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Barrier Busting
The Barrier Busting podcast offers insights, strategies, and inspiring stories that explore practical tips and powerful tools for unlocking our full potential.
Barrier Busting
How to Rekindle Your Relationship with Food
In this episode, registered dietitian, Heather Fiore, sheds light on how we can redefine our relationships with what we eat. Join us as we explore the complexities of food habits, emotional eating, and the powerful stories we tell ourselves about nourishment. Heather shares her professional insights and personal journey in making peace with food. We discuss the habits that form during childhood, their long-term effects, and the cultural contexts that shape our views on eating.
This episode isn't just for those looking to change their diet — it’s for anyone seeking to find balance and joy in the food they consume while letting go of guilt and shame. Whether you’re seeking to overcome emotional eating or just want a new perspective on your eating habits, this conversation provides valuable takeaway techniques and ideas to consider. Heather emphasizes the idea of approaching food with kindness, reconnecting with our bodies, and ultimately unlocking the potential for a more fulfilling relationship with what we eat.
Are you feeling stuck? Is something holding you back? Are there obstacles in your way? Well, let's smash through those obstacles so that you can live your best life. Hi, I'm Matt Brooks, founder of Matt Brooks Coaching, and I'm fascinated with how people overcome barriers and achieve success. Join me for insights, strategies and inspiring stories as we explore practical tips and powerful tools to unlock your full potential. This is the Barrier Busting Podcast. Well, welcome back everyone. I'm Matt Brooks and I'm happy to have you here listening. And for those of you who are new to the show, welcome.
Speaker 1:We are talking about habits for several weeks now and the good news is today you don't have to listen to me talk nonstop about it. I've got my first guest. I'm very excited. Let me just recap quickly what we've done in the last three shows. So, the first show we talked about how the brain, like, automates habits, how the basal ganglia remembers your behaviors and automates habits through what we call the habit loop, which is a four-step process, if you recall. There's a cue or a trigger of some kind and that triggers a craving, which is the second step. The craving triggers a routine to find the fourth step, which is the reward that was discussed in my first show, my second show, we talked about how to build good habits and build new habits, and then last week we discussed bad habits, which no one wants to hear about, but we've all got them, and we discussed why they're so hard to break and we got some interesting information about how to break them.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to look at habits from a different perspective, from the perspective of food. Yes, I know nobody wants to hear this, but don't worry, I promise. I know nobody wants to hear this, but don't worry, I promise you're not going to hear about kale today. You might hear a little bit, but no one's going to force kale upon you today. In fact, I have a dietician on the show today who I had on another show at one point and when I asked her about sugar and what she thinks about sugar, she said well, sugar's delicious, so you're not going to get lectured to today.
Speaker 1:I'm very excited to welcome Heather Fiore, who is a registered dietitian in private practice in Lawrence, kansas, although she is licensed to work with people from several states. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Her practice is called Free State Nutrition. She holds a degree in nutritional science from Cornell and a degree in health education from SUNY Brockport. She works with people of all ages, but has had a career that has placed an emphasis on children and adolescents and those who struggle with diabetes. You can find more about her and her practice at wwwfreestatenutritioncom. More fascinating to me, however, above all of it is the fact that she and her family own a pet bearded dragon. Hmm, there's not something you hear every day. So, heather, good morning, welcome and thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Hi Matt, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a pleasure to see you again. It's been a while, you know. Before we get into the topic of habits, I want to hear a bit more about you. Okay, Like, first, you've been a dietitian for a long time over two decades and you went to school for it, which means you somehow caught the bug for this early on. So tell us, how did you catch the bug? What got you into this in the first place?
Speaker 2:this in the first place? Well, it was a couple of very personal factors. My grandmother was interested in nutrition, not educated just generally, wasn't really an educated person, but she just had sort of a sense about you know nutrition and you know would say things like, ah, you know, maybe watch the butter on your bread and you know things like that where she just like kind of you know sort of I don't know, just sort of made us aware a little bit about what we were eating, not just like eat a big plate of pasta and the bread to sop up the gravy, as she called it, because we are Italian, so there was plenty of pasta, but she just had this sense of like, yeah, maybe balance makes more sense.
Speaker 1:Which is interesting because my grandmother you grew up in Jersey and my grandmother was Portuguese. When she immigrated to the country she was kind of pushed into a neighborhood with Italians right. So my grandmother was all about eat, eat, eat. Whenever we'd go over to visit her, she would just pummel us with food. And your grandmother was all about eat, eat, eat. Whenever we'd go over to visit her, she would just pommel us with food. And your grandmother was pretty much saying be careful, which is interesting.
Speaker 2:Right, like recognized that we we love with food and we celebrate with food, and you know we mourn with food. Food is involved in all these things. But you know, she just had the sense of like, oh, let's maybe be a little bit sensible about it too. And and then you know, she just had the sense of like, oh, let's maybe be a little bit sensible about it too. And and then you know, I had my own sort of struggles with, you know, body image and all that kind of thing that actually turned me away from studying nutrition, because I thought maybe this is like going to be too much. I have all these issues personally and then I'm going to be studying and maybe that's maybe I should go in a different direction. But I found my way back to nutrition and it ended up helping me, of course through my own personal issues, which made me really want to help others deal with their food issues in a similar way, and so that's kind of been my guide.
Speaker 1:You know it's not uncommon when I talk to people in helping professions that what drew them there in the first place was something that happened in their own lives. This is a pretty common thing. It's why I'm in life coaching. You know, I studied to be a therapist but I opted to become a life coach because, you know, I had my own shit right. That happened in my life. That was tough to deal with, and when that happens, you're searching for answers and you're searching for help, and so it's not uncommon to hear that, and I think it's important to. We can't emphasize it enough, because when you see someone in a helping profession who has been through things themselves, you're getting actual. You're not just getting information that came from a book in college. You're getting real life experience and there's something very potent about that. Now, would you say that going into this profession really helped you become a whole person? Do you feel this is really the niche for you? I get the sense, yes, and can you talk just briefly about how that has enhanced your life?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I have to say you know, you mentioned I have been in practice for over two decades and I didn't this entire time I wasn't totally focused on all of this. I had lots of jobs and I did this and I did that, and I didn't always have the autonomy to practice in a way that I wanted. But especially since getting into my private practice about seven years ago, I really came into myself as a professional and realized, you know, sort of remembered oh right, this is where I did this in the first place and like getting people out of this cycle that they're in, of all the guilt and shame and all that stuff it is, it is just the honor of my life to do it. It is such a joy for me to witness. It's incredible and I like I'm not prone to hyperbole but it is. It's so life-changing for people that, like I can't deny that it is truly an amazing thing that people experience and I love being a part of it.
Speaker 1:Isn't that wonderful. I mean, that's the reason I'm bringing up this kind of life coach and I talk to people who feel stuck and want to get somewhere, and so it's great to talk to people who found that center in their lives. I want to ask you after working as a dietitian in a number of different settings, you decided in 2017 to open up your own practice, which takes tremendous courage, by the way, to do something like that. Tell us about the experience of opening your practice and how well you already said how it's made a difference in your life. But what do you do with your clients to help them find the sweet spot of fulfillment? I know you're not about guilt and shame when it comes to food, so you know what is that experience of opening up your practice. It's very scary. It takes a lot of courage. And then how did that get you to a point where you are working with people to find their sweet spot?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I have to admit, I sort of stumbled into it. We moved here to Kansas from Rochester, new York, and I didn't know what I was going to be doing. I just sort of had an opportunity office oh we'd love to have somebody to refer to and I was kind of like, oh, all right, I guess that could be me, I guess I could try that, and I've worked outpatient and thought it would be similar. So you know, just kind of hung my shingle up, I got myself a little flip phone and that was my business line and some business cards. And I was, you know, I was basically ready to go Completely clueless about what this process looked like, what it's like to work with people in this setting and how it differs from outpatient, like in a doctor's clinic type of thing.
Speaker 2:But I had the fortune of getting connected with a business coach, which was life changing for me because he saved me like months and months of time figuring stuff out on my own, like I was charging very little, it was not going to be sustainable. So he figured out, helped me figure out a reasonable price to charge and then a way to package my services, and you know even just the intensity of working with folks. You know an outpatient, you see somebody every three months and even then sometimes people are like, oh, the dietician again. And here it's like I'm working with people every week or two and like three weeks feels like way too long. I'm like, oh my gosh, how have you been? I haven't seen you in so long.
Speaker 2:And so it's like a very different mentality of you know the intensity of the work and the amount you're able to get done with folks because you're seeing them so often and you know, and I get an hour and nobody's knocking on the door saying your next client's waiting and all that stuff. It is just, you know, it just really gives us the time and the space to work on what we need to work on. And you know, I don't know it just helps people really like explore the root of things. I'm not just here, you know, talking about the food pyramid, although to do this, but like yeah, why are you doing it? Like that? Like let's look at these things and explore how you might change. You know, back to your theme, like why is it like this? And you know what would it be like to change to this or to try this, and you know, kind of just go slowly with it.
Speaker 1:Well, two thoughts came from that. First, I was a kind of just go slowly with it. Well, two thoughts came from that. First, I was a child of the seventies. So for my generation, if you get sick, you have saltines and ginger ale, right, and paragoric they used to give us paragoric oh my God, was that horrible.
Speaker 1:And but the other thing is, for those out there that are, you know, more prone to work with a life coach, that I love about this story is this advice that you can see in a lot of places just do it If you're not fully ready. So what? Just do it. You'll learn it as you go. You can plan and plan and plan, but action is what makes things happen. So you just jumped in, you dove in and then you learned it as you went, which is the kind of advice I give people. So that's spectacular. I saw on. So that's spectacular. You know, I saw on your website that you are licensed to work with people from several states. I can't remember them all now, but it was like Texas. Tell us all the states you're licensed to work in. And do you do telehealth? Is that what you do with the people?
Speaker 2:from there, correct? Yes, I do do telehealth Gosh. Can I name all the states? So I officially have a license in Kansas and Missouri. New York has a certification I have that and then Texas I just got that license. And then there are a few other states that don't require a license of any kind, so they are on my list as well, like New Jersey. They've got like a licensing law on the books for the past four years and it's actually not in place yet. So in the meantime it's still. You know, you can. I can see people there. I believe it's Colorado, california, virginia.
Speaker 1:And so you meet them over Zoom or something like that, over Zoom, okay.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I had that in place all along. But, you know, COVID lockdown really, you know, you know, required all of us to sort of jump into zoom full time and realize, like gosh, I could be seeing people from anywhere. You know this is. It's a very similar service, Like, yeah, sitting in the same room together is nice, but honestly, zoom is, like you know, pretty much the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same with me. I can see people from Europe if they want to want to click on. But I wanted to make sure to bring that up because you're terrific and I want people to work with you and not think that, oh, I don't live in Kansas so I can't work with Heather. No, you can work with her if you're from a lot of places. Let's get into the topic at hand, since we're talking about habits. That's been the series that I've been doing. Let's start real quick with what are some of the things you see in your practice as a result of lifelong bad habits. What should we know? Are there things that might be less than obvious to us? Lay people, people who don't think about diet and dietitian-related issues in our regular day?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think so many things, but one of the things that I realize people are doing, maybe subconsciously in some way, is a lot of people are focused on trying to lose weight, and so there's this sense of trying to eat less, like always. Even when they're not doing it, they're still in their mind thinking I'm supposed to eat less.
Speaker 1:That is like drilled into our heads which, by the way, often backfires right 100%, 100%.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, people start their day and they think, well, the longer I go without food, the less I'll end up eating, right, is the thinking? So wake up in the morning, morning not feeling all that hungry, skip breakfast, cool, have some coffee, skip lunch maybe, or grab a little something or other. And so that's kind of the sort of the habit people get into is like, oh, I don't eat breakfast, I'm not hungry for breakfast. You know all the things I've heard, all the things about why people aren't eating in the morning, and it does become a habit because your body is just like, well, you know, I guess this is what we're doing, so it doesn't send hunger signals, and you know, you just feel like, oh yeah, I'm just, I'm like one of those people. I don't, I don't eat breakfast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I might be guilty of that. I think I told you that that might have been me. You drink coffee until two in the afternoon. Then you're really over. You're stupidly hungry and you grab whatever you want, right? You see that often.
Speaker 2:Yes, see it all the time, and it not only you know. Affects like what dinner looks like, especially if you're the person that's supposed to go home and cook and you're starving. You know you're probably going to pick up the drive-thru on the way home, because who wants to run home and start cooking when you're starved? And then usually, if you're up late enough, a couple hours later you're hungry again because you missed out on eating all day and so now you're snacking at night.
Speaker 1:I know nothing about this.
Speaker 2:The thinking is like oh, I shouldn't be doing this, but you're doing it because you're, like, legitimately hungry. You might eat too much food because of, again, the thoughts you have about it. And then that affects that morning. Right Now you ate, you went to bed and of course you're not hungry. So it all starts again.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, right and just tell me about real quick and I've got to break for a quick minute. But when it comes to the topic of habits with food, it occurs to me that so many of our habits that center around food were sort of put in place in our childhoods. Is that right? I mean, wouldn't you agree with that? And how do you break those?
Speaker 2:Because habits like that are hard to break most definitely and I do try to explain to people that you have to you have to start with some grace for yourself, right, like you've been doing it this way maybe for decades, and you were sort of trained to do this for whatever reason. Maybe your parents, you know, taught you to clear your plate or, you know, made you try things or eat things that you didn't want to eat, or just have these rules about food that you picked up on and you're like, okay, this is how we do things and so you know I, you know I'm not a therapist, I'm not trying to like delve into their childhood and address that, but just like recognize that explains a lot about why you do things now. So, like you know, why not think about taking a different approach, try something new and different? It's going to feel uncomfortable, but let's see how it feels. You know, like let's just approach things with curiosity, see how it feels. If it's really terrible, don't do it, but let's try it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just love the fact that you started this whole thing with give yourself some grace. That's a phrase I use a lot to people who are beating themselves up for things they learned in their lives that have caused them real problems. Okay, start from a perspective of giving yourself grace. That is a great place for us to stop for a second, just for a quick break. We're going to be right back and we are going to talk junk food to talk junk food, feeling overwhelmed, struggling to find balance in your daily life.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry for the shameless plug, but I have to do that, and don't I have a great voiceover artist, don't I?
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, she does a great job.
Speaker 1:Somebody might know I believe right, I might. So let's get back to why. Do we develop these bad habits around food. Talk about the mindset and in particular, I'm interested in the concept of junk food because I was reading, in one of the books on habits that I've been researching, a discussion about how our ancient ancestors, when they were foraging for food, were looking for calorie-dense foods, but those were not as common to find. It was hard to find foods that were calorie-dense, which means sugar, salt, fat, and so today our world is rich with these foods, these calorie-dense foods, but we still crave them because those patterns are embedded in the base of our minds that worry about where our next meals come from, even though we have McDonald's everywhere and food everywhere. That's a powerful force to fight. So let's talk about that and talk about mindset. How do we fight thousands and thousands of years of primitive instincts?
Speaker 2:Yes, there's a couple things there. One I will say is just this. You know this idea of oh, this is calorie dense and so we're prone to crave that, and on one hand it's true, but on the other hand, that habit I was just describing is part of how we end up there. When we're in this place of restriction, whether it's intentional or not, you're much more prone to go for those foods. You know, you show up at home having barely eaten all day and there's a bag of chips there.
Speaker 2:You're going to eat the bag of chips because you right hungry and it's, it's delicious, it's quick and you know it's gonna provide some calories. You know it's just it's checking all the boxes and um, and then you know they they make it so that they're not very filling and then they're just like they've got the, the I don't know the flavor pattern. That just makes you want to keep going. And so you, you know if you're hungry, that just makes you want to keep going. And so you know if you're hungry you're not really going to get full, so you're just going to keep going.
Speaker 1:So you're kind of sick. It's super stimuli, right? You know? Yes, yes, and so you're going to want to keep it. I mean, yeah, I know, do not put a bag of potato chips or Tootsie Rolls in my house.
Speaker 2:It's not going to last the day. I'm going to kill it in a day and it's. I know it's shameful, but that's the problem, well, and there's. So there, there's the piece where you're showing up and you're starving, so that's setting you up to do it. The other piece there is the mentality that you have around chips, where you're thinking like these aren't good for me, I shouldn't eat chips. And so just that thought of showing up to eating, I shouldn't eat this. Once you eat one chip, you might as well eat the whole bag, because you've already done the thing you just told yourself not to do. So what's the difference between one chip and 10 chips? And you know a bag of chips and I was talking about in one of my podcasts.
Speaker 1:Sorry to interrupt, but about this habit loop in terms of you see the donut, you crave sugar. You eat the donut, you get the sugar high. But it could be that the craving and the reward come from a deeper place, a place of defiance which you're sort of inferring right there. Like you see the donut, you hear in your head all the people that tell you do not eat the donut, it's bad for you, don't eat the donut. You say, screw that, I'm going to do what I want. You eat the donut and you get that feeling of you won, that feeling of defiance. And aren't I awesome because I defied the rules. Right? That's a big problem with food, isn't it?
Speaker 2:100%, but One hundred percent. But it's quickly followed by some shame of like oh, I shouldn't have done that, I wish I hadn't eaten that donut. And next time you see a donut you're like I'm the person that eats the donut. You know, I'm the guy that eats the whole bag of chips. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that brings me to you just told yourself who you are.
Speaker 1:That's a perfect segue to my next question, which was when you and I were talking about how we talk about food. You said something really interesting to me about how we talk about food somehow shapes who we are with our relationship to food. Right, talk about that a bit, yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think you know we can't just, you know eat food and think, you know, I'm nourishing my body.
Speaker 2:We have all these thoughts and feelings about it again, like maybe going back to your childhood, maybe your parents didn't allow you to eat cookies, or there was no candy in the house, or whatever it is, and you know. And so it isn't just a food, it's something you weren't supposed to have or it's you know something. Again you get into this pattern where you feel like I can't trust myself around this food and you're reinforcing this message that you're not somebody who can be trusted around food. You know, and that's sort of the story you're telling yourself about. You know how you act with this food instead of just like I don't know, maybe it's just food, maybe today you only need one piece of candy, Maybe tomorrow you need three pieces who cares? Like it doesn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things, but in your mind it feels like this very big deal and that just sort of makes it harder to manage and it feels, yeah, it feels like, oh, I just eat all the thing, all the time.
Speaker 1:So we really need to pay attention to how we talk about food with ourselves, right, and not just. I mean, it's sort of like how, you know, we're always told listen to our bodies. We need to listen to our words too, right? That's kind of what you're saying, Right? Okay?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. A hundred percent, when we rely too much on our brain and you've got like, oh, don't do this or do do this on one side or the other, you're all mixed up in there. But if your body is going to tell you like, yes, I feel like eating a donut, or no, I don't feel like eating a donut today, but your brain is always like donut.
Speaker 1:My body has never told me no, I don't feel like eating potato chips. Today, I'm going to admit that I'm guilty. I'm older now, so I try not to eat things like that very often. But yes, there was a time where my body would say, no, you want those, you need them, eat as many as you want, and that you know that sounds like your brain, not your stomach.
Speaker 1:Right? Exactly, I'm sure it was, but let's use this as a segue into another topic that I think is really important Emotional eating. Right, and I found an article on CNN by a Madeline Holcomb that was saying that emotional eating isn't always so bad. That was like the title Emotional eating isn't always so bad and I was fascinated by that, because all we hear is shameful things that make us feel guilty and shameful. And this article was saying essentially that, yeah, it can get out of hand, but that food has a place in many areas, not just in terms of nutrition. It's something we do culturally you referred to that earlier. It's something we do for many, many reasons, and sometimes we use it as a coping mechanism, right. So what do you think? I sent you that article and you read it. What did you think? Do you think emotional eating is a bad thing? Fill us in from a registered dietician's perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I absolutely agreed with the article and the folks that were quoted in there that you know. Again, it's like approaching yourself with grace. This is something that you do, you know. Is it the only way that you manage a certain feeling? If so, that might be something to look at. Right, maybe you need to talk to somebody about that. Maybe you need to figure out other strategies for managing that, that emotion or or or situation.
Speaker 2:But it can be in your toolbox, like sometimes food helps, sometimes you had a tough day, you sit down, you want to relax and you know a bowl of chocolate ice cream might be just the thing, and other times it's not, like it might be the thing you think of eating. But then you know you eat the thing and you're like well, I'm actually still feeling whatever way, right, and maybe that wasn't the best choice that day. Maybe something else, maybe taking a walk or talking to somebody or whatever, would have been better. But you really just want to consider is this the thing that I, that I need and want right now? Is this going to be the best way to serve myself? If so, then go right ahead, eat the thing or do whatever it is you're thinking you're going to do, as long as it's not harming you.
Speaker 1:Well, what I liked about the article and what you're saying is that our bodies and our minds are not separate. They work in different ways, but they're all part of one whole. They work in different ways, but they're all part of one whole. And the reason they call it comfort food is because sometimes we need comfort. Right, we just do.
Speaker 1:It's a question about and again with the cultural traditions. So much food is centered around celebrations and I'm in Jersey now and everything has pasta. Oh my God, I've never seen so much pasta in my life. Everything you know tomatoes those are the things that you see all the time and but you see people celebrating around that like there's special pasta dishes for Christmas and other times of the year, and and you see the families enjoying themselves and that has a positive impact on our overall wellbeing. Right, even if it's food maybe we shouldn't really eat, it does have a positive impact. So when does it go over the line? When is comfort food eating or junk food eating, or emotional eating? When is it a sign that maybe we should get some help?
Speaker 2:that maybe we should get some help. So I mean, one example would be so I mean, food is all food is fine, right, there's nothing that's totally off limits and that if you ate it, ever it's bad. So eating, you know, food in that situation in general is fine If it turns into a binge situation, meaning it feels out of control. Sometimes someone who's binging will describe it as almost like dissociating, like they barely even know they're doing it. If you're in the situation where you are eating a very large volume of food, you know, not just you know, not just like eating a large portion at dinner, or two portions or something, but a very large volume in a short amount of time, it barely registers, you know, you just, you just do it before you even realize you've done it and it feels compulsive. That's a problem. That is something that you maybe probably need some help addressing. That's where we are concerned about, and I don't even know if I describe that as emotional eating, but it could start there, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'm glad you said binge eating. You keep leading me into my next things because we are out of time for today, but we are going to have you back, heather's coming back, for next week's show, which is awesome of you. Thank you, heather, and we're going to talk about binge eating and in-depth and overeating and things like that, but that is all for today. I want to thank Heather Fiore for joining us, remember you can find out more about her at wwwfreestatenutritioncom, and join us again next week to hear more, because we have many more topics to discuss. For now, thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed this, please hit the subscribe or follow button so you'll be notified every time I drop a new show, especially next week's when Heather comes back. Thank you for listening and we will catch you next time on the Barrier Busting Podcast. Thank you.
