Life's too short to count almonds

Today we chat about an all too common phenomenon, when a strong weight-focus by family members distracts from clearly seeing the actual situation with someone's health and wellbeing. Both Susan and I have had clients with siblings who are lower weight than them, and despite our clients objectively having better physical, nutritional, social and mental health than the thinner sibling they are constantly compared to the sibling in a negative light with the thinner (but clearly less well) sibling being held up as an example. It is weight stigma in action. So why does this happen and what can we do about it? We also go on a lot of tangents.   https://julieduffydillon.com/podcasts/5-help-my-daughter-who-is-fat-like-me/   https://youtu.be/H89QQfXtc-k?si=LjjW8nhG2wnz5SCR

We are so excited for this one. In this week's podcast we have special guest Alicia Edge. Alicia is an Advanced Sports Dietitian, Owner of Compeat Performance and The Compete Academy and all around amazing dietitian for athletes of all levels from weekend warrior to The Matlidas. We've been fan's of Alicia's for years but her profile really took off when she posted a potentially controversial instagram post explaining how and why the no longer do regular body composition measure including weight. We chat about that, the problem with 'everybody knows' beliefs about body composition and performance and about Alicia's own transition from a prescriptive, weight and body composition focused sports dietitian to one with an eating disorder informed, behaviour focussed, whole person approach to sports performance and wellbeing. You can find Alicia's instagram post here, her own podcast here and, for dietitians listening, you may be interested in The Compeat Academy. And here is the recipe for Alicia's 'best thing I ate this week'. Vietnamese Caramelised Pork Bowls, YUM!!   

Selfcare is not all bathtubs and pedicures. In fact, they are pretty useless or inaccessible sometimes in moments of struggle. Today we chat about some of the unsung 'selfcare heroes'. From things we use or find helpful to things we have learned from clients and the nuances of things like exercise and food as self care. Self Compassion guided practices we mention are here. As always, get in contact via our social media if you have any questions or comments. And we'd love you to leave a rating or review if you like what we're doing here. 

We've had a number of conversations recently with people who are worried about their kids bodies. It happens at this time of year every year and we think we might know why. With school holidays often leading to inconsistent eating, more reliance on takeaway, drive through or convenience options and less movement we can feel 'bleugh', a bit sluggish, a bit lethargic, just not quite right.  At the same time the weather is warming up so we are seeing more of our body than we are used to.  Also this does seem to be a time of rapid growth for some of our kids who haven't finished growing yet.  Put all these ingredients together in a culture that fears weight gain, at the time that diet ads are ramping up and its a perfect storm.  Join us for a chat and some strategies for getting through this time. Quarterdeck Narooma https://merivale.com/venues/quarterdeck-narooma/ Tiger Milk Dressing https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/browse-all/ceviche-classico-with-leche-de-tigre-14188  

Doors to our course 'The Non-Diet Way' Are OPEN! Click here to learn more and sign up. For the final time this year we are running our 4 week Non-Diet Way Fundamentals course and we'd love you to join us. Have a listen, why did we make this course and what's it all about. And, there's still time to join our FREE 'Diet Culture Spring Clean' webinar which is at 7:30 TONIGHT! Lovedale Smokehouse Brisket slow cooking class information here. 

In today's episode we answer a listener question we received about supporting a 'fussy' teen to expand their horizons. Download our 'Make Friends with Salad' salad builder here. Ellyn Satter Institute resources. Our webinar Diet Culture Spring Clean is on Thursday October 5, 730pm AEDT sign up here Doors are open to The Non Diet Way you can sign up here

In this episode we discuss a new diet book. Strap in it's a long one. The author is doing the publicity tour and ended up on a podcast that we usually love...we did not love. It was a mixed bag but mostly the same only story - big claims, kernels of truth and a whole lot of weight bias. Join us to discuss the good, the 'meh', and the rage inducing. Mentioned in the podcast - Dr Joshua Wolrich's book " Food isn't Medicine' and Maintenance Phase podcast Restaurant Meg had her 'best thing' at was Hello Auntie in Marrickville. Our FREE Webinar 'Diet Culture Spring Clean' registration page.

The was recorded when we were still having all the feels about The Matilda's World cup campaign. We have a chat about the shifting focus from weight as a measure of performance or progress, encouraging athletes to connect to and trust their bodies. The risks of eating disorders hiding in plain site among elite athletes, 'state not weight' philosophies and fuelling for the work athletes are doing. Sign up for our FREE 'Diet Culture Spring Clean' Webinar here.   And see the giant cabbage at our instagram!   

After a break to focus on our first course, 'The Non-Diet Way' fundamentals, we are back! We have loved getting to know some listeners in person as they joined our course and we will be launching again ASAP. In the meantime we have also been working hard developing a Webinar for The Butterfly foundation's as part of their Body Kind Families initiative. It is free and we'd love you to join us, you can register here. Here is the article we mention about the risks inherent in nutrition education if you're interested in that and the "clean up your metaverse" guide.  We're glad to be back, hit us us with any questions or comments via our social media.

Just a quick catch up, planning to just tell you what we're eating but stumbled on a topic that comes up for us with clients quite often. Enjoy! We'll be back September 7 to kick off Season 2. Don't forger to sign up to our mailing list at www.megandsusan.co   

We're getting personal today and sharing our own food and body stories. While they have definitely been more straight forward than many, we've had our ups and downs, missteps and learnings along the way. We firmly believe that our past experiences shape our present day thoughts, feelings and behaviours so it's important to understand and appreciate where we have come from to help move forward in the direction that we want our food and body story to go in the future. Doors to our first ever online course are now open! Click here to find out more and use the code 'NDWPOD" to get 20% off the full price.

"Hi Meg and Susan,....I've dieted for so long I don't know what I like. I'm confused I just want to eat normally...." This was a question we received from a listener and it's a good one and one we have certainly heard in the past. Dieting and diet culture has made food and eating so hard, we hope our chat helps make it a little easier. It has become so hard to confidently navigate our food choices and eating behaviour because we live in a culture that breeds insecurity, doubt and and disempowers.   This is the whole reason we have teamed up and developed our first online course! We want to help you build resilience, reclaim certainty and know how to stop diet culture from stealing your confidence in feeding yourself and your family.  We're so excited to announce that after months of planning and development we are just about ready to launch our course and have opened the waitlist!  It's a short course, 4 models over 4 weeks each with a range of video lessons, skills training and resources as well as a weekly live zoom Q&A session.  Click here to learn more and join the waitlist to get 20% off the course price when doors open next week. 

AI is coming and being used in a huge range of online programs, from course development, to podcast support and even meal planning. We've had a bit of a play with a few AI products and unfortunately, there is a huge risk of AI simply proliferating more and more diet culture saturated information. Sign up to our mailing list for special offers and first access to our upcoming course.   "Have a delicious day" lol

Join us today for a quick mid school holiday chat. As always we share the best thing we ate this week and discuss a few strategies for dodging diet culture bullets from online 'influencers'. If you don't yet have it, and need some more help reducing your exposure to unhelpful information online, check out our guide for 'detoxing your metaverse' Shoutouts to http://funkyfood.com.au and https://www.recipetineats.com/ and Megs country trip lunch https://www.grazewillowtree.com.au/restaurant/ Excellent podcast https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/kris-kneen-burgeoning-body-fat-acceptance-size-life/102404190  

We went, we ate, we reflected. We saw Nagi Maehashi (aka Recipetin Eats) live!  We were please to see a love of food without an obvious side of diet culture and Meg was so hungry that she ate a chip made of of bugs!  A pretty light and fluffy podcast his week we hope you enjoy it!     

On today's episode we chat about a couple of things we have seen on social media recently that have caused us to have some 'thoughts'. Both were concerning diet culture messages directed at or out of the mouths of preschool aged kids.  Missing both an understanding of developmental stages and capacity for kids to understand nuanced and abstract nutrition concepts, and of the harms of diet culture messages is a recipe for harm, confusion and disordered eating.  Resources mentioned include, The Curious Nutritionist, Sunnyside up nutrition and Foost. 

On this episode of Life's Too Short to Count Almonds, we answer a question from a listener this week about weight loss and diet culture.  We explore the harmful effects of diet culture and it's obsession with weight loss and delve into the concept of mindfulness as a tool to help break free from the pressures of diet culture.   We know that triggers such as a change in seasons or fitting into old clothes can be very disruptive and make it difficult to break free from harmful beliefs fuelled by diet culture but the good news is that practicing skills and building strength over time can help to weather the storm of diet culture. Join our Meal-Planning the Non-Diet Way Challenge before 22 July here. [00:00:45] Cooked veggies and lamb: traditional and delicious. [00:04:56] Catering recipes available on our website. [00:07:53] "Success not measured by weight - relationships important." [00:09:52] Lose weight without diet culture possible? Maybe. [00:15:22] Mindfulness not for future goals, red flag. [00:16:45] Body image and health choices complexities. [00:22:18] Diverse sources will help resist pressure, impulses. [00:24:19] Weight loss pursuit harms well-being, joy helps.  

Unfortunately Diet Culture gets it's tentacles in soooooo early. Today we chat about an, unfortunately not isolated, incident when a health professional gives restrictive diet advice to a toddler. As I'm sure you can imagine, we were unimpressed and ready to rant, and reminded of other similar stories we have heard over our years working in this space. In this instances we have been aware of, there have been resources and grounding to identify the advice as wrong and harmful, ignore it and move on, but this won't always be the case. We chat about the risks of advice based on weight and what we can do instead. https://www.megandsusan.co/offers/joKcNMHu/checkout

This week we’re talking about pleasure. Pleasure gets a bad name in food and nutrition. Pleasure is associated with “bad” or forbidden foods. However we know that when people have a peaceful a relationship with food and mostly eat foods they enjoy their nutritional intake is richer and more varied.   Also note the fancy dietetic terms ‘alimentary atresia’ and ‘sensory specific satiety’. Also listen out for Meg’s tummy rumbles! Meal Planning link to book https://www.megandsusan.co/offers/joKcNMHu/checkout  

Our eating is often impacted by those around us. Sometimes this is really helpful as it can help us explore new or different food, eat more regularly than we might or help us develop our skills of 'making do'. But quite often, the impact isn't so helpful.  In this episode we chat about 'the space between' parent's and children's eating behaviour, helpful and unhelpful impacts and get really distracted talking about food we've cooked and eaten recently and an update on Meg's #recipetinchallenge 

If you asked Meg or Susan 'what is the one thing that helps you with managing food/feeding the family/saving money on food etc' we would both answer 'meal planning'. Sometimes people are surprised that we are such supporters of meal planning because for many people, meal planning has always been a way of 'sticking to the diet' or controlling and limiting food intake. In today's episode we get quite distracted talking about things we have cooked, but also talk about meal planning 'the non-diet way'. How can we use meal planning as self care and keep it in it's place as a support not a straightjacket?

Within a week of #blueygate the producers of the episode that created the social media storm had removed the 45 seconds from the beginning of the episode #winning! So, these storms can lead to great change...but there was a lot of belittling, abuse and dismissing of people who spoke out. So do we have an obligation to speak out? How can we protect our own health and wellbeing and contribute to change? This episode was recorded before the Bluey episode was updated but it's not really about Bluey anyway.

Meg made Susan cry by making her watch the Dove 'Cost of Beauty' video. You can watch it too if you're up to it - heads up, it's very emotive and challenging so give it a miss if that's not going to be helpful for you right now.  So we talk about the video and a bit about protecting our kids from toxic messages on social media. We discuss how even though not everyone who diets, or consumes diet culture messages, will develop an eating disorder that doesn't mean that dieting doesn't have a significant cost.

We went and saw a comedian this week, ended up in the front row and Susan got picked on. #sorrysusan When asked, "What do you do?", her first response cannot be repeated without checking the 'explicit content' box on the podcast. So in this episode we answer the question what is a non-diet dietitian? Talk a bit about what we do we do with clients and why is it a tricky concept for people to get their head around?

This week we chat about the incredible virtual conference 'Bodytalks; FEASTival of Anti-diet Ideas' that our friend and colleague, Clinical Psychologist Louise Adams is putting on in May. Having catered for Louise's 'Untrapped Program' retreats. Louise asked us to 'cater' for this virtual event. So how would we cater for people we don't know, across countries, timezones and seasons, with widely varying preferences, budgets, food values and health conditions? Tune in and find out!

Social media is not going anywhere and can be a useful way to build community, feel connected, get new and fun ideas, but it is also a cesspool of bad nutrition advice, predatory marketing and impossible beauty ideals. Today we discuss what to watch out for, and ways to curate your feed to create a supportive feed that encourages body trust, connection and food freedom. Couple of our favourite instagram pages to get you started on improving your metaverse algorithm- by no means a definitive list! beauty_redefined your.latina.nutritionist fionawiller feelgooddietitian thenutritiontea untrapped_au shreen_beyoubefree

Welcome to our podcast! Who are we and why did we call our podcast 'Life's too short to count almonds'?