Paging Dr. Mom
I was a medical student with two kids, trying to keep it all together. I constantly felt like I had to defend my decision to chase a meaningful career and raise a family at the same time. But professional women with children shouldn’t have to choose between ambition and motherhood.
Paging Dr. Mom is a podcast for the women doing it all and wondering if it’s ever enough. If you’ve ever felt the pressure to be everything to everyone, this space is for you. I’m Dr. Angelle Downey, a family physician, single mom, and host who believes we can thrive, not just survive, through the chaos.
With real talk, expert insights, honest stories, and a few good laughs, we’ll navigate the mental load, burnout, identity shifts, guilt, and joy that come with being a high-achieving woman in a messy, beautiful life. Together, we’ll cry, connect, and grow into the strong, wise women our kids are watching us become.
Let’s build a life we don’t need to apologize for and actually love living.
Paging Dr. Mom
17: Why Diets Don’t Work: How to Raise Body-Confident Kids with Katy Harvey, RD
In this episode, I sit down with non-diet dietitian Katy Harvey to talk about why diets don’t work, how to rebuild trust with your body, and ways to raise kids with a healthy relationship to food. We also explore perfectionism, body image, and the subtle ways diet culture shows up in motherhood. This is a must-listen if you’re tired of feeling like your body is a project to fix.
Connect with Katy Harvey:
🔗 Website: katyharvey.net
📸 Instagram: @katyharvey.rd
👥 Facebook Group: Intuitive Eating Made Easy
🎧 Podcast: Rebuilding Trust With Your Body
📄 Free Guide: 5 Simple Steps to Reconnecting With Your Hunger and Fullness — Download here
This episode includes a paid partnership with BetterHelp. Click the link, betterhelp.com/drdowney, to get 10% off your first month.
Click below to purchase the 365 day journal I created called Enough As I Grow. I am a proud affiliate partner with Amazon and will receive a commission from purchases at no extra cost to you.
🖋️ Enough as I Grow 365 day Guided Journal on Amazon
Email: drangeladowney@gmail.com
Social Media links: Here
🎵 Music: Upbeat Strings by Evan MacDonald
Today's conversation is where every woman who's ever stared into the fridge feeling defeated. I guess Katie Harvey is here to help us unlearn all of that. We're talking about why diet don't work, what it really means to trust your body, and how we can raise our kids to feel at home in there too. This episode is full of powerful mindset ships and some real talk about motherhood, body image, and letting go of the guilt. So if you've ever felt like your body is a never-ending project, this one is for you. Hey, hey, I'm Dr. Angela Downey, and this is Paging Dr. Mom, the podcast for women who are juggling careers, kids, chaos, and cold cups of coffee. We're talking about the real life behind the resumes, the messy moments, big feelings, and how to stay human when you're doing all the things. If you've ever felt like the only one trying to keep it together, you're not. We're gonna laugh, cry, vent, and thrive together. So here we go. Hello to all my busy mamas. I'm Dr. Angela Downey, and I'm so glad that you're hanging out with me on Paging Dr. Mom. This podcast is for all of us who are just trying to keep it together while juggling kids, careers, and whatever else life throws our way. We're gonna be exploring those moments that we definitely wouldn't be putting on our resumes. I want to introduce you to today's guest. Katie Harvey is a Midwest girl, a non-diet dietitian, and the host of the Rebuilding Trust with Your Body podcast. She specializes in intuitive eating and helping women ditch diet, stress less about food, and make peace with their bodies so they can feel comfortable in their own skin. Katie is all about eating the foods you love unapologetically without going overboard. She believes that you can eat for satisfaction while also honoring your health. I've been looking forward to this conversation with Katie because she brings such a passionate, practical voice to a topic that so many women struggle with silently. And that's our relationship with food, our bodies, and all the pressure to get it right. As a non-diet dietitian, she helps women step off the shame treadmill into something a lot more freeing. I'm so excited for you to hear what she has to say. So here we go. Hi Katie, it's so great to have you on Paging Doctor Mom today. How are you?
SPEAKER_00:I'm wonderful. I'm so excited for this conversation.
SPEAKER_01:I've been following you on Instagram, and I really appreciate like all the content that you're putting out there. So I'm excited to have you in the studio today and uh looking forward to this interview. So let's start by maybe having you introduce yourself and tell us about your journey to becoming a non-diet dietitian and intuitive eating coach.
SPEAKER_00:My training, my background, my schooling is as a dietitian, and my very first job during grad school, coming out of grad school, I was working with breast cancer prevention and survivorship. And we were doing clinical trials. And these clinical trials mostly centered around diet and exercise. Like the idea was that weight gain that tends to occur as a result of breast cancer treatment then increases the risk of recurrence of the breast cancer. And so we were doing studies on well, how do we help these women lose weight so that their cancer doesn't come back, right? So we're putting them on these diet and exercise programs. And what I quickly discovered is that it just plays out the way that every diet does. You lose weight initially, and then we watched them regain the weight, and we were doing DEXA scans on them. So we were getting body composition. And what would occur is they would lose weight and inevitably lose, you know, some body fat, but some muscle mass with that. And then when they regained it, they regained it almost all as body fat. And so this is not a judgment against fatness by any means. It's just effectively what happened was we jacked with their body composition. And so metabolically and strength-wise, they were worse off by the time we were done with them than before we ever touched them. And then what I was also seeing and hearing from them was all of this like body image stuff and relationship with food, and they felt so much shame and failure. And I was kind of like, this is crazy. We can't keep doing this. And at the time, I was also reckoning with my own relationship with food, and I had stumbled upon this thing called intuitive eating. And so I'm reading the book and I'm reading the literature, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. And this is such a better way of approaching things. And I put together this binder with the research, and I took it to my boss, who was the um primary investigator on our studies, and I was like, I think we should do this as our next study. And she shut it down just like so hardcore. And that was the moment I knew I'm like, I can't stand this job. And so I kind of meandered around a little bit from there. I did some uh floating around in hospitals, just acute care coverage, which I do appreciate that experience. I think that was really good for me clinically to have that experience. I did a very brief stint in corporate wellness and hated every minute of it. And then I found my way into the world of eating disorders. And that's really for dietitians where it's going to intersect a lot with intuitive eating, and then the anti-diet movement and health at every size and all of these things that I had never heard of before. Nobody told me about any of this in my schooling, but I instantly felt at home. And from there, kind of the rest is history. Like I built up my private practice specializing in eating disorders, and then I started my online coaching, which is geared not towards eating disorders specifically, but just towards women. Like as a society, women who are constantly dieting, never feeling good enough, your body image sucks, you feel like you can't trust yourself with food. It's like there's so much that that we can do to help people before it gets to the extent of an eating disorder. So that's how I landed where I'm at now. As and I call myself a non-diet dietitian.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. So you've had some struggles with perfectionism and trying to control your body. Are you okay sharing with us? Totally, yes. In fact, I've been in the earlier years.
SPEAKER_00:A million percent. Yeah, it's I'm totally open to talking about that. In fact, I I laugh because my therapist today, she's still like, Do you think that that might be your perfectionism? I'm like, how dare you? Yeah, I mean, I was just one of those people who was born kind of type A, you know, like it is so much of it, I think, is my wiring, and I'm like stereotypical oldest child. And what I also learned in my undergrad was that that seems to be the profile of a person who is drawn to the field of dietetics as well. Like we we were the most just so perfectionistic, rigid bunch of females that I've ever met. Uh, one of the classes we took, we were mixed in with these um like hotel, restaurant, hospitality management majors who are very type B. And like the difference was striking. And so there's that, you know, I'm just kind of wired away. And from a very young age, looking back, I struggled with my body image from pretty much as early as I can remember. I was like, if you look at my growth charts from childhood, I was always just on the high end of the growth curve. And so I was in many ways like taller and just kind of like bigger than my peers, but although you would look back and it's I wasn't objectively fat, and not that it would have been bad or wrong if I was, but like in my head, I was, and so I struggled with my body image.
SPEAKER_01:Because you saw that on a chart, right? So you're you're seeing that, and that's affecting how you think and how you feel about yourself. You see yourself at the top of that chart, and that's that's hard.
SPEAKER_00:It is, yeah. And I think for parents too, they're like, oh my gosh, you know, my kids off the chart, and what do I do? And luckily, I was never put on a diet, but there were comments made at times that really stick with you, you know. And I think my perfectionism then started to play out in like wanting to really excel at school and um sports and um like just doing all the things and like being quote unquote good and not getting in trouble and seeing the world in very black and white kind of right or wrong ways. And that it's I look back and it's just like the perfectionism was present in so many areas of my life, and it was my shield. It was my attempt at protecting the world from seeing how flawed and imperfect I am. It's like, no, no, no, I'm perfect. See, look look at this. Like nobody look behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz thing, you know. And I've done a lot of work to be able to embrace my very real imperfections that that we all have, and to just be more aware when the perfectionism is showing up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, perfectionism, I'm a perfectionist as well, and that took me a long time to realize. It's not like perfectionism isn't that you do everything perfectly, it's that you feel like your your worth is tied to how well you do things that you're always trying to, you know, get really good grades at school so that your parents will be happy with you. And um I think that's something that a lot of professional women struggle with. Perfectionism in the workplace, perfectionism with our bodies. A lot of professional women feel like you know their bodies are this constant fixer-upper. So, why do you think our identity, especially as moms and as physicians, is so tangled up with our body image and our weight?
SPEAKER_00:Gosh, I mean it this goes so deep. You know, if if we're alive and breathing today, we were born into a world that already valued thinness and put it on a pedestal. And the message, you know, that thin is good, fat is bad, weight loss is good, weight gain is bad. We grew up in a society that that sent us that message over and over again. And a lot of women, I mean, I hear this all the time with my clients that they either watched their mother or someone in their family dieting throughout their childhood. And a lot of times they were roped into the dieting themselves. And so it starts real young that our worth is tied to our body size and to our appearance. And then for women in particular in our society, there's all the pressure around like having your hair look a certain way and your makeup and getting your nails done, and that our appearance is of the utmost importance, and we're expected to spend a lot of time, energy, and money on these things. And then I think for moms, you know, it's like that pressure to be the super mom and do all the things, but to make it look effortless. You know, it's like you need to put all the effort into it, but you can't let anybody know you're trying too hard. And I was just, I was at physical therapy this morning. I'm in physical therapy for my knee, and we're I was talking to my therapist, and we were uh trading stories about our kids' sports teams and stuff. And I mentioned that I have snack duty this weekend for for flag football, and how last weekend the snack that we received was it was inside a brown paper bag, and you open the bag, and there's like five snacks inside of the bag. And to me, it's this symbol of like it wouldn't have been enough to just bring a box of granola bars and everybody gets one. It had to be this above and beyond thing. And I can guarantee you the mom packed the snack, not the dad. I can guarantee you that. And then, you know, you add in working and being a working professional, and like there's all the expectations of doing your job well and excelling. And I would imagine that for people who become physicians and make it through med school, like you don't get through med school without working hard and excellence and perfection, in the sense that like getting the answers right on your test so that you know everything. So, like at times what you're doing is a matter of life and death. And so I mean, it's just one layer of pressure from like every angle in your life. Like, where are you allowed to just breathe and to not have to do all the things and do it all with excellence, you know?
SPEAKER_01:I like that line. How to do it all with excellence. It's just it's this unachievable um goal, and excellence becomes greater at every step of the way. Like I remember my snacks for my kids when I went to when they went to like football or soccer or whatever. It was like orange slices or maybe slices of watermelon, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and now you're having these round bags full of all sorts of treats, and that puts pressure on the next parent to make it bigger as a that's a lot of pressure on women, and kids don't want to be the one who just shows up with orange slices, or maybe they don't even care. I don't I don't know. Maybe that's just pressure we put on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00:Right, yeah. That's actually a really interesting thing to ponder. Is and it probably depends on the kid how much do they care about the appearance, like how much have they already internalized that messaging, you know?
SPEAKER_01:They probably maybe they just want to have fun with their friends, and um the snack is is is a pain because they now they have to eat this big brown bag with all these vegetables and fruits inside it. Who knows? So diet culture, it shows up in so many sneaky ways in motherhood. Like, how quickly do you bounce back to your regular body after you've had a child, or what we pack in our lunches, or what we bring for snacks? Sometimes I feel like when I go to the grocery store and I'm unpacking my card, I'm like, what are people around me thinking? Like, is the cashier thinking, oh, you know, she's got too much red meat, or like too many sugary foods? There's this constant um judgment sometimes that we feel. So, what are some of the subtle ways that that these things can inf infiltrate our daily lives?
SPEAKER_00:Gosh, I mean it's so it really is everywhere. Uh, in fact, a lot of times people will say that that they're like, wow, like once you see it, you can't unsee it, and you realize that it's all around us. And I mean, at the grocery store, it's even like the branding and the packaging of the products, it's baked into that. You know, we've got like skinny pop popcorn, and you know, there's like morality built into that. And I mean, gosh, you don't have to look very far on social media to see all the ways that food is judged as good and as bad. And if you challenge someone's belief system about food, you might as well have challenged their religion or their politics. I mean, that's a way to stir up a fight real fast. I've learned that the hard way. Um, you know, even like again, like tying it back to kids at school, like the teachers at our school are allowed to say what they deem personally as a healthy snack or an unhealthy snack. And it's like, well, what what's your criteria for that? And why would this be allowed, but not this? Like, what's the actual logic behind that? And it's just like they've internalized their own belief systems. And a lot of it too is like things that are genuinely intended to be helpful. Like people think it's coming from a good place to label foods as good and bad and healthy and unhealthy, or to um like not let certain foods into the home because they're told that, like, oh, that's ultra-processed junk, so you shouldn't eat it. And it's like the intent is that, oh, I want to be healthy, I want to take care of myself and my family, but that thought process actually causes more problems than it solves. And so it's just the messaging is everywhere, and it's hard to sift through and tease apart what's accurate, what's legitimate, and what's not. And, you know, I think even for health professionals, sometimes that's hard.
SPEAKER_01:Talk to me a little bit about what is intuitive eating.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so intuitive eating, a lot of people hear it and they think, okay, I assume that that just means I should like eat whatever I want, whenever I want. And I like to stop people right there and like that's not intuitive eating, that's impulsive eating. Or some people will interpret it as like, so just eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Like, okay, kind of. Like that that's two out of the ten principles. And so these principles that I am referring to come from the original book called Intuitive Eating, which was written by two dietitians and it's been studied pretty extensively. That to date, there's well over 200 published articles on it. So it is an evidence-based way of approaching food and nutrition that basically recognizes that dieting does not work long term for the vast majority of people. Most people who go on a diet will lose some weight at first. And that's the thing. I remember I was at um, it was an obesity conference when I was in grad school. They made us go. It was required for one of our classes. And we're sitting there, and one of the researchers is comparing all of the diets and which one's the best. And the conclusion was they all produce weight loss within the first 12 months. And then within the next two to five years, people regain all the weight. And for I think it's like two-thirds of the people who regain the weight, they'll regain more than they lost. So we're sitting with this conundrum where like it looks like it's working at first, and that's the deceptive part. And then when people almost inevitably regain the weight, they blame themselves for it. It's like, well, it was working, so I'm the failure. And that's, I think, something really important for people to understand that you didn't fail. It was a strategy that wasn't going to be sustainable because it works against your biology and your psychology. So intuitive eating says, okay, let's let's face the reality that that doesn't work. And let's think about why. And then let's think about how what's a better way to approach food and eating. And that's where they came up with these 10 principles. It's not rules, it's not steps to follow. It's more like if you've got a jigsaw puzzle and you're spreading all the pieces out on the table and you're putting them together, the picture's not complete until you've put all 10 of them together. But it doesn't totally, it doesn't really matter what order you put them together in. And it really starts with can we let go of this diet mentality? This idea that we must restrict certain foods and control our calories in order to be healthy and happy and lose weight and da-da-da-da-da. And so letting go of that and saying, well, what happens if you eat when you are hungry and you choose food that's actually satisfying to you? And you're not judging the food or judging yourself for eating it, and you're listening to your body and you're stopping when you're full. And then we get into um body image. And are we treating our bodies with respect? And are we allowing our bodies to weigh what they are meant to weigh at this phase of our lives because that's a moving target? Uh, and then there are principles that are on exercise and our relationship to movement, as well as general nutrition. It doesn't mean we throw nutrition out the window. And so as we we combine all of this together, you you find a way of eating that allows you to enjoy the foods that you love, have peace with food, to not be thinking and obsessing about food all the time, for you to be able to make peace with your body and accept your body, even if part of you still wishes you were smaller. I mean, that's the world we live in, is that people are are apt to feel that way to some degree. But how do you treat your body with kindness and respect even when you're feeling that way? And so the spirit of it is that you're working with your body instead of against it.
SPEAKER_01:How do you feel about going through those 10 principles? Or is that a whole other podcast all to it?
SPEAKER_00:It could totally be a whole other podcast. It's it's really the foundation of the work that I do with clients and being able to meet people where they're at and to kind of hone in on okay, what components of that are you struggling the most with? I mean, for a lot of people, you tell them like, eat you when you're hungry. They might not even know when they're hungry because they've spent so long actively disconnecting themselves from that or suppressing their hunger with coffee or diet soda or doing that thing that dieting taught us where it's like eat really high volumes of things like vegetables and rice cakes so that you feel fake fullness and trick yourself into eating less. And so sometimes it's like we just need to hone in on what does hunger actually feel like and getting reconnected with the body in that way. Or for other people, it may be more about like all of these rules that they've adapted over the years, where you know, it's like don't eat past this time, and you can only have carbs once a day, or you know, like different rules that have handed been handed to us by diet culture, and being able to say, well, okay, well, what if we let go of the rules and come back to what does your body actually want? What's satisfying to you? So it's it's one of those things that it's it's complex, but in a really beautiful way. And there tends to be a lot of just like self-growth and self-discovery along the way, which is really cool. And it will have this ripple effect in a person's life.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's amazing the habits that we pick up. So last week I I had to go do some grocery shopping and I had a couple varns to run. And I thought, oh, there's a McDonald's. I should probably just pick up something really quick in between. And I was like, am I actually really hungry right now? Like I it didn't even occur to me to think, am I am I eating because I'm hungry or am I eating because I know I've got a couple varons to run and there just happens to be a McDonald's there? And when I checked in with myself, I I wasn't I wasn't hungry at all. And um so learning to listen to my body has been I have to actively remind myself to check in with my body because I'm not I'm not always doing that. Although so many things are out of habit. And so maybe can we talk about our kids for a second? So how do we start teaching them to trust their body and to trust their hunger cues and intuitive eating from a really young age?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the really cool thing with kids is that they're born intuitive eaters. Most human beings are born intuitive eaters, like babies will cry when they are hungry and they will stop eating when they're done. And even toddlers and young children will do that if if you watch them, like sometimes they'll eat like a bite of the cookie and then run off to play. And that said though, we don't just want to let our kids be like feral with food because if you just let them eat whatever and whenever, again, it'll be impulsive eating. And most kids would just subsist on fruit snacks and goldfish all day if we let them, because they don't have the wisdom yet to be able to like structure meals and snacks and things like that. So we do what's called the division of responsibility. And this comes from Ellen Sauter. She is a dietitian and therapist, she has um dual degrees, and she created this concept where it really outlines what's the parents' job when it comes to feeding their kids and what's the kids' job. She calls that the division of responsibility. And essentially the idea is that the parents' job is to determine what foods are available to eat when the food is being offered, and uh where, like the location of where we're eating. You know, are we eating out? Are we eating at home? Are you allowed to go eat in the living room, or do you need to sit at the table? And, you know, ideally we're at the table, but sometimes it's fun to be able to eat, you know, have a picnic in the living room, or sometimes we need to eat when we're on the go or whatever. But that's the parent's job to decide that. And the child's job is to come to that eating experience and to choose from what food is available to them. It's not a free-for-all in the kitchen. Parents are not a short-order cook, but to choose from, like, let's say, what's on the dinner table. And they can eat or as much or as little of any of those foods as they want and listen to their bodies in that way. And when we do that, the child will self-regulate. And there, you'll see there'll be some days that you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they're eating so much mac and cheese. And other days where all they want is the vegetable or the meat. And so kids will have, especially the younger they are, they'll have a pretty varied intake day to day. But if we were to measure it over the course of like two weeks, nutritionally it all evens out. So what we want to do is create the structure within which they can then listen to their bodies, and that we don't need to harp on kids about good food, bad food, and nutrition and all of that. Because what this the research shows is that the more you try to talk to kids about nutrition, the more likely they are to actually develop disordered eating from it because they're just too concrete in their thinking. I mean, even adults have a hard time not being black and white about food. So the way that we teach kids good nutrition is through showing them by just putting those foods in front of them and like it just demonstrates this is what a balanced meal looks like, and letting them listen to their body from there. So it, and some of this is kind of age-dependent too, that like the older they get, the more autonomy they get to prepare some of their own meals and snacks and make those decisions. And we can kind of help them sometimes with thinking about, you know, what foods are gonna give you energy and um, you know, maybe think helping them think about how to pair together things, but we can do that without imparting a lot of moral language about the food. And we have to be so careful about that of calling things junk or telling them that things are healthy. Because paradoxically, what happens is when we're told that something is healthy and we should eat it, we become resistant to eating it. And when we're told something is unhealthy and that we should stay away from it, we want it more. So if we can just neutralize the judgment, it allows us to actually have more balanced eating in the long run and to truly be able to listen to our bodies.
SPEAKER_01:So if you have a picky eater who's uh nice spread in front of them, they're they're being a little bit picky, they don't eat a whole ton, and they're like, I'm full. They they want to walk away from the table. But you know that in the next hour they're gonna be they're gonna be wanting something. What what would you suggest in that case? It's hard with picky eaters. You have to sit there until you finish what I put in front of you, which you know is obviously not not what's being recommended here at all. But um like what do you do when kids aren't really wanting to eat?
SPEAKER_00:So it's to me the picky eaters, I mean it's kind of a continuum, but I I sort of put them into a couple categories in my mind. You've got the picky eaters who if you stay with this consistently enough, it will work. Where you want them coming to the table hungry. So you've got to make sure they're not doing too much endless snacking in between meals because the snacks are usually gonna be the easy foods for them to like. And so you want them coming to the table hungry for their meals. Now not ravenous, but you want them to have an appetite because they're more likely to try things when their appetite is strong. And then holding firm that what is on the table is what is available. And there, I would suggest for a meal, like 30 minutes is plenty, and you cut it off at a certain point. Like what if they haven't eaten, then so be it. But with the division of responsibility, like you've put on the table what's offered and factor in so that there's at least one thing on the table that you know that they like and they can choose if they're gonna eat it or not. But what's offered, you're not gonna go make them something else special. So my youngest is more on the picky end of things right now. And a lot of times, if I have a hunch that he's not gonna want to touch what we made for dinner, I'll also put um yogurt and some fruit and there's milk on the table. I might put bread on the table, and if nothing else, like he can make do with those things, and often he does. And a lot of times those kids, if you hold to the structure, they will start to try things over time. And you can maybe try like get them in the kitchen so that they're helping to prepare some of it because every positive interaction with the food increases the likelihood of them accepting that food. And this the research shows that sometimes kids have to be exposed to a food upwards of 20 times before they'll actually eat it. And so just allowing them to see the food on the table is an exposure. And maybe, maybe they'll put some on their plate, but they don't want to eat it, or maybe they'll touch it and then they're like, ew. And then maybe the next time they'll put it up to their lips, but they won't eat it. So, like letting them do that versus creating power struggles around the food. And this is so hard. It's so, so hard. So that's the the kind of traditional picky eater is holding. Holding to the structure and keep exposing them to things. The kids who are more extreme picky eaters are the ones where if we would say, you know, this is your dinner, and if you don't eat it, there is no more food available later, where it's like eat it or starve, they will starve themselves. Those kids, we have to work a little bit differently. The division of responsibility does not work as well with them. They may need like feeding therapy, you know, um, OT, speech therapy, dietitian. They probably should be assessed for something called ARFID, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. And a lot of times with that, there's like sensory stuff going on. They may have undiagnosed, like swallowing issues. Uh, we see a lot of overlap with autism spectrum stuff there. And we with that, it's more about meeting them where they're at and trying to very gradually branch out. So we might do something called food chaining, where it's like if they'll only eat one brand of chicken nugget, well, what happens? Can we try a different brand of the chicken nugget or a different shape of the chicken nugget? And literally just like painfully slowly trying to inch them out with their variety and their acceptance of foods. So it's you just kind of have to understand your kid and like how extreme are we talking with the picky eating and going from there.
SPEAKER_01:I remember my mom used to make this meal all the time. She called it tomato gunk, which just like sounds too much.
SPEAKER_00:That makes you want to eat it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And I mean, I'm like 50 now, and I'm like, maybe I'll try it. I I don't know, but she's definitely presented it to me more than 20 times, and I am not ready to do that. So tomato gunk.
SPEAKER_00:That's so funny.
SPEAKER_01:Right? Call it call it something different. Tomato surprise. Who knows? But uh yeah, I'm I'm still not ready to try it. It's kind of funny. But so what are some of the things that we might unintentionally say or model that could be hurting our kids their body image or the relationship with food?
SPEAKER_00:That's that's a really, I think, important question. Um one thing I would say is if your kid were to say something to you about their body that's like to the effect of I feel fat, you know, something that sort of boils down to that, or we can generalize to that, the temptation is to say, Oh, honey, you're not fat. The problem with that is it reinforces the idea that if they were fat, that would be a bad thing. So if if your child is expressing some type of body image discomfort, first of all, that's huge that they're sharing that with you. And I would just start with curiosity and then noticing what's coming up for you. Cause for us as parents, especially moms, it often stirs up some big feelings for us. And to be able to just ask, you know, well, what did you mean, or why are you feeling that way? Or to just try to get a little bit more information about where they're coming from and to be able to have a conversation about how bodies come in all different shapes and sizes, and to do a little bit of that kind of education around body diversity is so important and so powerful and age appropriately to be able to start to teach them about like body image and diet culture and things like that. So that's one thing is like the body image thing of being careful about how we're talking about bodies. I would also say be very aware of what you are saying to like out loud about your own body. So maybe you went to put on your jeans that morning and they didn't fit. Your kids will hear the comments you make about that. Uh, any comments about them growing and needing new clothes, to be careful what you say about that. Um, comments that you might make about other people's bodies, you know, even kind of that gossipy thing of like, oh, did you see so-and-so? She's gained so much weight. Like, our kids will overhear these things from us. And they will pick up on these messages, even if you're not saying it to your kid about your kid. So so much of it is our own stuff and kind of dealing with it. And then, um, like with food, we've touched on this a little bit, trying not to judge and label food as good and bad or healthy and unhealthy, because kids will just take that way too literally, literally, and they will it it's very easy then for them to think, oh my gosh, I ate this pizza and that's so unhealthy, and now I am unhealthy. And now we've created this guilt around food that can become a much bigger issue. So I think those are two of the most important things.
SPEAKER_01:So if your child is attracted to chips and pizza and sugary drinks, how do you how do you move them away from that? Like if if we're not supposed to label things as like good or bad foods, what would be a way to kind of pull them away from those foods that are typically not as as good for you?
SPEAKER_00:And first of all, it's you know, it's like of course they're drawn to those foods. They taste good, you know?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There's stuff in it to make them attractive, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, exactly. That that was the goal. Is yeah, we and we know that that is like very palatable to us and lights up our brain. And so um this is very counterintuitive, but especially if you feel like your kid is kind of obsessive about certain foods, like let's say your kid's real obsessive about sugar, the temptation is to like limit and restrict it. But a lot of times what'll happen is those kids will start sneaking it or binging on it, or you'll start finding wrappers in their room, or they'll go to their friend's house and they're like cleaning out their pantry. So, what we want to do is actually provide more access to it in a structured way. And so having it with meals, with snacks, but alongside other foods. And with sugar, this is where I said earlier that from what's served, the kid can eat as much or as little of the foods as they want. With sugar, this would be where we do set a gentle boundary and say, like, let's let's say you're serving dessert with dinner tonight. Everybody gets a portion of the dessert. And like, that's their portion, but if they're still hungry, they can eat more of the other food on the table. So the dessert is more there for the taste and the pleasure and not so much to fill our bellies. Or, like, let's say it's fruit snacks is a common one that kids love. Well, let's serve fruit snacks sometimes, literally on their plate with a meal, sometimes with their snacks, and they get one package of the fruit snacks and then they can fill up on the rest of the things. So it's including it and not making it off limits, but there are some boundaries with it. And then every once in a while, let them have an unlimited quantity and kind of get that out of their system, so to speak. Uh, things like pizza and chips and stuff like that. I would keep it on the rotation so it's not forbidden and just make it like it would be any other dinner. Like, okay, yep, it's pizza night. And then when we're having pizza night, maybe put some other foods on the table with it. A lot of times I'll grab one of those like bag salad kits and dump it in a bowl and mix it up so we've got like pizza, salad. Um, I might throw some fruit if I have some. And that way the pizza is just being put on a level playing field with everything else, and we can put, you know, a variety of foods on our plate. Um, same thing with chips, like serving it alongside as part of meals, or if they're gonna have it as a snack, could we also throw like a protein food in there with it? So, like a cheese stick, maybe, or some like some nuts or something. And that way they're getting more of that satiety from the other foods as well. And um just giving it some structure because those are also foods that it's just so common for us to kind of eat them on the go. You know, it's like I'm picturing like walking into the gas station and getting the pizza or the chips or the snacks. And to an extent, sometimes, you know, we all do that. And especially for teenagers, like that's pretty normative behavior. So I don't get too worked up about it, but we want to make sure that they're having some sit-down meals with the family. That that's one of the best things you can do is at least once a week try to have a family sit-down meal if at all possible.
SPEAKER_01:So you've said you're not gonna hate or diet yourself into loving your body. So, what would it look like in a world to eat with compassion and joy rather than shame or control?
SPEAKER_00:That's that is my dream for this world. Because it's that thing where the more we look in the mirror and berate ourselves and tear ourselves apart, then you turn around and you go to eat and you feel like, well, I don't deserve to have whatever this thing is that I actually want. I need to eat what I should be eating, whatever the healthy thing is, or whatever the thing is that's lower calories. So hopefully I can lose weight. And so food starts to feel like punishment and exercise feels like punishment. And so instead, if we can say, okay, I look in the mirror and maybe I'm having some negative thoughts, I don't like what I see, and then giving ourselves compassion for that and just acknowledging like this is really hard. And to then say to yourself, I'm gonna choose to treat my body with kindness and respect today. And that's a very intentional choice, and that you're not gonna stand there and keep picking yourself apart because that doesn't do you any good. And then with your eating to think about coming back to those principles of intuitive eating I was talking about. Like, what are you actually hungry? And like you were saying with your example when you were running errands earlier, to pause before you eat and go, okay, am I hungry? Because sometimes the answer to that is no. And it's like, oh, interesting. I wonder why I'm wanting to eat if I'm not actually hungry. You know, is it just like the habit of like the route of running errands or the time of day? Is there something emotional going on? And then if the answer is yes, I am hungry, the next question is, well, what am I hungry for? What sounds good? And then what does my body need? So you can choose what is it that you want, and then what's missing from that that your body needs and what can you pair with it? And then can we try to eat mindfully and listening to our bodies? And I'm just as guilty of this as everybody else of like eating while I'm driving or while I'm working. But when possible, can we eat without distractions and to pay attention to our food or the conversation that we're having with others and pausing to check in with our bodies and being more connected in that way? Because our bodies do have built-in mechanisms to tell us how much food to eat. And we don't have to outsource that to an app on our phone or Weight Watchers points or some weird calorie goal or whatever it might be. If we come back inward instead of external, your body will tell you if you learn how to listen and how to trust. And that's not an easy thing to do, but it works if you do it and if you embrace that approach.
SPEAKER_01:What's a common nutrition myth that still shows up on social media that drives you just a little bit crazy?
SPEAKER_00:There's so many of them.
SPEAKER_01:Um where to start?
SPEAKER_00:Where to begin? Uh, right now, one that's really just like grinds my gears is the idea that carbs are bad and that we should all be avoiding carbs. You know, we lived through that low-fat era where everything was low-fat and fat-free, and then they, you know, scientifically it came out like, oops, that was a bad idea. We didn't mean to call we didn't mean to uh make things worse with our our public health messaging, but here we are. And it it's just kind of flipped now. We're like carbs are bad and we need to stay away from carbs. Our bodies need carbs. And if if we recognize that like the three main macronutrients that give our bodies energy are carbohydrate, protein, and fat, we need all three of them in their own regard. And we don't need to be scapegoating any of them. Your body needs carbohydrate for just straight up energy and restriction of carbohydrate, again, it's that thing where it might feel like it's working at first and you feel more in control or you're losing weight or whatever, but it's usually not sustainable and it will backfire. So that the carb thing just really grinds my gears. And the other myth out there nutritionally, that lately I think is very loud and problematic is all of this messaging that's like processed food is the devil. And it's it's just so short-sighted because the reality is that in order for us to feed the world of billions of people, processed food is part of that. And I'm not saying that everybody should just only eat processed food, although if that is all you have access to, a million percent that's what you should eat. That you know, the choice between not eating and eating processed food, like that is the healthy choice, right? And that we can eat processed food alongside less processed or with fresh food, and it can all coexist. It doesn't need to be this like fear-mongering around it and shaming because that messaging tends to backfire. It creates all the guilt and the shame. And for a lot of people, it actually turns into binging, and it's just not a helpful or necessary way to think about food. Like it's there is room for processed food right alongside all the other food. And some of the processed foods have a lot of benefits to them from a shelf stability, from a nutritional standpoint. And then let's not forget that like those foods bring us pleasure in in terms of you know taste and enjoyment, and that that's part of our relationship with food as well.
SPEAKER_01:So a lot of women fear that if they stop dieting, that they're just gonna lose control. So, what would you say to a mom who's afraid to let go of the rules that we've been taught, I guess, through social media?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, or even our own upbringing. The first thing I would say is I get it. And so much of that is like a lived experience where it's like you feel in control when you're on the diet, and then when you're off the diet, you're out of control, and it reinforces like this is what happens when I'm not dieting and controlling my food. But the tricky thing there is that the loss of control is often being driven very much by the restriction of the dieting. And so when we break someone out of that restriction cycle that they tend to get in, initially there's a lot of times this I liken it to if you were underwater holding your breath, you come to the surface and then you gasp for air so your body can like recalibrate to homeostasis. Sometimes that's what happens with food when it's like, okay, I'm done dieting. There might be the gasping for air with the foods that you weren't allowed to eat. But if you're truly working through that and trying to connect with your body and listen to your body, eventually that will run its course and you won't only want to eat like cupcakes and Doritos for the rest of your life. Like you would get tired of that eventually if you were listening to your body. And it will start to even itself out and you'll start to feel more calm and peace with food and you won't be obsessing about food. So it's like you do have to be prepared to like ride out what might feel kind of out of control because you're you understand that you're playing the long game. And when you understand that, and that when you can see that the dieting cycle is part of what becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy with being out of control, choosing to remove yourself from that cycle can be so empowering and so freeing. And then once the intuitive eating stuff starts to click, it's like just this mind-boggling thing where you're like, I can't even believe I was doing that before. I'm never going back to that again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's amazing. Katie, I love quotes. Is there a particular quote that you love and would like to share with us?
SPEAKER_00:I do have one. And it's not even about like food and bodies and all of that. This quote actually comes from my favorite TV show, The Office. I'm one of those people who will watch it like from the beginning and I'll watch it over. And oh, it's like my comfort show when I go to bed. There's this quote, and it might even be the last season. It's towards the end of the series. And it's for those of you who watch it, it's Andy Bernard. He says something to the effect of, I wish there was a way to know that we were in that you're in the good old days before you've left them. And it gives me chills every time because it's like this reminder to appreciate the present, even the parts of it that are hard, because there's a really good chance you're gonna look back on this era of your life and and think of it as like those are the good old days. And it kind of makes me want to cry every time I think about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I love that. That's that's fantastic. How can listeners find you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a few places. Um, if you're a social media person, I'm on Instagram quite a bit, so it's at katyharvey.rd. Um, if you're listening to a podcast, I assume you enjoy podcasts, and I have one called Rebuilding Trust with Your Body. And um, of course, there's just my website. It's katyharvey.net if you want to look me up there.
SPEAKER_01:And you've got something for the guests. You've got uh I do five simple steps to reconnecting with your hunger and fullness guide.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So it's really intended for people who are like, okay, I like what you're saying. I'm curious about like where do I begin and how do I do this so that it doesn't just become a free-for-all with food. So connecting with your body and your hunger fullness is where you're gonna want to start. And so I've put together a guide. It's like five steps. Here's how you do that. We're gonna add a little bit of structure so that it doesn't just feel like you're floundering, and then it's gonna teach you how to tune into your hunger and fullness. So people can go grab that. It's at non dietacademy.com forward slash hunger.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I'm gonna make sure that all of those links are in the show notes. And so that makes it easier for for people to find you. But Katie, I can't thank you enough for being with us today. I your honesty and your wisdom around body image and intuitive eating, it's exactly what a lot of us need to hear. It's exactly what I need to hear. So and you've given us permission to be gentler to ourselves and to our kids, and I'm so grateful for all of the work that you do.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Amazing. I'm so happy to be here.
SPEAKER_01:And thanks to all of you who are hanging out with us on Paging Doctor Mom. If you enjoyed today's episode, go ahead and hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss what's coming up next. And if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find me over on Instagram at DRAngela Downey. I would love to hear from you. So take care for now, you're doing better than you think. That is it for today's episode of Paging Doctor Mom. If it made you smile, nod along, or feel just a little more seen, then go ahead and hit that follow button and share it with a friend who needs to hear it. Take care for now, you are doing better than you think.