Episode 28: What I've Been Fed

In this episode, I'm sharing my personal food story — from my earliest experiences with diet culture to navigating breast cancer, medically induced menopause, and what it means to truly nourish a body that flies.

In this episode:

[00:00] Introduction & announcements — Flourish Retreat June 19–25

[01:58] World Health Day and food culture

[05:58] College years and body image

[09:05] Aerial arts and body composition

[09:50] Coping mechanisms post-fire

[10:55] Reframing my relationship with food — Train with Shay | Zach Coen | Kylie

[17:55] Breast cancer diagnosis and health journey — Jen Crane

[20:12] Navigating menopause and body changes — Mary Claire Haver

[21:44] Current goals and maintenance strategies — Liam | Beth Feraco

Connect with Fallon

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 🌐 www.inthewingsaerial.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to The Aerial Alchemist, where movement transforms into magic and stories take flight. I'm Fallon, dancer, aerialist, and storyteller, inviting you into a world where circus and dance meet creativity, resilience, and community. Whether you're here to be inspired, to learn, or to simply dream a little bigger, you found your place. I'm glad you're here. We're gonna talk a little bit about my food journey through my life. But before we jump in, uh just a reminder. Still spots available to join us in Italy this summer, June 19th through the 25th. Get on it.

unknown 0:58

Get on it.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Get on it, get on it. Uh, we're doing an aerial creation retreat. I keep looking at the photos of Oasis Sorgente, which is where we are hosting the retreat in Umbria. And I just can't even believe that I'm going to this magical place. We will be doing aerial poolside and everyday nourishing meals, lots of downtime and lots of creation time. So just gonna be like such a juicy, luscious week. And I can't wait. And I hope you will join us. If you have questions about it, please reach out to me. I am happy to talk through um over DMs, text, phone, call, whatever, whatever to make you feel comfortable in going. Please, please join us because I don't just say you're gonna miss out. Miss out. It's so it's gonna be so beautiful. So let's jump in today. This is airing on World Health Day. So I've mentioned kind of off and on over the podcast about talking about my like my food goals, my fitness journey, like how I look at food. I didn't want to do it around New Year's because it just felt like there was so much more like stigma with it. So this feels nice, World Health Day. And I kind of went back and forth. I could just do like an extended version of what I eat in a day, but that didn't feel authentic. So I'm just gonna tell you my story, my relationship with food, which started a long, long time ago. And this is kind of piggybacking off of what we just spoke about last week. I'm getting all my day, I'm batch recording. So actually, if you're a Patreon, you're gonna get this way sooner than you're listening in the in the future, in the head past. I don't know. Anyways, that's fun. But last week we were talking about the International Women's Month and things associated with that. But another thing that we get, another big message that we get or as women, is around food culture and diet culture. And so as a child of the 80s, I am no stranger to it. So let's dive in. Where do I begin? I'm gonna start with when I was 14 years old. It was probably before that. It was definitely before that that I was getting messaging. I was paying attention to my mom. My mom has been on every single fad diet on the planet. And when I was 14, she put me on my first diet. I wanna be clear. I did not need to be, no 14-year-old needs to be on a diet. I shouldn't say no, I'm in medical. I understand that there are exceptions to every rule. But no 14-year-old needs to be on a diet to lose weight, especially when I was doing what I was doing at that time. I had just quit gymnastics, and my body was probably changing from that because I wasn't doing gymnastics three hours a day, five days a week, and more if I had a meet on the weekend. But I was still swimming and I was dancing and I was doing other things, and I was a diver at that time too. So, you know, I was still active, and none of that matters as we'll get into it. I am now realizing as I'm saying, I'm still in, I'm popped right back into this mindset, right back into that 14-year-old body. It was really interesting though, because I feel like the message was that if you, if you or your body does not look a certain way, look a certain way, we're talking about aesthetics again, then it's not enough. Then you're not worthy of this world. Which is bullshit. It's bullshit. But that is the messaging that we get pummeled with all the time, that my mom got pummeled with, which was why she was the way she was. And it's interesting because I look back at photos of that period in my life. I don't have that many anymore, most of them burned, but even though I thought in that moment that I was fat, I was not. I look back at those pictures and that far from it. I can't, I truly can't believe why I was on why I got put on a diet. I also, on the flip side, had gotten called into my coach's office at one point because they were worried I had an eating disorder. I did not. I not in not in the 80s sense of eating disorder. I I was still eating food and I did not throw out food. That's what all they were worried about that time. I know that that can look a lot of different ways. And I think that I have struggled with that throughout my life, but not but in in the very much the control sense of it, not in an extreme way, I guess is the best way I can put that. The other interesting thing that as I started to grow and I moved out of the house and I didn't wasn't under my mom's influence anymore, and I started, you know, you're in college and you eat whatever you want. I wasn't doing as much activity as I had been in high school. But I was still like in a relatively normal sized body. No one, no healthcare professional was worried about my size from a health standpoint, and my and my weight kind of fluctuated up and down over the years. Uh I had gotten out of dance for a good chunk of time in my um twenties. And I had been doing yoga and yoga. I went from being, you know, like I don't this is all very weird for me to talk about. I'm just gonna say, because I don't want any of this to feel like judgmental. I don't want anyone who's listening to internalize it, to look at pictures of me now, because there's not a lot of old pictures of me on the internet. There's some here and there, but like I said, because a lot of things burnt in the fire, there's just not a record of that. I don't want anyone listening to internalize it for themselves. I'm just purely gonna speak from my perspective and how I was feeling in my body, knowing that this was a lot of programming from the outside world. So I'll apologize in advance if I'm not using the most appropriate terms to discuss this. And yeah, I guess I'll leave it at that for now. So my weight fluctuated up and down. I went from feeling like in shape and out of shape. I didn't worry about it too much. And then I got into yoga with a friend and I was doing yoga like six or seven times a week and like lost a fair amount of weight just from doing that, just from moving, which was great. Like I was feeling really good in my body. My whole life, I guess my whole adult life, I've really not worried about the scale too much. I've worried more about how do I feel in my body, how do I feel in my clothes? Am I able to do the things that I want to do in this body? And if the answer is yes, then I'm good. And the answer is no, then I started thinking about other things. So I had been doing yoga and then I found aerialness like 15 years ago. And really interesting thing happened when I found Ariel and I threw myself into it. I lost like, what was it? It was like like eight to ten dress sizes, and I gained like eight pounds because I it was all muscle. Um, and I always I've used that as like an a nice way of like describing how body composition can be, and that it's really not always about that one number on the scale. And also like BMI is just another number because when I when I lost dress sizes but gained weight, my BMI looked like I was overweight, but I was not. So it's just it's one number to look at of a bigger picture. So that was an interesting thing. And then I stayed pretty stable like throughout aerial. I think I, as I grew more in my aerial career and I was cast in shows for different reasons, I was more on the ground than in the air and not doing as much of the aerial. Um, and my body kind of shifted and changed again, but not by much, just a little bit. And then the fire happened. So I had gone into the fire, maybe being a little bit heavier than what I felt really good at. And then um I went a little off the deep end with food and alcohol. Yeah. The end, that's what happened. It was my way of coping. Um, we yeah, I don't there's really nothing else to say. I feel like so many people have been there. You're eating a food for convenience and you're not really being mindful about what you're eating. And if the like in the high fat and the high carb things, which are also then higher in calorie, they fill a place in your soul that needs to be filled when you're in that. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's just what it was. So after about a year after the fire, I had gotten to a point where I was really not happy in my body. It got back to like I wasn't able to do the things that I wanted to do. Aerial was significantly harder. My clothes were not fitting, and we're talking none of them. Like when my stretchy jammies and my scrub pants were not fitting, that's that was my cue. That I was like, this is starting to get a little out of control, and maybe we need to to do something. At that time, I was following a bunch of people on TikTok, and one of them was Shay Click. I will tag her in the show notes. She's trained with Shay on the social medias, and I loved her. I loved her message. Shay and also Zach Cohen, who I've mentioned before. I think I've mentioned before on here. Maybe that was something else. Anyways, Zach Cohen also, he is a dietitian, the dietitian with a beard. And I followed both of them, both of whom had this beautiful approach to food in that you can have whatever you want, that there's nothing off limits, but maybe you can't have as much as you want. There was another person that I followed, and I'll see if I can find her. I think her name was Kylie. And her messaging was about eat what you want and add what you need, which is also like a beautiful messaging. And all of this, I started to reframe how I looked at food and it started to reprogram it for me. And then I wondered, I was like, well, Shay's like on here. I wonder if she like teaches people how to do this. Like, cause she's always got these meal planning things on here. And sure, sure enough, she does. And at the time she was accepting new clients. So I signed up for like, I think it ended up being eight months with Shay, and I did personal training with her, and it was awesome. I lost 27 pounds in that, but more importantly, I reframed everything about how I approach food. What she had me do, it was a multifaceted approach. It was all in, and this worked well for me. I'm not saying that this would work well for everybody, but it was a great fit for me because I was at the point where I was done. I felt awful. I felt like physically bad. I had been struggling with IBS for years, mind you, and then just felt icky in my body. I just wasn't digging it. So I was ready to go all in. And I, and for me, paying the money, because it was not cheap, but paying the money held me accountable. And when I signed up with her, I was paired with one of her assistant coaches who I did most of my check-ins with. And we did everything. There was a check-in sheet that I had to that we did every, I think it was every other week. It's been a few years now, so I don't remember all of it. I had to do like my weigh-in. Um, I had to take pictures mostly naked from the front, side, and back and send them to her, which they work with you on everything. So that sounds terrible for you. They worked with people, but I will say those pictures were one of the most helpful things that I did because that scale didn't always move, but my pictures were different. And that just goes back to the losing weight or the losing like inches, but gaining weight because you start gaining muscle mass too, and your body just shifts and change. And so those progress photos were really great for me. And I put them in a locked folder on my phone. Nobody else ever sees them, but it was good for me. It was good motivation for me. I had to track everything every day. And what they wanted me to do was focus on my protein and my calories. They wanted to make sure that I was in a calorie deficit, which for me I think was around 1600 calories at the lowest deficit, and then enough protein, which was uh 125 or 135 grams of protein a day. Um, and I had to track everything. And they said, if you can get those things, don't worry about anything else right now. And then I would check in and I would send her screenshots of my fitness pal. Uh, she would double check that like everything else was looking good, like making sure I was getting enough fiber. And I always was, because let me tell you, vegetables and the low carb wraps have a ton of fiber in them. And I love those things. They worked really well for me. And they fill you up and they make you full. So that's important when you're in a deficit because deficits are hard. So yeah, so that's what I did. There was a bunch of other things. Steps. I had to get at least 8,500 steps on average a day. I had to get 90 ounces minimum of water a day. Game changer. Your girl's been dehydrated most of her life. It's not been till the last few years where I've actually not been a dehydrated bitch, I tell you what. Uh yeah, I feel much better now. My skin is great. I don't use as much chapstick. It's fantastic. What all of this did though, specifically the tracking, was to make me a more intentional eater. I would have to stop before I put something in my face and be like, are you wanting to log that? It was also helpful what she had me do was log everything I planned to eat in the day before I even ate it. So then you could see if I had my breakfast, lunch, and dinner logged, then I knew how many calories I had left over for my snacks. I also knew how much more protein I needed to get. And so what I would try to do is front load my protein in the beginning of the day so that like at the end of the night, I would be like, oh, I have 200 calories left and I've already hit my protein goal. I'm having one of my ice cream bars. So things like that to like make it easier. But before I logged any of those extra things, it made me be intentional. Am I actually hungry? Or where's my water at? Maybe I'm just thirsty. Am I just bored? Am I stressed? Is there something else going on that I can address in a different way because I'm not actually hungry and I don't actually need the food? Because when it's all written down and I'm like, well, I know that I'm not gonna die because I've had plenty of food today. That hunger is not hunger. So it's starting it, so it helped me be more in tune with my body and read my hunger cues. The other big shift that it did with me, in addition to the intentional eating, is how I spoke about food. I don't use healthy or unhealthy with food anymore, ever. And it is everywhere, you guys. When I go to work at my muggle job, not so much in Ariel because I think we're more like intentional and have broken down some of these barriers. I think um I stopped morally coding food. There's no such thing as healthy or unhealthy food in my brain. There is food that fits your goals and food that doesn't. And those goals move. That goalpost that moves all the time. All the time. Because y'all sometimes I'll be like, I don't want this, I want this food because it's going to feed my soul, not because of anything else. And I need that right now. And what is gonna satiate me the most right now? Sometimes that was protein, sometimes that was fiber, and sometimes that was chocolate. And sometimes it needed to be both. So it was a chocolate protein shake. But it doesn't matter. And so food for the first time started just to come, I started to approach it from a place of nourishment as opposed to worth. So after I had um just about wrapped up my training with Shay, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And let me tell you, when I was so grateful that I had signed up for that training program when I did, because it was before we moved back home. And I thought I could do the thing where it's like, well, as soon as we move back home, then I'll have time to do this thing. I'm so glad I didn't do that. Just do the thing because there's never gonna be a good time. There will never be a good time. If I had waited till I got back home, there was a whole slew of problems once we got back home, and then I would have put it off, and then I got cancer, and then I would have put it off because of that too. And then I like I went in to my cancer diagnosis in the best shape of my life. Easily. I felt amazing. I had done all this training with Shay. I had been working with Jen Crane from Circ Physio for at least a year, if not more, couple of years, and was feeling strong and flexible in ways that I had never felt strong and felt flexible strong and flexible before. And so it was, I was set up the best way I could for that. And it was freaking hard. The active, active treatment was fine. The surgeries were fine. Having six weeks off was honestly probably good to force me to rest. The radiation, totally fine. You're burning so many calories when you're going under radiation. I I couldn't eat enough calories. I was losing weight during radiation because I was still just eating what I normally ate and it wasn't enough. And I realized I had to eat more calories to maintain my weight so I didn't start losing muscle mass. So that was all fine. The hard part has been now that I'm in medically induced menopause. Now I have been equipped with all of these tools, which have, again, has been great. But what I'm noticing is that things are shifting in my body. Fat is moving around in places that it wasn't before. The scale is staying the same. I st it started creeping up a bit. I went, I put myself in a deficit for I think a week and a half and got it back down to where it was. Like I just I keep a little eye on it, not a big eye, but a little eye, because what I have learned is that it can spiral out of control if you if you don't just keep an eye on it. It doesn't overwhelm me, it doesn't take over my brain. But maintaining is not not just doing the same thing every day. You have to kind of be aware of what's changing in your life because your life will change. Are you more or less active now? Well, now I'm more a little less active because I'm struggling with balancing lymphedema and not flaring that. And so if I do too hard of a workout or too much of a workout, then my lymphedema swells, and that's a whole nother thing. So there is this balance. Because I'm not quite as active, I need a few less calories. And because I'm in menopause, I need less calories. I just saw, I think her name is Mary Claire Haber. Haber? Anyways, she's I'll find her and I'll I'll put a link to her in the show notes as well. She focuses on menopause. So if you are a a female body of a certain age, you might find her helpful. But she just posted a video that was talking about why it is hard to lose weight and seemingly impossible when you're in menopause. And it's because you don't have estrogen because of all these things that estrogen does. And I cannot replace the estrogen. So it will be difficult for me, which is why I am really focused on making sure it doesn't crank up there so that I can still do the things that I want to do in my body. And so that I can live a long life of doing things that I want to do. That is what it is about, not about what it looks like. Because it will keep looking different. Lord, you don't I know. My body looks, man, way different, as you can imagine. So I gave you my my goals when I was on in a deficit. I'm just gonna throw out my maintenance ones. I'm at like 19, I think it's like 1950, 1900, 2,000 calories a day, give or take. Um, and my protein goals are 150 grams of protein a day. Um, and I usually get that um at least within about 10 grams, some days honestly more and some days less. Um, and then water is all the same, everything's the same. I still have the same goals. Water has become so easy for me to drink now. And what I use the word water loosely, anything that is liquid and hydrating is water. If, but I will say that if you are tracking things, if you're tracking calories, then zero sugar things are your friends, or low sugar things are your friends because the sugar just has um a lot of calories, especially if you're in a deficit. Man, zero sugar soda diet soda is your friend because you get that sweet without the calories, which is nice. And you're hydrating. It is just water. Even if it has caffeine, it's not dehydrating you enough to matter. It's still water. That's all I'm gonna say. I could say more. I'm gonna post, I'm gonna tag so many creators that I love around this stuff that like break down all these food stigmas. I think it's nice to have like a reprogramming in your brain and get away from the people. If there is a person in a grocery store yelling at you about how it's bad for you and then tries to sell you something, do not listen to that person. Do not don't listen to them. They don't know what they're talking about. Anyways, I digress. I'm looking at the time. I have rambled on forever about this, but it's a big thing for a lot of people I know. And I hope that maybe it was helpful for you in some way, if it, even if it was just like, oh, I resonated with that. Uh yeah, I feel that. Yeah. Um the goalpost is always moving. It will always be different. Things will always change. Before I let you go, I would like to thank my patrons on Patreon. Thank you for supporting me and what I do and all of my works. I could not do it without you. If there's someone in your life that you think might benefit from this episode, I would love it if you shared it with them. And if you have requests for future episodes, hit me up, slide into my DMs. I am at In the Wings Ariel on all the social medias or on Patreon at in the wings Ariel. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will see you next week. This has been the Ariel Alchemist. Now go create some magic of your own. Happy flying.