Are you or is someone you know affected by PCOS? I have some bonus episodes for you! Listen now for the third bonus episode all about how to self-advocate for your health and find support while struggling with PCOS.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food PeaceTM. Sign up now to get on the waitlist for the next enrollment period TOMORROW, and receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food PeaceTM with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how.

Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you.

Episode's Key Points:

• Be sure to check out the first and second PCOS bonus Love, Food episodes!
• You shouldn't have to advocate for yourself, but unfortunately you'll probably have to... so I have some tips to share!
• PCOS is a women's disease, and so there's not a lot of research about it out there, and people don't really want to talk about it. Plus, weight gain is a part of PCOS, which makes it even harder to find support because we live in a fatphobia world.
• BUT, increased support actually helps improve our health! It can lower your blood pressure, help with insulin sensitivity, and so much more. So support is a big deal!
• Weight bias in the healthcare community is a moral issue!! We have to combat it, and it starts with us.
• First off, what's weight stigma? It's negative attitudes towards a person due to their body size. This leads to prejudice and discrimination, and results in lower quality of care. Stigma also activates a hormone response that ultimately leads to increased insulin resistance, and so much more. AND PCOS is tied closely to weight gain, which means that weight stigma is a BIG deal for those struggling with PCOS!
• But doesn't shame help us lose weight and watch what we eat? NO! Shame does NOT promote weight loss, and can in fact lead to more weight gain and avoidance of medical care.
• The research also shows us that bias within the healthcare community is rampant. That means that as someone with PCOS, you need to walk into the doctor's office armed with information, and ready to advocate for yourself and protect yourself from weight stigma. Here's some ways how:
  • Decline to be weighed. You DON'T have to be weighed! It's NOT a medical necessity, and it can be super triggering.
  • Assert that you don't need to talk about dieting. Protect your recovery by letting them know that you aren't interested in talking about weight loss, and that talking about dieting could actually put you at risk for weight gain.
  • Let the doctor know that diets just don't work. Let them know that diets have never benefitted your health, and demand a different intervention strategy.
  • Ask your doctor what they recommend to patients that are in smaller bodies. There are ZERO conditions that only affect people in larger bodies, and so there are weight-neutral ways to improve your health.
  • Ask for the research! Ask for the data that shows long-term success (sustained weight loss with improved health for five years or more)... it doesn't exist!
• It sucks that you even have to do this extra work, but there ARE people out there in the fat activist community who are ready to help you.
• The last thing we need to talk about is how to find support. Be open with your friends and family about your struggle, join our PCOS and Food Peace Support Group on Facebook, find support on social media, try to meet up with folks in person, and head to the PCOS Awareness Symposium!

Show Notes:

• Julie Dillon RD blog
• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food PeaceTM Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food PeaceTM Syllabus.
• Glenys Oyston
• Ragen Chastain's Dances...

How do you navigate a fat phobic world without support? This episode's letter writer just started college and recovering from an eating disorder. And it is hard! College campus can be a hub for overexercise, bad body talk, and diets. Listen as I chat with Ayana Habtemariam from Truly Real Nutrition about ways to navigate this part of your Food Peace journey.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how.

This episode's Dear Food letter:

Dear Food,

I have battled with you for almost three years now. This weekend actually marks one year of choosing recovery. Choosing to fight Anorexia Nervosa was the best decision I have made, but I did not realize it was going to be so hard and long. I was a senior in high school when I began recovery, but I knew no matter what I HAD to go to college. My parents talked about me taking a gap year in between high school and college to focus on my relationship with you, but that is not the usual in my small town. Thankfully, I am in college now at a university just down the road from my house. I thought my battle with you would be completely over once I left home, but honestly it has just gotten worse. Living on my own means making my own meals and keeping myself accountable. Diet culture is so loud here; I feel like I find you to be a part of every single conversation. It makes me feel hopeless in such a challenging and lonely environment. The school gym is just steps from my dorm—I usually find myself there after a bad meal with you or a hard exam. Why do you attack specifically college students? College is already difficult and adding fear of food and fatphobia makes it even harder. I know it is not just me too that has this struggle, but no one speaks out about it. I am at a loss of how to keep motivation and pushing forward in such a challenging community.

Sincerely,

Confused College Freshman

Show Notes:

• Julie Dillon RD blog
• Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus.
• Ayana Habtemariam website TrulyRealNutrition.com
• Ayana's Instagram handle: @TheTrillRD
• Black HAES aligned collective from Ayana and Veronica Garnett: ReclaimingOutPlate.org
• Intuitive Eating book (aff) and website
• Find an Eating Disorder Dietitians near you.

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to [email protected].

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Rejoyn: www.rejoyn.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Food is fuel and so much more. It is ok that food connects us to those warm fuzzy things in life--friends, family, pleasure, and humanity. Want to make this step on your Food Peace JourneyTM? Listen here now to the latest Love Food Podcast episode featuring guest expert Elizabeth Armstrong @PCOStherapist.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how.

I want to learn more about you! I would love if you could take the 2020 Love Food survey: access it here: JulieDillonRD.com/Survey. Open until March 31, 2020.

Check out my friend Summer Innanen's FREE Body Acceptance Masterclass. You will learn:

• The 3 biggest mistakes people make when doing body acceptance work (and why they keep you stuck feeling bad about your body)
• Her 6-Part Framework for radically changing the way you feel about yourself and believing you are good enough regardless of your body size
• Why it is possible for YOU (yes, YOU) to accept your body and feel more confident in who you are.

Learn more about Summer's Masterclass (aff) here: JulieDillonRD.com/FREEmasterclass

This episode's Dear Food letter:

Dear Food,
You have, and always will be, such a big part of life and identity. Growing up in an Indian household, you were everything - we would spend hours preparing delicious meals to eat and share with other people. My mum was an exceptional cook who loved nothing more than to research recipes to try out on me and her friends. Food, you are there in so many of my best childhood memories - going out for ice cream sundaes on the weekend, discovering the magic of baking, and making cheese toast as a midnight snack with my dad.
But now, at the age of 36, having battled with weight for as long as I can remember, and trying to figure out my PCOS, I realise that our relationship is really complicated. While you have brought me so much joy, you also come with a ton of fear and anxiety for me. I remember calorie counting with my mum in my early teens, being praised for controlling what I ate, and family members commenting on my body whether I had lost or gained weight. Food, I have starved myself of you so many times, and this always results in me punishing myself through binging and exercising. I'm tired of weight loss taking up so much of my headspace. I'm working really hard to get some neutrality on all of this but sometimes, even just noticing a shirt doesn't button up right anymore can set about a heap of negative thoughts.
From
Working really hard

Show Notes:

• Julie Dillon RD blog
• Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus.
• Be sure to follow Elizabeth Armstrong on Instagram: @PCOSTherapist
• Elizabeth's website: PCOStherapy.com
• Julie's episode on Don't Salt My Game with a PCOS deep dive: People with PCOS can totally eat birthday cake.
• Weight inclusive PCOS care from Laura Thomas
• Hunger So Wide and So Deep
• Intuitive Eating book (aff) and website
• Find an Eating Disorder Dietitian near you.

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to [email protected].

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Rejoyn: www.rejoyn.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you value sustainability? Vegan? Concerned about the agricultural impact on the environment? What if you want to improve the environment and have your food choices reflect that? Pull up a chair and let's chat. This episode of Love Food features guest expert Christy Harrison, author of the newly released Anti-Diet.

This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how.

This episode's Dear Food letter:

Dear Food,

I've been in recovery from anorexia and orthorexia for over 6 months now and have been feeling so much better! Digestive issues I've expereinced for years have finally cleared up, and I love the way my body feels when I am nourishing it and giving it what it wants. Nevertheless, I struggle with the ways my food choices impact the environment. For a long time, while fully enmeshed in my eating disorder, I set out to live without electricity and try to grow all my own food--anything I did buy had to be something that I could concivibly produce in my area. This was a lot of rules and Ed loved it. During times when I fell short of vision and ate imported foods, I was ashamed, and during times when I succeeded I felt superior to others who lacked the discipline to care for the Earth the way I did. All and all I was unhealthy and isolated.

Now in my recovery, I no longer have such high standards. I try to live simply but give myself the joy of buying foods and now use electricity to do some of the things I love and carea about. I've also become involved in environmental activism. In the climate justice sphere, veganism is often touted as a major step one can take for the Earth. Inspite of this, I know deep down that eating animal products can be done in a way that it in balance with Earth and my body. I also know that the more time I spend obsessing on food, the less energy I have for this activism I care so much about!

But it is hard food, hard to be among people who claim that there is a moral imperative to eat in a certain way. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to find food peace while also believing certain foods are better for the environment and others aren't. How can I have food peace when I feel my dietary choices are something I need to defend? How can I have food peace when a part of me knows that entire way we live now, including how we get our food, isn't in balance with the Earth?

Sincerely,

Letter writer

Show Notes:

• Julie Dillon RD blog
• Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus.
• Christy Harrison's website
• Food Psych podcast
• Anti-Diet book (aff)
• Intuitive Eating book (aff) and website
• Find an Eating Disorder Dietitians near you.

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to [email protected].

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Rejoyn: www.rejoyn.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Body positivity promotes body respect, acceptance, and love. If you don't always love your body, does that mean you can't model body positivity? Julie and a guest discuss the letter from someone who feels like a hypocrite for telling people to love their body when she doesn't always love her body back.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• Julie shares a part of her personal struggle with her body image. She feels a bit awkward doing it and hopes it ok to share with you.
• Julie and guest Paige Smathers explore the definition of recovery. Recovery can be the food times enjoying food as well as the messy tough struggles when we may feel out of control. Recovery includes awareness of the moment, no matter what it looks like in the moment.
• If all or nothing thinking plagued food choices or body image it can also negatively affect your definition of eating disorder recovery.
• Paige says all we can do is try our best.
• Do you have to always love your body to be a model of body positivity? Julie and Paige say no! That just means you are an aware human.
• Model self-compassion and vulnerability.

Show Notes:

• beautyREDEFINED (Paige's Food Peace Syllabus addition)
• Shapeville by Andy Mills & Becky Osborn
• Paige's Story and her Body Image podcasts. Listen. They are great! She also interviewed Julie on her podcast discussing the disordered eating in a thin-obsessed world.
• Paige Smathers nutrition therapy
• Eating Disorder Dietitians
• Julie Dillon RD blog

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to [email protected].

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Rejoyn: www.rejoyn.com
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy