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Julie Duffy Dillon (00:00)

Welcome to episode 421 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. Today we are breaking down how to move away from dieting while impacted by trauma with special guest Meg Bowman. Let’s get to it.

Hey there, voice finder. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. Today is a letter episode. What does that mean? Well, since I started this podcast way back in January of 2016, yes, we are almost 10 years old here, but this podcast was founded on letters from people just like you. I had letters written by listeners.

that would address the letter to food. And we would have you break down all the nitty gritty, like get into what’s really tough about your relationship with food. And then me and sometimes a guest would explore and hopefully give you some pointers to help you get unstuck for some first steps forward. And what I’m using today is an archived letter. This is a letter that I have answered before.

but I’m pulling out again because it was so impactful to me and to listeners. And I have a special guest today. Her name is Meg Bowman. And Meg is the author of the forthcoming book, This Is Your Body on Trauma, How to Nourish Safety, Resilience and Connection with Polyvagal-Informed Nutrition. I’m so excited for this book and I love that Meg and I have very similar ways of helping people and really just use a different language. And so you’re going to see this polyvagal-informed nutrition combined with finding your food voice. And I hope it adds. Another tool for you. So a little bit about Meg. In her book, she explores how nutrition can be a powerful tool for trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, which is a big part of what we explore in this episode, and building resilience. Alongside her writing, Meg is the co-founder of Nutrition Hive, a group practice specializing in mental health, GI, and hormone-related nutrition care. At Nutrition Hive, she works with clients seeking compassionate, evidence-based support at the intersection of food and emotional wellbeing. I have a link to her book below. It is coming out in about a month. So pre-orders mean so much. I can just say as someone who’s written a book myself, like pre-orders mean so much. So I encourage you to pre-order using the link below. And I can’t wait to hear what you think about it once you get your hands on it. But in this episode, again, we have a letter writer who is trying to apply intuitive eating principles and is kind of, they feel like they’re fumbling. They feel like they’re doing it wrong. And I hope that the tools that Meg brings to this episode helps this letter writer, and I hope it helps you. Maybe you also have felt like you’ve just been flailing around at times as you’re trying to move away from dieting.

Before we get to this episode’s letter and hearing from Meg, I wanna tell you about the Find Your Food Voice book. the Find Your Food Voice book is something that coincides really well with the discussion of trauma. And this is the book that I put together that brings together all of the tips and tools and strategies that I used to help my one-on-one clients with. they would often, this would be work that we would cover in a year or two. So for just $20, you get all of the tools and strategies that I would teach my clients so if you tried intuitive eating or you’ve tried for so long to recover from your eating disorder and you just can’t seem to make the next move forward, Find Your Food Voice was written for you. All right, we’re gonna take a quick sponsor break and when we get back, you’ll hear the dear food letter.

Julie Duffy Dillon (03:54)

Dear food, I am not sure if you and I can ever have a peaceful relationship. Lately, I am exhausted with recovery and the daily struggles of trying to eat intuitively, feeling like I’m failing and wanting to change my body. It feels like there is too much stress in my life that I do not have any energy left to try to go against the mainstream’s ideas on food and dieting that on bad days, I wish that I had never heard of intuitive eating and embarked on this journey. I realized that we had a complicated relationship after reading Intuitive Eating for the first time. I bought it on a whim, looking for an end to the food and exercise tracking madness, but still desperately wanting to change my body. I wanted to teach myself the right way to eat. I thought I was doing well, eating intuitively and generally feeling at peace. This was until it was pointed out to me that I was following the intuitive eating diet. And this realization launched a pretty steep decline in my recovery. I know that the behaviors I had were not healthy and that at one time I realized that I needed to help with them. But since I’m not able to separate intuitive eating with the intuitive eating diet, I am so confused and apprehensive to try to relearn it. Was everything I had learned the last three years completely wrong? And how could I have missed the mark so much?

Part of me wants recovery and the other part of me knows it will continue to be very challenging. And I do not feel like I have it in me to stay on this path. I don’t think I can go back to how I was before, but I continue to be in what feels like a half recovered space Working through my disordered food behaviors illuminated that I have a lot of personal trauma and feelings that I was using disordered behaviors to cover up and deal with. As I work through those, I noticed the disordered food behaviors creeping back like an old friend, wanting to help me cope. realized diet culture is everywhere. And because it’s everywhere, I feel exhausted by constantly defending my position to people and not giving into the allure of what I know now to be another diet My extended family gatherings that involve food consist of comments about amounts of food, good, bad food, needing to work off the food or some special ingredient that will save us all from disease. Yoga has been a refuge, but walking into the studio, I might read a flyer for a weight loss cleanse, overhear conversations about diets, hear body negativity from other yogis and even some of the teachers. I attended a yoga teacher training information session. thinking it would be a good challenge for myself to take my yoga practice to a new level and left feeling completely defeated after learning that one of the training modules was around how to eat like a yogi. Sharing my own baked treats with coworkers inevitably invites a litany of body and diet comments as well as their own personal justifications for eating or not eating the food I brought. I created an Instagram account for my dog because I thought it would be a fun way to share the funny things he does. Do you know how much diet culture permeates Instagrams about dogs? A lot. I cannot shut off the continuous diet culture that is everywhere in my life. Something has to change. Perhaps I am not on board with intuitive eating and HAES and that there are still pieces of diet culture I’m hanging on to. All I know right now food is that I am mad. I am mad that I know that my food behaviors aren’t healthy for me, but that I want to keep doing them because I feel like it felt like I was in control. I have so much shame for having this problem at all that I can hardly admit it to myself. I justify this by fully embracing that I hate my body and that of course, then the disordered eating makes sense. I’m so tired of starting over with different therapists, Finding yet another book that I put my salvation into, hoping that yes, maybe this one will click and I will magically love my body and I will become an intuitive eater. Will I ever feel normal around new food? Will I ever want to take care of my body instead of punishing myself for making a mistake at work, getting into an argument with a loved one or accidentally reading a diet message on a magazine cover and feel self-loathing? Can I enjoy your food without feeling an intense desire to want to exercise or restrict later? Can I trust you food knowing that my IBS may cause days or weeks of intense, intestinal little pain and fear of you food? Will I be able to go to my doctor and not be completely obsessed for weeks after accidentally seeing my weight and shame for feeling good that it was lower than I thought? It all feels too much and I feel entirely ungrounded. I realized that this letter is even contradictory stating that I wish I could even have my old food behaviors back. and also knowing that I have learned and made progress. I am just not sure, food, that I’m on the right path or even what the right path is. Sincerely, wanting to check out.

Alright, voice finder, let’s get Meg on the phone and we can talk about this letter.

Julie Duffy Dillon (09:11)

Hey there, Meg, welcome to the show.

Meg Bowman (09:13)

Thanks so much for having me, I’m excited!

Julie Duffy Dillon (09:16)

Yay, I’m excited. It’s nice to meet you. We’ve never met before, so this is so lovely.

Meg Bowman (09:21)

I’m super thrilled. I’ve been a low-key stalker online for years.

Julie Duffy Dillon (09:25)

I love low-key stalking That’s so fun. Well, did you get a chance to read the letter?

Meg Bowman (09:32)

I did, I did. There was so much in here.

Julie Duffy Dillon (09:36)

Yeah, it’s a lot. But it also is like very familiar to me. Like it feels like a lot of people have similar experiences when they’re like trying to move away from dieting or trying to move away from their eating disorder. There’s like, there’s some similar like milestones that I picked up. you too? Yeah.

Meg Bowman (09:52)

For sure. For sure. just that kind of pattern of the trauma that was just so clear in the narrative from before going into it through the process of trying and now even today, just, that fingerprint was all over it. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (10:03)

Mm-hmm.Yeah, well, of course, that’s why I thought of you with this letter because of mentioning trauma and you have a book coming out on trauma. So was like, Meg, help me. So what do you what’s your big picture about what’s going on with this person? What do you think’s going on?

Meg Bowman (10:25)

Yeah, absolutely. know, I think of course I’m going to make a guess. And of course, if this was, if this was, you know, a person in front of me, I would have 10,000 questions. Um, but the, the guess that I would make, like the thing that I see, you know, about the challenge they’re having is when they talk about, you know, I moved into an, into an intuitive eating pattern, but it really felt, I realized it’s really feels like an intuitive eating diet.

Julie Duffy Dillon (10:30)

Yeah, that’s all we’re doing.

Meg Bowman (10:55)

My guess is the thing that didn’t change was the nervous system survival state of it, right? Like from a polyvagal lens, as I kind of look at what they’re saying, they never got back into that felt sense of safety, that ventral connection and regulation. Even in their use of an intuitive eating framework, they really stayed. quite like their nervous system really stayed quite activated. And no wonder, I mean, no, no wonder it did. I mean, the thing that really struck me here was, you know, when we talk about kind of where is our nervous system getting information, we get information from inside our body. And this person is getting it through their IBS through their experience of chronic pain. Like they’re getting constant internal cues.

Julie Duffy Dillon (11:47)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Bowman (11:51)

And then they get information from outside their body, right? All those things, we go to the gym, we go to work. It’s this assault of diet culture information coming at us. And then there’s even the nervous system cues of danger that are coming in between relationships between them and other people, right? And all they’re experiencing inside, outside, and in between is just danger cues, danger cues, danger cues. And so, you know, my perception is, wow it makes it so hard to tune into the body. ⁓ And I wonder whether that for them was actually.

Julie Duffy Dillon (12:29)

Yeah.

Meg Bowman (12:38)

say an appropriate way to go after intuitive eating, but like maybe the most effective way. You know how if you were constantly getting these messages of pain and and don’t kind of have the capacity to to deal with them nervous system wise like what does that look like to tune into your hunger and fullness cues that that’s a little challenging.

Julie Duffy Dillon (12:40)

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, like there’s, I would imagine it’s not like a magic wand. Like you can go from like getting all that feedback and not being safe and not being in that place of like safety and the nervous system. Like this seems like the, for many people, it’s just like the first kind of step towards it. I don’t know like, or like how to kind of bring it in. And while you’re still like experiencing all of the trauma responses.

Julie Duffy Dillon (13:32)

And as you, because it takes time. I mean, I’ve done trauma work with a therapist. Like that takes years to like really like help you and your body to be able to do a lot of healing. So what are you supposed to do? Like if you’re like, I don’t want to diet anymore. So like, this seems like a natural next step. And yeah, we’re rooting for more. Like we’re rooting for more like freedom. And I don’t know, I think, I guess what I’m trying to say is like,

Meg Bowman (13:47)

Yeah. Sure, sure.

Julie Duffy Dillon (13:59)

I think a lot of people will poo poo like an intuitive eating diet and things like that. But I’m like, I don’t think people are necessarily doing it right or wrong. Like it’s not a black and white thing. It’s like you’re applying and you’re learning and figuring it out and making your own. I don’t know. Like to me, that makes sense. Yeah.

Meg Bowman (14:15)

Absolutely. I think the thing that really resonated with me and admittedly I did, you know, slam your book last night. was delightful. think you’re a good student.

Julie Duffy Dillon (14:24)

Which I think is like, so like, listen, she was telling me that she read my book last night. I’m like, wait, wait, you read the whole thing last night? She’s like, yeah.

Meg Bowman (14:30)

No, this is totally what we do, right? This is totally what we do. We read a book a night. But I think the thing that you and I use different language, but I think the thing that was so familiar to me, you know, in your work, especially with that example of Paul, I think Paul was his name that you used, but was that that, you know, intentionally turning toward experimentation, intentionally turning toward the acknowledgement that it ain’t going to be a one and done.

Meg Bowman (15:00)

Like this is a practice, this is a process. And for her, think that the, where I, I don’t know if this was a her, for this person, the letter writer, I think that the place that I would have started would not be attention on the body, it would be attention on the nervous system. So really that awareness of can I name my nervous system state in the moment? Like I am in sympathetic activation.

Julie Duffy Dillon (15:09)

Mm-hmm. There you go, okay. Yes.

Meg Bowman (15:27)

I’m in dorsal shutdown or I am actually feeling safe. And, and from that point, you know, kind of use some of those guard rails that you’re talking about. If we are in a survival state, like let’s use our guard rails. Let’s have a plan for when we’re in that state. And that’s a totally different plan than when we’re feeling regulated. You know, because I was just talking yesterday to somebody who literally feels no hunger cues. They’re gone when they’re in a survival state.

Meg Bowman (15:57)

And so that plan looks very different from when they can intuitively eat.

Julie Duffy Dillon (16:04)

Mm-hmm So if someone who has no connection to their hunger cues, what direction would you give them?

Meg Bowman (16:12)

Yeah. I mean, I almost always start with nervous system regulation in one way or the other. Right or wrong. I just find it so frequently when there is an eating disorder or disordered eating, there has been a loss of that connection of safety for a long time. And if we can develop a common language, ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (16:17)

Yeah.

Meg Bowman (16:43)

if they can start to name where they’re at, like it just transforms the experience of it. ⁓ Because we know the stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that we tell ourselves around food, that changes based on what our nervous system state is. And if we can name, okay, wow, I’m in a super like, I’ll give you an example. A couple weeks ago, I had to go into downtown Chicago, which like that is a fear place for me. I don’t like how the taxis honk at me. And ⁓ I had to record the audio for my audio book, which was also terrifying because I’ve never done anything like this before. So much pressure. And in the weeks before that,

Julie Duffy Dillon (17:15)

Yes, I would love that. Yeah, that’s lots of pressure.

Meg Bowman (17:38)

Like four weeks before that, my nervous system was so activated that it’s like, you must make a list of exactly what you’re gonna eat that week. You know, we’re gonna point it out. Sure. Yeah. Totally. Right. I did this like, this was the instinct that I had was like, how can I make myself feel safe? The way that I’m make myself feel safe is I’m gonna make a shopping list. I’m gonna like,

Julie Duffy Dillon (17:48)

Wow. My phone just chimed right when you said that too. That was funny. Did you hear that? It was like, bing. Wow, yeah.

Meg Bowman (18:07)

plan out my meals, I’m gonna do whatever. And honestly, the thing that changed it was the second I realized that because I know that’s one of my cues of me moving into sympathetic energy, like a lot of fix it, fix it, fix it energy. That’s my home away from home. ⁓ Because I knew that I was able to go, ⁓ like what do I need in the moment?

Julie Duffy Dillon (18:15)

Yes. Yeah, yeah, what do I need right now? What’s the unmet need or like how whatever words work, I would say to like, yeah, being curious, like what’s going on right now? Like, how can you insert that pause? And I have to be honest with you too, like I’ve learned about lots of different things with polyvagal theory. And one of the things that’s been very intimidating for me has been the words. I’m like, I can’t remember the words. And that’s where like, I’m remembering Julie.

Meg Bowman (18:33)

What do I need right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (18:58)

in the 90s taking biochemistry and struggling. I always say I loved it so much that I took it twice. I hope you hear that I’m being sarcastic there. But yeah, so like from that point of view, if someone has hard, like feels like they can’t access a lot of the trauma information because of the words, you have like a secret to that, like how people can move through that.

Meg Bowman (19:05)

So I personally always add a word. So I say sympathetic activation and dorsal shutdown or ventral regulation or ventral connection. Other people might use words like hyper activation or hypo activation. ⁓ You know, there can be some, sometimes we don’t like

Julie Duffy Dillon (19:29)

Ooh, okay. To help remember. Okay.

Yeah.

Meg Bowman (19:45)

hyper arousal, hypo arousal, sometimes that’s difficult language. But honestly, like too much energy or too little energy, that’s what it is. So if we can just, you know, kind of acknowledge that it is, I think that’s the thing that Polyvagel really, really, really inspires me to constantly try and remember is that it doesn’t actually matter what words I use. If that’s not the words that you resonate with, then we got to go with yours.

Julie Duffy Dillon (19:48)

Mm-hmm. There you go. Okay. yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that so much. Like, it doesn’t matter. Like, just, as long as we’re all on the same page, then we can make our, yeah, yeah. And I would imagine too, like there’s probably certain states of mind where it’s going to be really hard to like navigate and learn complex information. But there’s other times where, yeah, when you’re feeling in a safer space where we can do more like learning and apply it.

Meg Bowman (20:22)

Because it’s about your experience, right? Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (20:44)

so for someone like this letter writer, which again, there was so much that was unpacked, but there was like so much that I know listeners can relate to, especially if they’ve tried to not diet or tried to recover. What are some like steps that you’d recommend? Like what are some first few steps for someone that’s in this space?

Meg Bowman (20:47)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think particularly for this letter writer is finding moments of safety for their nervous system is really important. Whether those moments are inside, outside, or in between, right? Like there’s definitely a little bit of support that we could give for that IBS. Clearly, I am not going to advise a low FODMAP. That is not where we’re going here. But we could do a low FODMAP.

Julie Duffy Dillon (21:10)

yes, yeah.

Meg Bowman (21:29)

enzyme if that was appropriate. We could do a little encapsulated peppermint like enteric coated peppermint and just see if that helps that the reactivity and the perception of pain. But honestly they may not be able to access cues of safety from inside for a while. So then I would start looking at where are cues that we could get outside or in between relationships with others. Like, do we need to do my favorite type of detox, which is a social media detox? Like, do we need to, you know, come up with some phrases that we can use when people make comments? You know, somebody says, ⁓ I can’t eat blah, blah, blah, because I haven’t exercised. And you have a stock comment in your back pocket, which is like, what an odd thing to say. You know, like, can we find moments of safety? inside outside or in between wherever we can and my guess is at first we might have to work not inside with this person because it’s going to be so hard to tune inside.

Julie Duffy Dillon (22:38)

Yeah, yeah. So what an outside give me some more examples on that. What does that look like?

Meg Bowman (22:42)

Yeah. Yeah, it could really be anything. mean, Dub Dana, polyvagal therapist, Dub Dana calls them glimmers. So it’s like looking for these micro moments of safety. You know, I always you’re gonna laugh at me, but I always find a glimmer at the end of the day when I take my bra off for the day. And it’s like, ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (22:51)

Come on, anyone who wears a bra is gonna understand that.

Meg Bowman (23:06)

But also I was recently at my folks house and it was such a hilarious one. They have a tree in their backyard and you know how the wind blows the tree and the leaves are blowing beautifully? There was this one leaf that was unhinged. Like the thing was just like flying around here or there and we spent the entire visit just laughing at this leaf. And every time we saw it, it was just this moment of like, okay.

Meg Bowman (23:34)

That’s what safety feels like, you know?

Julie Duffy Dillon (23:36)

Yeah, so what’s going on in the body during those glimmers?

Meg Bowman (23:39)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think a few things like we’re moving more into a parasympathetic approach from the nervous system. Historically, we would have called that rest and digest, but we know that the body is, the adrenaline is going down in those moments. The hormones of care and concern and connection are going up. And I think for…

Meg Bowman (24:06)

for this point, like the most important piece, is in those moments of safety, somebody actually is able to eat intuitively. Somebody is actually able to have choice. They’re able to seek connection from other people and receive that connection and not have it be like harmful.

Meg Bowman (24:34)

So even if it isn’t about food, even if it’s about something completely different, just finding those moments of safety ⁓ can be transformative.

Julie Duffy Dillon (24:40)

Yeah. So then does it look like trying to add in more glimmers throughout the day to start to experience more safety and have more of an understanding or a knowing of it? Is that what that looks like?

Meg Bowman (24:53)

Yeah. I think the slightly different wording that I would use is maybe not add in because that feels a little of effort. So maybe we can maybe we can just notice, you know what I mean? Like this morning, ⁓ I was first thing up in the morning, I was in my bathroom and there was a bunny in the backyard trying to stretch for something and it was hilarious, this bunny. ⁓ But I, you know, in past lives in

Julie Duffy Dillon (25:05)

Mm-hmm. Good idea. Notice, yes. Yes. love that.

Meg Bowman (25:31)

⁓ previous nervous system states. Like I would have seen that moved away, gone off with my day. We got to go, go, go, go, go. I got all these things to do. Here we go. And I saw it and I was like, my gosh, that’s amazing. Hello bunny. And just that moment, you know, I didn’t have to reach for it. I didn’t have to try to create it, but in noticing it, it

Meg Bowman (25:58)

If you do that more and more, really transforms things. ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (26:01)

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah. And the wording you’re using, it reminds me of my therapist. then let’s call it notice, Julie, instead of add in. That’s totally classic for my current therapist. So I love that. ⁓ it’s important. I mean, I think there’s a nuance to it. There’s a gentleness, but it’s intentional, you know? So ⁓

Meg Bowman (26:12)

Yeah. I do appreciate the TherapySpeak, I really do. They got some good ones. Yep, Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (26:28)

I love this so much. So I mentioned earlier that you have a book that’s coming out about trauma. And when I read through this letter, I was like, this is, this is like such a common experience. And I think people who are trying to do some of their recovery work on their own often have so much trauma that’s layered in. And also we like live in this like world, like there’s some clients who are going to be like consistently traumatized just opening the front door. ⁓ And so tell us about your book.

Julie Duffy Dillon (26:58)

How can this letter writer use it? Yeah, who’s it for?

Meg Bowman (27:03)

Absolutely. So I definitely very intentionally wrote it for clients. You know, I have a lot of postgraduate nutrition interns at the moment and they’re all like, I can’t wait to read it. And like, well, it’s really not for you as a provider. It is really for the clients. And if I really had to kind of do a too long didn’t read on it, I would say that we’re

Meg Bowman (27:32)

we’re moving toward what is healthy for any individual. I don’t define what healthy means because I don’t know. I don’t know who my reader is. Right? I don’t know. But what I do suggest and it’s it was fascinating to me to read your book last night and I was like, oh, this is hilarious. I really have people design like what is my toolkit?

Julie Duffy Dillon (27:38)

Yeah, yeah, we don’t know. I’m the same with you. Yeah, we have a lot of similarities. I love it. Yeah.

Meg Bowman (28:01)

What is my approach to eating when I’m really experiencing a lot of survival states?

Julie Duffy Dillon (28:07)

Mm-hmm.

Meg Bowman (28:10)

far before. Like I don’t even want to touch it when we’re in ventral. But eventually when we spend more time in ventral, then it’s about like, okay, the gentle nutrition pieces. Like might we notice that, you know, every time you drink four cups of coffee a day, you get a migraine. No, but we don’t do that first. That is absolutely not what we do first. The first approach is just how can we get back to safety and how can we get back?

Meg Bowman (28:38)

Regulation and what might that look like for any given individual with food? ⁓

Julie Duffy Dillon (28:43)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, like, you’re a dietitian right? So like, ⁓ having a dietitian write a book about trauma is really interesting. I mean, come on, I’m a weirdo dietitian, so I mean, I welcome the weird. But yeah, like, welcome fellow weird dietitian. I love it so much, you know? So ⁓ what makes your trauma book different as a dietitian? Like, what makes it unique?

Meg Bowman (28:52)

is weird. my gosh, it’s so weird. Yeah. well, okay. I’m feeling a little spicy. Can I give you a little spicy? I you’d like a little spice. ⁓ you know, so when I, when I exist in the mental health nutrition space, in today’s climate, it can sometimes be incredibly maddening because it is all about the what, what do we need people to eat?

Julie Duffy Dillon (29:15)

I love it. Yeah, this is a podcast that’s for adults only so spice away.

Meg Bowman (29:39)

⁓ what is good, what is bad? Let me vomit a little bit, you know, and, and what’s fascinating to me is when you go to these conferences that talk about mental health nutrition, which of course I have, and I, and I will continue to cause I need CES and I want to hear, you know, different perspectives. Like you will have this very restrictive, everybody should do keto. ⁓ it hasn’t been studied for eating disorders, but we’re really curious about it.

Meg Bowman (30:10)

right alongside a therapist presenting about polyvagal theory and safety. And nobody is making the connection of all the fear that comes from, you know, these approaches where you’re purportedly trying to help somebody’s mental health with food. At the same time, you are triggering and propagating.

Meg Bowman (30:37)

trauma to their nervous system. I just think of like a client I had who was told that by her physician, this was an actual MD, ⁓ you won’t get healthy ⁓ until you stop eating your one cupcake that you have a year for your birthday.

Julie Duffy Dillon (30:39)

Hmm. gosh, that’s so ridiculous.

Meg Bowman (30:58)

And I was like, well, that’s fascinating. And so I just, the thing that I think.

Julie Duffy Dillon (31:04)

What was going on with that MD? Like that, to have that like absolute, yes.

Meg Bowman (31:07)

their nervous system state is that I think that like looking back at this letter writer I think the thing that I would encourage them to do when they hear other people say that shit it’s like what are you hearing you’re hearing their dysregulation

Julie Duffy Dillon (31:17)

Yeah Yeah, I mean, that is the goal with anyone in their own relationship with food when they hear other people talk about it and they like put it on them. It’s like, my, this is like classic projection. it’s, especially as parents with kids, I mean, we, that’s, it’s like, makes it blareingly obvious what our work is to do, but unfortunately the person there thinks it’s theirs.

Meg Bowman (31:31)

It’s not. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (31:46)

Yeah, and you know, talking about the conferences where there’s like a diet recommendation for mental health, but then there’s also like trauma conversations and it’s like this disconnect. I mean, I think the bridge if we could ever, I mean, or just the way to blow it all up really, is like we have to acknowledge how traumatic dieting is. but like that, I think like we’re part of the few people that will.

probably just even notice that. And especially as dietitians it’s really easy for us to see that, because we’re like spending time sifting through your relationship with food. But why can’t everybody else see it? That’s like working in healthcare or as a therapist, because it’s so obvious to me. But, you know, I think.

Meg Bowman (32:12)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s glaringly obvious. I don’t, I don’t, you know, you call it, call it the big cry. I didn’t have a big cry, but I did have a client where all of a sudden I was like, ⁓ crap. All the stuff I learned, not all the stuff I learned in school, but like the whole approach to being very prescriptive about recommendations and, and, know, just being so rigid is just wrong. But I think the thing that I will say is.

Meg Bowman (33:00)

For a lot of people, rigidity feels safe.

Julie Duffy Dillon (33:03)

Yeah, yeah, like the doctor recommending that one cupcake or whatever. that ⁓ was so calming to that doctor to be like, yeah, then everything’s neat and tidy then.

Meg Bowman (33:06)

Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah, right.

Absolutely. And what’s their training, right? Their training is we’re going to do a specific medication for a specific amount of time at a specific dosage. Like that’s the training. The liminal space, the gray area, the wiggle room, like that is hard for people to get.

Julie Duffy Dillon (33:17)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, and nutrition is only gray. It’s all it is. Nutrition science is never black and white. And if you try to make it, you just can’t control for those variables. That’s why a cupcake a year or a day, mean, really to me, both the same. like.

Meg Bowman (33:35)

It’s only nuance. It is only nuance. Yeah. No. I can’t even. Yeah. Yeah. And what they did, like what, what that recommendation did was arguably, I think easily arguably more damage than I don’t think the cupcake is going to do any damage, like more, like more damage in terms of the wear and tear on the client’s nervous system than the cupcake ever possibly would.

Julie Duffy Dillon (33:53)

⁓ man. Let’s just say it did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So does your book go into some of that, how our nervous system, what’s it impacted and how it affects our health? Okay.

Meg Bowman (34:23)

Yeah, we do talk about it a lot because with trauma, know, we have, there is often an increased inflammatory load in the body. There just is. And ⁓ we see that expressed in all kinds of ways. We see that expressed ⁓ in asthma. We see that expressed in cardiovascular disease. We see that expressed in, mean, name a disease and I can find you tied in trauma. And then the question becomes,

Julie Duffy Dillon (34:33)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Meg Bowman (34:52)

What is modifiable? And what is safe to modify? What is going to bring safety if we modify? ⁓ looking at the crazy leaf, man, that for me was safe to modify. That’s safe. And there might be other things for this particular ⁓ letter person, like a FODMAP.

Julie Duffy Dillon (34:55)

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Mm. Ooh, I like that. Yes, yes.

Meg Bowman (35:21)

is not going to be safe. It might bring some signals of safety to the body because they’re not having such unrelenting potentially. Maybe. We don’t even know. But it’s not going to be safe to their nervous system because it’s going to be so triggering. So it’s like what is safe to the person in front of me?

Julie Duffy Dillon (35:23)

Right, So Meg, tell me the name of your book.

Meg Bowman (35:40)

Yeah, so it’s called This Is Your Body on Trauma, How to Nourish Safety, Resilience, and Connection with Polyvagal Informed Nutrition. And it is out ⁓ October 28th.

Julie Duffy Dillon (35:52)

I love it. Is there an easy way for people to find it or can they just get it where books are sold?

Meg Bowman (35:56)

Yeah, they can go to my website, is megbomanutrition.com.

⁓ And then there’s links to ⁓ large retailers and independent retailers and also links to audio versions, which I got the privilege to record. So fun.

Julie Duffy Dillon (36:06)

Fabulous. I love that. Well, I’ll also put it in my, I have a bookshop store, like a virtual storefront, so I’ll put it in there too. And links for all of that will be below for anyone listening or watching. So I’m so excited to read it. I cannot wait. It sounds like we have this kind of parallel kind of experience, but they go well together, so I cannot wait. yeah.

Meg Bowman (36:30)

We do. Yeah. Yeah, I think we sometimes use different language, but I just saw so many similarities. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon (36:39)

I love that so much. It’ll be a nice bundle package then. Well, thank you so much, Meg. It was so great to meet you and thank you for like helping me with this letter.

Meg Bowman (36:48)

Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

Julie Duffy Dillon (36:51)

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Meg Bowman. And like I said at the beginning, I am so excited for this book and I can’t wait to hear what you think about it as well. Before I sign off, the next episode will be in two weeks and it is a chat with my team with Coleen and Rachel. And I’ve heard from a lot of you who listened to our last chat talking about the Fit for TV documentary. If you didn’t catch it, you can catch it in the show notes below. So the team is coming together to do another deep dive in some current Diet Culture BS because the world keeps giving us more and more. just always will be giving. So dear voice finder, until next time, take care.