The Midlife Feast
The Midlife Feast
#156 - How to Cancel Your Clean Plate Club Membership with Emily Sucher, RD
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If you’ve ever felt guilty for not finishing your plate, even if you’re full, and you’re not 100% sure why, you might be a member of the Clean Plate Club.
In this episode, I invited registered dietitian Emily Sucher to explore how messages from childhood are still impacting our food decisions today. Whether you grew up hearing about starving children or just hate the idea of wasting food, this conversation offers a fresh perspective.
Emily shares compassionate ways to tune back into your body’s cues, reframe what food waste really means, and help the next generation build a healthier, more intuitive relationship with eating.
Connect with Emily
The Website: www.livewelldietitian.com
Instagram:@livewelldietitian_
Like what you learned? Check out these other episodes!
How to Decode Your Cravings in Menopause
Cooking for Pleasure, Not Perfection with Andrea Buckett
What to Do If Intuitive Eating Doesn’t Work with Julie Duffy Dillon
The Capacity Crisis: Why Women Feel Emotionally Exhausted in Midlife with Dr. Sarah Vadeboncoeur, RD
Parenting Without Diet Culture with Oona Hanson
Ditch the “I’ll be good today” loop in 5 days with the Midlife Morning Makeover Email Challenge! ☀️ Head to menopausenutritionist.ca/morningmakeover
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Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free guides and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, Dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the midlife feast community, my monthly membership that combines my no nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.
Jenn Salib Huber:In this episode, I am calling all members of the Clean Plate Club. You know who you are, and maybe it's because you grew up in a house with many siblings and you never quite knew if there were going to be leftovers, so you had to eat what was there. Maybe you grew up with food scarcity or didn't feel like you had regular access to food, or maybe you had somebody a parent, a grandparent breathing over your shoulder, telling you about all the starving children in Africa. Regardless of how you got into the Clean Plate Club, you are going to enjoy this episode with Emily Suker, who's a women's health dietitian, and she joined me today for us to break down what exactly is this club that we didn't request membership in. Where did it come from? What are some of the ways that it shows up, especially if you're learning or aren't intuitive eater and maybe find it a little bit hard to stop in the middle of a meal? Emily shares lots of great tips with us that I know will help anybody, especially if you have younger children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews that you are trying to block their membership to the Clean Plate Club.
Jenn Salib Huber:Give this one a listen, hi, emily. Light Club Give this one a listen. Hi, emily, welcome to the Midlife Feast. Hi, I'm honored to be here. So we're talking about something that I think is a topic that is very relatable to many generations, but I do think that Gen X really, really relates to this idea of the Clean Plate Club. It comes up in the Feaster community not infrequently, you know. I've seen people joking about it online, and I think it's a really important topic to explore, as people are learning intuitive eating at any age, but it really becomes, let's say, like top of mind. If you are a grown ass adult who's trying to change your eating habits and you sometimes feel stuck in this, why don't I? You know, why do I always feel like I have to finish my plate? So let's start with the basics. How do you define the clean plate club?
Emily Sucher:Yes, I love this question. So I define the clean plate club as this urge to have to clear your plate at any meal, and it can come from your beliefs about food waste or how you were raised, from childhood it really starts at the very beginning. So if we were to dive into kind of the beginnings right, if people are told like, oh, you have to clean your plate, you don't get dessert if you don't clean your plate, or think about the starving children, these are ingrained in our heads from such a young age and so then as adults it's hard to listen to our body's cues and so we feel this urge to clean our plate and it kind of gives us this satisfaction or reward of, oh, now I get to eat dessert or I did what I was supposed to do.
Jenn Salib Huber:And when I knew that you were going to be joining me on the podcast, I actually put this question out to the Feaster community and said hey, how does this show up for you? What questions do you have? And a lot of people brought up some memories of actual scarcity food scarcity in their childhood and about not having enough and really feeling and needing to really kind of eat what they could when they had access to it. And even though they're now in adulthood and that's no longer a concern, that mentality is still there. And so that scarcity mentality of you know, if I have access to it now I need to have it is how do we get over? I guess get over is the wrong word, but how do we work through that, especially as intuitive eaters where we're trying to understand our patterns of eating, we're trying to practice this attunement and this, you know, paying attention to hunger and fullness cues. What are some of the ways that people can maybe start to process that scarcity mindset out of their current relationship with food?
Emily Sucher:Yes, I think this is very valid and having kind of that first step is acknowledging their past and having that awareness of, oh, at one point, like I really didn't know if I was going to get my food next, or I didn't know if I was going to get this special treat again, because my family was really large and we had to share those specialty things.
Emily Sucher:So, especially like treats and like I remember growing up too, like the brownies, like oh, we only get three each. Like so much. So it is acknowledging first and then from there we can challenge that, like what would it look like if, you know, as an adult, if we are able to buy our own food, if we do have that that sense of you know, ability to buy food whenever we want it and we do have access to food, which you know is a great value, if we are able to do that now. But it challenging Okay, if I don't finish my pizza or if I don't finish my meal, even though it's really good, I can buy this again. So giving ourselves permission to enjoy food whenever we want and reminding ourselves that we do have the ability now to replenish what we maybe didn't finish.
Jenn Salib Huber:And that's really not much different than any other work we would do around permission and scarcity right, I mean the scarcity mindset can show up because of actual scarcity or because of the scarcity that dieting and diet culture has created.
Jenn Salib Huber:And so practicing permission and making sure that you have regular access to foods that you enjoy is, you know, I think, a great strategy, regardless of where that scarcity has come from. And so what about the people who hear, like their mothers and grandmothers voices or their parents in their head saying you know, finish your plate, or that food waste, because that is by far the most common one from our generation? I don't know what year you were born. I was born in 77. And anybody who was a child in the 80s grew up with the world vision commercials of the starving children in Africa, and that was like used by our parents to say you know, don't waste your food, there are starving children in Africa, and that actually came up in the community as well. That someone said I still can hear my mom saying that and that whole there are people starving in the world. I guess argument is one that lots of people who are members of this clean plate club can relate to. How do we start to change that?
Emily Sucher:Yeah, I hear this a lot with some of my clients who are in midlife and it is hard. There are starving people in the world but I always like to remind them is if we don't finish our plate, is it really going to feed them? Like, if we have four bites left of our sandwich? Like, either way it's going to be waste. So I explain it to like our body can only take so much for physical needs, emotional satisfaction, satiety before if we overeat, it's wasteful for our body and it might not be very good for our minds either, because we might feel some shame or guilt, which hopefully we work through, but we might not feel very physically well either. So in that point it's waste for our bodies or we throw it away and it's waste for the trash can. So, having this kind of like, well, we have to choose how we want to waste our food today. Do we want to waste it and feel physically probably overly full, or do we save it for later or throw it in the trash can every once in a while?
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, and that really speaks to practicing body respect and body kindness. Right, what is going to be the kind way to handle this situation? And maybe it informs your next choice Maybe the next time you cook that meal or the next time you plate that meal you change kind of what you put on your plate so that you're not kind of confronted with that situation again. But I think you're totally right that we have to remember that it doesn't change anything for anyone else in that moment, that we really have to put ourselves first and should put ourselves first in that moment.
Emily Sucher:Yes, exactly, and I love like learning for a future time. So next time I might be have a bigger, bigger eye than my stomach might actually be.
Jenn Salib Huber:Let's talk a little bit about hunger and fullness cues, because this is another way that I find that the clean plate mentality shows up as an attunement disruptor. And so in intuitive eating, anybody who is familiar with kind of the concept of attunement, it's that learning to listen to your body's hunger cues, fullness cues, keeping satisfaction in mind. But the fullness cues really can get overridden, I think, more easily than the hunger cues, and especially with that clean plate mentality, sometimes we just go into like autopilot, right, and then the next thing you know it's gone, but sometimes it's the well, I can just finish this, you know, even though we're comfortably full. What are some of the tools that you have found helpful in helping people to kind of stay attuned in the moment when they're trying to practice that? You know awareness of their hunger and fullness cues, but they have that clean plate mentality that is hanging out in the back of their brain.
Emily Sucher:Yes, for sure. I was just talking about this yesterday with a client and we first talked about slowing down. So you know, eliminating the distractions around us and whether it be like watching TV while we eat, sometimes that can be a distraction. Sometimes it can even be like our partner we're talking to or our family we're eating in a family environment and we're busy asking our kids how their day was, and so then we just eat and we have two bites left and we're like, well, I better just finish them, even though we haven't had a moment to check in with our body.
Emily Sucher:So if we can slow down clear distractions not meaning kick your kids to the side, but to slow down during that moment, putting your fork down between bites, being really in tune with your body. My other favorite way is checking in with our five senses. So if we can pull like oh, how does this look, how does this smell, what is the texture of this? We can start to notice when those things start to fade, Because when our sensations start to fade, we're probably starting to get to the point where we're pretty comfortably full.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, yeah, and interest in food. Like I always say, I can really tell when my interest in eating is starting to change at a particular meal. I still could and I may still choose to continue eating, but for me it's noticing, that is my interest in this waning. And then it's about like, have I had enough to feel full and satisfied? And that's where satisfaction plays such an important role. Because if I'm satisfied, if my taste hunger needs have been met, if I've, you know, nourished enough to feel like I have enough, I've eaten enough for the next few hours.
Jenn Salib Huber:And because I practice permission and I know that I can have more in 10 minutes or an hour if I want, it's much easier to press pause in that moment and say I think I've had enough. But if you have that clean plate kind of mentality that is still on autopilot, that can be really hard. So I think that recognizing for anybody who's listening and thinking, oh my gosh, there's no way that I can like drop in in the middle of my meal. I think the suggestions that you made, emily, are really good about like the five senses and anything that you can do to kind of bring yourself back into the present, for sure.
Emily Sucher:Yeah, it's so easy to just say slow down, but yeah, how can we actually do? That is, yeah, checking in with specific areas, and I love that satisfaction because if we're not satisfied, even if we cleaned our plate and are over full, we might still have taste hunger that we need to satisfy, and then we feel really over full once we satisfy that.
Jenn Salib Huber:That's why I tell people lead with satisfaction, like just check that box early on, like if there's a taste and a texture, if there's something that you are craving and that you want, you have to honor that. At least in my experience, it's really helpful to honor that as a valid type of hunger and include it in what you're putting on your plate. But recognizing that if that need isn't met, it's going to be very hard to notice't met, it's going to be very hard to notice your fullness. Or it's going to be harder if you're not paying attention to satisfaction or if you haven't included satisfaction on the plate literally.
Emily Sucher:Yes, and even when it comes to kind of these people who maybe are struggling with clean plate club is sometimes I'm like, if you know, if you're saving your favorite thing, that you know you want to eat all of it on the plate, especially like at a restaurant or something. If you save that for the end, it's going to be much harder to like, pause and leave that part on your plate. So why don't you start with that? Because you're going to enjoy it more for that first bite.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, who's going to enjoy eating their favorite food at the end of a meal? It's always going to be more enjoyable at the beginning of a meal, right? And yeah, I tell people that. The same thing too. Like, don't save your favorite thing for last, eat it first and just kind of check that box. So it's great to hear that that's how you practice too.
Jenn Salib Huber:So many people will say I know that I'm full but I keep eating. And or you know, like I can sense that I'm full because I'm less interested in food. Maybe things have slowed down but I just keep eating. And I think that that's a really common thing. I mean, anybody who's listening if you think, oh my gosh, that's me. Don't feel like you're unusual by any means. And I think that some of that is the intersection, too, of the perfectionism of you know like doing it right and the right thing to do is to finish your plate. That you know pleasing others that perfectionism, people pleasing you know kind of thing I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you kind of address that type of situation.
Emily Sucher:Yeah, that is always so hard when it is for others or that perfectionistic actions that we need to work through, and one of the things I'll ask people is like why does why does it have to mean so much so you know, if you don't finish like why, why does it care, why do you matter so much to please, you know, your mother, who's not even sitting next to you anymore right now, like she's across the country or something like that. Like anymore right now, like she's across the country or something like that. Like why does it have to mean so much? Instead of you know, what really matters is how you feel and how you, you know, and the meal. Are you satisfied? Do you feel physically well and are you choosing to eat in a way that is honoring your body and your health?
Jenn Salib Huber:I think too, there's a lot of emotional labor involved in meal planning for women and so the emotional labor involved in deciding what to eat, you know, and often having to think about other people's needs. And even if you share meal planning and cooking responsibilities, you know, with a partner or a spouse or someone else in your family, it's usually still the adults in the house who are bearing that emotional kind of burden. And I think for a lot of people it feels like more work. It feels like there's more like once you finally sit down and eat the meal that's been prepared, it feels like it requires an additional level of energy to bring that attunement in right. It's like finally I can sit down and eat, and then to have to think about working again at you know how full am I?
Jenn Salib Huber:Am I satisfied that sometimes I think we just go into autopilot and it's like, well, I'm eating, I'm just going to eat what's here. That sometimes I think we just go into autopilot and it's like, well, I'm eating, I'm just going to eat what's here, and so I mean that's a bigger discussion. But I think that for a lot of people we're not talking, we're not bringing that into the conversation, because for a lot of people. By the time I get to five o'clock, my capacity which is something we love talking about is pretty low, and so I don't I may not have as much attunement as I would earlier in the day, so I think that's a factor too.
Emily Sucher:Yeah, that's a huge factor. Another factor I feel like is if women have younger kids and they are, they're not finishing their plate and they're cleaning up and they finish the last few chicken nuggets or the last few bites of their kids food, so kind of having to also kind of determine there, I think that's another big factor and I think those are both also like huge other discussions. That would be another great episode for you.
Jenn Salib Huber:Now some people in midlife and again, most of my audience is in midlife but lots of people in midlife do have younger kids or may have kind of younger grandkids. If people are wanting to improve their own relationship with food and potentially improve the relationship with food that their kids or their grandkids have, what are some tips that you have for parents and grandparents about not inviting the clean plate club into your house?
Emily Sucher:Yes, I love this. I worked with kids before this and one of the things is always just offering variety of options, and my favorite thing is to get like a Tupperware or you know something you can store the leftovers in and so you can say, oh, you don't have to finish it, We'll put it in this box, and if you get hungry later, you have free access to this container of food here. We'll put it in this box, and if you get hungry later, you have free access to this container of food here. Then we're not having food waste and they know they can stop when they're full and they're going to have access to the foods that were prepared for them that they have easy access to. The same can go for adults. We can also use this and say if I'm not finishing this meal, I can have scall you know scalloped potatoes as a snack. I don't have to save it for a full meal if it's maybe a smaller portion than you would have for a mealtime.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, the Tupperware idea is a really great one. We used to do that when my kids were younger as well. My kids are all teenagers now and we used to just say you know, when you're hungry, let us know and we can reheat this. So we weren't catering in that, we weren't making something else, and it was really clear that, like they don't have to eat at all, but they're also not going to have another meal prepared for them the next time they're hungry, this is what they eat, so you can still bring in some of that.
Jenn Salib Huber:You know Ellen Satter's division of responsibility and those kinds of you know I call them like the sensible rules around eating so that parents don't become a short order cook. But I think it really does help to break that cycle of the clean eating, clean plate club that you don't have to finish it all at that meal. You can have it later at another time. And what about? What advice do you have? For maybe sometimes the clean plate club mentality is showing up because you might have a child or a partner or somebody in your house who, like, takes your food, and so this comes up a lot with siblings. My kids will put name, you know, we'll take a piece of paper and, like, put their name on food. We've had, you know, done that with various things, but sometimes people say, well, if I don't eat it now, my husband's going to eat it all. What are some of the ways that adults can maybe approach those conversations?
Emily Sucher:Yes, definitely needs to be communicated and I would say maybe even not at a mealtime.
Emily Sucher:So when you're in that zone, it might feel kind of vulnerable and you know food can be so vulnerable, especially if you're working through, you know, some of your relationship with food and working on this intuitive eating journey, especially if you are new to it, it can be really kind of awkward or uncomfortable to have these conversations. So I would recommend not having it around a mealtime more just like as something that you're working on and some of the challenges that come up for you. So, for instance, like, oh, I noticed that maybe you grabbed some of my food and this is something I'm trying to work on and I want to have this food later, but I have this, you know deep feeling that I can't have more of it later because it's going to be gone. So if I say you can have it, you can have it. If not, maybe it would be helpful for me if you, you know, just ate your own food and then maybe you can ask or you know, I will offer it to you if I feel comfortable with that.
Jenn Salib Huber:That's great advice. So it really sounds like when people are trying to shift their mindset around, needing or wanting to finish their plate, if they notice that they're kind of full and satisfied in that moment, it really still comes down to permission and attunement, right? Yes, yeah, and you know permission to say yes, permission to say no, permission to have it now, permission to have it later, but also being able to notice if you're full and notice if your senses have been satisfied, and not just kind of the physical sensation of fullness, but the did I enjoy this? Am I satisfied? Do you have any other advice for shifting your mindset around? You know this finishing your plate mentality.
Emily Sucher:Yes, for sure. I would definitely say, like knowing that, like meal timings aren't a real thing, you can eat whenever. I think that is super important to know. Like, if you don't finish your plate at noon, you can still have a second lunch at 3 pm. Like you don't have to just have a snack. So, knowing that meal timings are okay, you can save food. And also it is okay if you have to throw food away. It's not the end of the world, it doesn't have to mean so much, that's okay. So, and also utilizing the freezer that's my favorite is on those low capacity days, I can just pull something out and you know, or maybe I'm like I don't want to eat that because cravings change you can throw it in the freezer and actually want to eat something, and when you are enjoying it, you might can it in the freezer and actually want to eat something, and when you are enjoying it, you might can check in a little bit more. In those senses it's not just as like I'm going with the flow, automatic flow.
Jenn Salib Huber:That's a great suggestion. I love being able to put things in the freezer and pull them out at another time when I might be craving them or when I don't have a lot of capacity. And I think I just want to end, too, by reminding people that this if you've been eating this way for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, it takes practice, and anytime we're learning something new, there are going to be bumps in the road and we're not going to do it perfectly. So, deciding that you want to shift your awareness around how you're eating, when you're eating, whether or not you finish the plate or not, if you change how you respond to that feeling, it takes practice, and so lots of self-compassion for the times when you think, oh my gosh, here I did it again. It's all just part of the experience of learning to change our thoughts, our patterns, our behaviors. And yeah, it doesn't happen overnight, right.
Emily Sucher:Yes, it is definitely a journey to get there.
Jenn Salib Huber:Amazing Emily. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insights around this. Where can people learn more about you and how you work with people?
Emily Sucher:people learn more about you and how you work with people. Yeah, my biggest place would be Instagram, and my handle is at livewelldietitian underscore, so happy to find you there, and you can connect to my website through Instagram as well.
Jenn Salib Huber:Amazing. So the question that I love to ask what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife?
Emily Sucher:Yes, as someone who's not there yet.
Emily Sucher:I am going into it with curiosity. I'm still off, but just as I've been learning and supporting clients in midlife, it is everyone is different and everyone experiences things different with any stage. But being curious and not judgmental about the stage of life you're in because you can find beauty in anything and, yes, you have to shift, but you can still thrive in any stage of life. You're in because you can find beauty in anything and, yes, you have to shift, but you can still thrive in any stage of life.
Jenn Salib Huber:I love that. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. I know that this episode will be a big help to people who can relate to wanting to finish their plate.
Emily Sucher:Yes, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to finish their plate.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yes, thank, you so much for having me as an honor. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast. For more non diet, health, hormone and general midlife support, click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.
