Episode 74: Series - Anti-Diet Approaches to New Year's Resolutions with Angie Dye

This episode is a first for the One Small Bite podcast! A client at TD Wellness is here to talk about her experience working with David and share with us her path through intuitive eating. Dr. Wanda Williams tells us a little about herself, her relationship with food growing up, her experience with chronic dieting, and what brought her to TD Wellness and ultimately to intuitive eating. Wanda speaks about what she has learned from intuitive eating and how it helped her discover things about herself. She even shares a time when she turned away from intuitive eating and tried combining intermitted fasting and the keto diet. This interview is very insightful and honest. Wanda was so kind to share with us her personal experience with intuitive eating and TD Wellness.

Wanda has been an educator for 19 years. After many years of teaching students, Wanda transitioned to being a consult and instructional coach for teachers, helping them to grow as professionals. Wanda lives a busy life as well as travels to multiple schools for work.

When Wanda first found TD Wellness, she was looking for a professional to provide her with a meal plan to help address some health concerns after being informed she had signs of prediabetes. Wanda talks about several of her and David’s conversations concerning her relationship with food growing up where she talks about being “picky”, always on the go, and remembers her mother dieting off and on. It wasn’t until college that Wanda started trying different diets. Diets were always hard to stick to because as soon as she was told to not eat something, she would crave it (this is something known as the depravation-desire phenomenon).

After David introduced Wanda to Intuitive Eating, she read the book and felt like it just clicked. It was a total attitude change for her “like a weight lifted off of my shoulders”. It gave her permission to change her attitude and thoughts on food and what she was eating. It allowed her to pay attention to her body’s signs of hunger and fullness; a chance to trust her body again. Even after partially healing her relationship with food, she was pulled back in by diet culture (it happens to the best of us). Wanda shares with us that this was an immensely stressful time in her life and later realized the return to a diet was because she wanted to control something in her life while so many things around her felt out of her control. After a slow return, Wanda is mentally focused on sticking to intuitive eating, she feels better, and says she tries to not be her own food police. Although she has a high stress job, she feels she can better manage the stress and mentioned that at her last physical, her doctor said her risk of prediabetes was not present. Eating is fundamentally about loving yourself.

Have you heard about the new One Small Bite Facebook community? Come and join the great conversation and be a part of a community that’s chopping diet culture, asking thought provoking questions about Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size, and building positive relationships with food.

If you want to reach me, please go to One Small Bite podcast website at that link and leave me a 90sec or less audio message. Or, feel free to reach me at [email protected] I'd love to hear from you.
Remember - Chop the diet mentality; Fuel Your Body; and Nourish Your Soul