69. Rewriting the Narrative of Body Confidence and Intuitive Eating with Anne Poirier

Anne Poirier, the inspiring certified intuitive eating counselor, and body confidence coach, joins us this week to unravel the threads of body image and intuitive eating, sharing her journey from personal struggles to empowering others. As we navigate through Anne's story, we shed light on the destructive grip of diet culture and the societal pressures that perpetuate the "thin ideal," while offering the promise of her Body Joyful revolution.

Body image isn't just about what we see; it's deeply intertwined with how we value ourselves. The "good gift/bad gift" analogy Anne presents helps us understand that our perceptions have profound effects on our behavior and mental health. Our conversation takes a critical look at the messages we've inherited, from family to media, and ponders the potential for creating a ripple effect of body positivity for future generations. Anne also introduces us to the intuitive eating philosophy, crafted by Evelyn Tribole, as a liberating escape from the confines of traditional dieting.

Wrapping up our thoughtful exchange, we engage in the heart of intuitive eating principles, emphasizing the significance of trusting our body's cues over the noise of external diet dogmas. Anne challenges us to rethink health and weight loss, encouraging a shift towards well-being rather than numbers on a scale.

This episode isn't just an interview; it's a call to join a movement that's rewriting stories about our bodies and our meals, led by a voice as influential as Anne's. Join us for an episode that's as nourishing for the soul as a balanced meal is for the body.

How To Find Anne
Click HERE for her website
Click HERE for IG
Click HERE for FB

Anne's book, The Body Joyful is HERE

Let's Be Friends
Hang out with Heather on IG @greenpalettekitchen or on FB HERE.

Let's Talk!
Whether you are looking for 1-1 nutrition coaching or kitchen coaching let's have a chat. Click HERE to reach out to Heather.

Did You Love This Episode?
"I love Heather and the Real Food Stories Podcast!" If this is you, please do not hesitate to leave a five-star review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:40

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. Today I had the opportunity to talk to Anne Poirier, who is a eating disorder specialist and also a certified intuitive eating counselor. We dove deep into the subject of intuitive eating because we both agree that if you want to make changes in your body, if you want to lose weight in a healthy way and keep it off and just make peace with food, intuitive eating is the crucial first step to doing this. So take a listen to the podcast. We talk all about what intuitive eating is, the foundational principles behind it and why this is something that you cannot live without If you want to lose weight, get healthy, feel good about yourself and make peace with food. So take a listen. Hi everybody. Today I am here with Anne Poirier.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Having overcome her own eating, food, weight and body image challenges and drawing upon close to four decades of experience, specialized training and advanced certifications, anne created the Body Joyful solution and wrote the Body Joyful book to share her highly personal and life-changing journey. Anne is a certified intuitive eating counselor and body confidence coach, self-talk trainer, eating disorder specialist and author. She is also the founder of Shaping Perspectives A Woman's Way to Joy and the leader of the Body Joyful Revolution community, an online source of support, encouragement and inspiration for women of all sizes, shapes and weights. This group of women are committed to rejecting society's thin ideal and diet culture so they can feel more comfortable and confident in their bodies and selves. Together, this revolution is on a mission to reduce body shaming, bullying, weight stigmatization and disordered eating, and help prevent eating disorders.

Speaker 1: 2:59

So, anne, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you here today and talk about all that you do. But let's start with you first. I wanted to hear about your story around food and body image and just how you Well, how that began and how you overcame it and where you are now.

Speaker 2: 3:22

Yeah, thank you, heather. I'm so glad to be here. So thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and this journey I think sometimes I use the term our past leads us to our purpose, and so my story really led me to changing the way I thought about food and eating in body and then realizing how much that helped me to move forward and help others do the same thing.

Speaker 2: 3:51

I grew up, I was a privileged middle class white family and when I was about 10, I had a series of little events, the little events that happened to all children, and they were little things, like a little bit of nickname calling, a little bit of bullying, nothing horrendous. I know that there's things much worse A doctor that told my mom you better watch what she's eating because she's on the high end of the scale. And then not being able to fit in a certain size clothes, having to go to a different department to shop for clothes. So those three kind of events led me to this feeling inside. I internalized them and said my body's wrong. I must be wrong, there's something wrong with me. And with all of that I just fell down a path of trying to lose weight, trying to look different, trying to be different, and that spiraled me into an eating disorder at a fairly early age. I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa at 12. And it was in this 1970s, aging myself a little bit, but it was a time when it wasn't really known and my mother just really had to work hard to figure out number one, what was going on with me, as she would say. I was disappearing before her eyes and trying to figure out what was going on and then getting me help, which wasn't specific. Thank goodness we have specific help now, but I just wish we didn't need it, and that's kind of the mission now is can we help our next generation around this particular topic? And so I did get help.

Speaker 2: 5:36

I got help enough to kind of survive for a little bit, but unfortunately I relapsed in college due to just the internal dialogue that just continued to happen in my head Not good enough, not happy with my body, a coach's comment on not looking the right way or weighing too much we should actually weight us all and yelled out numbers, and that just spun me into a different place. And so this lifelong struggle of just trying to fit into what I call society's then ideal. You know this. You have to look a certain way in order to be okay. And I put my self worth and the size of my body and my body weight together in the same basket, like if I was in a small body I was good enough. If I was not, I was not. So that's what kind of led and drove my life for many, many years. I actually went into fitness because I thought if I was in fitness then I'll have to stay in a size body that will be accepted by other people, and it really wasn't. Until I had.

Speaker 2: 6:51

I went through a divorce, a challenging divorce, and with that I found myself falling directly back into the behaviors of disordered eating, compulsive exercise, binging. And it wasn't until a little after kind of falling down and having a boss that said there's something going on, you need help and I'm gonna get you help, or you can get yourself help. And you know I saw I call these two people my mom and this particular boss. You know some of my savers. So because of that I went back to therapy and I did a lot of work on myself and that's when I kind of flipped the switch and said there's gotta be a different way.

Speaker 2: 7:38

I think I was tired of that time too. I was like enough, enough is enough. And that's when I knew I was ready to heal and took the steps in order to heal my own journey, and I ended up going back to school for eating disorders. And that's the path that I've kind of created for myself now to say, hey, I'm on the other side and you don't have to be there if you've been struggling with this kind of thing for a while. And I know that I'm not alone. I mean, women are struggling.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Yeah well, thank you for sharing your story.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I think the one thing that just stuck out for me was that this like seasons of life.

Speaker 1: 8:21

You know you had an experience at 12 years old and kind of got it If you wanna call it under control, or you sort of made peace with things, and then college set you back a little bit and then your divorce.

Speaker 1: 8:38

So then so you've had these big these are big life changes, and it made me just think about just women in midlife who is mostly who I work with midlife going through like menopause and what a huge transition that is Like that, just alone, just alone, like forget divorces or whatever, but just like that transition, because you're like empty nesting, you're aging parents, whatever, like other like stresses are going on. Plus you are feeling like any of those suppressed like body image issues maybe that you were having when you were busy with kids and everything. Now, like it's all the time is yours. So it's like and we have a lot of pressure to stay thin and like all the society standards right, that we're gonna like age in reverse and we're gonna, and so I think midlife is one of those times where, like eating issues and stuff, can really come up to the surface again. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2: 9:43

Absolutely, because our body changes too right. The hormonal shifts and our body starts to change and all of a sudden we look down and we go what the heck happened to my body? And that can be a catalyst for some of the past thoughts of body image or the past thoughts of oh, now I have to do something about that. I need to lose weight or I need to go on a diet or all the different terminology, because if we don't like the way we look in our bodies, that's where we go. And unfortunately, there's a lot of nutrition advice out there that is good, and then there's more that is not good, right, and so that's, unfortunately, a lot of the advice that is not good.

Speaker 2: 10:33

And the fast, the quick fixes, which is what our society is accustomed to. I want instant gratification as opposed to delayed gratification, and then we jump into something that will help us look better, so we can feel better and can we think about feeling better as a way of maybe looking better as opposed to the flip-flop. So I agree with you 100% it's a menopause and this midlife change takes a toll on our psyche.

Speaker 1: 11:14

Yeah, I mean I'm scouring the internet and social media all the time Muslim because I'm looking for who the influencers are out there, I mean, and there's, once you click on menopause diet plan or whatever it is, I mean you know like social media, then suddenly you're like inundated with stuff, I mean, and there's a lot and it's it just strikes up like all this fear and you know, hormones are confusing and we have to fix it and we have to balance things and we have to lose weight and, like you know, because time is of the essence, I mean it's just, it's really it can certainly, I know, bring up, start to just drag up probably something that might have been tamped down for a while.

Speaker 2: 12:04

I think that there's a, there's a piece of that that falls into the whole neuroplasticity of our brain, right that these like our self-talk patterns in our mindsets, around things that sometimes aren't surfaced until something happens. Right, there's something that happens in experience, or it could be as simple as a memory gets triggered, or a pair of pants doesn't fit, or, you know, you get a comment at dinner. You know the little, the little things that can set us off, not even that we're experiencing ourselves, but that's something from the outside hits us. And the next thing we know, or exactly what you're doing, we're searching the internet. For how can I, you know, lose this weight or how can I look better, what's what's going on with my body, and then forget it.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Yeah, how can I reset my metabolism? How can I lose weight fast? And it's, yeah, there's there's certainly a lot of fear because women are possibly gaining weight or weight shifting and and it feels very out of control, you know. So the one thing I think sometimes it can help you feel, or the women you know, more in control is to get on a diet with someone else's strict rules, or eliminate gluten or stop eating dairy or whatever they like want. You know helps people, I think, to feel like more in control, but it's really doesn't do that in any way, shape or form. So for you, for your clients, I mean, what are the some of the problems that they face? I mean, is it similar to what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2: 13:49

Yes, it is. It is the feeling of not liking themselves right. And I use an analogy around body image called the good gift bad gift analogy. You know, and we get a good gift from a friend, we take care of it, we love it. You know, I have this great picture I got 20 years ago from a friend that just goes with me everywhere and I kind of use that as the example. We take care of something that's that's important to us and that we like. When we get a bad gift from our friends, you know, we say thank you and appreciate that and the next thing, you know, not even with any real conscious thought, it might be in the back of the closet. We give it to goodwill, we may re-gift it.

Speaker 2: 14:32

And if we're thinking about our bodies as like this, this bad gift that I just can't like, I just hate it, or I don't like it, or it's not working for me, or why is it looking like this or why am I gaining weight, all those things, the negative aspect around how we feel in our body, almost subconsciously we just don't treat ourselves as well and that's when we fall into kind of unhealthy patterns around food and eating and exercise and thought patterns and that can spiral us into depression and anxiety and worry and all of those things as well. And so that's the piece that can we see. You know, when I speak to people, it's mostly because I need to change my body. I'm not good enough as I am, and that's where we have to peel some of the layers back. And what makes you believe that, and why is that?

Speaker 1: 15:29

Yeah, and you know you have your story around being 12 years old and getting messages from outside. I also have a story when I was about 11 years old. You know just the messages from family, from, I mean, women, I think weren't really supposed to like their bodies or definitely not enjoy food, because we're always supposed to be watching our weight. You know, like sort of subtly, you know we're just supposed to be eyeing food with, you know, just not trusting it. And so, ray, we get these messages when we're so young and it sits in the back of your head. I mean right, I mean it's just kind of these like messages until you probably see someone like you or you know like that, oh wait, we don't have to hate our bodies Because we're kind of programmed right To like, just to always be like badmouthing ourselves or criticizing ourselves, and it's a generational thing.

Speaker 2: 16:29

It's passed down generationally, you know and.

Speaker 2: 16:32

I think that's what. That's why the work that I continue to try to do and I know that you do too is this like can we help women feel better in their bodies? Because if we help postmenopausal, menopausal and postmenopausal women feel better in their bodies, aren't they around our younger generation and will they shift a different or share a different message around their bodies? So it's not so ingrained in our brains that we're supposed to not like our bodies. How about we're supposed to like our bodies, you know?

Speaker 1: 17:10

I know that's so radical, right, I know. I know that we could actually, like Ray, say that we look at our bodies and like and like what we see.

Speaker 2: 17:18

Yeah, yeah, and not even you don't have to love it, even, right. You can just say hey, my body does this, and my body does this, and you know, good for my body for showing up today, and you know, we just don't have that verbiage or don't think about that as being an okay thing to do, right.

Speaker 1: 17:38

Yeah, and that's really a practice right that you have to tap into every single day, I think, sometimes right to just keep yourself on the forward.

Speaker 1: 17:47

You know trajectory to like just right, checking in with yourself, right and just. Is that true? Is my body really that bad? Is it like you know so it's when? I'm sure that you do that with your clients and in your groups and everything. So I wanted to just touch on your intuitive eating program, right, and your background with intuitive eating, and I have a couple of questions about that. So why don't you, can you just give a little background about the intuitive eating movement or philosophy, and then I'll ask you my couple of questions.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Sure, evelyn Trebowl and Elise Riesch wrote the book Intuitive Eating Back in 1995. So the scary thing is it's been around for a while. Right, so we've had this way of eating or this philosophy for a long time. They just did there, I think, 40th year or their fifth edition or something like that. Anyways, so it's been around.

Speaker 2: 18:54

But their premise is can we start to begin to trust our bodies? So intuitive eating isn't, which some people think. Well, if I listen to my body, I'll just eat everything all the time. And that's not what intuitive eating is about. Intuitive eating is really tapping into my own body. What does hunger feel like for me? What does fullness feel like for me? What does comfortable fullness feel like for me? And starting to trust that and honor that and also to be aware of how certain foods feel in our bodies. I don't think we think about it. We just eat what we're supposed to eat or we're not supposed to eat, and then we might feel bad, but we don't think about that. So it's really starting to.

Speaker 2: 19:44

I think the bigger overlying principle is to honor the body and to listen and tune in. And so they develop these 10 principles around this, and some of the main ones are starting with rejecting this diet mentality and let's take a look at how we can fuel our bodies and feed our bodies so that we're not depriving our bodies but also we're respecting them. So that's part of this. And then honoring your hunger, feeling your fullness, understanding satisfaction, the importance of satisfaction, checking in with emotions and how we can deal with emotions without food or maybe with a little food, but it's not all food when it comes to emotions.

Speaker 2: 20:33

Another piece of the other side is what we were talking about earlier is the mindset and the voices, which is the dealing with the food police. We all have these kind of internal food police and we may have external, as you mentioned, heather, but like a grandmother or a mother or an aunt who had particular rules around food, and so that might be a police of food, and so we hear all of that. So we wanna try to can I challenge the food police a little bit and make peace with food. So that's the bigger principles. And then they have a couple of other principles around movement and enjoying movement and feeding ourselves through gentle nutrition. So then, in respecting our bodies, but it's an overall arching way of eating that is tuned in more to you as an individual, not as a plan where you're eating this and this and this.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Yeah, no, I love the whole intuitive eating philosophy and because I personally feel I mean and I have my own story around just losing weight and just body image and making peace with food that could not have happened to me without utilizing some of these principles of just checking in, I mean right going, like am I physically hungry, am I having a bad day? And I'm eating in response to that, like just mindfulness and honoring that. And I think that that all goes into the intuitive eating movement. And also I think it's like the opposite of rules.

Speaker 1: 22:20

I mean I think some women have been so ingrained to just you're either on a diet or you are off a diet, right, I mean there's like you are following someone else's rules and you lose weight and then you can't sustain it and you blow it, and then you're off the diet and you blow it and then you better get back on, like the police are coming.

Speaker 1: 22:47

So this, like this concept I mean at least my clients this has been a big theme with my clients is that they're just on a diet or off a diet and you're off the diet and you're blowing it. And I say to them frequently I'm like there's no food police or there's no one knocking on your door saying, like, what are you eating? You give yourself permission to eat whatever you want, but I so I wanted to just follow up with that, because I think that people do get fearful of that. If they're not following some rules like I'm not supposed to eat gluten or dairy or whatever it may be that they're gonna go really off the rails and really eat whatever that you know like and they're never gonna be able to stop.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Right. They don't trust themselves because they've been told not to trust themselves as part of a belief system that we've been fed. I think, over and over and over again, that you can't trust yourself and you can't trust your body. And how can you trust your body and that's Exactly, yeah, exactly. We get to question, we get to pause and stop.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Mm-hmm right, and that we have to learn how to just be our own advocate and trust ourselves deeply. Yeah, that we're not gonna get out of control with eating, that it's not. We're not gonna just sit there for 24 hours straight and never be able to stop, and yeah. So I mean it takes work, as I'm sure you can see with your groups and everything. But I wanna ask you a question just going into, like, intuitive eating realm. What if you had a client who came to you and she's very overweight, she needs to lose a good 100 pounds, just say and You're saying you know you're infusing these intuitive eating principles, but which I think doesn't talk about weight loss? Right, Right, the intuitive eating movement. So how do you address somebody like that?

Speaker 2: 24:57

Yeah, I think. Well, when somebody comes in that space, when they're looking to lose weight and they need to for their health, they will say and so there's two things that I want to share with you. One is that I think weight loss is at so much of the forefront that people that's the only thing they're thinking about and they're chasing weight loss. And I used this with a client the other day and it never had come out of my mouth before, but it was a gentleman that I was working with and I go. What happens if you, you know, in high school, and you were chasing a girl like, where's she going? He goes as far away from me as she can. I said stop chasing the girl, right? Because basically, what we really want to do is say okay, so we know that this is there. We acknowledge that there's weight loss that you want and that would probably be helpful for your body. We can acknowledge that.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Now let's talk about what are the behaviors that can help get us there. We're going to keep that and Evelyn and Elise will say we put that on the back burner. It's there, we know it's there. What are some of the habits that we can start to instill that will help move us in that direction. And if we can start to instill small habits most of the time around food and eating, that's going to move us in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 26:26

But the more that we focus on just the weight loss and the more that every whatever it is every week that we weigh in and then we look in the scale and if it doesn't do what we think it should be, it should be doing Because I was so good all week, that sets us up for usually our own sabotaging ourselves, sometimes because I was so good. It's not worth it. It's that all or nothing thinking that we fall into. And so we want to acknowledge and understand that weight loss is part of this journey and, with that said, can we put that aside and really focus on the behaviors that will help us get there, instead of that, just the numbers?

Speaker 1: 27:13

Yeah, that's so true. Not an Emma believer in this too. If you don't have that foundation of intuitive eating mindfulness, paying attention to your hunger cues and all of those skills to lose weight, you have to have that foundation in place before you can start thinking about losing weight, which gets frustrating to people sometimes especially, I don't have my clients. They come in, they're like I want to lose 50 pounds and we have to just back up a little bit first, and this is a process rather than just here's your meal plan, because that's a diet and I don't do diet. So that's a really good way to explain it that it's not about you get to eat whatever you want, you're not going to lose weight or for health reasons, but that you have to have these principles in place first and these habits, to then be able to move forward.

Speaker 2: 28:21

I sometimes I'll ask too. I mean, a lot of times there are some things that are obvious numbers and possible A1C and some things like that that are obviously this could be a helpful thing, that releasing weight could be helpful for. But I also try to make sure that I ask I go deeper, like why? Why do you really what's it going to give you if you were to lose weight then? What right have you lost weight before? How did you feel about your body then? What was going?

Speaker 2: 28:58

So we kind of dive a little bit into some of the other things too and I'm sure you do too is, instead of just focusing in on weight, weight, weight release I'd like to use the word release as opposed to loss, because, like, release it, right, let me, let it go there. You go Five free, but that can be part of it too is why, what's the real reason? Is it really connected? So many people I know and have actually lost weight but then not felt it, almost feel threatened, and then there's some underlying things and then the weight comes back on because whatever they thought was going to be solved by the weight loss wasn't, and then the next thing you know, weights back. So a lot of times you get to go through a lot of the other pieces of what's going on.

Speaker 1: 29:59

I totally agree with that. I think the why is so important. If you are just losing weight or vanity reasons, or you think that losing weight is going to make you a happier person, or I mean it might make you a little happier but it's not going to solve all of your deep-seated emotional issues, Right, and so there really has to be a solid why. I mean, yeah, health issues, IA1C, things like that, but the why really, I think has to be solidified also before you can even think about losing weight.

Speaker 2: 30:46

Right, yeah, agreed.

Speaker 1: 30:48

Yeah, I know it sounds like you are on a mission kind of, but tell me what your mission is and why it's so important to you. I mean, I know you have your own personal story around your own eating issues and body image. Tell me what keeps you motivated. I guess to help people make peace with food.

Speaker 2: 31:11

I think the biggest peace is that I have two daughters. They are adults now and I was not a very good role model. I said I'll be honest, right, I wasn't a good role model around food and eating. So many birthday parties I did not partake, right. And so I think of all the different things that I myself, as a mom, wish I had role modeled around food and eating, and so when I've been able to do the work, to forgive myself, but now I have a grandson and I do believe that the only way we can make generational change is if we start to change the conversation around food and weight and body and that's what.

Speaker 2: 31:56

So I wrote my own story, but then underneath that was this yes, but how do we get the next generation? And so I did just release last month my eight to 12-year-old book called Not a Fat Annie. There's a little pun in the title, but it does surround body shaming and bullying and weight stigma and the generational diet culture pieces through a story, through a fictional story of a young girl in fifth grade who's getting bullied, and I thought why not start by developing? We can teach our younger people not only through role modeling, which I think is the biggest thing that we can do is role model differently, but also through story, and help them maybe question some of the belief systems that have been ingrained in us because they were ingrained in our moms and because they were ingrained in their moms. And so that's my bigger mission is, how do we help our next generation so they're not?

Speaker 2: 33:04

And I feel it's so much harder now with social media and 24-7, and always in the videos and the facial, the visual pieces that we really didn't get as we were kids growing up, we got more of the external messages and standing in the line at the grocery store and all the magazines and the commercials. We got it that way, but now it's 24-7. And so it's a big mission. I get that, but I figure, hey, if you can change a couple of people, it's going to change If a family starts to think differently about their bodies than maybe their kids and their kids the friends of. Who knows the ripple effect that one shift can make in somebody, and so that's kind of what I hold on to and say maybe I can make a difference by just one person at a time.

Speaker 1: 34:05

I love that and I think I feel exactly the same way. I have a daughter. I also have two sons and I don't think they're immune just because they're boys. I think that they all get it and they all get inundated on social media and it's really been my mission also to start with them first. Yeah, I mean if I could help everybody in the world, but I mean if you can change just your family, your daughters, your sons and just rewrite the story of food and that food is meant to be enjoyed, and to listen to our intuitive selves and write who knows that can reverberate to their friends I mean it can do a lot. So I think that's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 34:54

I see my daughter and with her son teaching a different way around food, and that's what it's about.

Speaker 1: 35:05

I love that. That's so great. And how can people get in touch with you and to learn more about your style of how you work and intuitive eating? And tell me how people can get in touch with you?

Speaker 2: 35:19

The best way is just to you know, if anybody wants a digital copy of the Body Joyful my journey from self-holding to self-acceptance, they can just email me at ann at thebodyjoyfulcom, and I'm happy just to let them, you know, mention your podcast and you and I will send along a digital copy for them so that they can have that. That's kind of a starting point because I think it helps people understand that they're not alone, and kind of a pathway. So it gives a pathway on the outside, the other side, and then you can also reach me over at shapingperspectivescom and we do have a five secrets to food freedom and body confidence there.

Speaker 1: 35:58

So that's good for people, fantastic, and I will put all of that in the show notes so people have the links. And thank you so much for coming on today and having a really meaningful conversation. I know you and I are both very much on the same page with us and on our missions to change the world and change food stories.

Speaker 2: 36:17

The two of us keep going and thank you for what you do, because you're spreading a different message, not only through the work you do but through your podcast. So thank you.

Speaker 1: 36:26

Sure. Thank you so much for being here.