We’re exploring is weight loss possible in the long-term? What do you need to do to achieve that? Plus, how learning to eat more mindfully (in a non-diet way) can help you to become a more intuitive eater.

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Summer:
This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting and intersectional feminism. I am your host. Summer innan, a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence, and the best selling author of body image remix, if you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

This is episode 320 and I am replaying the episode that I did with Alexis connison, clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist and author of the diet free revolution. We are unpacking everything that the research says about weight loss. Is it possible to lose weight in the long term? What do you need to do to achieve that, plus how learning to eat more mindfully and in a non diet way, can help you to become a more intuitive eater. You can find the links mentioned at summer innan.com, forward, slash, 320.

I want to give a shout out to listener R who left this review. This podcast is helpful if you’re looking to build self esteem and self acceptance. Thank you so much for leaving that review. If you have the means to do so, you can financially contribute to this podcast by going to kofi.com that’s K O, dash, fi.com, forward slash summer in and in. And you will get access to my free ebook conquering self doubt, and that helps to support the show and try to keep it on the air for a little bit longer. And if you do not have the financial means to do that, you can leave a review for the show. You can go to Apple podcast, search for eat the rules, click ratings and reviews and click to leave a review. Don’t forget, I have free stuff for you on my website. You can go to the body image coach.com and you’ll find the body image coaching road map for professionals as well. You will find the free 10 day body confidence makeover.

Okay, this was one of the best or most downloaded episodes that I’ve ever done, so I wanted to re air it, and it’s such a good review of the research and looks at even like the study that was done on participants of the biggest loser and what happened to their metabolism and things like that after the show. And so hopefully it’s a really helpful reminder of why dieting doesn’t work. And I just love kind of getting into like the the data and the research around this as well. I want to give a brief content warning for the use of the word obesity that will be used throughout this episode in a clinical sense, just when Alexis refers to some of the research and the studies, Alexis connison is a clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist in private practice in New York City. She’s the founder of the anti diet plan, a weight inclusive online mindful eating program. She was previously a researcher associate at the New York nutrition Obesity Research Center in affiliation with Columbia University. Her research has been published in peer reviewed journals. She is a frequent speaker at conferences, and she has been featured widely as an expert on the topics of mindful eating, body image and diet culture in the media. You can find her on social media at the anti diet plan.

Let’s get started with the show. Hello, Alexis, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here today.

Alexis:
Thank you so much for having me.

Summer:
I loved reading your book, the diet free revolution. And there was just so many good quotes from it. I think I told you in the email I sent, but I just, like, I highlighted so many different quotes and parts of it. And I just, I love the way that you weaved some storytelling about either real or, like, you know, anonymous clients into the book to really, kind of get your points across and everything else. It was really, really good. So I’m looking forward to digging into the stuff that you talk about in there today. Hey, I’m so excited to dive in. So why don’t you start out by telling our listeners just a little bit about your story. And you know what prompted you to really get into this work? And you know what was your relationship with food like when you were growing up?

Alexis:
Sure, so I think, like so many of us. I grew up in a home with a lot of dieting, and there was always this push and pull between, were we going to be kind of good today or be bad today? I was fortunate in the sense that there wasn’t a ton of criticism around my body, but there was definitely a lot of criticism. You know, my mom definitely had a lot of criticism around her own body. So I internalized the idea that fitness was kind of just like what we all yearned after, and that was going to be the path to happiness in life, and also that dieting was a way to kind of compensate for what what we ate. So it was really this cycle that, you know, again, I think this is familiar to so many people, but this idea of, like, indulging and enjoying yourself, and then, you know, we’re gonna be better tomorrow. We’re gonna start better tomorrow. So I was got really stuck in that cycle. I went on my first diet, I think I was about eight years old, and it was something that I wanted to do myself. No one put me on a diet, but I, you know, think it was, in part, like a way to, you know, be closer to my mother, and also just kind of like what I thought that grown ups did. So I remember being eight years old and going on a juice fast, and it was like a recipe or a diet prescription that was in one of the many, many diet books that were kind of just like strewn all over our house growing up. And it was one of the first times I remember really feeling preoccupied with food because I was so hungry. I remember going to sleep at night, and just like dreaming of what I was going to eat for breakfast, I was starving. And you know, it kind of that pattern set me up for many decades of, you know, going on and off, these pattern, periods of being bad and being good and thinking that, you know, everything in life would be better if I could just find a way to rein in my eating, get control of myself and have this ideal body that I was thirsting after. So I was so kind of immersed in that that I really set off on a career path to figure this out, because I felt like I can’t seem to get this under control for myself. So of course, let me, like, study this as much as I can, and maybe I’ll figure it out. And you know, when we’re a mess around something, of course, like I’ll just help other people do this thing that I can’t figure out how to do, and I became a psychologist and really had plans to be like a weight loss therapist. I trained working in a Bariatric Surgery Center. I worked for many, many years in obesity research, and it was fortunate that not too long after I started my private practice again, kind of hung up my shingle with this idea that I’m going to be a weight management psychologist and I’ll help people be thin. Thankfully, I attended a training on mindful eating, and the training itself was a very diet focused training where they handed out like these calorie counting books, and we were supposed to tell people eat mindfully, and by the way, try to cut out a certain number of calories. Makes no sense. And But thankfully, there was a group of people at the training who were Health at Every Size, professionals. And I had never heard about Health at Every Size before, and just opening up those conversations. I mean, I mean, I remember sitting with one person at lunch and kind of just chatting and talking about dieting, and, you know, the person said, but diets don’t work. And I was like, What are you talking about? It was, like, the most bizarre statement, like it had literally just never occurred to me before that, like diets don’t work. I, you know, was just so trained and immersed in this world that it’s about calories in, calories out, and how can you get people to, you know, increase their motivation and willpower? And the reason that I wasn’t able to do it was obviously because there was something wrong with me, and I was, you know, not strong enough and lazy and undisciplined. So just the introduction of that idea that the whole system is, you know, a sham was really, really eye opening for me, and I, I’ll say, I didn’t take it all in right away, but the idea kind of reverberated in my mind for a while. And eventually, you know, I started reading, doing more research, and really trying to unpack this, and it just all made so much sense. And that was a, I would say, a life changing moment for me.

Summer:
So, yeah, you mentioned going to these conferences, like these, you know, these obesity conferences, and hearing the researchers talk about how, like, I guess, they weren’t getting the result they sort of hoped for with the studies. You know, what was like, and how that was kind of a catalyst to you sort of seeing that, like, Okay, this paradigm doesn’t work. So talk about your experience with that, just because I’m so curious. I’m so curious.

Alexis:
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s some of the best evidence for the idea that diets don’t work and that long term weight loss is not sustainable for most people, is in the field of obesity research, because if you look at these studies, you know, and these are done by people who are highly invested in the weight normative paradigm. They’ve built their careers on it. There’s pretty much a consensus that they know how people can lose weight in the short term, but that almost everybody gains it back long term, and that diet and exercise is not the, you know, secret path to, you know, to changing our body the way that, like, the average person thinks it is, and the way that we’ve all been told and that was actually, like, one of the reasons that I wanted to write this book was that, as I was spending a lot of time in the research field, it was, like, so clear that, you know, it was not about just like, eating less and exercising more, that this was, you know, incredible. Complicated, and that we were just, like, encouraging people to do something over and over and over again that we know doesn’t work, and not only does not work, it’s actually pretty harmful. So I was had a hard time wrapping my head around the discrepancy between, like, what the research was saying and what was being disseminated to, like, the average person through just, you know, the mainstream media, the evening news, and the things that even our doctors are telling us. So I wanted to try to bridge that gap a little bit with my book,

Summer:
yeah, and you do an amazing job kind of breaking down, you know, some of the studies, and I’d love you to just sort of, you know, touch on some of the details from a couple of them, because I think that, you know, it’s just like you said, the information that we’re getting from from mainstream media and doctors is not backed by the research. And I think that, you know, a lot of people, maybe, kind of on a surface level, know that listening to this podcast, but it’s also helpful to just sort of understand a little bit of the nitty gritty in there. So I know one of the studies you mentioned is just like the Look Ahead study, and I’m curious to know you know what you found when you looked into that study?

Alexis:
So I wanted to include that study in my book, because I think it’s often what people who are invested in the weight normative paradigm point to as like long term weight loss is possible. And when you look at the study, it is one of the few studies that looks at what they call, like an intensive lifestyle intervention, which is basically diet and exercise long term. They studied people for like, a little more than eight years. And I think the study was supposed to go to 10 years, but they cut it short early because they weren’t seeing the results that they wanted to see. And what the study found was that people initially, you know, lost, I think it was like 8% of their body weight, or something like that. And then over the first year or so, and then as the study went on, almost everybody gained it back, gained back the weight. So I think by the end of the study, there was a significant portion of people, or maybe the average, that had maintained about a 4% weight loss. So the investigator, the researchers standard was, you know, they would consider it a success that people lost, I think, like 7% or something at the long term follow up. So that wasn’t met yet. All of you know, the medical establishment kind of held the study to be a success, and to say, look, we can, you know, help people lose weight. But if you look at what they did in this study, this is not the average Dieter. You know. They looked at people who, you know, first of all, were committed enough to this and kind of struggling with this, enough to sign up for this study, and then they really provided them with like, every resource imaginable. So what tends to happen is that, you know, for the average person, like an actual, real life person, not in a study, go on a diet, and we just have the resources that are, you know, we have the diet plan. Maybe we buy some food for it, or whatever. You know, we’re and we’re pretty much on our own. But in this study, the participants were like, provided with special diet food. They were provided with gym memberships, and they were provided with weekly counseling where they would like check in with people and have, like the research team supporting them to make sure they were staying on plan. And then when they struggled or when they started to regain weight, they were then kind of bombarded with more resources. So sometimes they were given weight loss medication, sometimes they were given in home exercise equipment. So, you know, the study researchers, like, bought them a treadmill or got them into therapy. So, you know, it’s just not, I don’t think it’s like a typical story of what happens. But with all of that, with like, every resource imaginable, and all this money and funding that, like, the success was a 4% weight loss maintained, you know, I think it was like eight years or something like that, and these people were working their butt off for it, you know? They were like, like, exercising, regularly, sticking to this diet long term, you know. So I think that it underscores the idea, like, when you talk to most people about, like, why, you know, who want to lose weight, their goal is not 4% of their weight loss. And this is what you know, this is what doctors are saying, with every resource possible, you can achieve 4% weight loss that’s not going to, like, sell a lot of diet plans or really motivate people that much. And then, of course, you know, like so many of these studies, they don’t look at the risk. They don’t look at the people you know as much who drop out of the study. They don’t look at the impact of eating disorders. How many people felt an eating disorder, is it, you know, you know, in consequence of this. So it’s not without risk. And I think the payoff is just really, really lousy.

Summer:
Yeah, I think that’s what stood out the most to me, was that, like, if you think about 4% it’s like, such a low number. And I think if you even said that to people that that probably wouldn’t make or break, like, you know, their happiness or their health or anything, that they’ve sort of mentally associated with weight loss, that, you know, it’s not really going to like, change your body that much. Much, and the fact that, like, you know, that they tout that as being like a success is is just ridiculous, because it’s counter to kind of what they’re really asking of people, which is like, much more significant weight changes when I think about, like, kind of what doctors say to people and everything else,

Alexis:
yeah, and I think it’s counter to what people want and what people would feel is kind of worth that type of really drastic life changing behaviors. Like, do you want to, you know, spend hours of your life every single day working on this to, you know, lose few pounds,

Summer:
yeah? And it’s, I mean, it sounds like, it’s like, kind of like, Hey, do you want a disordered relationship with food to, you know, achieve something so minute?

Alexis:
Yeah. And I think, you know, that’s one of the other studies that I covered in the book, which I think is really fascinating, is the people in the National Weight Control Registry. So this is, again, you know, I think there is an acknowledgement in the quote, unquote obesity research field that weight loss is, you know, long term weight loss, and maintaining that weight loss is very, very rare. So people started to say, Okay, we can’t induce it in our studies, right? Like the people that we’re studying don’t seem to be able to lose weight and keep it off, but there are people out there. We all hear about them. They tend to be very loud and very vocal about that. They have managed to lose weight and keep it off long term. So researchers said, those people are out there. Why don’t we just look at those people who are naturally able to, you know, who are in, you know, outside of a study environment, able to lose weight and keep it off long term. So they created the National Weight Control Registry for people who have lost, I forget what it is the significant amount of weed, but I need to look up what the criteria are. It’s, it’s not even that dramatic of amount of weight and keep it off for, I think, two years, either one year or two years. And they kind of put these people into a database and pulled them on a whole bunch of stuff, and another group of researchers came and looked at these people who are in the National Weight Control Registry and said, You know what, when we look at what these people are doing every day, it looks an awfully lot like what we see in our clients, our patients with chronic, enduring anorexia. And I think that’s really interesting. They in that study, they came to the conclusion this is how twisted the like obesity research field is.

And actually, this study was done by a group of eating disorder researchers, which is in many ways even scarier. But they came to the conclusion, not that there’s a whole bunch of people on this National Weight Control Registry that might have an eating disorder. They came to the conclusion of, oh, how can we take these lessons? This is the language they use. These lessons from people who have severe and enduring anorexia, and apply it to fat people. So basically, how can we make fat people have anorexia? And it’s one of the most disturbing studies that I’ve read, honestly, what I take away from that data is that, you know, for the rare people who are sustaining, you know, weight loss long term, it’s often not in the healthiest way. I mean, if you look at the National Weight Control Registry, these people are spending, I think it’s something like two hours exercising every day. They track every bite of food that they eat. They think about what they’re eating almost all the time. They are incredibly restrictive. They feel a lot of anxiety if they veer off course from their diet, or if they’re in an environment where they’re eating foods that they don’t consider to be safe. Again, you know, I think it’s a lot of the things that we do see in our clients with eating disorders. And, you know, rather than just celebrating weight loss whenever we see it, which is often what happens like especially in the medical profession, I think that really it should be a flag to be assessing for eating disorders and to be, you know, seeing for real what’s going on with people.

Summer:
Yeah, that’s a really good way of saying it. One of the other things that you that you talked about in the book was kind of, you know, like, the set point, and what happens to our weight when it’s pulled below the set point. And you reference, like, The Biggest Loser. Is it an actual study that they did on participants of the Biggest Loser? And like, what happened with that? I’m so, like, it was, it was just so fascinating to me. What happens? What happened to their bodies?

Alexis:
Yeah, there’s two really interesting studies on set point. One is, was done, like, I think, in the early 90s, and it was one of the first studies on set point, and that was done with people who they actually had stay in the hospital for, like, in this research center for prolonged periods of time. One of the things I thought was really interesting about this study was that they looked at, you know, lean, quote, unquote, lean participants, and, you know, higher weight participants, and had them all live in the hospital for a set period of time so that they could assess everything, you know, everything that went in and everything that went out of their body and had these like metabolic chambers that they were in. But the Lean participants only stayed in the hospital for like a month or something, whereas some of the larger body participants were in the hospital for like a year or two years. And I just can’t wrap my head around what’s going on for. Someone, and what our culture does to people to make us think that living in the hospital for and also, the lean participants were paid to for their participation in the study, and the higher weight participants were not paid. They were just given the promise of weight loss, and that was like enough for people to stay in the hospital for two years. Yeah, like, I don’t know that’s one of the things that stuck with me about the study. But what the data actually found was that when people lose a significant amount of weight, metabolically, their body tries to restore it, right? We know this now is set point theory. It’s this idea that our body is kind of like a thermostat, a little bit where we have, like, a comfortable range of weight that our body wants to maintain, and if it goes beyond, you know, if our weight dips below that range, our body starts to think, uh, oh, something’s wrong. Oh, you know, we’re in a fountain. We’re starving. We don’t have enough access to food. We have to slow down metabolism and send cues to try to encourage us to seek out food. So this is one of the reasons that we know that while people can lose weight through dieting or exercise or kind of this, like calorie and energy imbalance, long term, that’s not sustainable, because our body is very much invested in keeping us alive, like that’s a good thing, and part of the way that does that is by encouraging us to eat when we’re starving and when we’re not having enough nutrition. And it’s very, very hard to fight against that. So this study that was done in the 90s started to observe like that slowing the metabolism and the increase in ghrelin levels. That’s a hormone that makes us feel more hungry. I think there was a decrease in leptin, which is kind of the satiation hormones.

So people, you know, would eat and eat and eat and have a lot of trouble feeling full. And then this was pretty much replicated with a few other findings in terms of, like, what the body does to try to help us regain weight when after we’ve lost weight, with by studying the contestants from The Biggest Loser. So they looked at, you know, a bunch of the contestants from one of the seasons of The Biggest Loser. It’s, this was an NIH funded study, and they essentially found the same thing. Found that, like people who had lost all this weight, you know, when you looked at the contestants, this is why we never see like the biggest loser follow up show, right? Because if you look at people one or two years down the road, people have regained the weight, and what they found, which was really interesting, was that metabolically, these people look completely different than someone of the same weight who had never lost weight to begin with. So you know, this is why I think it’s so we have to be so careful not to generalize. Sometimes we see research studies that say, well, people who are thinner have better health outcome. Well, okay, but that’s not comparing people who are you know, where their natural set point weight is in a thinner body size, to someone who’s now weight reduced. Because we know that metabolically, someone who who’s set point, or who you know, has lived most of their life in a larger body size, who’s currently at a smaller weight does not look metabolically the same as someone who’s natural set point weight in that range, even if they’re currently at the same weight.

Summer:
Wow, yeah, yeah. So, like, the impact is pretty significant in terms of, like, what it does to those hormones, exactly.

Alexis:
And it basically means that people, you know, if your weight reduced, like, you’re hungry all the time. Your metabolism is slowing down. You’re getting these cues to these like, you know, part of the reward center of the brain is just encouraging you to, like, seek out food all the time. So we become really preoccupied with food. We’re thinking about food all the time. We’re trying to find ways to, you know, eat, and it becomes all consuming. And, you know, it’s not a matter of willpower that people regain the weight, it’s, it’s really a matter of physiology,

Summer:
yeah, totally, totally, and so, like, I, you know, kind of hearing this, I’m sure there’s people listening that are kind of thinking, and I’ve heard this before from clients, like, have I totally messed up my body? Like, can I recover from decades of chronic dieting like Will my hormones go back to the way that they were? How do you answer that?

Alexis:
So I think it’s a hard question, but at the end of the day, we we are where we are right now, and I think that it’s important to start off just by having a ton of compassion for ourselves that we live in this culture that made us believe that the best thing that we could do for ourselves was to try to restrict our eating. And I think that our bodies do tend to be resilient and regain some sort of balance in terms of what is right for you. Now that balance may not be, you know, your set point weight, of what your body was like when you were 20 years old. And also, just like our bodies change over time, naturally. And I think that a lot of people look back to this time of, well, I messed up my body because, you know, I weighed X when I started dieting, and now, you know, I’m much bigger, but, like also, maybe when you started dieting, you were 15 years old, and now you’re 40, and your body is not going to work the same way. So I think it’s important, you know, in a way, I don’t think that the question is so relevant, although I do have a ton of empathy for just like the struggle around body image and how scary it is to stop dieting and not really be sure exactly what your body is going to do. But I do think that, you know, the more important question is kind of, how can we care for ourselves now in the body that we’re in, and find a way to come back to ourselves with compassion and nourish ourselves and honor, you know, get back to a place of like honoring our body and reconnecting with our hunger and fullness and trusting ourselves, and just embark in that process. And part of that process is trusting that wherever our body’s gonna end up is going to be okay,

Summer:
yeah, yeah. It’s easier said than done. I think, you know, for a lot of people, it just feels like sometimes, like you’re coming really out of control, even though you never had control in the first place. Actually, that reminds me of one of the stories that you shared in the book, and you had, like, one of the clients kind of list out all the things that they want it. Or what was it? It was like all the things that happen when they try to lose weight. What do you remember?

Alexis:
I kind of do both. And these are from work that I do with science as well that like so many people, first of all, you know, we look at, what are the fears around not dieting? And a lot of people come in and they say, Well, if I give up dieting, I’m going to eat in a way that feels out of control. I’m going to, you know, my body is going to react in ways that I don’t know what it’s going to do. And it feels really scary. But I think that when we go into, you know, really dive to the next level of that. And what’s underlying that is, you know, people are not if they’re coming in to try to heal their relationship with food, we can kind of assume that things aren’t going so great as it is, and oftentimes, many of the things that people fear from giving up dieting is actually what, what is happening with dieting? So, you know, it’s like, yeah, so it’s like, well, that’s already happening. So you know, maybe that’ll continue to happen, or maybe it won’t, but my hope is that people are open to trying something new. And I think that, you know, people are listening to this podcast, people are, you know, looking to learn more about mindful eating and intuitive eating. It’s coming from a place of just being tired of doing the same thing over and over again. And in some level, I think that people are open to a different approach.

Summer:
Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, I see it, especially once you’ve been doing it for like, 2030, years, it’s like this, like you physically can’t physically and mentally can’t do it anymore. And I think that that can be a catalyst to healing. Yeah, it’s exhausting.

Alexis:
It’s exhausting going through that same cycle over and over again, and especially the mental kind of the self criticism, the beating, you know, beating ourselves up, and the amount of space it takes up in our brain, it’s tiring.

Summer:
So what do you say to someone who says, like, I have to lose weight for my health?

Alexis:
So I think that there is so much research at this point showing that, you know, our health is not determined by our weight. There was, you know, for example, a big research review that just came out recently, it was covered in the New York Times that showed that, again, that there are that fitness is a much more key variable in terms of determining our health and our weight. But that’s not the first study to show that, you know, we’ve been hearing for years and years, if not a decade or more. You know, emerging research looking at the factors that do impact health, and you know, this is something that a lot of people don’t want to hear, but like most of what impacts health is totally out of our control. The biggest predictor of health is income. So we know that across the income span, the more money that you make, the more wealth that you have, the longer that you’re going to live. And you know, income is not something that we have a tremendous amount of control over, especially, you know, wealth in this country. Some of the other, you know, huge impacts on our health is genetics. You know, by and far, that is one of the biggest ones. And then when we look at the things that we can control, diet and exercise is not the main factor. Like, yes, okay, fitness does have an impact on our health, certainly for people who are wanting to improve their health and fitness, that’s a an option that we have more control over. But also we need to look at things like stress management, because we know that chronic stress takes a, you know, toll on our health. We also know that being on that, you know, dieting on again, off again cycle is a stressful experience. We know that experiencing weight stigma creates a state of chronic stress. We know that, you know, living in a marginalized body is a stressful experience. So when we look at, when we hear studies that are like, well, you have to lose weight for your health. In our people are healthier than you know, fat people we have, there’s so much that that study isn’t tell. Us, because we’re looking at not only, you know, people at different weights, but people are being exposed to different levels of weight stigma, people who are being treated with different levels of people who have different levels of access to care in the medical setting, like if you go to the doctor and you’re constantly being told that you have to lose weight and that there’s something wrong with your body, and being fat shamed at the doctor’s office. That’s a really awful experience, and it makes me want to avoid the doctor’s office. And we know that people who are at higher weights tend to get less preventative care, because going to the doctor is an awful experience, and they don’t want to do it, and that makes ton of sense. Also, when they do go to the doctor’s office, oftentimes people are not being treated with adequate care. They’re being told to lose weight instead of, you know, actually diagnosed with whatever brought them into the doctor’s office to begin with, or they’re being told you can’t have this medical procedure until you lose weight or, you know, so it’s a very complicated story, but I think what’s not complicated is that it is pretty clear that weight is not the be all, end all when it comes to our health, and that if you are interested in improving your health, there’s a lot that we can do completely independent of our weight. You know, stress management, not smoking cigarettes, you know, not drinking alcohol to excess, getting a decent night’s sleep, connecting with friends like we know that loneliness has a big impact on our health. And you know, these things are sometimes a little less sexy than, like, what the newest miracle food is, or, you know, how many, you know, ounces of flax seed to add to your smoothie, your smoothie in the morning. But these are the things that really do make an impact. And we often, when we’re focusing on losing weight, we discount those things. You know, we say we’re not going to go get lunch with friends because I might eat something that’s not on my diet, or I’m not going to, you know, I’m going to wake up at five o’clock in the morning to make sure that I go to the gym. And so what if that means I’m getting five hours of sleep?

Summer:
Yeah, exactly like you see how dieting, kind of, you know, really is harmful to your health in many ways, like how it, like you said, impacts stress and sleep and sometimes socialization in some cases, yeah, yeah. So, you know, in your book, you talk a lot about, you know, the importance of mindfulness. And you mentioned up front that, like, mindfulness was sort of one of those things that really, like, kind of opened your mind and helped you find Health at Every Size. So why is mindfulness so important?

Alexis:
I think mindfulness is such a powerful tool or practice really, because it’s not just about, you know, changing our relationship to food. It does, but I think fundamentally, mindfulness can really shift the way that we see ourselves and the way that we interact in the world. So, you know, one of the skills of mindfulness is, well, you know, for people who are familiar, I’ll start off by saying that mindfulness is really just the process of being completely, fully aware and present in the current moment. So, you know, most of us live our life kind of going along. We’re pretty checked out, and we’re often not aware of, like, what’s happening in our body, what’s happening emotionally with us, how we’re feeling, you know, even like what we’re doing, we really kind of are, like, going through in this zoned out kind of way. And mindfulness start is a meditation practice that helps us just increase our awareness. So in terms of, like, food and our body, it really starts. One of the most powerful things that I think mindfulness does is just it. We can start to observe the things that we’re saying to ourselves. So at the foundation of changing anything about ourselves is awareness is just, you know, we have to see what we’re doing before we can try to change it at all. And then I think also, we have to try to foster a sense of compassion for ourselves, a sense of collaboration like that we’re not our worst enemies, that we’re able to be on the same team with ourselves, working with kindness, to have you know if there’s changes we want to make in our life, and so many of us are just hired in this constant self criticism, if we pause and just listen to the things that we’re saying to ourselves, if like, things we want to say to our worst enemy, let alone someone that we care about. And I think that even their mindfulness can go a long way in terms of changing the inner dialog. You know, observing what we’re saying to ourselves, starting to notice, you know, maybe, whoa, that’s really, you know, harsh. What is there something else I could be, you know, shifting kind of, I don’t talk about, I don’t think that it’s helpful to try to erase those thoughts or make them go away completely, because kind of, the more we focus on something, the more that it sticks around. But I think when we notice that, we can kind of say, Okay, there’s a thought. It’s not necessarily the truth. It’s just a thought. And what do I really need right now? How can I be more kind or loving to myself in this moment? And I think that that’s, you know, one of the key things that mindfulness does now. On a more practical level, I think that mindfulness also can help. Us be more in tune with like, when we’re hungry, what foods we’re in the mood to eat when we feel satisfied, what it feels like to eat past the point of fullness, when our eating is driven by an emotional experience versus a physical one. It just brings more awareness to everything. And I think that for many people who have maybe started to explore like mindful eating or intuitive eating, especially just like through social media, it can feel like the sense of like, Don’t diet, diets don’t work, eat whatever you want. And that can seem really overwhelming, because there’s no way to know, you know. Well, how do I know what I want to eat, or how do I know when I’m hungry? And I think that mindfulness can be kind of the missing link there, because when we’ve spent so much of our lives in conflict with ourselves and really tuning out from our mind and our body, mindfulness is something that can help us just hear naturally what our body is is trying to tell us, and many of us need a little practice to get back there.

Summer:
Yeah, it’s, it’s challenging, like, and I know you kind of mentioned this in the book, and I always feel this way, like, as soon as you kind of mentioned meditation, I was like, Oh, I gotta, like, leave the room. Like, I can’t do this. I actually did your five minute meditation. So it’s like, and I honestly found it so hard. It was like, one minute, and I was like, Is this thing over yet? But then, you know, I think you made a huge point that I feel like is not necessarily new to me, but for some reason it like, really stood out this time. And it was like, the purpose of this is to just, like, observe those thoughts. So I was like, okay, like, just notice that this is bothering me. Like, notice that this is hard, versus, like, trying to just be like, this isn’t working because my mind isn’t quieting. And I think that that was, like, a huge differentiating factor, and that’s something that you really try to, like bring home is like, hey, the purpose Hey, the purpose isn’t to, like, get into this and, like, have totally clear mind and clear thoughts. It’s like to just observe, like, what you’re actually thinking and doing. Like, wow, this experience is happening. But I have such a challenge. Five minutes felt so long for me.

Alexis:
Yeah, and, you know, I think I’m a big proponent of mindfulness is something that should fit into your life, into your daily routine, and doesn’t mean that we have to, like, spend 20 minutes, or even five minutes every day, you know, building a meditation practice. I often have people when they’re just starting, start with, like, three minutes of meditation. You can start with one minute if five minutes feels overwhelming, but, yeah, it’s exactly what you’re saying is that mindfulness doesn’t have to be this, like, completely serene experience, where we’re like, finding some kind of existential bliss, like it’s really just about sitting with yourself for five minutes, and that can be uncomfortable, like it can be hard to just slow down and be with ourselves. And it’s not about quieting your mind or anything like that, or only focusing on your breath. A lot of the meditation that I teach is kind of centered on focusing on your breath, but the idea is not to stay totally focused on your breath where our mind isn’t wandering off. It’s to use the breath as a tool to observe the mind and to notice when it wanders off. And I think that there’s a lot of value in just that process of noticing, like, I’ve often left a meditation period where my mind is going all over the place, and maybe I notice that I keep going to, like, thoughts of worry or thoughts of whatever, and I leave the meditation I’m like, Well, I’m actually feeling pretty anxious right now, and maybe when I sat down to meditate, I wasn’t aware of that. So that, I think, in many ways, is a gift, because we’re able to say, okay, like, wow, I have this thing going on today. What do I need to try to care for myself? Because I am feeling, you know, maybe I am feeling a little more anxious than usual, and I need to make sure that I am doing things that are comforting, that are soothing, that I’m focusing on self care, that maybe I’m not going to go do this stressful thing that I have planned at the end of the day. So I think the awareness is really where everything starts.

Summer:
Yeah, and I think that was that’s really key. And I so I love that you highlighted that. So I know we have to wrap things up here. Tell everyone just a little bit about your book, the diet free revolution.

Alexis:
So the diet free revolution is a book I’ve been wanting to write this for so long. I feel really so fortunate that I finally have the opportunity. I started working on this book almost 10 years ago to initially, my goal was to kind of translate some of what I was learning in the research field to, you know, the general public, but also as it evolved and my work evolved, I really thought about what I was doing with my clients. I’ve been working with people struggling with mostly binge eating disorder and other kinds of disordered eating for about 10 years now, and there were things that I see over and over again, often as a product of diet culture, of you know, tools that have been really helpful for people. So I tried to think in this book, if someone’s coming to see me, and they’re still maybe have one foot in diet culture right there. Have maybe heard about this thing intuitive eating or mindful eating, and I’m using the words interchangeably here, but they’re not the same thing. But, you know, maybe they’ve heard of of, kind of like an anti diet philosophy. They know that what they’ve been doing isn’t working, but they’re not sure where to go from there. And maybe they do still want to lose weight. Maybe they are still holding on to this sense that my body’s not okay right now. You know, what is the work that kind of the universal pieces of the work that go from bringing a person there to helping them really work towards a place of more like food freedom, or, you know, just being unburdened by this struggle around food. So I created a 10 step program, because one of the things that I think is important is that people have structure, and it was intentional that it kind of mimics the idea of, like a diet plan that’s like 10 steps to lose 10 pounds, although this time you’re not trying to lose 10 pounds, although you’re losing kind of the weight of diet culture, but I think that oftentimes people get overwhelmed at the beginning, and there’s something that feels safer about having a structure and this sense of, here are some things that you can do so it weren’t the program the book works through. You know, at the beginning we talk a lot about some of the research of like, why diets don’t work, what the research actually really says about our health, and if we want to improve our health, what are some things that we can do? And then it goes through the skills of mindfulness and mindful eating. And we also speak about, you know, what to do, kind of how to handle what many people call like, quote, unquote, emotional eating, and how to understand more about how our emotions impact our relationship with food. And then one of my favorite chapters is the last one, which really gets into this sense of like, now that we have a little bit more head space that we’re not, you know, thinking about what to eat all the time, how do we live our lives in a way that feels authentic and aligned with our values? So we talk a little bit about values, and we also talk about pleasure, which I think there’s such a taboo, especially for women in our culture, around experiencing pleasure in our bodies, whether it’s around sex, whether it’s around food. So I tried to dive in a little bit about what is it like, and how can we really live our lives more engaged, kind of reclaiming our pleasure around our bodies.

Summer:
Yeah, perfect. Well, I just, I love the way it was written. I loved the, you know, the stories that you used. I loved how there were specific kind of, like summaries and things to do, like actual exercises at the end of each chapter. I thought it was really well put together, and so I’m excited for other people to go and grab a copy. So with that said, Where can people find more of you?

Alexis:
So people can find me. My website is Dr covidson.com you can find information about me. And I also have a small group practice in New York City, where we specialize in the treatment of binge eating disorder. They can find me on Instagram at the anti diet plan, and I think on most social media, at the anti diet plan.

Summer:
And I’ll link to all of that in the show notes. Sorry, go ahead.

Alexis:
Yes, sorry, no, I was just gonna say, and the book is available wherever books are sold. Amazing.

Summer:
Yeah, I’ll link to that too. And I really, really enjoyed it, and I really appreciate you taking the time to be here today. It was so awesome to have you. Thank you. Alexis. Oh, thank you so much. Rock on.

I hope you enjoyed listening to this one again, or maybe for the first time, it’s definitely one of my favorites. I love referring people to this episode, so was happy to re share it. I will have new episodes next time, which will be in two weeks again. And thank you so much for listening today. You can find the links mentioned at summer innan.com, forward, slash, 320, Rock on. I’m Summer innan, and I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer innan, and if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts, search, eat the rules and subscribe, rate and review this show. I would be so grateful until next time, rock on you.