Bonus: Mailbag!
Virgie Tovar and Isabel Foxen Duke answer listener questions about how to leave diet culture behind.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Okay. I am back.
Virgie Tovar: Hi!
Isabel Foxen Duke: Let's do mailbag. I'm super pumped for mailbag.
Virgie Tovar: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Virgie Tovar: Welcome to Rebel Eaters Club. I’m Virgie Tovar and Isabel Foxen Duke is back. Isabel is a health coach who helps finally find peace with food. She’s also a really good friend of mine. You sent us your most pressing questions about how to get the hell out of diet culture and Isabel and I are here to answer.
Virgie Tovar: Mailbag is your superpower.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Oh, this is, this is my jam. I love a Q&A more than anyone. Let's do it.
Virgie Tovar: Okay. So you're ready to show off your superpower.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yes, I'm ready.
Virgie Tovar: All right. So someone asks, where do you draw the line between healthy eating and eating what is pleasurable? Am I right to think that the point you are making is not to not choose health, but to be allowed to feel and seek pleasure through food if that is your decision?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah, this is a great question. So I think that, you know, this sort of comes down to the definition of health, right? So we think of health as something that has just to do with like my macronutrients and my physical body. Right? But the reality is health includes mental and emotional health and pleasure and joy, and being able to get pleasure and joy specifically from foods is something that we're really designed for. And that's very important for our mental health, important for satisfaction, satiation, all of these various different, you know, benefits that come from pleasure. Right. I mean, pleasure is a health activity.
Virgie Tovar: Pleasure, pleasure is health promoting.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Exactly, pursuing pleasure is a health activity. Right? So then when I think about health, right, as a giant pie of all sorts of different aspects of health, that may include things like macronutrients and vegetables, but it probably also includes all of these other things. A big challenge that my clients come up with, they think like, if they have a salad, that means they're, by definition, choosing a salad over, you know, the macaroni or the hamburger or whatever. And I'm like, put your hands together, have them both. Right? Like, let's get it all in, you know, really looking at health from the attitude of like, how do I get it all in, right? You know, my health needs are changing. Maybe one day, my pressing need for pleasure is just, it's more pressing than my need for something else. And it's okay for that to be flexible and changing.
Virgie Tovar: I love, I love, I love. Okay, next question. What diet BS did you fall for when you were still stuck in diet culture?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Um, Ooh, uh, I mean, I mean, all of it, I mean, for me, the intuitive eating diet was such a big one, such a big one. It's amazing, like, people will go through my whole program. We'll talk about weight set point theory and we'll go through all the stuff. And still, I often hear people say, there's just still this part of me that feels like somehow if I get it right, I'm going to lose weight. Right? And so if there's this part of you, that's like, somehow if I get it right, I'm going to lose weight. Or like maybe this legalization phase is just a phase. You hear that a lot with intuitive eating, of like, “well, I'm going to eat a lot in the beginning, but then I'll eventually I'll get to a point where I don't want brownies anymore.”
Virgie Tovar: Right, right.
Isabel Foxen Duke: We've talked about that.
Virgie Tovar: We were just talking about this where it's like this myth of like, there's almost like an angelic, like, “Ah! I'm an intuitive eater now. I don't even want anything that isn't a vegetable.” And I'm like this arrival myth is just, it's just kind of poop garbage. I’m like, I don't think that that's a thing. Not only do I not think that's a thing, I also don't think that's absolutely anything we should be striving for. I mean, it's only because of diet culture that that thing would even have any cache or value or appeal anyway.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Right, and I liked the arrival language, the arrival fallacy language. Really it's like, if there's any part of you that's like thinking that in the future, your food's going to be magically different or like you're like gonna get somewhere that you're not currently, that's a red flag. Right? Really like diet recovery is just about my food is what my food is. And I'm cool with it no matter what it is. Right? And so if I'm still orienting towards food as like something that I'm going to achieve in the future, that is probably indication of some sort of underlying diet mentality.
Virgie Tovar: Yes. Yes. I love that. I love that. Okay. So next question, How do you avoid turning intuitive, eating into just another diet?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Ooh. Ah, yeah, so I mean, letting go of narrow definitions of hunger and fullness would be like my number one thing. Right? Like recognizing that generally speaking, I think when people first learn about intuitive eating, like I did, you know, I thought hunger was a growl in my stomach. Little did I know that hunger can literally just take the form of thinking about food, right? Let even the concepts of hunger and fullness go. I prefer concepts like appetite and satiation. So like my definition of appetite would be, “I want food,” “I'm in the mood for food,” “I could eat.” Then great, eat, you know? And you know, satiation or satisfaction, is just, “I don't want to eat anymore,” “I'm done,” “I'm satisfied.” And sometimes this is where people get tripped up with the difference between satisfaction and fullness. People think, “if I'm full, then, like, I must be satisfied. And if I go past full, that's bad.” But actually sometimes you need to get really full to get satisfied. There are days where I could eat something and I'm like, “oh yeah, I'm satisfied, I don't really need any more.” And it's all like, polite and cute, and like, not that full. And there are other days where it's like, “I'm going to get stuffed right now.” And that's my satisfaction point. Like, I need to get it in now. And that's okay too. And so I actually really encourage people to just let go of the concepts of hunger and fullness in general and focus more on appetite and satiation, which my definitions of that would be. “I want food” and “I don't want food.” Bottom line.
Virgie Tovar: I love that. I love that. Okay. Amazing. Okay. So this is, I think that this question is a little bit about, can you talk about what it was like sort of being in the depths of dieting and compare that to what it feels like now that you're not dieting?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Ooh, you know, I say this a lot to my clients. I still get super anxious. I still have lots of life problems. I still have a lot of relationship problems. I’m still going to get triggered and go into trauma response. I just do it about other things now. Not about food as much, not about my body as much. You know, when I was dieting, like that became the epicenter, that became the place where all of my trauma energy went. It was constantly all about controlling food and hating myself if it wasn't under control and perfectionism and the this, and the that, and the just constant fatigue of trying to hang on by my fingernails all the time, trying not to fall. That's every single day of dieting. And then falling and hating yourself for falling. Right? And today, you know, initially, especially I would say, the first couple years into really solid recovery, I felt so free around food and it's so amazing. And then there was, there's this liberation that I experienced, that was so amazing. But I do like to remind people just to like, kind of give a dose of reality that not dieting anymore didn't actually solve my trauma. It just no longer attaches to food. But fundamentally, like I still am a human being who struggles with trauma and anxiety and like stress and relationship stuff. And so it's like food is just not one of them. And I actually think of it as like a privilege that I actually get to work on other areas of my life now, because food was constantly the thing that's distracting me from everything else. I get to work on my relationships. Now I get to like work on my career challenges now in a way that I couldn't be as present for when it was all about food. But yeah, I think that there's this idea that like, once we're in recovery, like life is going to be a magical unicorn. Just kind of similarly to like how we feel like once I lose the weight, my life will be a magical unicorn and that's not true either. And so I kind of like to like, call that out.
Virgie Tovar: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, Yeah. I think to that point, I love the idea of sort of getting to you know, work on these other areas of your life, because if food is your number one way that you're coping with anxiety or unresolved trauma or any number of things, right, or like living in a fatphobic culture, like food is so immediate and constant, it's so connected to survival that you don't, you don't really get past that. That's sort of like, in the hierarchy of what you're dealing with, how you're taking care of yourself, that one's always going to be on top, if that's one of your coping mechanisms, you know?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Right. Like every new year's resolution was like, about losing weight in the past. Like this year, my new year's resolution was to be more kind to my boyfriend. Very different, you know?
Virgie Tovar: Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm so grateful for you sharing your time and your wisdom. I can't wait for our next encounter.
Isabel Foxen Duke: I know what a treat.
Virgie Tovar: It is truly life changing when you stop worrying about food and you become free to use your mental energy and emotional bandwidth for other things, like… helping a friend leave their toxic relationship, taking up macrame, creating elaborate zines about your favorite foods, or learning how to FINALLY make a massive tower of cream puffs called a CROQUEMBOUCHE,
If you have thoughts on the conversation you just heard or even if you just want to say HI, REACH OUT! DM me @virgietovar. DM the show’s producers @TransmitterPods Or Shoot us a message at rebeleatersclub@gmail.com!