We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - What Is Intuitive Eating? Evelyn Tribole on Trusting Your Body

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

377. What Is Intuitive Eating? Evelyn Tribole on Trusting Your Body  Glennon and Abby talk to renowned expert, Evelyn Tribole, about the principles of intuitive eating, the roots of diet culture, and the importance of self-trust in eating habits and overall well-being.  Discover:  -What intuitive eating is and three practical steps you can take to begin; -The true origin of fat phobia & how it may be playing out in your life; -How to re-discover your inner-compass; and  -Why understanding your ‘body lineage' can heal your relationship with eating. About Evelyn: Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S is the author of 10 books, including co-author of the best-selling Intuitive Eating, a mind-body self-care eating framework, which has given rise to over 200 studies to date. Her newest book is Intuitive Eating for Every Day: 365 Inspirations and Practices. IG: @evelyntribole To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, we're getting through, aren't we? That's what we're doing. One foot in front of the other, 2025 is looking like it might be a real doozy. And we are in it with you and we're here for you and with you. Recently our show was selected by Apple as one of their 10 shows we love. And they called it a comforting support system for braving the everyday. And that is what we hope. We hope that we can help you brave the everyday. That's what you help us do. And so on Sundays, we are publishing an episode for you, one

of our favorite episodes of the past four years that we've selected to be a comforting support system for all of us as we brave this new year. So in addition to our new Tuesday, Thursday episodes and the ones that we're posting on Wednesday as well, please come on Sunday for some togetherness, some support, some soothing Sunday togetherness for 2025. Thank you. We Can Do Hard Things. Today we have someone here who I have a hunch that a lot of you already know. Her name is Evelyn Chibley and she is the author of 10 books, including co-authoring the best-selling Intuitive eating that everyone I know follows at this point, which is a mind, body, self care eating framework, which has given rise to over 200 studies

to date. Her newest book is Intuitive Eating for Every Day, 365 Inspirations and Practices. Evelyn, do you have any background knowledge about me? Do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into today is what I want to know? I have a sense. In fact, I've got to tell you, you entered my heart during COVID when you were, your book tour got canceled and you were sitting on your couch in your colorful jacket thinking, screw it. I'm gonna read from my book in my presentation jacket

and that's when I knew I loved you. Oh, thank you. And of course I read your book back then too, so. Oh, thank you. Untamed, yeah. So I have a stance, but I don't wanna assume anything. So that's the best way to go not to assume for me. For background, I want you to know

that I have read everything you've done and listened to you everywhere. And so if I. Oh wow, thank you. Can you explain what intuitive eating is? Like I'm a child. Like pretend I'm in third grade. And explain what it is.

You know, it's so interesting that you come to that perspective of a child. Because that's where our research is rooted, that kids are natural intuitive eaters. And you know, the thing that I think is important to help in the understanding of this, this all got started because Elise and I were witnessing the suffering for so many people dieting, so many people outsourcing their eating decisions to some guru, some expert, some meal plan at the expense of losing trust in themselves, trust in their abilities. I can't tell you the amount of women I've had in my office who are

crying. Very, very smart, successful women. Like they'll say, I know the calories of a single pea and I don't know how to eat. And that kind of is the background of this. And then to answer your question, what is it? It's basically you are in charge of your eating by listening to the messages of your body. And if we get into a little bit of neuroscience, it's based on intraceptive awareness. And that is our bodies give us these amazing text messages, letting us know how we're feeling, whether we have to go to the bathroom,

whether we're anxious because of a heart rate, or whether we're hungry or we're full. And we're in touch with that. It's powerful, powerful information. The challenge right now, people are at war with their bodies and they don't trust the messenger. So we have a lot of work to do, Glennon. Yes, we do.

So I am in my 1,200th level of recovery right now. I became bulimic when I was 10 years old. And then I thought that I got it fixed when I was 25, because I became pregnant with my son. And basically, what I have learned is that from the ages of 25 until now I'm 48, I had just switched bulimia for anorexia. So I thought I was good, but what I really did was just create a million rules

to try to control the hunger. So now I'm in anorexia recovery and I think I'm getting healthy for the first time in my life. Wonderful, wonderful. Which feels like starting over like I am a kid. So here's my question to you to start off with. So I've listened to a lot of your interviews,

and I felt comforted when you say that a lot of other people say to you, I'm broken. I am a bottomless pit of hunger. I hear what you're saying. This is what I believed, Evelyn. I believed for everyone else that they did have a mechanism inside of them that they could eat and feel full and stop and then eat and feel full and stop, etc. I did not believe that about myself. I believed

that I did not have that thing. That if I started eating, if I let my hunger go, I would eat until I died, that I would never be satiated. What I want to ask you about is that I've heard you call that a primal hunger, and I feel that. I remember when I was in my bulimia years, just I felt like an animal, like a primally eating binging. Absolutely. But when I think about my recovery now and how much wider it is than just food, I think,

you know what? I have that primal feeling about a lot of things. I have a primal sadness. I feel like if I start crying, if I let myself feel sad, I will never stop. I have a primal anger. If I let myself scream, I will never stop. I have a primal anger. If I let myself scream, I will never stop. I have primal exhaustion.

If I let myself stop, I will never get up. So I heard you say that where there is primal hunger, we can look back and see deprivation. Yes. You got that right. Absolutely. So is it possible that I clearly felt so hungry because my hunger was not allowed as a child?

I wasn't allowed to eat. I wasn't allowed to feel hunger. So the deprivation led to the primal hunger. Is it possible that all of our primal desperation, if we look backwards, we find that we weren't allowed to have it? Like, there was no room for sadness. There was no room for anger.

There was no room for rest. And there was no room for hunger in my childhood home. And is that the source of the desperation? Wow. I've never heard anyone ask it to me in that way. But I think you're dead on. I think about the book Rage Becomes Her, and it makes the argument of the same issue that women have been angry for so long and there's this fear that if we let it out, it's going to be this amazing rage. And yet we

also know with anger and rage, there's energy that can compel us to make changes and so on. And when it comes to primal hunger, the thing I find with a lot of people is they really underestimate the power of biology. You know, an analogy I love giving, and perhaps because I love to surf when I'm in the ocean all the time, is when a big set comes, you go under and you hold your breath, you hold your breath, and you hope to God when you come back up,

there's not another way because you're gonna have to hold your breath longer. And when you finally hold your breath long, long, long, long, and you finally, it's clear to breathe, you inhale this gasp and no one says, oh my God, you have lost control breathing. You need to manage it. You need to be on a breathing plan.

And yet, because you know, and this is our survival mechanism, right, to live. And we are wired that same way when it comes to nourishing our body, because without food, we will die. And I think because we have food 24 seven, we can door dash it, we can do all kinds of stuff. We really don't appreciate how strong that drive is. And so when you're walking around chronically hungry and you've got this fear, I'm one

bite away from a binge, that's another way I've heard it describing, my response is, you know, it's understandable because on a biological level, your cells know. Your cells know like, I'm like, she hasn't been feeding me enough and I've been working out so hard and I'm so tired. And so part of it is taking that brave risk and that brave leap of faith on starting to feed your body, knowing that that's part of the antidote.

But when you're in that place of fear, you know, I really, I tell my patients I respect the fear because fear gets in the way of doing a lot of things. We don't want it to hijack us, but at the same time we need to look, okay, what do I need to feel safe in order to add this particular food to my eating in order to nourish my body

and looking at those kinds of aspects. So yeah, there's a lot, a lot there. I now believe I'm in this newest iteration of recovery. And I now do believe that I have an internal thing that will tell me when I'm hungry and that I can eat and then feel full and then wait a few hours and then feel hungry again and then eat and then feel full and then wait. I understand what I'm saying to you sounds very obvious, but I did not know that about

myself. I actually really get it and I respect that because again, there's a lot of fear to get to that place where you're at. It's amazing that you're at that place that you have cultivated that trust in spite of the many years of being involved in disordered eating or eating disorders, which to me is a great message of hope for all your listeners out there who are as you know. Just listening to both of you just now, is the opposite of fear trust in this conversation? Because what you're talking about with primal anger and primal hunger and primal exhaustion, and is it, is the root of it really coming

not only back into your body, but trusting yourself to make decisions, trusting that your body is going to send the messages, trusting that you will hear the messages, and then also trusting that it won't, like that the anger won't last forever. That the hunger won't last forever, you know, that there are things that we can do. that the hunger won't last forever,

that there are things that we can do. And I think the basic is to really trust your body and yourself because the world is telling us women in every way possible that we are not to be trusted. Right. And it's like the most primal coming home. Yeah. Oh, I love that language.

You know? It's good. How do we lose it? Like, I want to start with the little girl, right? The little girl who did know, does know, when she's hungry. But let me tell you a story, OK, that I was thinking about this morning. I have wonderful, beautiful parents. You know that during recovery, a lot of stuff comes

up, right? So I have been exploring the complexity of my family of origin. Karmically, I also have deeply feeling sensitive writers for children. So I know that I will be dealing with them figuring me out in several years, which so karmically I'll get it back. But I remember my parents sitting with me at the dinner table as a child. And whenever I would go for a second scoop, my dad would look at me and he would say, did you wait for your message?

Wait for your message. And that is what was said to me every night. And then I would freeze and then I would stop eating. So it's interesting though, Evelyn, right? Because it's like he was trying to teach me that I would have an instinct inside me of fullness. But what happened was that I didn't learn that I had a message. I learned that he was the message and the control was outside of me.

So that's one way. How do we lose in general, how do people lose their trust in their own bodies and start looking outside of themselves? It's so complex as you know. So one exercise I'd like to do with my patients is I call it your body lineage and that is looking at your family of origin. What was your earliest message of what a body should look like and how a body should be treated? We look at parents, we look at the messaging through the lifecycle up to the age of someone is seeing me. We look at siblings, was there teasing involved and what did your parents do? And did the parenting match their normal parenting style? Often what I see is the teasing

goes on undisciplined and it makes it seem like it's okay. Then we look at grandparents, aunties, and uncles. What was the messaging there? Was there body gossip when you went to family events? And what's really sad now is I am seeing patients who are second and third generational dieters, their grandma's been dieting. And so you get that and then that's just our family of origin. And now let's expand to the world around us, social media, media, media, all of these messages that you are one bite away, man, from killing yourself, or you're one bite away from curing yourself.

And eating is so much more nuanced than that. And so it gets really, really complex. And the thing I like to emphasize with parents, I have not yet met a parent who doesn't want the best for their kids. And a lot of these things they do are a couple of things. One, it's really well-meaning. And sometimes, obviously, I don't know your parents,

but sometimes what's happening is the parents are projecting their own insecurities onto their kids. They doubt their ability. I'll give you an example with my son. It came up as you were giving your story. When he was two years old, I made this amazing meal. I just, I remember it. Lasagna, salad, my favorite cake.

I don't know why I did all for me, but I did. The family loved it too. So I serve everyone the same size of cake. He finishes his meal. He finished his cake and he looks at me, goes more mommy. And the mommy in me is thinking, dude, you've had enough to eat. But the intuitive is like, you know what, let him have cake. I've served him another piece, the exact same size. You know what he did? He ate one piece. He ate one bite rather and off he went. And so what that does, I was thinking, my God, if my patients that I see their parents witness

that, they see the self-regulation. But if they are tightly wound and they're afraid, they might over-regulate and say, oh, you know, do you think you really need that piece? Or in the case of your dad, you know, what is your tummy telling you? What's your messages? And those, those kinds of things. So it gets really, really complex. And one of the things I aspire to for families is, you know, diet culture out there is just so, so nasty and so pathological. And the idea of changing culture is so big, but what if we simplify and said, you know, what if we end the legacy of diet culture at our own kitchen tables? At least home? Yeah. Is a safer space to the degree that that's possible.

We don't disparage bodies. We don't disparage food and those kinds of things. Because the world outside is tough enough. And I have a lot of young parents who really, when they hear that message, like, oh, I can aspire to, I can do that. I want to do that for my kids because they understand the suffering that they've been through with all the dieting and all the stuff that goes on all the noise around diet culture. Well and it makes me think the story of your son makes me wonder if you're the parent

who says no you've already had your slice of cake. That child psychologically leaves the table and all they're thinking about is wanting another piece of cake. And so it's done on a regular basis. And I want to emphasize generally one episode is not going to make or break a kid's childhood. So parents out there thinking, oh my God, I did that with my kids. Like, what do you do on a regular basis

is what I would be looking at. That's a really, really good point. And it encourages self healing for parents because it does truly it's no, bless us. Like when we say to our kid, or if we say to ourselves, well, I can't just give them what they want. They will eat until they are sick. We must not believe that about ourselves.

Like if we learn for ourselves, if we start to eat intuitively and we heal and we learn that actually we are not bottomless pits, that our bodies work, then that self-trust would wash over us with our parenting. We would say, this child is not a bottomless pit. This child, I can provide this child what this child is asking for and this child's this child is asking for and this child's body will regulate itself eventually.

Yes. It's trusting. And you know, and I love what you just said and that is my body is working and that's something I have a lot of my patients do is to identify when their body is working. They'll come in sometimes and they're really pissed off because they got really, really hungry and ate a lot of, lot of foods. Like, well, let's unpack this and see what's going on. Oh, well, they had an early lunch at 11. They got pulled into a meeting after work. Then they went and worked out and they got home at eight o'clock.

They haven't eaten in eight hours. And it's like, you know, I understand that it was really annoying for you. And yet what I want you to see is your body's working. Your body's like, I haven't had enough to eat. Feed me, please. And what's really needed besides the trust is consistency for the most part on a regular basis that if you want your body to trust you, even all this time of deprivation,

it needs to be fed consistently, nourished consistently to the degree that that's possible. We don't have to be perfect. I want to emphasize it's not a perfect process. Do you think, I just read this thing today that said that if you eat at the same times, around the same times every day, is that, would you instruct people to do that? Or is it just like eat when your body's hungry? You know what, it really depends. When I'm working with someone, they're usually seeing me because they're having more challenges than the average. And so sometimes I might create together,

joint create some scaffolding to help them honor their hunger. And so having regular meals can be really helpful. I'll never forget, back when I was training, I was back in my competitive days of marathon training, I would go over to my grandma's who lived out in a rural area I'll never forget, back when I was training, I was back in my competitive days of marathon training, I would go over to my grandma's who lived out in a rural area and, because I could train with no stoplights and stuff. And she would eat dinner every day at five o'clock.

And I'm like, I'm not hungry, but by the end of the week, I was hungry at five. Because our bodies get used to this. So yeah, that can be a method if that's helpful. I would certainly check that out and experiment and see. In my early days of recovering this time around, I started to understand that my anorexia was a bit of an oppressive religion that I was following. And like all oppressive religions, it was there to protect me from myself that I thought I was bad. And

so I needed this set of dogma or to follow to protect me from my own badness, which as an aside is also was, I could have been describing my evangelical experience, but very similar, right? What I remember talking to my doctor at that time and saying, I have great news. I figured out what I'm going to replace the anorexia with. And I excitedly just told her a bunch of new rules that I was going to keep for myself. And I thought she was going to be like, she's nailing it.

Yeah. And she said to me, you know, that's interesting, Glennon. I'm hearing what you're saying. What I want you to know is a lot of people who do not have an internal locus of control continue to depend on outer locusts of control. Now, Evelyn, what I need you to know also is that everything was so confusing to me in early recovery

that I thought she was telling me for one solid year that I needed to have a locust inside of me. And Evelyn, not until I read it in a book was I like, oh, it's a loccus. It's a center. So can you explain what is an internal locust control? Basically, I would say it's having self-efficacy. You trust yourself and you don't rely on external or other people to make decisions, whether it's around your eating, career choices, all of those kinds of things.

So it's trusting your inner guidance. Yeah. Yeah. And so many of us learned not to do that. It's like we all learned that the way that we can survive is to find a map. Like a map that someone else- A magical map. Yes. Like here's my religion map. Here's my work map. Like a map that someone else. A magical map. Yes.

Like here's my religion map. Here's my work map. Here's my. And the problem with maps is that someone else made them. Right? Oh, that's so true. Absolutely. Yeah.

And it might work for that discoverer, but not for you. Not your body. Yes. Only you know. Yeah. So this idea that, OK, no more maps and just an inner compass that will guide you one step at a time. That's even a better description, an inner compass.

Yeah, I like that. So the wild thing I'm finding a year and a half into recovery is that the food is the least of it. Yeah. Yeah. Because if one starts trusting one's hunger and discovering that one is not broken, then one starts trusting all of their other bottomless pits. One starts trusting their need for rest.

One starts trusting the validity of their anger. One starts trusting the need to slow down and feel the sadness. A magical discovering of unbrokenness is utterly life changing. Is this something you see happening that it just goes so beyond food and then you start trusting the compass for everything and then your entire outer world shifts? I see it all the time. In fact, at least not get unsolicited emails and DMs that this has changed my life. Back when I was talking about the intercept of awareness, you know, that is our body's way of self-regulation at a biological level, but includes emotions. And when you are in touch with that, it helps get your needs met. And what ends up happening is it clears up

brain space. So yes, you trust yourself in your decisions, but now you have more ease, ease in living, ease in eating. You're present at conversations. I can't tell you the amount of patients I've worked with where, yeah, they were there at the dinner with their girlfriend or their partner or their family, but their mind was somewhere else. Their mind was calculating how they're going to compensate. And so they're not present in the relationship. So that's the other thing that ends up happening.

There's more presence in the relationship, which is incredible. Absolutely. That is so true. I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me. And coming from my background, food was fuel. And I think that I have always had an overeating problem since retiring because that's what I became accustomed to.

And I actually remember early on in my sobriety, I had, I spoke with this one woman, she said, what are you using to supplement alcohol? And I said, I drink so much coffee. And she said, what are you using to supplement alcohol? And I said, I drink so much coffee. And she said, what I want you to remember and what I want you to do is drink as much coffee as you possibly can drink as long as you don't drink any alcohol.

And I said, what do you mean? She said, if it's nine cups a day, drink it. Eventually your body will stop needing the caffeine, will stop thinking. And I think so much of what you're talking about with this intuitive eating is of the same mindset, right? Like give your body the fuel, especially if you have been limiting the food.

So I don't know. I think that everything what you're saying is like so important for me to hear, especially because as an athlete, because I'm still an athlete, I just work out much less than I used to. Yeah. Thinking about food as nourishment instead of fuel,

because it was like, I sat down at a meal and I'm like, did I earn these calories? Did I work hard enough to earn the food? Like to me, I had to previously work hard to earn the food. Oh, wow. Wow. And that was hard for me to unravel in my retirement. Well, and I'll tell you what, I've worked with a fair amount of elite athletes

who then retire and what ends up happening many times is well, many people take them aside like, well, you better watch it. You can't eat the same amount of food you've been eating now and it creates this doubt. It creates this vigilance about the eating when this person never had an issue with food before. But because of all of this mistrust, they were back to the fear again, you start second guessing yourself, you know? Evelyn, what are we so vigilant about? Like trying to get to the root of all of this. I did an episode about my original anorexia diagnosis,

which shocked me. I just thought I was nailing it as a woman. I didn't know that I was anorexic at all. Yeah, I'm always figuring out that I'm things that I didn't know I was. But that's another story. I remember some after an hour of talking about anorexia, somebody said, God, you're so fat phobic. And I wanted to be like, no shit, Sherlock. Look, what the hell do you think anorexia is?

Clearly, I am revealing that I am terrified of growing, right? Like, yes, I am saying that that is true. What is the root of fat phobia? Why the hell are we also, why have we been conditioned and trained to be afraid of it? It's, and you're right, it is a conditioning. It's a social conditioning. And if in your right, it is a conditioning, it's a social conditioning. And if you want to really trace back the roots, we

can get into slavery, yes, fear of the black body, misogyny, capitalism, there's all kinds of things. And there's this fascinating framework called Bobby Harrow's cycle of socialization. And it shows how we are born into this world, you know, innocent. We're not hating our body. But as we start getting these messages from our trusted family, caregivers and so on, as it gets into our institutions, in our schools, in our policies and so on, then there are

rewards and punishments if you, you know, conform to what they consider the norm and people don't want to be treated badly. You know, if you're in a larger body, it's awful and stressful to wonder, am I going to be able to fit on that airplane? Is that seatbelt extender going to work for me? If I go to a roller coaster ride and amusement park with my kids,

will I be able to go on the ride with them? Because the world was not built for people in larger bodies. So the anti-fat bias is unfortunately alive and well, and it's in healthcare. And it just, oh my gosh, the medical fat phobia that creates even bigger problems and gatekeeping in terms of getting care, it's a very, very big issue. Huge.

That's just part of it. And the mistreatment of people in the prejudice and the horrific abuse really. It is abuse. It is abuse. Of people with bigger bodies. It is abuse and mistreatment. Yeah.

And someone says like, I don't want to be treated that way. So I'm going to conform as if we can mold our body like it's clay. And that's the shocking part to a lot of people, you know, that they get sucked into all these diets thinking, well, this one's going to work. And yet there's a body of research showing it doesn't work. It predicts actually more weight gain. If there's anything wrong with that, it predicts weight stigma. It predicts eating disorder risk, predicts weight cycling, which in of itself has its

own health risks in terms of cardiovascular mortality and all kinds of issues around there. And sometimes I think it's like a form of virtual signaling. Look how good I am because I eat this way. You know, it's like the day, I don't remember when this was because now it's like a form of virtual signaling. Look how good I am. Yes. Because I eat this way. You know, it's like the day, I don't remember when this was because now it's happened so much. It's a sad norm that you go to have a meal

with family and friends and someone's apologizing for what they're eating or they're explaining. You don't need to explain to anyone why you're eating or why you're not eating. Let's just break bread and enjoy the conversation and catch up with ourselves and so on. So it's a cultural neuroses that we have.

It's global, I see it all over the place. And in white women, it's such a signal of goodness. It's like, and worthiness and power, power. I always think about the quote from Naomi Wolf, who let's admit it has seriously lost the plot, but she did say something very smart, which was that thinness has never been about beauty. It's always been about obedience. Yes. Right. It is my living in

a tiny body and denying hunger, denying appetite, denying power, denying all of it is my signal to patriarchy that I am a good girl. Yeah. And denying your exhaustion. And you know, Abby, you mentioned this earlier about primal exhaustion because another trend I see a lot with people who are especially over exercising. And one of the ways I ask about this is, you know, if you're feeling an injury coming on, can you take a break? If you're feeling sick, can you take a break? And if the answer is no, no, no, then I will ask, do you have a fear that if you stop working out, you're never going to work out again?

Yes. How did you know? And then I said, well, then I will ask, do you have a fear that if you stop working out, you're never gonna work out again? Yes, how did you know? And then I said, well, because I think your body is exhausted. And I see you smiling, Abby, with that. And what I see is if someone's had the love of sport and the love of movement, it will come back, but your body just needs this big old rest. There's nothing wrong with you.

It's just you're exhausted. I actually had to do an entire year, like almost a self experiment on, on reteaching myself what suffering meant. Because to me, I attached the amount that I was able to suffer to my self esteem. If I was, if I was able to suffer deeply, self-esteem. If I was able to suffer deeply, you will get this as a marathoner. Then that brought me an incredible amount of self-esteem.

And it's this illusion of power that I thought that I was stronger, better, faster than everybody. And so I did an experiment that I spent an entire year of not doing anything to suffer. And to see what would happen with myself, Asim. And the irony is that I actually started to trend to do things more that I enjoyed doing.

Ah, beautiful. So I got into surfing. I would go on- Oh, no kidding. Yes, and PS, I'm on the Facebook Girls Who Can't Surf. Oh, I love that group. Yes, yes. Because it's so much fun. There's no performance involved.

Exactly. So I found these little niches of things that I was getting into. And I think the same can be said for food. Cause like, I do think that there's a self-esteem quotient involved. Was I a good girl during this meal? Did I follow all of my perceived rules prior?

I read something that you, I think it was a New York Times article where somebody was having dinner with you and you had had a big dinner and then you ordered cake and you had one bite of it and then you pushed it away. Or you invited the table to have some because you were full and the person said oh you're so good how did you have one bite of that and you said no I'm not good I'm satisfied

can you talk to us about good bad sin discipline God, sin, discipline, all of it. And the morality of eating, right? Versus satisfaction. Yeah, and so aiming for satisfaction is a great way to center your eating. And by the way, I wanna also say, I've had some people think that eating has to be a 10 every time, that the meal has to be Nirvana.

It's like, no, sometimes it's a pair of boring, sensible shoes. It's gonna get the job done and that's okay. But when you can eat to the point of satisfaction and you know, you can have that food again. I knew that wasn't going to be the last time I was going to have cake. It's so it's not a big deal. And sometimes, honestly, I feel a little sad. It's like, oh, I'm by the way, I forgot to mention I'm here in Hawaii working remotely so I can serve.

And you might be hearing waves in the background. And there's a restaurant here that I love. It's got my favorite desserts. It's hula pie. It's got my favorite desserts. It's hula pie. It's macadamia nuts, ice cream with chocolate fudge. And I get sad when I'm full because like, oh, it tastes so good, but I'm not willing to feel uncomfortable

to eat the rest of it. And I know I can have it again whenever I want to. And I realize there's privilege in that as well. I want to state that as well. Yeah. But because you know, you trust yourself, you know you're not going to future deprive yourself of this thing.

So you don't have to eat till your past full, because you know you're going to give it to yourself whenever you want it in the future. Absolutely. And by the way, I will say that when people are newish into intuitive eating and have a long history of deprivation, what sometimes can happen is that sadness of feeling full

because you still want to eat can feel devastating. Yeah. It's me. Oh yeah, okay. So that is actually more of a reflection of the year spent in deprivation. And so what I say is that will ease up as your body mind gets to see, oh, you're going to have that food again.

You're going to have that food again. And you can still eat it right now if you want to, but do you want to feel that way that you might be feeling and maybe you can save it. Maybe you can make a promise. You're going to to, but do you want to feel that way that you might be feeling and maybe you can, you know, save it. Maybe you can make a promise you're going to have it again. You go back, you know, the next day or whatever it happens to be with it, what that food is. So that's, it's normal. There's nothing wrong with you.

You're not aberrant because you're so sad that, oh, I'm so full, you know, or you're so excited about trying a new food. I get patients so excited. I get to eat really, I really get to eat the cake. It's like, yeah. And then they feel guilty. They're so hard on themselves. Then they feel guilty because they're excited. It's like, you know, you have freedom,

maybe for the first time. And that's pretty exciting. Nothing wrong with that. It's normal to feel excited and anxious, all the feels, all at the same time. Nothing wrong with you. It's the human experience. Yeah, your writing partner said this,

which is so ridiculously simple, but made me very emotional. She said, you can have whatever you want. You can have it for the rest of your life. Yeah. Pod Squatters, like, what? We could actually have the rest we needed. We could have our sadness. we could have our anger, we could have our appetite.

It's like what the work is to figure out all of the things that have been set up against us believing that. Yeah, and you know, and part of it is figuring out it's something really basic. What am I feeling? What do I need? And then sometimes I'll do even when I call the universal attunement question,

and that is one of three answers. How do you feel right now? Pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? And our brain naturally organizes that way in terms of like, don't like, or kind of neutral. And if the description is, oh, I'm feeling unpleasant, then the question, oh, why might that be? Maybe they're hungry, maybe they're sad

and need companionship. But starting to get into that. And so many, we've been talking about women, have been so other focused at the expense of not getting your own needs met. And that's where the problem happens. Nothing wrong with being service oriented. But when your own needs are not being met,

that's when it becomes a problem. Yeah, and what I've discovered in this year of recovery where I start to see everything differently is people who don't meet their own needs, selfless people are very dangerous. I truly am starting to see that I was a dangerous person. Like, being not a person who can feed myself in all different ways makes you so controlling of the outer world.

When you don't trust yourself, you don't trust anyone else and that makes you dangerous. That's such a good point. Yeah. You know, so I don't, I have shifted from seeing selflessness or martyrdom or obsession with the other and not the self. I've gone from seeing it as just a harmless woman thing

to actually quite dangerous. Like, I don't want to be around people who don't take care of themselves, because I don't trust it. Yeah, and you know what's interesting? When people are sucked into diet culture, whether it's an eating disorder or just diet culture dieting or trying to eat the healthiest way that you can, there's, and this doesn't get talked about enough, there is a profound level of self-absorption that goes on. And it's a, oh, thank you, you get it. Whenever I bring it up to my patients, I'm really delicate, so I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing them. But when you're so self-absorbed, first of all, it's understandable.

It's a survival response on some level, but that means you're not aware of what's going on around you. And it becomes really problematic. And there was this famous study done during World War II where they took men who were conscious objectors, they were very healthy in mind and body, put them on a semi-starvation diet and what they found is that these men became incredibly self-absorbed. They became obsessed about eating. Again, this is during World War II.

There was no TV food network and chefs, celebrity chefs running around. And all they could talk about is food and collect recipes and cookbooks. And some of those men developed eating disorders. Again, they started off very, very healthy in mind and body. So it's an example of what food restriction can do

to your mind and body. It's's an example of what food restriction can do to your mind and body. It's really profound. We can't underestimate it. That is the story that my doctor told me to finally convince me that I was anorexic in my very adamant insistence that I was not. When she read me that study and all the details about what happened to those men,

it was absolutely devastating to me because I felt like I was discovering that what I thought was my personality or my personhood was actually just a bundle of symptoms of someone who was hungry, hungry brain. Yeah, that's a great way describing it, the hungry brain, yeah, that needs nourishment. There's 10 principles of intuitive eating. It's not the same at all in any way, but a little bit it reminds me of, of

recovery like AA, because it's like a set of things that helps you live a little bit differently. But I know it's not rules. I know we're not doing that. Thank you for knowing that. We're not doing that. But I know you choose to lead with the ones that you feel

like a person needs to hear. What tenants of intuitive eating do you feel like would be good to share with us or start with us for this podcast? Yeah, I want to do at least two. It's so hard. It's like asking you to name your children. Which one should we start with? You know?

And one of the ones I want to start with is rejecting diet culture, rejecting diet mentality. There has been a misperception that you can't do intuitive eating if there's a part of you that still wants to be in a smaller body. And my response is, you know what? You're a human being. We're living in a weight obsessed culture. Of course you can come in,

you can come into this and be confused and not sure. This is not a journey of perfection. This is not a journey of pass or fail. All are welcome. The issue becomes what you're willing to act on is, can you center the work of intuitive eating? And yes, we acknowledge that this desire of weight loss is in the room. We'll talk about that as much as you need to. But in other words, like on a computer, the active screen is the intuitive eating because that's inner base, as we were talking about earlier. And the moment you start focusing about weight, that becomes external and the work needs to be really internal so that you can start to experience and hear and respond in a timely manner and

trust those messages in the body. And I think the other one, I think Elise would agree with me on this, probably the most organizing principle of all of them would be aiming for satisfaction because ultimately it's not satisfying to under eat. Ultimately it's not satisfying to eat to a point where you're past comfortable full. And so in a really weird way, aiming for satisfaction gets you into balance. And it's pleasure based. Most people I have worked with have not ever come across that as a way to start working

with their eating. And so you get to get curious. It's very, very personal. And so often I will say, you know, when I'm doing interviews, if you want to take one step that could be a step. What would be a satisfying meal for you? What would be a satisfying snack? And I've had patients say, I have no idea. And they start crying. They don't know what they even what their favorite foods are, because they have been so conditioned to follow the

plan to follow the guru. And it's important that we have a lot of self compassion on on this journey. As you were describing your own story, Glenn, and there's a lot of revelations that end up happening, like, oh my God, I was like this. You know, and that's okay. You didn't know, you didn't know any better. Now you're starting to know differently. And when we know better, we do better. So those are two I'd be working with.

Another one, and this gets a lot of misunderstandings, is making peace with food, which basically means you can eat whatever food that you want to. And I have patients that are terrified of that. And I don't push that when they're not ready to work on that. And so sometimes I might look at, and there's a big psychology on this, a lot of research on habituation. And habituation is this phenomenon dealing with novelty. So if you think about, you know, the first time you had a new pair of shoes that you just couldn't wait to have or a new car, it could be an old car, but it's a new car to

you and how exciting it is. And after a year of having it, it's like, ah, it's my ride. And the best way I've ever heard it described by a researcher was, you know, imagine you're falling in love for the first time with somebody. And at some point they say, I love you. And it's amazing. It's magical. You're floating on air.

But five years later, you're in a committed relationship. They say, I love you. And it's wonderful to hear, but it's not that same magical feeling. And so with making peace with food, it's about having the habituation process because when you're constantly on some food plan, some dieting plan, some restriction, food stays exciting and food stays scary.

The habituation process hasn't taken place yet. And then there's this whole other area. It's known as the restraint theory, but what it's known as its nickname, it's the what the hell effect of eating. And that is when someone has a lot of restraint around eating, they have rigid rules, something comes along to break that restraint. And it could be an event, it can be an emotion, it can be a food. And all of a sudden it's like, Oh, I'm never gonna eat that food again. So I'm going to get it all now while I can.

And it ends up becoming an all or none kind of food feast. So making peace is really about the psychology of having ease with your eating, whatever that food happens to be. It's amazing in that process. Yes, Ed. I have a follow-up question. I think because, I'll speak for myself here.

I think that I am probably more addicted to sugar than maybe anything that I've ever been addicted to. And so my question is in terms of this idea of, in this philosophy of intuitive eating, what do I believe in my urges? Because I do have that urge after dinner every night to finish it up with something sweet. And I know that we're not trying to,

I just am curious at like this idea of intuitive eating, listening to your body, but I have this real, what I think is probably a real sugar thing that's happening inside of me. How do I differentiate healthy versus addiction? Because we're addicts. This is problematic. Well, and you know what?

We can get into the weeds on food addiction theory. The interesting thing is, is when you look at what are the causes and conditions that might create this, it could be a belief system, I shouldn't have sugar or I shouldn't have too much sugar. I can have a quote, moderate amount. If I follow just the portion size, and then the moment you have like two cookies instead of three,

then what happens? If you haven't been getting enough to eat, that's gonna increase the intensity of desire for sweets, because our body survives by carbs. I've never met anyone who's contacted me and said, Evelyn, I have this issue with kale. I can't stop eating it. It's usually a carb thing and often sugar because that's what the body needs in order to survive. In fact, we even have a carbohydrate

storage form in the brain. We have glycogen in the brain. It's so important. So, biological deprivation can fuel that sweet desire. Psychological deprivation, meaning I can't have it or I shouldn't have it too much. And these things can cause you to cross the line. And then there's also just patterns of eating. Some cultures have like a sweet or sweets after finishing a meal.

And there's actually really nothing bad with that. But if you believe that what you're doing is wrong, that you're one bite away from a sugar binge, that creates kind of a scarcity mindset to some level. What do you think about that? That's probably where I live is that I'm afraid that I'm one step away from just like going into the freezer and emptying out every like, I do think that I have a trust issue with myself with my hunger because I have a voracious appetite. I think that I could have, I could be helped in this way.

Do you, are you scared of your appetite? Yes. I mean, I am for a lot of reasons. I grew up in a family that was more overweight. I grew up in an environment where your body was the mechanism to income, to your safety and security in the world. And I also grew up in a bigger body as a woman. So I have all of these things that have kind of played a role in this, especially in my retirement, where I'm, you know, I start eating at noon because I intermittent fast because I don't, I don't think it's that healthy. And I don't even like when you talk about that intermittent

fasting around. I've asked her not to do that because I just feel like so much. I have a bottomless pit of anger at diet culture. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. It's everywhere. It's everything. It's so much. I think even all of look, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about,

but I think even being scared that you're addicted to sugar is probably just from diet culture, right? Like why does everyone suddenly think you're addicted to sugar is probably just from diet culture, right? Why does everyone suddenly think they're addicted to sugar? Why is it just that we like sugar? Yeah. So, Abby, can I ask you? Yes, please. You know, appetites, speaking, an athlete to another former in my case.

Marathon training, I had tremendous appetites. People used to tease me. I've had people say, oh my God, you're eating a lot of food. And my response to be, I'm an athlete. I need to train like one. And so my experience has been people not seeing a woman eat first of all, and they eat in quantities that can rival what a man's eating because I'm training like a lot. And so I'm wondering when you talk about your appetites, if that's also a byproduct of your training. Yeah, that is normal. In other words, to have the appetite. Yes, for sure. It is normal.

I think the way I'm engaging in my, not that I'm on a diet, but in the way that I eat has a control function in it that I pass off as, well, I just wanna live longer and I don't to carry excess weight. I am also looking at the fact that I have heart disease in my family and keeping my cholesterol at bay. All of these things, scientifically speaking,

are also in my consciousness around it. But I do want to feel like I can trust myself more. Yeah, so I wanna offer a suggestion just for you to think about. Please. And it has been my experience that the people I work with who engage in intermittent fasting has been the stepping stone into problematic eating. I've seen a lot of binge eating.

There's been studies now with binge eating correlated with that. You lose muscle mass when you do that. At least that's what some of those studies have shown. So it's just something to think about. And then remember I was saying earlier about anti-fat bias being in healthcare and institutionalized.

When you start looking at all the research around weight, it's all of this epidemiological research, meaning it's association, not causation. And when you start getting into the weeds on this, which is a hobby of mine, they don't control for really important things like social determinants of health, like trauma, like weight cycling, like weight stigma. This all can have an impact on that. And then having this fear, quote, of weight gain because of health, that gets you into diet culture, but now it's holy, it's noble, you know? And regardless of the reason to be concerned about weight, it doesn't change the outcome data. So those are some things I'd have you just take a look at. And I'm not your,

you know, nutritionist or anything, but that's something I would be wondering if that's kind of feeling a little bit of the sugar desire. The desire is there. I love sweets, by the way. There's nothing wrong with enjoying sweets, but the fear is. The desire is there. I love sweets, by the way. There's nothing wrong with enjoying sweets, but the fear is what I'm hearing there. You're one bite away from mayhem. Yes. Yeah.

Yes. For me, it's like a removal of all of the things that I have been told will protect me from myself. That's the journey I'm in right now. Like I am suspicious of every single thing in my life. Every person, every dogma, every intermittent fasting feels to me like just another thing that somebody's telling me is going to protect me from this dangerous appetite that I have. Right? What am I? what are we all protecting ourselves

from? That's the big question, isn't it? You know, there was a study published, oh my God, over 20 years ago, kind of looking at this focus that we have on this desire for health and protection and this desire to not be killed by what we eat. That's my paraphrase and the researcher didn't say it that way. But one of the things the researchers said that really to me was really ahead of his time was like, you know, we're so worried about what's gonna kill our curious in terms of the food, we need to start looking at what is the impact of this worry or this anxiety.

That's not healthy on our body, you know, that increases stress, which is not a positive thing also. And I think we really need to get back to enjoying our food. And one of the things I see is that there seems to be, oh my gosh, every decade, almost every year even, there's always a new food that's going to save you. And there's some food that's going to be demonized. We certainly saw it with the low fat craze. Then we saw it with the keto, all those kinds of things. And now it's like, oh my God, watch out for ultra processed foods and all those kinds of things. And now it's like, oh my God, I watch out for ultra processed foods and all those kinds of things.

And yet in those conversations of fear mongering, we don't hear how most vegetarian foods are actually one of the highest categories of ultra processed foods. So are vitamins, so are supplements. And so there's a lot of hypocrisy that I see or one-sided arguments on this. And what it's doing is scaring people.

And with that fear, then you turn that inside, you don't trust yourself because of all these things that are happening. And I share with you Glenn in the having a healthy suspicion, you know, skepticism. I said to my patients like, oh, I wish you would have had that when you started dieting, you know, but you didn't know any better. And everyone, you know, gets all excited about the latest and greatest and so on. So the latest and greatest. I'll never forget seeing an advertisement for cigarettes

that said gluten-free. Oh, we've not seen that. Oh my gosh. Oh, gosh. That's not the perfect illustration of it. Don't trust what's really good for you. Just trust the latest craze that wellness tells you to avoid gluten.

Smoke these cigarettes gluten-free. Oh my god. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Are there any people that are in such trauma places or for whatever reason, this doesn't work?

Are there people that should be, that don't have the inner locus of guidance? I think it's a really good question, actually. And to me, it's not an issue that it's not working. It's an issue of you probably need support. If you're going through trauma, oh my gosh, in order to feel connected to the body, you need to be present and you need to feel safe. And when you're undergoing trauma therapy, you're often not in that place.

And so we might be using things like nourishment as self care, kind of some scaffolding into some of the principles of intuitive eating. It's not that you can't access it, you just might need more support in, in doing so that's what I would be looking at. And so if anyone at a pod squad is listening is like, Oh my god, this sounds amazing, and yet I'm terrified. Well, maybe it'd be helpful to, you know, to work with somebody in this. Because if you have an eating disorder, for example, this would be, you

need to be working with your treatment team team in terms of working with intuitive eating eventually and so on. So it's that's such an important thing to say because when I'm listening to you say that I'm thinking, yeah, that's what I needed. Like, and I'll tell you what, I've been avoiding you. Like it's weird. I have been, I was not ready for this for a very long time. And I think not because of you know, because of her, no, because of you, because of her. No, because- Oh, I didn't take it personally. No, because I knew that this was the goal, but I also knew that I couldn't do it yet.

Like I- You needed to be ready. I needed to be ready. And I had someone said to me in early recovery, just eat intuitively. I would have lost my damn mind. Like I didn't know what they were saying. So I needed, like in the very beginning, I did have, my damn mind. Like I didn't know what they were saying. So I needed, like in the very beginning,

I did have, my doctors had rules. Hey, you need a plan. Absolutely. You're in the nutrition rehabilitation phase. And by the way, I love that term. Cause we know, you know, to me in that phase, and eating disorders like a broken arm or broken bone, and you need a cast,

you need structure to support the healing. The goal is not to have the cast on for the rest of your life. And when this sufficient amount of healing's gone on, you remove the cast and you're more into the freestyle aspect. And, you know, depending on the complexity, the more complex someone's situation is, you know, trauma history, eating disorder history, or eating disorder,

it's going to be complex to work through. It's workable. And I think, Glennon, you're a really good example of that. You give hope to a lot of people out there thinking that they're beyond hope. It's a powerful message that you have after all these years to be in recovery. It's wonderful.

Right back at you. And I just love you because you've been doing this for a long time. Like, if any pod squatter is thinking that this is like a trendy new thing, it's just trendy that people are actually talking about it in a wider, I mean, Evelyn has been doing this for decades, right? It is.

Yeah. The book came out in 95. So we're looking at almost 30 years. It's wild. It's really wild. I'm so grateful. And I think because diet culture has gotten just so harmful, it's making our work even more needed.

And so that's why I like to say that diet culture creates suffering. Intuitive eating is a path out of suffering, if you want out of that suffering. There's a way for you to do that. You don't have to suffer. I have one last question. It's about suffering.

I suspect that we're always talking about how there's so much at the root of all of this diet culture, all of it that has to do with capitalism. Oh yeah, yeah. I don't... What I find in my recovery is that the more that I am honoring and trusting myself, the less productive I am being, the less hamster wheelie, serving every, like doing all the things, making, social media, working, going, I just, I'm, I'm, I'm doing less of that. And I just, do you think that there's a reason why culture wants women to be

suffering and not trusting themselves? Because we can talk about its capitalism from a high level, but what I'm telling you is I am seeing it. I am seeing recovery make me less of a pawn. Yeah, and less willing to grind. You know, it is a byproduct of your wisdom of all the years and these kinds of things. And I don't think anyone sets out to say, oh, we want women to suffer, whether we're going to create diet culture, it's more insidious than that. And that's often why I like to use the term suffering because no one wants to argue about suffering. You know, even if someone's not ready to get into intuitive eating, most will say,

yeah, I am kind of tired of suffering. And so it kind of, you know, peaks their interest in that possibility. But yeah, getting more into, you know, honest to gosh, it took, in your case was an eating disorder, it sounds like in my case, it took a diagnosis of breast cancer and treatment to finally say, I am done with, you know, grinding, staying up to three in the morning to get other things done for other people. It's the first time in my life I don't feel guilty saying no.

And it's almost embarrassing to say that, but it's, yeah, I'm not willing to do that anymore. It's like, when you willing to do that anymore. It's like yeah the when you learn to say yes to yourself then you the next step is you learn to say no to other people. Yes. And then you're just a big yes no machine and then you're good and you're satisfied. Yeah and it sounds so easy. So easy. Look at me. I'm 48 and I'm on step two or whatever. So Evelyn just thank you for doing this work for so many people for so long. We're just grateful for you.

And I just feel like if you want proof that Evelyn, that this works, Evelyn is in fucking Hawaii about to go surfing today. That's right. And it's what I'm doing after this. I literally am seeing in the reflection of the window behind you, I see the, look at the wave. I'll duck. Can you see it?

Oh, are you riding the wave right out front or do you go to a different break? It's right next door. Sometimes they go out front, but next door I like it's wrecking three to four today too. And it's looking pretty nice. Perfect. We'll have what she's having. Yeah. Um, pod squad, we love you.

We can do hard things. Thank you. Thank you, Evelyn. Bye bye. Thank you for having me on. See you next time, Pod Squad. Bye bye. Bye. If this podcast means something to you,

it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give

us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Alison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz. I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle. ["I Walk Through Fire"] I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

I came out the other side I chased desire, I made sure I got what's mine And I continue to believe That I'm the one for me and because I'm mine, I walk the line cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on map a final destination we lack We stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain

That our lives bring We can do our thing I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start I'm not the problem, sometimes things fall apart And I continue to believe The best people are free And it took some time But I'm finally fine But I'm finally fine Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that

Our final destination we lack We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been. And to be loved we need to be known. We'll finally find our way back home. And through the joy and pain that our lives bring We can do hard today We're adventurers and heartbreaks on map We never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home We can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. I think