find us, it helps us with our downloads, so it can help us find more advertisers. So thank you in advance for supporting the show, and I hope that I can continue to help you find your food voice, which will include freedom and peace, not only for you, but for everyone else on the planet. All right, until next time, bye for now.