Finding Calm In The Nutritional Storm – In Session with Marc David

Introduction

0:01Welcome to the Psychology of Eating podcast, where food and body challenges are the doorway into a happier, healthier life. Now, here's your host, eating psychology expert and founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, Mark David. Welcome, I'm Mark David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We're back in the Psychology of Eating podcast.

0:33I'm with Kessia today. Welcome, Kessia. Thank you very much. All right.

Meeting Kessia

0:38So if anybody is tuning in for the first time to the podcast, how it works is we're meeting for the first time, Kessia and myself, and we're going to have a session together and see if we could do some good work. So, Kessia, if you can wave your magic wand and you can have whatever you wanted with food and body, tell me what that would be for you. That would be four to five kilo less and to eat in a more healthier way.

1:09And more healthier way means for you, what does that look like?

Dietary Changes

1:14It means, so we are pretty healthy at home, but I would like to give up on gluten and dairy and maybe a little bit less of shook. Okay. And what would make you stop from giving up on gluten and dairy? Like, what gets in the way of that? Mainly two things. One is I crave it. Okay. And two is I have five kids and four of them are young, very young.

1:50You know, my oldest one is 13. And I am just so overwhelmed sometimes by taking care of everybody in the house and my clinic. And I just get so overwhelmed that it's just so much more practical to keep it simple and to prepare sandwiches when they need sandwiches, you know?

Family Dynamics

2:09Mm-hmm. So, would that mean you wouldn't even have any gluten and dairy in the house? Yeah, that would be ideal for me. Uh-huh. And how would your kids feel about that? It sounds like they wouldn't know the difference. Yeah, they would know the difference. And of course, at the beginning, it would be hard for them. But that's why I say it is not so practical because to make it happen, I have to find good substitutions for that. Mm-hmm. So, that would make them feel okay with a change, right?

2:41Like, right now, I have to send food for school and, I mean, like, a sandwich for the morning. So, what can I send there that could make them happy, make sure that they are eating?

2:55It's just such a big change in the kitchen. Just to take these two things out of the kitchen is such a big change. I see all these people happy doing those changes, and I think, oh, they only have one kid, you know? It can be. It's just not real, right? Yeah, when you're making those changes for yourself as an adult, that's easy. Or it's easier. It's simpler.

Time Management

3:23Having a whole company of children that you have to make food for, and you probably, you know, you've got to make it happen. You can't take your time. Yeah. Yeah. So, things have to happen fast. So, I understand the difficulty there.

3:45Anything else for you? Is that the few things we should focus on? Weight and shifting your diet? There's something else. Yes? I think it's this feeling that goes with me, that I know what's right, and I know that this is what I should be doing, and then when I get in the right track, I feel so happy that in the right track, that I kind of relax, and I go back to my old ways, my old ways, and then I think to myself, I'm just sabotaging myself, why do I keep doing this all the time?

4:18Why do I keep going back to it if I know it's right? So, the thing you keep going back to is that you wish you wouldn't, is that gluten and dairy? I think so, but it's, yeah. Let's say, for example, I say to myself, okay, like right now I'm doing intermittent fasting, and I feel great, it's so good for me, I feel really healthier with that, and then I see that I'm losing weight, and I'm so happy I'm losing weight, that I want to give myself a price, and that price is going to be an amazing dessert, right?

4:50But that's sabotaging what I'm, what I'm on my way to do. I'm not saying I don't want to have desserts, because there's two days in the week that I don't fast, and I'm more like Shabbat, that is Saturday, it's a very special day for us, and I don't make any account there, like just, we just want to eat, and be happy, and enjoy the meal. So, but during the week, like when I'm doing this, when I'm doing this, I'm seeing results, and I always like, oh, great, I'm seeing results, okay, now I can have, now I can finally have

5:23that ice cream, I can finally, and then I go back to the, to the spot where I was, right, before I started.

Self-Sabotage

5:36Okay, so, I think I have a few things to say about this. You know, I think the first thing to look at is the expectations we could put on diet and food relative to what we can actually do and accomplish, meaning I make up my own food

6:07rules, I'm an adult, I can say these are my food rules, I could eat this, I could eat that, I don't want to eat this, I don't want to eat that. So, we make up our own food rules or our own food guidelines. What I notice is when we make, oftentimes, not always, but for many of us, when we make a very hard and fast rule, as an example, gluten and dairy, I can't eat those. Now, that's fine. That's, that's a fine rule to have. But if it's challenging to follow, then here's the dilemma, because I'm going to tell myself

6:46no gluten and dairy. Why? Because those are kind of bad foods. But then what happens if you eat a bad food? It makes you a bad person. What's wrong with me? What's my problem? And all of a sudden, we're in this battle, because we make the food bad. Now, what I want to say is, I think certain foods enhance your health. I think certain foods can detract from one's health.

7:17And especially as you pay attention to your body, you might notice, wow, these foods are better for me. These foods are not so good for me. Right. So, that's all fair. I think it's great to then create guidelines based on our experience. However, there's a little subtle shift that happens if I make the food bad. Because if I make the food bad, isn't it interesting that the bad foods, in this case, gluten and dairy, they're sort of the foods you crave.

7:47And in one of the reasons, one of the reasons we crave them is because they taste good. Right. So, most of the times, the foods that are on people's bad list tend to be the ones that taste good. They're the fried foods. They're the sugars. There's the candies. There's the sodas. They tend to be foods that attract us to their taste. So, all I want to say is it might be helpful for you to have more of what you want by loosening

8:26the good food, bad food part of it. And maybe instead of making it all or nothing, is it possible to say, okay, we just do gluten and dairy in the house two days a week. And five days a week, you don't. And two days a week, you know, it's going to be there. So, it's still a difficulty when it comes to preparing food for kids.

8:57I get it. You want your kids to have a good diet and you want to start them off well. And yeah, there's a significant amount of human beings who are sensitive to gluten. There's a lot of human beings who are sensitive to dairy. Both those foods tend to be produced in poor quality. That's another piece of the puzzle. You know, so much of the wheat products are very low quality. So many of the dairy products are low quality. So, there might be ways that you can adjust if there are higher quality dairy products

9:31that are more digestible, whether they're organic, whether they're from a goat instead of a cow or sheep's milk or sheep's milk yogurt or whatever it is. You know, I don't know what's available in your country. I know in the United States, there's so many choices when it comes to gluten-free. So, all I'm trying to say is to not make it a crime if you can't do this perfectly.

10:05Sort of make it, frame it as I'm doing my best.

10:11As opposed to if I don't do this perfectly, I'm not going to be healthy, my kids are not going to be healthy, and everything's going to be screwed.

10:23So, you see where I'm trying to go here? Yes. Yes, I see where you're, I totally see where you're, where you're being. The thing is that I, I, I, I tell you, I tell you, I think that really, really, one of my main concerns is the health. Like, I have to be healthy, and my kids have to be healthy, and they are sick, and like, I see that this is not good for them, and then they have it, and then it's not good for

10:56them, and then I feel awful about it. Mm-hmm. So, substitutes for milk, I don't see them eating, um, sheep milk, or, no, they won't drink that. Uh, I've tried these things, and, and they don't work for me right now, and I, I just get in this spirit a lot, but I know this is not good for them, I know this is making

11:27them sick, so why do I keep, it's like I've been trying to control, I want them not to be sick, ever, and I'm trying to control that, and I think that these two things would help me, really help it to control that, um, and also myself, it's, and the problem is that the more I read about it, and also because this is what I do, right, I read with health, I am an acupuncturist, I do Chinese medicine, and I probably see things from the reasons why

12:00I see this is not good, from my perspective, they are different, and the other people that don't have, uh, knowledge on, or they are not a knowledge on this kind of medicine, right? So, yes, it makes me a bit obsessed, and that's why I want them out, right? So, okay, if you go to, to your grandmother, you can have it there.

12:27Yes, I guess I have to get to this point where I don't have to be black or white in this aspect, but I'm not even, I'm like far from, from where I would like to be, and the fact that I cannot be what I want to be makes me feel bad. Yes. So, that's why the work happens in your mind first. The work has to happen in your mind, and in order for you to be productive in terms of

12:58what you want to accomplish, I think you need to give yourself more space, and you have to let go of perfect, and see if you can get to 80% good, 70% good, and let that be your starting point. Let that be goal.

13:22With the understanding also, you know, in my experience raising, I just had one child, and raising that one on a, on a healthy diet, when a lot of his friends were eating all the foods that we didn't have in the house, what I looked to do was to do my best to not, with my son, was to not make those foods raw. So, you know, how come we don't have soda in the house? How come we don't have ice cream in the house? How come we don't eat dairy in the house?

13:55So, okay, these are things we only have on occasion. We have them at birthday parties, we have them when we visit a relative's house, and we have it on special occasions, here and there, but we just don't include it in the house, because these foods, if you eat them too much, you're not going to be so healthy.

14:15Now, because I created the context of, and you can still have these foods, it didn't make them forbidden, because as soon as you make something forbidden, your kids are going to want it.

14:31And they're going to like, why can't I have it? And this one has it, that one has it. Yeah, I mean, you can work hard and say, just no, we can't have it. But if you don't make it forbidden, and you let them know that there's a little looser restrictions, we have it at parties, or when we go out, we just don't have it in the house, then they're not always clamoring for it. Oh, my God, I have to have that. And they're not going to rebound once they're out of the house.

15:01Because you didn't make it bad or wrong. Because kids want to rebel against rules. You have a hard enough time following your own rule. They're going to have a hard time following that rule, especially if those foods are everywhere. Right. So when you don't make it illegal, there's not going to be a black market for it. They're not going to be trying to sneak it. They're not going to think, okay, mommy won't let me have this, but you know, I'm going to

15:34go get it.

15:37So part of the, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it makes me think also about the way they would, I mean, when they leave home, right? And to make their own homes, right? You don't want them to go with this feeling of these foods are sinful, you know, and then they were going to want it too, and then they would feel exactly how I feel. Yes. Right. So if you look at it once again, that, okay, these foods can potentially detract from one's health, but you know, here's the reality, unless you have celiac disease, when it comes

16:11to gluten, or you're extremely gluten intolerant for any food, the dose makes the poison. So if something is going to be poisonous to us, it's all about the dose. Right now you have, you and I have heavy metals in our body, just breathing the air in the parking lot. You're going to, you're going to breathe in heavy metals, but there's not enough to kill you. There's not necessarily enough to harm you. So we, this is planet earth.

16:44It's not perfect.

16:46And I would love to encourage you to do the best you can, but don't shoot for perfect.

16:56Because if you shoot for perfect, you're going to disappoint yourself. And then you're going to be frustrated. Cause I think that's where you're at because you can't get it perfectly. You're feeling frustrated. Yeah. And so it's about loosening your own restrictions.

17:13And saying, okay, I'm a mom. I'm in charge largely of beating my kids. I'm going to do the best that I can do. What does that look like? What's the best that I can do knowing it's not going to be perfect. And then you can relax a little bit more.

17:43And another piece here is, you know, I know people who eat the healthiest diet in the world and they're always getting sick. I know people who eat the worst diet in the world and they're the healthiest people I know. I've often joked here. My, one of my grandfathers, he smoked cigars every day. He drank vodka every day. He ate bread with butter.

18:16He ate chicken soup and he ate candy. And a few other things. That was largely his diet. And he lived to be his early 90s. Never was in a hospital. Not one day.

18:28If I would have eaten his diet, I would have died. Um, so, so what I'm saying is there's a mystery factor in here that, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm like you. I want to eat in the way that I think is best. I want to feed my loved ones in the way that I think is best for them. But there's a place where we do our best and then we let it go. We do our best and then we surrender it to God. We do our best and we let life do its thing because there's no guarantee that if you're

19:06gluten and dairy free, you're not going to get sick or your kids are not going to get sick. No guarantee. Zero.

19:15Right. It doesn't guarantee that. I think you're putting too much power. You're, you're, you're giving that nutritional guideline too much power.

19:29Is it a smart guideline? Sure. Does it make sense? Sure. For all the reasons that you know.

19:40And chances are you do so many other healthy things for your family and yourself. That in the big picture, some of the foods that might not be perfect, you're, you're offsetting with other good things that you do and other good, healthy practices. Right.

20:04So how is this landing for you? What's gone through your mind? Kessia. Yeah, I definitely have to let go. It's just.

20:20Right.

20:22Yeah. I'm a hundred percent with what you're saying. Definitely. It's not something that I can control and I can do my best. As you say, it's definitely life would be more relaxed and I would be happier. Then I guess it'd be happier too. Um, yeah, I, I feel like the weight that I give to my personal responsibility and raising

20:54them is very heavy. I know, I know there is a part of God and he's the one who decides, right? And he is the one who takes care of us and, and looks at us and yeah, I have to work more on that for sure. It's a letting go. It's a letting go because we, we can get very attached to our food rules.

21:25It's understandable and we can get very attached to them. And the challenge is when we get too attached for them, oftentimes those rules become harmful to us. They, they're not actually helping us anymore.

21:45Now there's certain times we have to have rules. Like I said, if somebody is truly allergic to something and every time they eat it, they have an allergic reaction. Like, okay, you got to learn how to stay away from that. If you have celiac disease and every time you have gluten, you have a severe reaction. Yeah. You got to learn how to stay away from that. And that becomes its own spiritual practice. Right. I think for being a mother with five kids.

22:15And if it's not easy, if you don't have the kind of support that would, you know, somebody is just making gluten and, and, and, and sugar-free meals for them and it's, and they like it. So if you don't have the kind of support, then you can only do the best you can do. And ultimately your kids don't want you worried.

22:41You're a responsible mother. You are responsible. You're a responsible person and you're not going to harm them. You're looking to help them as best you can.

22:54So having more space around the dietary rules will teach them. It'll teach them, oh, I can follow certain guidelines and I can relax a little bit because they're going to, they're going to grow up in a world where everybody around them is going to be eating gluten and dairy and all kinds of junk food. Right. And so I find that the best strategy is to model for the young people in my world.

23:26I want to model for them. I want to model for the children. Here's what a healthy relationship with food looks like. Here's what a healthy relationship with body looks like. I take care of myself. And you know why I take care of myself? Because it feels good. Not because if you don't do this, you're bad. No, I eat good because it makes me healthy. I love health. I eat good because it gives me energy. I love energy.

23:52I take care of my body. I do good things because it feels good. And I do my best to avoid things that I know are absolutely going to harm me.

24:04And there are certain things that fall into this, this interesting category of nobody ever died from, from drinking a Pepsi or a Coke. Right. They're not going to kill you.

24:25But if you can empower your children to then see, oh, yeah, there's certain places I can make a choice in.

24:33Am I going to eat this? Am I not going to eat this? It's, it's more empowering for them. Definitely. Definitely. You're talking and it comes to like, what it reflects to me is like, I am a bit more stringent than what I think I am, even though I know I am a bit stringent. And, you know, one of the things that I mentioned in the beginning is this feeling of, I am getting there.

25:08I'm working and I'm getting there where I want. Right. And then suddenly I say, whew, I'm getting there. I can relax. Okay. Where's that ice cream? And I think I would really like to hear what you have to say on that. But I listen to you, it comes to my mind, it's like, like, I really need that relaxation because it seems to me that I'm being a bit more strict than what I'm actually aware of. And it's like, okay, you're getting there, but give me a break.

25:42Give me a break. Like, let me at least, you know, I would really like to hear your thoughts on that. Yes. So, when we adopt strategies that they sound good, they look good on paper. So, intermittent fasting, yeah, sounds great. It's a great strategy. It's a great nutritional tool. Now, is it good for everybody? Not necessarily, no. Is it good for certain people?

26:13Yeah. Is it good for certain people? Sometimes, but not other times. I think so. So, just observing human beings. So, I'm using that as an example because you do intermittent fasting and you notice that it feels good. And you notice that it gives you all these benefits. And then you also notice at some point that you want to say, oh, good girl. That was great. And then you want to celebrate and eat something that's on the bad list. And you really want to eat that. And then you do eat that. And then you feel guilty.

26:45Yeah. I feel like self-sabotage. You think it's sabotage. So, let's take away the word self-sabotage for a moment. I don't think anybody sabotages themselves ever. No. No. I don't think anybody ever sabotages themselves. I think a more useful way to language that is that we have parts of us that need attention. We have parts of us that need certain things.

27:16So, you're just not one person. You're not just Kessia. There's a part of you that's a mother. And when you're with your children, you're a mother. When you're with your husband, you're a wife. You're a partner. When you're with your friends, you're a friend. When you're with your clients and you're being an acupuncturist or a health professional, you're being a health professional. So, we put on these different hats. Now, what's happening is I think that when you adopt certain nutritional strategies for yourself, one of the hats that you put on is your health professional.

27:55That's great. You're using your knowledge. But another hat you're also putting on at the same time, a little bit the perfectionist.

28:04I got to do this right. If I do this right, everything's going to be great. If I do this a little bit wrong, everything's going to be terrible. So, that's the voice of the perfectionist. I have to do the things that I say I'm going to do. I have to do them perfectly. And if I don't do it perfectly, punishment. And punishment means guilt, shame, self-talk. Or punishment means I'm going to do the very thing I'm not supposed to do.

28:31So, which is a weird. It's a strange form of punishment. It's a reward. So, there's a part of you that wants a reward. And that part of you is the kid. That part of you is probably the child who's just raising her hand and going, wait a second. I want to have some fun. I'm a kid. I want to enjoy my life. Kids want fun. Kids want pleasure. Kids, if you tell your kids, we're not going to eat sugar because if you ate sugar every day, someday it could give you diabetes.

29:01It could give you blood sugar dysregulation. They don't want to hear that. They're going to listen to you. All they know is sugar tastes good. So, it must be good for me. So, the kid in you wants to have a treat. Now, why is that going to happen? Because when you are using a strategy or a tool that you're driving yourself to do it through stress and anxiety and being perfect, and if I don't do this, I'm not going to be healthy.

29:38I'm not going to be okay. Things are going to go bad. That's a lot of stress and pressure. Even though you feel good when you're intermittently fast, what's driving it is I better do this and I better do it right. So, that creates so much stress that by the time you're finished, you need stress relief.

30:04You need stress relief because you're doing something that's creating anxiety for you. Right. Now, you can do the same intermittent fasting and say, okay, I'm going to do this the best I can. Maybe it's two days a week. You find a happy medium that doesn't put you over the edge. No, I want to tell you something.

30:35I actually enjoy being with the fasting. It's not hard for me. It's the part of, okay, together with this, I'm going to avoid this and this and this, right? And it comes not because I am unhappy with the fasting or not. It's because I see like, oh, I'm finally losing the weight that I wanted to lose. I understand what you're saying, Mark. There's a place where it's a little hard for you.

31:07And that's the place I'm asking you to look at because it's the part of you that doesn't quite feel good about yourself. If I don't do these things, I can't feel good about myself. If I don't lose four or five kilos, I can't feel good about myself. So what's going to happen is there's a little bit of the weight loss need in the, hanging out in the background.

31:41There's a part of your brain that's choosing intermittent fasting to help you lose weight, which is fine. There's a part of you that's choosing to let go of sugar and dairy so I can lose weight. That's fine. Or gluten and dairy, whatever it is. So, but if I'm believing that I can't really be happy with myself until that weight comes off, then I'm putting pressure on the intermittent fasting. I'm putting pressure on my food rules because those things need to make me lose weight so I can be happy.

32:19Yeah. So it's putting a lot of pressure on the food and the diet to ultimately make you happy. So for me, I hear you say, I want to lose four or five kilos. Like, great. I consider that a preference. You prefer to have less weight. That's wonderful. Everybody has preferences. Preferences are good. They make us unique. They make us human. However, we often turn our preference into life and death.

32:53If I don't get my preference, I'm not going to like myself. I'm going to be terrible. Life won't be good. I'm going to look in the mirror. I just won't be happy. I won't be satisfied. And that's lingering in the background. So, yeah, I'm happy for you to go about finding and reaching your preference. Lose four or five kilos. But how do we do that so that you can be happy if you lose it and happy if you don't?

33:24Wow.

33:27Wow.

33:31Wow. See, for me, and I bet your husband would tell you the same thing. I bet your husband will say to you, honey, you're great as you are. Right? He doesn't want you to lose four or five kilos. No. No, he isn't. He isn't. But imagine for a moment, imagine for a moment of every morning you wake up and your husband turns to you and he says, honey, you need to lose four or five kilos, otherwise I'm not going to be satisfied with you.

34:01You'd snack him. You wouldn't like that. Oh, definitely. It would be terrible. Right. But that's what we say to ourself. We wake up in the morning and we say, we say to ourself, honey, if I don't lose four or five kilos, I'm not satisfied with you.

34:20You wouldn't say that to your child. You wouldn't say to your child, you know, you have a little bit too much baby fat on you. Until you lose that baby fat, I'm not going to love you so much. But once that baby fat comes off, I'm going to give you a big hug.

34:37I want to tell you that it is also, of course, of course, there's some statics here. And I, of course, it's an aesthetic preference, of course, but there is also something that it really worries me. Like, I know I'm not overweight. I know it is, but it just feels not healthy. Okay. It just feels that, like if I read a study that says that, you know, women that have more

35:11than 72 centimeters, I don't know, inches, how much is that? Never mind. Never mind. And their waist, they are more propense to, they are more prone to this and this and this and this. Oh my gosh, I have it. Oh my gosh. They say, this is exactly what I have. This is 72. This is what I have. You understand? And then I get, okay, now this has to go. This has to go because I want to be healthy. I want to live forever. So this has to go, you know?

35:43So, of course, I'll be, I'll feel, I'll feel happier. And if I, I think that I will look better with this five kilos up, you know, but it's also this, again, this healthy thing lingering on my, on the back of my head. I know where it comes from. I know it comes from, from my mother being sick and passing away when I was nine years old and all the terrible things that happened to me afterwards, not only mourning her and

36:14missing her for forever, but also like life became very miserable after she left. Yes. So I just don't want to live. I don't want to live. I want to be here around forever for my kids and I want to be healthy. And even as a child, well, I remember from my mom, she was the most amazing person, loved by everyone and like the most amazing person. But I always remember her tired on her bed, trying to rest because she was sick all the

36:45time. She was fighting a disease for years. And that was my childhood. Always tired in bed. But if she will come, come out and be with us, she'll be laughing and happy. But then the reality is that this is very exhausting for her. So she will go back to her bed. And this is all like all my childhood went around. I mean, up to nine before she passed away. Oh, mom needs to go to this doctor. And now they found out this doctor, maybe this doctor will help her. And now we're going to Brazil to make this surgery.

37:16And now we're going to this to make it. And that it didn't work. So we're going to try this one with this surgery. But it didn't work. We're going to do another surgery.

37:25Till it was just too much for her and she left. Right. So.

37:33It goes back and back to the same place, the same place. Yes. Yes. I will look definitely look better with this five kilo. But if it would be just that. I will. It'd be easy for me to take it, as you say, as a preference. Right. But you're you're equating it with health. You're creating. Yeah. Yeah. OK. So here's what I want to say about that.

Weight and Health

37:55This is this is unfortunate. I think.

38:02I'm convinced that the scientific world and the medical world is in the dark ages when it comes to the topic of weight and when it comes to understanding weight, absolutely in the dark ages. And one of the things we're in the dark ages about is that we tend to look at weight as a very black and white thing. If you weigh this amount, this is bad. If you weigh this amount, this is good. People who weigh too much, which whatever somebody determines is too much, well, that's

38:35bad. You're going to be unhealthy. There is some truth to that, Mark. OK, wait a second. There is some truth to that. Yes. When you go to the extremes, extreme obesity, extreme anorexia.

38:48You're going to put yourself in a bad part of the probability curve for health. However, when you start to go into the research, I'm going to recommend a book for you. It's called Health at Every Size. And it's written by Linda Bacon, a PhD. She collects all the research and she points out what was previously coined the obesity paradox. And in the obesity paradox, it's essentially that when you sum total up all the scientific

39:20research on weight and health, as it turns out, people who are slightly overweight have better health markers and live longer, which flies in the face of all the research that's supposedly saying no. Now, here's the point. I'm going to use your own observation. People of every weight, you can have the hottest body and you can have cancer. Right. Literally, everybody in my family who's died of cancer or some other disease, they had

39:52a slender body.

39:55My parents were not overweight. My grandparents were not only being skinny. It's about being active and being healthy in the way you eat. I mean, you're taking one or two cases and you're saying this is the case, but there's always statistics here. Not so, but what I'm saying is the statistics don't account for that. They don't account for what you just said, because you can be, according to science, overweight, but you can be fit and you can have perfect biomarkers and therefore you are healthy because you are doing things for your health.

40:28And this is where your body lands with weight. This is what it does. Because we have a nagging belief that if I consider something fat, that's unhealthy. And it may or it may not be. It depends on everything else. So yeah, are there plenty of people who are overweight, who are unhealthy? Sure. Because they have an unhealthy lifestyle. They're out of their body. They don't practice good health habits. They don't practice good diet.

40:59They don't care about health. But I know slender people too, who also don't practice health habits. Definitely. So what I'm saying is that this assessment that four or five kilos puts you in a problematic medical zone, I'm saying it's completely false.

41:21I'm saying it's completely false.

41:26And you have to believe that. Whatever helps you come to believe that, I recommended a book for you. You can start to see the research. The scientific community is very biased because the world is biased about weight. If you ask me what's the most prejudiced against class of human beings across planet Earth, it's not black people, it's not brown people, it's fat people.

41:56Almost universe. Fat people. Fat people. Fat people. Are the most prejudiced against humans, I believe. They're the most universally, we don't like them. Or we don't like that they're fat, or we judge them. So all I'm saying is that judgment has slipped into our science. It slipped into our research and our conclusions. So I know people who weigh far more than you do, and they've lived a healthy, long life.

42:34I meet people all the time who they are considered overweight, and they're fit and they're healthy, and they have great biomarkers. So I'm saying that you're not in a medical emergency because of your weight. That's what I'm saying. And however you can get there is going to be a good day because I think your job is to realize that, of course,

43:16because of your upbringing and because of your mother dying when you were young, of course, you're going to be sensitive to these things. And you've gone into being a health professional, so you care about health, and you want to be healthy.

43:30And just be careful that you also live your life, and you don't do healthy things out of fear of getting sick. Do healthy things because they give you the best chance to be healthy, but once again, we don't know what's going to happen.

43:53God decides what's going to happen. One of my uncles just celebrated his 88th birthday. He's sharp. He's alert. He's got a brilliant mind. He's relatively healthy, and it's a terrible diet forever. This is an absolutely terrible diet. My parents ate much healthier than him, and they died before they hit 60.

44:25Wow. So all I'm saying is when you start to look around and you gather evidence of what's actually happening out there, don't look at the research. Look at what you see.

44:40Sure, look at the research, but look at – use your eyes. Use your experience. What I see is women coming to my clinic. I only treat women. I'm more like in the gynecology area. Yes. And every one of them is sad about being fat. Yes. And they are not healthy. I'm telling you, they're not. They're not. I know what I have to treat them for. And when I go to the synagogue, and we have this chance to sit around together and just chat.

45:10Yes, it's true. I have friends that are slender, and I look at them, and they don't look so healthy either. But chances – I do see that it happens more with people that are overweight. What happens more? They are less healthy. Okay. Now, if that's true, being fat isn't their problem.

45:37That's not a problem. That's not the problem. Somebody being overweight is not the problem. No, that's a symptom. It's a symptom. So we don't – I'm not interested in treating the symptom. No. Particularly when it comes to being overweight. Sure, people are going to be sad because they're overweight. Nobody wants to – most people don't want to be overweight. But if you're not taking care of yourself – and if somebody's not taking care of themselves, there's usually good reasons for it.

46:08Right. I don't weep you. So usually good reasons why I don't take good care of myself. And that's where the action is. Okay. So how do I better care for myself? How do I better nourish myself? Not I need to lose weight, then I'm going to be healthy. No. Right. Right. So that's why there's something else going on here. And everybody's trying to treat fat. Like, oh, you need to lose weight, and then you're going to be healthy. Like, no.

46:39Something else for most people needs to shift. Their worldview oftentimes needs to shift. How they care for themselves, how they be in their body, how they're in relationship with their body. That's what needs to change. Once that starts to change, then we can find more of our natural self. We can find more of our natural health and more of our natural weight.

47:05You can make anybody lose weight. Just fast them. Just tie them up in their arms. Right.

47:12Yeah, you can – They're going to go back to the same place. Yeah. So you can force any body to lose weight.

47:21But to get there in a sustainable way is the more difficult path because we have to look at our own weight loss journey. And what that journey is trying to teach us. Everybody has a different weight loss journey. Right. Everybody has a different journey with weight. That might be a better way to put it. So over here, I literally – I don't believe you need to lose four to five kilos.

47:53I believe you'd like to. I don't believe you would need to lose that for your health. In fact, you could just as easily convince me that this weight that you're at is probably the healthiest weight for you. You could easily convince me of that. You know something? The body is brilliant. The body is wise. And oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, the body retains a little bit more weight than usual if it needs to be more grounded, if it needs to be more solid, if you need to feel more grounded and solid.

48:30Wow. So it wouldn't surprise me ever that someone who's a mother of five, it's going to be harder to have a slender body because you're a mama and you have a lot of little people to take care of. So you have to be grounded. You have to be present. You have to be here. Sometimes weight gives us a little bit more presence.

49:00I'm not saying that's the case for you, but I'm saying it's the case oftentimes for a lot of people that weight helps ground us, which makes us healthier, which makes us healthier humans and translates into the body. So all I'm trying to say is there's different ways to look at your weight.

49:19And that in my belief, if you convince yourself that my health depends on losing four or five kilos, I think you're creating an artificial battle that's going to make you unhappy. Too much stress is going to be far worse than four or five kilos that you don't want.

49:52Too much stress because of the four or five kilos.

50:00Stress is not so good for health. That we know.

50:08I think you need to be more gentle with yourself and understand that you're on a different journey than your mom. And your children are on a different journey with you than you were with your mom.

50:41It's not the same.

50:54Right. Right. So teach, teach, teach, teach your family and teach yourself to embrace health, to love doing healthy things.

51:10Because then we're doing healthy things out of love and joy and appreciation and taking care of ourselves. As opposed to I'm doing healthy things so I don't get sick and I don't die. Of course I don't want to get sick. Yeah. But if we're doing healthy things because the, because it's driven from fear of getting sick. It's not so much a healthy attitude. Thank you. Right.

51:43Definitely. Thank you.

51:46Yeah.

51:49Wow.

51:51Well, Kessia, I think this is a good place to just say it's been a good conversation. I think there's, there's, there's been a lot of, a lot of healthy, healthy possibilities here for you to consider.

52:08Yes. It's been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Thank you so much for your wisdom. It's so amazing. Well, I appreciate you being so open and honest and, and I appreciate you looking to be the best possible mother that you can be for your children and the best, you know, healthcare provider for your patients. That's a beautiful thing.

52:31Beautiful. Thank you. So this is an amazing gift. Mama. Really? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, Kessia. And thanks everybody for tuning in. Take care, everybody. Hey friends. We're so happy that you've joined us for another episode of the psychology of eating podcast with Mark David. Are you loving these episodes? Then simply subscribe and you'll never miss an episode again.

53:02We'd also love it. If you'd leave us a review so we can hear more about your own journey with food and body. And if you're curious about what we offer at the Institute for the psychology of eating, including our internationally acclaimed coach certification training that's rooted in dynamic eating psychology and mind body nutrition, please head on over to our website, psychology of eating.com. Until next time, take care and remember, having the body you want starts with loving the body you have.