Episode 4 - Intuitive Eating Misconceptions & Truths with RD Sammy Previte from Find Food Freedom

Welcome RD Sammy Previte to the podcast.  Sammy is a non-diet dietitian and owner of Find Food Freedom and co-host of What The Actual Fork Podcast!

We talk about intuitive eating. misconceptions about intuitive eating, thin privilege and so much more. 

“I have gone through stages in my life where I felt like food controlled me. I had tried every diet and NOTHING worked. I thought I was “being good” Monday through Friday by eating less and working out more. I would give myself a “get out of jail free” card on the weekends by indulging in foods I would restrict during the week. I would cut out specific food groups (cough cough…carbs) thinking that if I just ate less of something then the scale would go down and all my problems would go away…until Monday came again. It was not until I started looking at food as a fuel source and learning how to nourish my body that I was able to feel comfortable in my own skin, improve digestion, and live a life of food freedom.”

Sammy graduated from Penn State University with a B.S. in Nutritional Sciences and a minor in Kinesiology. Sammy worked in the Sports Nutrition department at Penn State with all 31-varsity teams. In addition to working in athletics, she served as a Retail Registered Dietitian for ShopRite Supermarkets in New Jersey.  She specializes in individual nutritional coaching as well as grocery store tours, corporate wellness, and keynote speaking.  She is a Certified Personal Trainer through National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) as well as a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor.

Sammy enjoys working with all different populations. Her favorite part about being a dietitian is helping others create peace with food. Many people believe that dietitians are the food police–this is simply untrue. Sammy believes that food was made to provide our bodies with nourishment and pleasure. Sammy treats each client with individualized care based on their specific needs. Sammy and the entire team at Find Food Freedom are proud to say that they do not support the $72 billion diet industry. Find Food Freedom is rooted in Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size (HAES). Find Food Freedom believes that all humans deserve fair, unbiased health care regardless of the size of their body.

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Transcript

Christine:
Welcome Sammy to the podcast. I'm excited to have you here. I've been a follower of yours on Tik TOK and Instagram. You definitely put out some really great content. Let's start with why you became a dietician and maybe how your philosophy has shifted from when you started to now.
Sammy:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and have these important conversations. I think like most registered dietitians and I can't speak for everybody, but the majority that I hear from a lot of us go into the field wanting to find like the magic answer. And when I say magic answer, I mean, like what is the perfect diet, right? Or what's going to help me lose weight and be happy, and then I'm going to figure it out. And then I'm going to tell everybody else how to do it. And so that was really what drove me to the nutrition field, specifically that bachelor's of science degree in college, was  when I was a very disordered eater at the time. And I just wanted to figure out how to be healthy and how to teach others to do so. And throughout that time in college, unfortunately it just perpetuated my disordered, eating my obsessing about calories, cutting out food groups, going to the gym only to burn calories as punishment to then binge later on. So fast forward into becoming a dietitian.  I became a dietician and I was looking around like, I still don't have the answer yet. I'm here. I am this dietician that's supposed to be helping other people. And I, I started working with clients one-on-one like right away and my first job.
And I would put them on meal plans. We would calorie count. We would talk about "healthy foods" versus "not healthy foods" (heavy air quotes there). And they would lose weight in the short term and then if they could overcome the guilt and shame, months later, I would hear back from these clients saying, I failed, I need a reset. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And I was like, this is not working like this. There has to be more to life. I was so unfulfilled from a professional standpoint. I could tell that these people were really struggling and they weren't failing anything. These just were unrealistic expectations for them.
And then I was introduced to intuitive eating and my entire world flipped on its head. So I had been fortunate enough to kind of naturally become an intuitive eater in my post-college years where I honestly just got to a point where I said F it, like, I'm not going to diet anymore. I'm not going to count any more. I just don't give a shit. And then from there, I kind of got through that and started just listening to what my body wanted. And so I was already doing a lot of intuitive eating without knowing it was a thing. And then I was introduced to.... one of the dietitians in my cohort from my program, she was an eating disorder, dietician and intuitive eating rooted practice. And I was like, what is this? Like, tell me more. And then read the book, listened to the podcast. Christie Harrison's food psych podcast was one of the ones that really inspired me and then once you learn that information you just can't unlearn it. So now I've completely transformed our practice. We do not teach intentional weight loss. We do not calorie count. Our entire practice at find food freedom is rooted in intuitive eating, health at every size, helping people make peace with food, make peace with their body and just learn how to trust their body again. To feel physically, mentally, and emotionally pleasant.
Christine:
Okay, let's talk a little bit about intuitive eating. I know it's very popular right now.  It's very trendy and we know that sometimes some of these trends then get misinterpreted or they get taken advantage of by people that aren't really following or using it the way it's supposed to be used. So tell me about what some common myths or misconceptions may be about intuitive eating.  Because I know Jillian Michaels went on and on about how we're just all stuffing our faces with donuts all day long. But what are some common myths? You deal with clients and see people and you might get someone that comes in that says I want to lose weight. So what are some common misconceptions about intuitive eating? And let's just start talking a little bit about what intuitive eating is.
Sammy:
Yeah. Great questions. So I think the first step to that would be what is intuitive eating? And it's so hard to conceptualize for people because if I spent five, 10, 20, 30, 40 years chasing intentional weight loss and then we say, okay, we're not going to do that anymore it's like, wait, whoa, what's my life purpose then, what am I doing? So intuitive eating is a self care form of eating that is made up of 10 different food principals, has over 120 plus studies and the entire purpose of intuitive eating is to trust your body again and feel physically, mentally, and emotionally pleasant. To pair along with that, one of the biggest misconceptions of intuitive eating similar to what you said about Jillian Michaels is people will say, oh intuitive eating is just eat whatever you want, whenever you want, like eat all the pizza cake, cookies, donuts, like that's intuitive eating. And that couldn't be further from the truth now. One of the 10 principles of intuitive eating is make peace with food. And when we're doing that, especially coming from a place of restriction, which a lot of our clients are coming from, you know, very restrictive diets or eating disorders when we're making peace with food, we have to have unconditional permission to eat, because if we don't give ourselves unconditional permission to eat, there will always be that mental restriction or that little voice saying you shouldn't be eating that you can't have that, which then fuels bingeing.
So we know that restriction is the number one indicator of bingeing. So in the beginning, when people start their intuitive eating journey, and I find a lot of people on social media when they don't seek professional help and intuitive eating and they think it's just eat whatever you want whenever you want. They think they're "intuitive eating", but really they're just eating everything in sight and then they feel physically unpleasant. Now they're emotionally unpleasant because they're beating themselves up for everything and then I'll hear them say  intuitive eating doesn't work for me. But they're not intuitive eating. That's not what intuitive eating is. That's just one little piece of it. And as we start to make peace with food a natural progression of intuitive eating is actually starting to naturally crave nutrient dense foods.  So one little thing I'll throw in there too is we had Evelyn Tripoli on our podcast.
She's the author, one of the two authors of intuitive eating, And for those listening, intuitive eating has been around since 1995. Like it is not new by any means, but like you said, it is becoming trendy and Evelyn was like, if you want to be confused about intuitive eating, go on Instagram and look up hashtag intuitive eating and it will confuse the shit out of you because like you said, there's people using the hashtag that have no idea. They're literally making posts about intuitive eating and weight loss, right? When that is literally the opposite of the purpose of intuitive eating like that. We're not chasing intentional weight loss. We're chasing trust with our body again. So those are just some of the things that come to mind.
Christine:
Yeah, it's funny because the whole Instagram influencer thing, we could do another whole episode on going on Instagram for information and not going to credible sources and just listening to influencers, cause you're right there's a lot of people misusing IE, people that aren't dietitians that are giving misinformation, people that aren't fitness professionals, giving misinformation, and it's really important to get the right information. And like you said, buy the book. You even have a course that helps dive deeper into the book and really helps people go from that, that failure point, because I don't know how you can be a dieter and fail so many times. I can't think of any other part of your life where you fail so many times and keep doing it again and again, how you get that trust back, how, how you can go from failure to trusting your body to and trusting your intuition to be able to eat properly and I think that's why it's really important to go to proper sources, read the book. If you want a deeper dive, go to courses like yours. So that way you can get assistance and your handheld along the way. Because it's a hard shift. It's a really hard shift. So let's talk about some of the air quote things you hadn't mentioned. You had mentioned something about "healthy food" and there's people talking about clean eating. There's programs out there that are leading or misleading, that it's a lifestyle to healthy lifestyle, but it's still the, it's still a diet. So I know you talk a lot about that on your social media, about different diets, air quotes. So why don't we talk about some of those diets that are out there.
Sammy:
So I think it's important to define, what is a diet? So when we look at the word diet in general, the word diet doesn't really have a bad connotation. It's just what we eat and drink. But when we're talking about like a fad diet here, specifically, all diets are the same thing. There's some form of restriction. So for example, the keto diet is restricting primarily carbs and intermittent fasting is restricting time.  All these different diets are restricting all sorts of things. So from the research, we know that restriction is the number one indicator of bingeing. So when we look at the diet industry, the $72 billion industry, like you were talking about earlier, people are failing constantly and blaming themselves. Diet culture is one of the only industries I know that the product and service is failing but the consumer is blamed. So once we get to this awareness of I'm not failing, these are all unrealistic, expectations are unrealistic plans or programs. We have this like awakening where it's like, Oh my God, dieting doesn't work. It's actually harmful, but then I think people get so scared because like, well, what do I do now? Because their whole life has been dedicated to dieting.  And like you said, I love how you call that out as like healthy lifestyle, air quotes, air quotes, changes, you can call it whatever you want. It's all just shit with glitter, thrown on it. Like, it's all the same thing. And so, yeah. It's all about being able to recognize like, if it's a list of rules telling you not to eat something, right? If it's someone telling you have to eat at a certain time, if it's excluding a food group, excluding an ingredient, those are all external factors.  The goal of intuitive eating is how do we turn inward and trust your body again, and your body's cues. And I like to use the analogy of a baby, like babies cry when they're hungry and they stop eating when they're full. We were all born intuitive eaters, but then these external influences of family and diet culture and all these things kind of disturb those cues. So it's just coming back home to those cues. But in the same sense, I think another kind of wrapping it all together with a question you asked earlier, another misconception is that nutrient dense food can't be a part of intuitive eating.  That's not true at all and I know a lot of people use the word, like I'm gonna use air quotes, healthy food. I don't really like to use that term. I will more so use the term nutrient dense food. But it's really important to take note of is that there is nothing wrong with human beings that genuinely want to improve their health. And I think that people think that intuitive eating is like anti health, but it's truly the opposite. It's pro health, but it's looking at all of the factors that actually impact your health. So that's more than just food and movement. I just want to call attention to that because I think there's so much misinformation. We know that people go on diets either a) because they think it's healthy or b) because they want to lose weight.
When we know through research that dieting actually has a negative impact on our health in many different ways and it's the number one indicator of weight gain and two thirds of dieters will gain more weight back. So if we're going on diets to air quotes, be healthy or lose weight, it's going to have the opposite effect. So that's where intuitive eating comes into play.
Christine:
So what happens when someone comes into your practice and really wants to take that approach where they don't want to fail anymore, they don't want to be weight cycling, but they still want to lose weight. Because I'm sure that you get clients that say, I want to lose weight and I want to do intuitive eating.
And you had mentioned something earlier that they don't go together. So explain that. Like if someone is going to attempt to do intuitive eating and go down that path, is weight loss completely off the table? Is it something that is possible?  Cause I know some people.
As as a gym owner, people come in, the first thing they say is I want to lose weight. So I'm sure you get that same question come to you.
Sammy:
So yes, I would say 99.9% of the people that we work with still desire weight loss. I think it would be scary if we gave them our message and they were like,  Oh, I don't have to worry about weight loss anymore okay, perfect. Let's go. Right? Because their whole life has been dedicated to that and we live in such a fat phobic, weight centered society that everyone has this pressure, especially as women: be smaller, take up less space, be more disciplined. All of those kinds of messages we see all the time. So I think about just myself as a practitioner, when I used to be rooted in like weight management, weight centric care, when someone would come in and say, I want to lose weight, I would say, okay, how can I help you?
But now when someone says I want to lose weight, I don't judge them. I don't shame them. I don't guilt them. I just create curiosity in that conversation and say, tell me why. , why do we want to lose weight? What's going to happen when we lose weight. And like majority of the time, you know, they either want to lose weight for air quotes, health purposes.
So then we have to talk about weight science. We have to talk about the research. , Related to that. , the conversation of weight is not off the table. I always like to describe it as if we're cooking. It's just on the back burner. It's not like the center of our work, but it absolutely is a part of the conversation. , or a lot of times we know that weight or body image is heavily tied into self-worth for people, because let's say. You know, a lot of our clients have trauma where they grew up in families where mom was taking them to weight Watchers, , from age eight onward, or dad would celebrate them when they lost a few pounds or, , they were called names in school due to the size of their body. So when we dig deeper, it's not that they want weight loss. They just want acceptance. They want self worth. And so we've had so many people that have actually even been in smaller bodies, say. You know, I want weight loss, but then I think about when I was in a smaller body, I still hated myself. And so it's not about telling people you can't lose weight or we're not anti human beings losing weight.
It's just not the purpose of our work. And instead of making it the purpose, we get curious and say, why what's going on here? , To be Frank with intuitive eating. People can lose weight. People can maintain weight, people can gain weight. It's just that whatever happens in that realm is seen as neutral. We're not going to celebrate it. We're absolutely not going to punish someone. If they lose weight. I have clients that have lost a ton of weight. It's just a data point though.  And I will never promote that because then intuitive eating becomes this promotional weight loss , thing, but I've also had clients that have gained weight because they came from extremely restrictive behaviors. Yet they're biometrics, they're CDC, blood panels. They've had so much improvement in their health and they gained weight and they needed. To gain weight. So weight gain is not a bad thing, but again, I think it comes back to that conditioning and the media and just diet culture.
Christine:
What do you say to people that come to you and say, it's, it's easy for you?
Because you're in a smaller body,  you're considered thin. What do you say to people that have it harder, it's just different. We all have different lived experiences. So as someone that is in a smaller body. How do you approach or talk with clients that are in larger bodies or in marginalized bodies?
Sammy:
Yeah, that's a wonderful question. And I'm so happy that you brought that up because that's such an important part of this work. , first of all, I think it's acknowledging your privileges when you're working with clients. I think it's so important to say, , I am a thin white woman. I have privileges that have made my life so easy in ways that I did not ask for this.
But , the truth of the matter is I have. Way more resources and way less, um, oppression, right. And way less discrimination because of the way that I look. And I think that's very important to bring that into the space, but also to say, but I'm here to sit with you. And listen to you and go through this with you. , I always use the analogy of I'm a male OB GYN, right? No matter how hard that doctor tries, he will never be able to give birth to a child or even pretend to understand what it's like to birth the human being. Because he does not have a vagina, but he can still be really good at birthing human beings. Right. And, and talking his clients through that and helping them and, and get successful live births. So I cannot pretend to understand what it's like to be in a larger body to have weight stigma constantly, you know, done to me to have discrimination all the time for the size of my body. But I sure as hell can listen and sit in the suck with my clients and help them work through that. And I, and I want to make it clear for anybody listening that no matter what size body you're in, you can absolutely have body image issues or struggles, but there's a very big difference that people in larger bodies. Have a lot more discrimination and weight stigma done to them, but people and air quotes socially acceptable, , bodies just don't have. , so that has to be a part of the conversation. And I would say the majority of my clients actually do reside in larger bodies.
Christine:
That's such a great point because I know that personally, I had a really hard time understanding this privilege, this thin privilege, because as someone that has struggled a lot, has had eating disorders and has, especially in the fitness industry, has not had the fitness looking body. I still didn't have the discrimination that larger bodies face and it's very eye opening to step out of your own insecurities and your own body image, kind of that lens that you have with yourself and realize that their different things  a perfect looking body, air quotes under with perfect. They can have really bad body image issues. They're not immune to that, but we definitely hold a different experience when we're not faced with discrimination and the weight stigma.
Sammy:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think of an example in my field is, I can post a video or a picture of myself eating a donut and saying , you have permission to eat whatever you want. And people will like it and be like, you go girl, like, you know, eat that donut. But someone in a much larger body, that's also a dietician or a body image therapist could post that donut. And people will say, you're promoting obesity. , this is harmful. This is unhealthy. And no, that's just, fat phobia like, that's just wrong and it's not okay. And it's important to recognize that, like I'm not here to leave the body positivity movement. That is a movement that was created for, for people in larger bodies. But I am here to be an ally and to lift up those voices. So I think it's also important in our work, you know, when I'm asked to be quoted in a pop sugar article, or when I'm asked to do a publication. I am constantly making sure that I am giving names of practitioners that are in larger bodies that are, , black women and our field that are so, so oppressed it's. So it's really important that that becomes a part of this conversation for sure.
Christine:
 Yes, so true. Let's talk about advice you would give to someone that is heavily in diet culture, or maybe they've spent years being either told from family and friends or we spent a lifetime , in our own home learning things, learning behavior. Then we go out, we watch media, television, the outside world is influencing us. So it's very hard to change our mindset. So what do you think are some strategies or just some pieces of advice? To help remove that diet culture from your mindset.
Sammy:
There's so many ways we could go with this, but I would say that first step is just building the awareness and recognizing that if you're getting to a stage where you're seeing like, okay, dieting doesn't work, right. A simple question you could ask herself. And I invite listeners to journal about is where has dieting. And restricting gotten me thus far in my life. Right. It let everything flow out onto a page. Where has it gotten you look at that? Read it. Okay. Why are we going to continue to do that? Right. And so building that awareness like, and so many people, unfortunately, will never even get to that awareness stage. They'll never even get to this part of the conversation. So getting to that awareness, I think is the first step, because we have to be aware of how harmful it is. And then it's really taking that next step and saying, okay, What can I do now? Like where do I go from here? So if that is purchasing me intuitive eating book, which is a super cost-effective way to start, right? If it is, you know, like you said, we do have a course, whether it's us or another intuitive eating dietician or practitioner kind of doing some self-paced work, if it is like, if you have the privilege or the resources getting somebody like our team, or again, there are. Thousands of non diet medical professionals out there getting professional help of somebody who can help you through this.
I think what's so difficult with intuitive eating is that everybody physically knows how to eat, right? Like hand to mouth chew, swallow, like done. So with the intuitive eating part, people get so frustrated, like. How can I just get this? Like, why can't I just do this? And I think it's important to recognize is that you've had five, 10, 20, 30, 40 years of diet culture experience.
So to now just say like, okay, we're going to eat without guilt and shame. And we're going to listen to our body. We've literally been conditioned our entire life. Let's do the opposite. So giving yourself grace that like, you're not supposed to be an expert in this. I use the analogy of accounting. I'm horrible with numbers. That's why I pay an accountant. And if I bought a book and accounting, I could read it. And I might have a little bit better knowledge and some understanding, but I will know by no means being an expert in accounting. And so that, yeah, same thing with intuitive eating. If we go through a course, if we read the book, okay, that's a great first step, but that doesn't mean that you have to be an expert or just understand it all.
Especially if there's a lot of trauma and diet culture history there. So. First step awareness, lots of grace. , and just getting that general understanding and that some of those journal prompts, I said, we do have a free guide. So your listeners are more than welcome to head over to , find food, freedom guide.com, where it has the 10 principles that has some journaling prompts. It has some assessments, so they can really just see like, where is their starting point and where are they right now?
Christine:
Yeah. We'll put your course information and that information just mentioned in the show notes, because I think one of the things that's very important is support. There's a lot of information out there. Like you said, a book is a really a cost effective way to start, but sometimes you need support along the way and that helps us. In a lot of ways, just become much more successful over the course of undoing all this that we've learned.
So just a couple quick, rapid fire questions we like to ask. I know you do this on your podcast too. I'm not going to ask you about peanut butter. But I'm going to ask you some of the things that we, a lot of our listeners are into fitness, either as fitness instructors or participants in our studio or online programs. So we always love to know what is your favorite way to move your body?
Sammy:
Oh, I love this question right now. 100% yoga. I've become like yoga, obsessed. And it's funny because I always used to hate yoga because I'm not flexible and I don't know how to quiet my mind. So it's been so fun throughout quarantine actually is I got really, really into yoga and I'm just like addicted to it now. I love it so much.
Christine:
And then what's your favorite self-care practice?
Sammy:
Lately, I would have to go with gratitude journaling each morning. So for all of 20, 21 thus far, I write down just three things. I'm grateful for. It could be as simple as like the sun hitting my face or a cup of coffee or something, but just finding gratitude in the smallest things.
Christine:
2020 has been a year of,  you mentioned quarantine. We have been spending a lot of time at home. So has there been any show through 2020, or maybe now in 2021 that you feel is very binge-worthy?
Sammy:
I'm going to go with two because I can't decide which one's better. Schitt's Creek totally obsessed. Um, and then shrill on Hulu with Aidy Bryant, and it's a very health at every size aligned show and she's hilarious. She's from SNL. I don't know if you follow her, but shrill on Hulu. Amazing.
Christine:
Then now I have to get Hulu. I think that's the last of the ones we don't subscribe to. We subscribed to every other one. So now you've just given me a reason to get that. And then finally, your favorite music, it could be an artist, a song that's speaking to you right now, or a genre, but your favorite music.
Sammy:
I am a huge Dave Matthews fan. I've been to over 17 Dave Matthews band concerts. So I'm missing five music so much with quarantine, but Dave Matthews, for sure.
Christine:
Well, hopefully soon you'll be at a Dave Matthews Band concert again, hopefully in 2021, if not 2022, which is funny that we speak so far into the distance about some things, but it gives us something to look forward to. I appreciate you being here today, again for listeners, the information for getting in contact with Sammy and also just following her on social media, she gives you. So many great strategies and tips. , and like you had mentioned earlier about giving yourself grace. She definitely gives a lot of opportunities to give herself some self love and grace through her social media channels. So I appreciate you being here.
Sammy:
Thanks for having me.
Christine:
Absolutely. And we hope to have you again soon on the podcast.