Episode 006: In this episode of Real Health Radio I interview Isabel Foxen Duke.
Isabel is a Certified Health Coach and Emotional Eating Expert. She helps women make peace with their bodies, so they can stop obsessing about food and get back to living awesome lives.
After years of trying to overcome emotional eating through “traditional” and alternative approaches, Isabel discovered some radical new ways to get women over their food issues once and for all.
Isabel has been featured in the Huffington Post, Elle Magazine, XOJane, and has even been praised by Ricki Lake. More information can be found about her at www.isabelfoxenduke.com
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to episode six of Real Health Radio.
Welcome to Real Health Radio, health advice that’s more than just about how you look. And here’s your host, Chris Sandel.
Chris Sandel: So, hi everybody. Welcome to the show. And on today’s show, it’s an interview with Isabel Foxen Duke. Isabel is a certified health coach and emotional eating expert. She helps women make peace with their bodies, so they can stop obsessing about food, and get back to living awesome lives.
Afters years of trying to overcome emotional eating through traditional and alternative approaches, Isabel discovered some radical new ways to get women over their food issues once and for all. Isabel has been featured in The Huffington Post, Elle Magazine, xoJane, and has even been praised by Ricki Lake. More information can be found about her on isabelfoxenduke.com. And I’ve been following Isabel for about a year now. She had a video training series called Stop Fighting Food. She’s actually about to re-release that again this year.
But I came across her last year, so sometime in the August/September time. Some of you maybe not know this about me, I’m really into music, I have been for a very long time. That is both band as well as electronic music. I used the work for a website called Resident Advisor, which is like the bible on electronic music. It was set up by a friend of mine. Over the holidays, they’ve been on over the summer this year. So most of them being to music festivals, or to play golf. But, yeah. Music is a really big part of my life. And with the video training series that Isabel has, she used a piece of music by a band or an artist called Moderat. And it’s from an album that I really love. And I find that so much of the music that people use in videos, and different stuff online just feels there’s not a lot of thought that’s gone into it, and it feels off, and totally inappropriate.
So it was really refreshing to watch this video and hear this music. And I know it’s probably not the best way to describe that’s how I got into it, but it was why I initially started following her. But then from there, obviously, she has to been then providing good content, for me to keep going. And that’s what I found out. She just has such great things to say. I think she’s got a really good take on things. And the more I can read what she had to say, or listen to her on a podcast, the more I’ve really got into her take on things. And I think she’s just someone who is really super smart. She’s one of those people who simultaneously makes you feel smarter and dumber at the same time. Or at least that’s how I feel when I chat with her.
I’m smarter because she’s super supportive. But I also feel dumber, because she’s just so widely read, and understands things on such a deeper level. And so this under confident part of me is like, “I just wish I could be able to speak like her or understand things like her.” So we cover a lot. As part of the podcast, we look at why binging and emotional eating really stems from dieting and weight expectations. We look at fallacies around weight and control, the problems with emotional deprivation. So not just physical deprivation, but emotional deprivation. We talk about this new documentary that she’s involved in, called Fattitude. And also her Stop Fighting Food program. So, I hope you enjoy today’s podcast, going to sit back and enjoy. So, welcome to the show, Isabel.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Thank you, Chris. I’m very excited to be here.
Chris Sandel: That’s great. And so look, to start off with, why don’t you just give a bit of background about you, and about how you got into the health and body image movement.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Sure. This is like one of those things where there’s the long and short story. I always say that at the beginning of every podcast, when this is the first question. But basically, I got into this because of my own personal struggles, which I think is a very common answer to that question. It just so happens that my particular struggle was not some sort of chronic illness that I tried to heal with food.
My particular struggle was that I was completely obsessed with food, and binge eating, and eating emotionally all the time, and couldn’t figure out why. And just, food was compromising my sanity. You know what? I was thinking about it far more than the average person, I felt compulsive around food in a way that I didn’t understand.
And this was from a very young age on. I always felt like my hunger was insatiable. Like if I didn’t hold myself back from eating everything in sight, I would. And I think that obviously now, later in life, I really connect this with a long history of dieting. I was put on my first diet when I was about three years old. So food was always this temptation, it was always the seductive thing, it was always this reward, it was this treat. It was this thing that I wasn’t supposed to have, but was holding myself back from, and constantly trying to control my hungers around, both emotional and physical hungers. And so, yeah. So that’s really how I ended up getting into the health and wellness world, was through my own personal … like just struggling with it.
And I think a lot of people, it’s almost unfortunate that they end up getting into this industry because they’re struggling themselves, and they don’t necessarily have a solution. One of the reasons that I actually decided to make this a career, and really get into this professionally, was because I couldn’t find any other professionals that had a solution. So when I actually came to something new, that was like, “Holy shit, this might actually work, this might actually be the answer,” I did feel the obligation to share it. I had some of the best clinical treatment for binge eating, and other various forms of disordered eating that exist. Like the fanciest rehabs, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and was I very privileged, you know, my parents were sending me to these places at a young age, and I obviously continued my own treatment into adulthood.
I really was seeing the best of the best practitioners, and no one was really giving me a solid solution to either emotional eating or binge eating. The answer didn’t really seem to exist, or when somebody said that they had an answer, it didn’t work for me. So that was really the real reason why I got into this industry, was because when I, actually after decades of trying to figure it out, felt like I came to something that actually was a solution for me, I felt pretty compelled to share it with the world.
Chris Sandel: Sure. And what was that disconnect between what they were doing, and it wasn’t working, versus what you came to, and realized, “Actually, this is the way that I want to do it,”?
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Isabel Foxen Duke: Well, ultimately, and I don’t know how much of this will be news to people out there listening. But ultimately, most binge eating in particular, and a lot of emotional eating stems from dieting, obviously. Like most non-dieters, people who have no restrictive histories, they don’t tend to eat emotionally that much. And binge eating, in particular, is just straight up a reaction to deprivation. I mean, clinicians seem to understand this. However, not a lot of clinicians are making the leap to it, it’s almost like, “We understand that diets don’t work, we admit the diets don’t work, we understand that diets create binge eating, and in a lot of instances, are what are creating emotional eating as well.” However, the general party line is, “if you are eating normally, you will be thin, you’ll have this specific kind of body tape, you will be BMI 25 or lower.”
And that was, I think, ultimately the biggest problem, was that I was always trying to attack my binge eating and emotional eating problem from this desire to change my body. And because of that, I didn’t understand why nothing was changing. But the reality of the situation was that I was in many different conscious and even subconscious ways, never able to not really restrict my food, never able to really let go of trying to control my food, because it was always all about weight loss at the end of the day. It was always all about trying to get thinner. Even when I was doing things … and I’ve talked about this a lot in my blog. But intuitive eating, which I think is an amazing step forward for clinicians, to be helping women eat more intuitively, and listen to their bodies for direction around food, rather than external diets.
I was approaching intuitive eating from a diet mentality, by virtue of the fact that I was approaching intuitive eating from this, “If I do this correctly, I will get thin.” place. And it was that way of thinking, that actually kept me … even though I had the best intentions to listen to my body, and I thought that I was doing everything right, to eat “normally.” Because it was coming from a place of, “My body’s not good enough, this is what I have to do to get thin.” I was still subconsciously trying to control, and in some ways, restricting my food, always. Which ultimately led to binge eating and emotional eating, a lot. There’s this weird kind of, it’s not a catch-22, but kind of like a disconnect in the clinical world, I think that still exists today. But as far as treatment for binge eating and emotional eating is concerned, most people are saying, “If you get your binge eating and emotional eating under control, you will be a certain size.”
When now I know from being influenced by people like Linda Bacon, and the Health at Every Size community, that that’s not necessarily true. And making that the goal, what I realized for myself personally, and this is really the core of my message, by making weight loss the goal of ending binge eating, or emotional eating, or even just not even necessarily ending those things, but really trying to grapple with them, and deal with those things, you’re self-sabotaging, because you are, consciously or subconsciously restricting or trying to control your food, which is what’s causing binge eating to begin with, if you are doing it for the purpose of trying to get thin or control your body. And so that was this big a-ha moment.
It was like as long as my attempts at dealing with emotional and binge eating were coming from a place that my body’s not good enough, “If I do this correctly, I’ll lose weight,” I was still in diet mentality, and I was still going to get the same results. I’m going to step back for a second. When I say diet mentality, the reason why diet mentality screws people over is also because you’re setting yourself up for this constant reward-punishment relationship with food, you’re setting yourself up for this constant self-criticism around food, like judgment around your food choices every day. Those things are really forms of what I call emotional restriction, that ultimately, I think, also lead to emotional eating and binge eating all the time.
So basically, I think the biggest difference between me and every other emotional eating and binge eating coaches out there (although some of them are changing, and the tune really is changing to incorporate more Health at Every Size kinds of principles) ultimately is, I look at emotional eating and binge eating, and I believe the solution, the only real solution that will ever work, has to be a truly body positive solution. Meaning, it has to come from a place of, “I want to cure my relationship with food, so that I can become sane, not because my body’s not good enough the way it is, or because I believe that I will be thin if I do X, Y, and Z then with food correctly.” If that makes sense.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. No, totally. And when I’m working with clients, one of the big things I’m always saying is like, “We are not going to be using your weight as a yardstick. I want you to be using intuitive eating for everything else, like how is your sleep? How is your memory? How is your concentration? How is your digestion? Let’s look at all of those things.” Because they’re the useful feedback. “What’s happening with your weight?” is really just not that important. And when people come and see me, I make a guarantee that if people aren’t happy with my results, that I will refund them. But the one thing I never guarantee is weight loss. I am very upfront with people about that, like, “I don’t know what will happen with your weight.” Often, like most of the time when people start with me, they do put on weight.
Normally by the time we end up, you’re there back at the weight that they started at, but they’re now eating lots more food than they were before, and they’re much more in control in terms of not being crazy around that, and just getting along with their life. But I really want people to get away from the using that weight as a yardstick, because I think that’s really the only yardstick people use when they’re really honest about it. So they tell themselves it’s about health. But when you peel that back, and you say, “You know what? Actually what you’re doing isn’t healthy for you,” they still want to do it, because actually weight is the real motivator.
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Isabel Foxen Duke: 100%. And this whole health versus weight conversation brings up this whole other topic, which is a lot of people are saying…I think people assume that weight and health are the same thing, when they’re not. And I think that this is one of the reasons why the clinical community is so confused, and why clinical eating disorder treatment, a lot of times, can be confusing for people. Because the clinical world is really trapped in this, “Okay, well, I am being told by the entire medical community that being healthful means being a certain weight.” But we obviously now are seeing more and more research that that is not necessarily true. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why a lot of clinical eating disorder treatments, they’re sending conflicting messages.
They’re like, “Don’t care about your weight. But don’t worry, when you don’t care about your weight, you’ll be this size, or this size is healthier, etc.” So I think it’s a little bit challenging, and unfortunately I think that a lot of eating disorder treatment is being stifled by the general consensus in the medical community, that being healthy means being a certain size, when we know more and more, and there’s just increasing evidence to support the idea that that is not necessarily true, and that weight and health are actually two separate things. And that people are not all built the same, we’re not all iPhone 6’s, we’re not all supposed to necessarily be the same weight. And this is a huge topic of conversation that we need to be having more gladly in various clinical settings, I believe.
Chris Sandel: Right. And from my perspective, dieting seems to be just like one of the worst things that people can do with their relationship with food.
Isabel Foxen Duke: And their health, and their physical health.
Chris Sandel: Totally. But in terms of dieting leading to binging, and that binge-diet cycle, from your perspective, is weight the main driver as part of that, or are there other components as well?
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Isabel Foxen Duke: On a superficial level, it is 100% weight. People don’t generally restrict their food from a calorie perspective unless they’re trying to lose weight. They might say it’s about health, but ultimately, they’re just confusing weight and health in that sense. I don’t think anyone tries to restrict their calories unless they’re concerned about their weight in some capacity. Either trying to lose it, or not wanting to gain it, or something to that effect. That being said, you’re begging a different question, which is why do people want to lose weight to begin with? Is a much bigger psychological and sociological question. So when people say, “Do people screw around with their food just because they want to lose weight?” The superficial answer is no one restricts their food unless they’re trying to fuck with their weight. That’s the superficial answer.
The deeper answer is, why do people want to control their weight to begin with? That has psychological implications, like, “I want to lose weight because I believe that when I get to X pounds, I’ll have X, Y and Z as social benefits, I will find the love my life, my boss will take me more seriously, my family will get off my back, etc.” No one cares about weight loss in a vacuum. We care about weight loss because what we make weight loss mean, because of what we think the consequences of our weight are going to be in the world. Some of which actually have validity, unfortunately, because we live in a world is that weight discriminating. And that’s real, and that’s a really big problem. And I don’t think that we’re going to actually find a solution to disordered eating, disordered thinking, diet binge cycling.
I’m not sure a real solution to that problem is going to exist as long as our society and our culture is as weight discriminating as it is. Especially right now, it’s really become more and more aggressively weight discriminating, even over the past like 20, 30 years, it’s just exponentially become more weight discriminating. But some of them are not necessarily based in reality. Some of them are more neurotic or obsessive, or they’re coming from a psychological place, that might not necessarily be in line with rationality or rational thinking. Because when we feel out of control in different areas of our lives, on some level, we think that it’s easier to make it about food and our weight. Like if my partner wants to leave me, it’s a lot easier to say, “Oh, it’s because I’m fat. I guess I should go on a diet to fix it,” than actually to grapple with the fact of the matter that maybe rejection happens, and it’s painful, and it might not necessarily be a solution to that.
So I think the threefold answer to that question is, yes, it’s always about weight for the most part. The question, the deeper question is why do people want to control their weight to begin with? That’s psychological, and cultural, and sociological, and has much more of a greater implication for it. Some of which are based on social realities, that are very unfortunate, and basically, really about bias and discrimination. And the other is how we try to feel in control in an out of control world. It’s much easier to make our pain about our weight, and make the answer to every emotional problem we have, a diet, than to actually face loss, rejection, other kinds of emotional pain that maybe we can’t do anything about, other than feel.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And I totally agree with you on that. What my clients say when I’m working with them, is that there’s so much I do that has absolutely nothing to do with food and body image in that real obvious way. It’s dealing with so many other areas of their life that actually are the real kind of crux of what’s going on. And people, as you say, they want to make it about their body, and make it about food. But actually, that’s not what it’s really about, that’s kind of a mask, or it’s dealing with it on a superficial level. And then when you start to actually look at what’s going underneath, that’s the stuff that really needs to be dealt with.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Totally. Like you will never fix your romantic life by going on a diet in my opinion. Despite the fact that there may be these cultural and social realities, at the end of the day, people get married at every size, every day, all day long. Like if you are struggling in your relationship, there’s probably something going on outside of your weight. But we tend to make it about our weight because that just seems easier. Going on a diet seems like a really simple solution to these much bigger problems that we don’t necessarily have solutions for. What’s ironic about it, is that obviously diets don’t work. They don’t actually end up even producing the fake superficial solutions that we think they’re going to produce, or that they’re supposed to produce.
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Isabel Foxen Duke: And then we end up just getting into the cycle of self-hatred, and more extreme dieting, and more extreme rebelling, and it’s like, it’s just a vicious cycle that is based on two myths. One, the myth that we can control other circumstances in our life with our weight. That’s fallacy number one. Not true, not a thing, yet people totally convince themselves of it, so that they feel like they have some place, something that they can do with their emotional discomforts or uncertainties.
And then the second fallacy is, “Not only can I control the rest of the world with my weight, but I control my weight myself.” That also is not necessarily true. Like we think not only that going on a diet is the solution to whatever emotional problem, but that going on a diet is actually going to get us the result that we want.
Going on a diet itself doesn’t work. So it’s two fallacies, it’s two things that don’t work, two false senses of control. And they are both working in tandem to essentially create a perfect storm, which is where we see a lot of disordered eating and dysfunctional eating coming from.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And I’ve come across clients who have actually been successful in getting the kind of “body” that they want, but the problem is it’s then, “Wow, I’ve got to do all this to keep it up.” And there’s never a way of being able to enjoy it, because there’s that sense of, “I’m hanging on by a thread here.” And so it is this real hollow victory when someone then gets there.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah. Every time somebody says that I’m always a little bit skeptical also of how long can you hang on by a thread. It’s really like everyone can hang on by a thread, but how long can you hang on by a thread? So when we say diets don’t work, it’s also really important to talk about what that actually means in reality. Like what we are we talking about? Diets don’t work for how long? Diets work for almost everyone in the short term. They work for almost no one in the long term. And I think that that’s really true. I’ve said this actually in a podcast recently. I know so many people who are diagnosed anorexics, who are able to get to extremely, extremely low weights through force and will, only to end up falling into binge eating years later. It’s this crash.
And that amount of time is going to be different for different people, and also that amount of time tends to go down with every subsequent diet attempt. So when I was younger, I could lose 10 pounds, 20 pounds on a diet. And of course, I would gain it back. But at least I could lose it the first time, in my head. Now, eventually, I got to a place where over time, with each subsequent diet attempt, my ability to stick to a diet lessened. So when I was 15 I could stick to a diet for 30 days, when I was 18, I could only stick to a diet for 10 days. And then eventually I got to a point where I literally couldn’t even think about dieting without wanting to shove my mouth with brownies. It got progressively harder and harder and harder to hang on by a thread, which actually is an evolutionary function.
That makes biological sense, that it’s more and more challenging to forcibly starve yourself over time. It makes sense. And that’s what probably kept us alive back in the day. When we talk about diets don’t work, and really talk about the definition of success, we also have to think about time frames here, and what that means as far as in the longterm, which statistically, I think is something like three years. It’s 95%, 97% of people cannot maintain restrictive behaviors with food for more than three years. Even that statistic is a little weird because again, it’s like an average, it’s always different for everyone, everyone has different experiences. But in the longterm, the trend that we’re really seeing, the reality of the situation is like almost everyone loses their shit eventually.
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Chris Sandel: Yeah. And I think that is entirely correct. And so outside of dieting, what are other things that people are consistently doing that are making them feel crazy around food?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Well, again, what’s the definition of dieting? Dieting doesn’t necessarily have to mean like, “I’m on Weight Watchers, I’m on Atkins, I’m doing the South Beach diet.” We don’t necessarily have to define a diet that way. So I believe diets are what are making people crazy around food entirely. I think diets are the full-on problem, and of course, body image is a problem, by virtue of the fact that body image is what’s basically making people go on these diets. But ultimately, to me, if no one was ever on a diet, no one would ever have binge eating, emotional eating in issues, really. The question is what’s the definition of a diet? I don’t define diet by saying, “Weight Watchers, or Atkins, or South Beach.”
The real definition of a diet means essentially, I have a specific way of eating that I’m emotionally attached to. Meaning that if I don’t eat a specific way, whatever that specific way is, maybe that specific way is I only eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full, which most people would not call a diet. But if you’re thinking about it again, with diet mentality, like “I have to eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full, or else I will lose my shit, or else I will feel badly about myself, or else I will judge and criticize myself, or my self-esteem is somehow attached to eating in that particular kind of way.” That is what I consider to be a diet, when we are emotionally attached to eating a certain way, when our self-esteem is dependent on eating a certain way, when we feel right or wrong, depending on how we’re eating.
All right. So for me, diets are the full-on problem, it’s just a matter of how are we defining diets. A diet doesn’t have to be like a commercially-defined definition of diet. For me a diet – if you’re judging your performance on food, like judging your performance around food, as like what makes you good or bad, or what makes you right or wrong, then that day, you’re on a diet.
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Chris Sandel: And I was reading … I can’t remember if I was reading something you’ve written recently, or I was hearing you talk about it, but you were talking about the difference between physical deprivation and mental deprivation in regards to food. And you were saying that mental deprivation is much worse in your opinion. Can you just speak a little bit about that?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah. I’ll say that it’s more problematic, it’s more often the problem. Because like for example, a lot of people physically deprive themselves stuff for all sorts of reason, but if that reason isn’t shame and judgment, and, “I’m a bad person if I eat this thing,” they actually have a decent shot of being able to stick to it. So a perfect example is like celiacs, who don’t eat gluten. Like technically, they’re restricting themselves from eating gluten. But you don’t see celiacs binging on gluten very often. For the most part, they are able to actually not eat gluten. And I think that that’s because their reaction to eating gluten is not, “Oh my god, I suck. I fell of the wagon, I’m such a bad person.”
Their reaction to eating gluten is like, “Oh, shit. Now, I have to go sit on the toilet, and that’s really annoying.” Or like, “I feel sick. That sucks.” Which are two emotional, and psychologically, two very different reactions. Or like another perfect example, is like ethical vegans. They are ethical vegans, vegans who are not eating animal foods for the purpose of ethics, for the purpose of animal rights. They are not thinking to themselves, “Oh my gosh, if I eat that hamburger, I’m going to be a disgusting fat pig that no one will love.” They are actually making that choice, it’s a choice. It’s a true choice, based out of reasons that have nothing to do with shame and self-judgment, basically. So, yeah. So I think that on the one hand emotional…I should back up for a second. What is emotional deprivation? Emotional deprivation versus physical deprivation.
Physical deprivation means like, “I’m actually sitting on my hands trying not to eat something.” Like, “I have taken gluten off the table, I have taken sugar off the table. I’m not letting myself eat more than however many calories.” Whatever it is. Physical restriction’s pretty obvious. Emotional restriction basically means, “I judge myself for having eaten something, or for eating something. I feel badly about myself for having eating something. My self-esteem is attached to something that I’ve eaten.” And that is 90% of the problem for most people, because it’s not that hard for people to give up physical restrictions. It’s not really as hard for people. I’ll say it’s not nearly as hard for people to give up physical restrictions as it is for them to stop feeling guilty and shameful about eating outside of what they think is okay. That is usually much more challenging.
Of course, there’s really more struggle with introducing food that they’ve previously disallowed. But the reason for that is the shame and guilt. The shame and guilt is really like the driving force behind all the deprivation and restrictions, feeling like, “Oh, shit. I’m going to be an unlovable fat pig if I eat this thing.” And so I think emotional deprivation, that’s what I call basically, just like shame, and self-criticism, and self judgment for having eaten something, usually on the basis of weight, or usually it having to do with fears around weight, is much more difficult to deal with, it’s a much harder thing to actually address. It’s 90% of the problem, and ultimately I do think that it is a bigger problem than physical restrictions in so far as obviously physical … or just starving yourself to death…That’s not going to last very long / that’s incredibly dangerous and bad for you. That’s obviously a huge problem.
But a physical restriction like, “I don’t eat gluten because I’m celiac,” is not inherently a problem. “I’m going to try not to eat gluten because it’ll make me fat, and I’ll never find a husband,” is psychologically a completely different thing.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And I think where I see this come up, when I’m working with people who have really restricted, and have been more on this anorexic side, as opposed to the binge eating side of things. And I’m being very generalizing in what I’m saying here. But often that family members and people from the outside, are like, “But you started to eat a lot more. You’re doing much better.” And they’re like, “Well, you’re physically feeding yourself, so that should then just translate into this just repairs itself.” And then they’re saying, “Well, you know what? I was eating a hell of a lot more, but I hated every moment of it because I haven’t then got past the mental side of things.”
Isabel Foxen Duke: 100%. I think that’s a really, really good example. An anorexic woman is not healed because she goes to a rehab center and they force feed her. That is not the answer to anorexia. There’s no amount of food you can force feed someone, or there’s no amount of food that a person can eat, that can heal them of the mental anguish that they’re feeling around food. That’s the real issue, that’s the real dysfunction, that’s the real disorder, so to speak.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And I think that’s where, from my perspective, when I’ve worked with people who’ve gone down the more traditional route, that’s the bit that seems to be missing a lot. Where it’s just very much focused on, “We need to get your calories up. We need you to be eating regularly.” And it’s almost like that’s the thing that’s going to just heal it all.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Right. It’s like healing the symptom instead of the problem.
Chris Sandel: Yeah.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Totally.
00:34:00
Chris Sandel: In terms of exercise, what are your thoughts in terms of exercise, in terms of helping someone if they got issues around food and body, and yeah, just that side of things?
Isabel Foxen Duke: I apply a very similar, if not the exact same attitude to exercise as I do food, which is basically, I teach what I call “intuitive exercise,” or intuitive movement, which means actually listening to your body about how your body wants to move, what makes it feel good, what doesn’t make it feel good, similarly to intuitive eating. I encourage my clients to eat what makes them feel physically well. Not that eating something for emotional reasons is wrong. But just again, we’re teaching the idea that your body is actually giving you biofeedback. You are a mammal, and you are an animal. You do not need external people, blog posts, books, pieces of paper, etc., to tell you how to eat. And similarly with exercise, I think that we should be doing what feels good to us physically, and doing what feels fun for us, and moving our bodies the way animals move their bodies, instinctively and naturally. And as far as the mental and emotional side of things, which is obviously my greater interest, I also similarly talk about exercise the way I would with food.
I just wrote this blog post recently and sent it out yesterday, you may have read it. Check your motivations. Are your motivations coming from a place of self-love and compassion, or are they coming from a place of self-hate, and, “I’m not good enough the way I am.”? If every time you go out for a run, it’s because you think you need to shave off five pounds, that’s going to probably backfire for you in the long run emotionally, physically, or otherwise.
If you’re going out for a run because you just effing love the way your body feels after that run, and love that endorphins, you’re just loving it, takes the stress off, makes your body feel good, make you feel strong. Whatever it is, you’re probably going to have a lot more success longterm. And I would say that that’s really what constitutes a healthy relationship with exercise.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And another thing. For me one of the big recommendations I make with someone, especially if they’re not naturally drawn towards exercise, and they haven’t done a lot of exercise. It’s like, “I want you think of an exercise that you really enjoy doing, that if in six month’s time someone told you there are no health benefits to doing it, you would continue to do it.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Or weight-related benefits.
Chris Sandel: No health benefits, weight benefits. It’s just something that you genuinely love to do. And then that’s your place to start. And it might be later on that you choose to do things that are going to help in terms of aesthetics if you want to go down that road. But really starting with the stuff that is fun, making you move your body, etc., is really what people should be focusing on.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah. Particularly in the beginning, I think helping people find enjoyment in exercise is really great. Because I think that particularly for extreme dieters, and people who are coming out of a more dysfunctional relationship with food. I know I certainly hated exercise. I was doing it from a place of self hate. I was just forcing myself to do it all the time.
Chris Sandel: And then there are those associations you have with exercise from in the past.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Totally. So finding just fun, playful things to do. Like I started taking pole dancing classes, and also I love swimming. Just fun things. The way I move my body like I was a kid, I think that’s a great place to start. Ultimately, I think that working out for health, for true health benefits is okay. I think that that’s actually … like a lot of people do that, particularly it can be a great way to manage all sorts of stuff, cardiac health, diabetes, etc. The question is again, can we separate weight from health? Because I think when it starts to be about weight, it starts to really be more about body shame, and not feeling good enough, and just hating the way we look, and not wanting to be seen, etc. Those kinds of motivations are really I think, much more problematic.
I think that if you’re running four times a week to help manage your diabetes, I don’t necessarily see a problem with that. I think when we conflate weight and health, that’s when problems actually start to arise.
Chris Sandel: Yes, definitely. I know body image is a big thing you talk about. I find the same thing with clients. But I also think that not just body image, but also just confidence, and confidence within yourself. Is that something that you …?
Isabel Foxen Duke: They’re related.
Chris Sandel: They’re totally, totally related. What are some of the ways that you think is great for helping someone build up that confidence within themselves?
00:39:15
Isabel Foxen Duke: And this is actually a really interesting question to be talking about with you because this is where I actually think that gender starts to become a bigger piece of the conversation. A lot of women feel like their only sense of worthiness is in the way they look. And women are taught this from a very young age, in particular. Not that men don’t have this, because they certainly do, and I think again, in the past 20 years, as the weight discrimination has been skyrocketing, men are more and more affected by this, again, particularly since late 80s, early 90s. But ultimately, when you really think about it historically, I think one of the reasons is why just pure traditional confidence and body image are also related – It really has to do with where’s your sense of self-worth coming from.
A lot of women in particular, but again, increasingly men as well, are basically taught from birth, that their sense of worthiness comes from the way they look. Women historically are valued by their bodies, and by their “beauty.” How they look is how they are valued as people. Historically, that has been true. We are taught that from a very young age. Every single Disney movie tells us that. I think ultimately, that’s really where the connection between just general confidence and body image comes from. It’s like, when you’re healing body image issues, one of the things you ultimately have to do to your point of view, is actually start to ask yourself, “Where am I getting my self worth? If my self worth is no longer based on the number on the scale, where the fuck is it coming from?”
And really ask yourself that question, like, “if I don’t really want to judge myself based on my weight anymore, how am I going to judge myself? Am I going to judge myself based on my ability as a mother? On my career? On my acts of service and kindness towards other people? Where is my self worth coming from, if not my looks?” And I think that that’s a really important question to ask, because ultimately, a lot of women, the reason their body image and their confidence are so highly connected, is because they’ve basically been taught since they were five years old, that their entire sense of self-worth should be coming from their bodies, should be coming from the way they look. That people are going to love them because of the way they look. They are inherently lovable because of their body size.
So that’s, I think, the bigger question, is that we need to be asking women, if we’re not going to look at your body as the sole defining factor of where your self-confidence is coming from, we need to find some other things for you to start judging yourself on the basis of.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And what I find is, you can split people … and again, I speak in generalizations, into two categories. And one is the person where you have got so little going on in all of the areas of your life, that you really need to get new interests, get new hobbies, build this life, where you get can those things. And for other people, and this is quite common, there are people who are achieving everything in terms of their career, women, they’re moving the corporate ladder, they’ve got a nice relationship, house, car, or all that. But there’s no appreciation for those things. And so it’s then, okay, how can you then build in that appreciation? And if actually, you don’t value those things, and you’re working your ass off to get to a place where you’re like, “You know what? I don’t want any of this stuff anyway.” It’s like, what do you then need then to be doing? Or what is the thing that you really want to be achieving?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah, totally. You can end up having a complete midlife crisis, a crisis of self when asking these questions because it really forces you to ask yourself what’s important. How do you want to judge yourself? How do you want to be judged by other people? What are your values? It really comes down to a question of what are your values? And that’s a question that we don’t often ask ourselves.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And if anything, too often, people are trying to follow this path that they believe that they should be on, or they should be doing these things, or these are the things that should be valued. And actually they’re not that important to them. And I’ve actually, in my personal life, I’ve had a number of girlfriends, wives of friends, etc., who’ve just quit corporate jobs, and they’re now doing jobs that they love. And they are just so much happier, because they’re like, “You know what? I don’t care about the money in whatever I thought I would. I don’t care about the sense of status of being a lawyer or whatever it may be.” It’s like, “You know what? I want to do something that makes me really happy.”
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah, totally. That was certainly my experience. A little known fact about Isabel Foxen Duke is that I used to work in finance in corporate America, and totally had my quarter-life crisis, where I quit my job, and babysat, and started studying nutrition for no reason. It was just like, I went the other way. So I get that.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. And no, I think for a lot of these women, and like yourself, you will be able to find a good career in whatever you then choose to do. And it might not be the most traditional route, but you’re going to be able to then be successful, because there are really strong women, and they have this real passion anyway.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah. I’m substantially more successfully in my current career than I think I ever could have ever been when I was working in finance because I hated it. And I wasn’t putting my all into it at all, I was literally just getting by. And now obviously, I work in a field where I’m like totally compelled by my job, and will do extra work for no reason. And I think that that’s really where my success comes from. I just think everyone has a better shot at succeeding at something they actually care about, than they ever will at succeeding at something they hate.
Chris Sandel: Yeah, definitely. And I guess, also through my perspective with looking at health, is so much of it’s not about the food, it’s all about all those other things going in someone’s life, because they’ve just been unhappy with all of those other areas. It’s not about finding the perfect diet.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Absolutely. Yeah. Again, no one cares about weight in a vacuum, we care about weight because of what we think it means. And we have to really start to ask ourselves like, “What is it that we actually really want underneath our desire to lose weight?”
00:45:45
Chris Sandel: Yeah. I’ve seen some posts that you’ve put on your Facebook page about a documentary called Fattitude. I think you’ve been interviewed as part of this. It looks really interesting. Can you just tell us more about it?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yeah, totally. So Fattitude is a really, really interesting project. It’s basically a documentary attacking weight discrimination as a really legitimate form of discrimination, certainly in the United States, and increasingly around the world. And really talking about weight bias as something that is incredibly problematic. I think there’s all sorts of instances of this. Again, I can’t speak for really outside of the US, most of my stats are going to come from that. But in the US, people are being fired for being too heavy, their health insurance, the amount they have to pay for health insurance goes up according to their weight. There’s all sort of actual real institutional forms of discrimination that are happening on the basis of size.
A lot of them are backed up by these claims that health is attached to weight, which really is …A lot of people are really trying to say, “Actually that may not be true.” And even if it were true, there’s a lot of questioning about how much of our weight is in our control? And are we really all necessarily supposed to be the same weight? Like a lot of these assumptions that if you’re over a certain BMI, then you should pay more for health insurance, is based on this idea that we are all supposed to be BMI 25, between like BMIs 21 and 25. Or whatever. There’s this specific narrow range of what a healthy weight means, and that might not necessarily be true.
So this is a big political conversation that’s being had, is this idea of how are we actually, potentially discriminating against people for something that they A) necessarily might not be able to control, B) is definitely not a realistic indicator of their health. And there’s a lot of incredibly negative, and really scary, and dangerous implications for this.
Like for example, if a thin person and a fat person go into a doctor’s office, and they both have diabetes, they both have the exact same blood sugar levels, one of them will be told, “Hey, I think that you should manage your sugar intake and start exercising more,” and the other will be told to lose weight. It seems to me that the first is obviously the much more saner and rational way to handle diabetes, especially considering the fact people can try to lose weight in lots of unhealthy ways. So, yeah. So there’s a lot of different issues involved with weight discrimination. Obviously I think that weight discrimination is something that happens on a spectrum. Fattitude, the movie, is really focused on plus-sized people in particular. So in the US, that would be like sizes 14 and up.
But I think, in general, my perspective, and one of the reasons that they had me come and talk on the documentary, is that I see weight discrimination as something obviously that affects people, and I think they would agree that affects people on a spectrum basis. Like somebody who’s a size two is treated differently than someone who’s a size 10, who’s treated differently than someone who’s a size 16, or a size 24. We have all sorts of judgments and assumptions that we make about people on the basis of size, that again may or may not be true. And I think that health is a very important topic of conversation to be had in that. But also people are being bullied and harassed for their weight. All sorts of horrible things are happening to people on the basis of size, that you would never do to somebody who’s had cancer, or was “unhealthy,” even if that person was unhealthy, which again we don’t know.
So it’s really looking at the various different ways that people are discriminated against on the basis of size, that to some extent, again, might have nothing to do with health. And really challenging how much of this is really about health, and how much of this is really about hate. And that is a really important question for us all to be asking. I think that there’s a lot of rationalizing weight discrimination, and what we call fatphobia on the basis of health. Again, we don’t necessarily know how much, for a lack of a better word, how much weight that really holds, we don’t really know how true that necessarily is, or how real that is really is. And again, it seems in many instances, to be a rationalization for bullying, a rationalization for shaming of various kinds.
And that’s what the documentary is really about. It’s really exploring weight bias as a true form of discrimination that’s taking over the planet right now, unfortunately. A lot of people confess that weight is the one socially acceptable form of discrimination left. I don’t necessarily know that that’s true, because I think there’s still a lot of racism, a lot of homophobia, and a lot of sexism in the world. So I’m not sure if I would go so far as to say that. But I’ve definitely heard before, and I think a lot of people have. Weight discrimination is certainly a form of discrimination that’s really unquestioned and unchecked in our society. And that’s what this documentary is really trying to shed light on. And I think that it’s incredibly important, and I’m really, really proud to be a part of the movie.
Chris Sandel: Wow. That sounds really, really interesting. But do you know when it’s going to be out, or any of that? I think the last time I saw, they were just about to do some Kickstarter campaign.
Isabel Foxen Duke: They’re in the last round of funding. So basically, they’ve done a couple of rounds of funding, mainly to pay for like interviews and travel, and all that jazz. They’ve now since completed all their interviews. So they have all the material they need, but they’re in the last round of funding for post-production. So that’s what’s going on with them right now. They’re doing a huge campaign this summer. It will be going on basically until September. So, I’d encourage everyone to go actually check out … I think it’s fattitudethemovie.com. I don’t know. I wish I had my notes on this, so I could really give people a proper place to go check it out. There’s an amazing Vimeo trailer, that will explain the movie much better than I ever could. And so I would definitely check out the trailer, and donate to the Kickstarter.
But basically, yeah, they’re going to be in hardcore fundraising mode until September. Hopefully, they’ll hit their goals, and make their movie, and I would love for this to be out in the next year or two.
Chris Sandel: Cool. I will find the links, and I’ll put them in the show notes, and below this, so people can go and access it that way.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Awesome.
00:53:05
Chris Sandel: So last year, you launched a program called Stop Fighting Food, and I know you’ve actually rolled that out again shortly sometime after summer. For those who don’t know about it, what is it? What is it all about?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Stop Fighting Food is basically my flagship program. It is the full-on enchilada of everything that I teach to help women stop feeling crazy around food, particularly women who identify with binge eating and emotional eating. However, I think that everything I teach can basically be broadly applied to dysfunctional eating across the boards, because like I said, a lot of it comes from the same places, and they’re all very intertwined. Stop Fighting Food is like my holy grail of everything you need to know in order to change your relationship with food permanently. It’s four months long. It’s pretty intense, the masterclasses. But there is a free video training series that I offer, and just to give everyone out there for free, an opportunity to really check my philosophy, and my methodology of how I help women go from feeling crazy about food to ending the food craziness once and for all.
And so if anyone out there is listening, I highly encourage you to go check out the free video training series, which will be officially out in September.
Chris Sandel: Cool. And where can they go and see that?
Isabel Foxen Duke: Stopfightingfood.com. I don’t when this is going to go up, but if this is going to go up sooner rather than later, you can actually go and register for it right now, and you’ll just get an email when it’s out. And the trailer is really cool. I really like the trailer. So if anyone thinks that I’m not totally crazy based on this interview, and you can definitely go to stopfightingfood.com, and go check out the trailer asap.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. Again, I’ll put the links and everything in the show notes. So, apart from just Stop Fighting Food, if people want to find out more info about you, where should they be going?
Isabel Foxen Duke: So Stop Fighting Food is a great place to go, especially if you want to see that video training series. Isabelfoxenduke.com is my blog. And that’s really, if you just want some immediate help, that’s the place to go. My blog has all sorts of blog post about, like my particular perspective on binge eating, emotional eating, feeling crazy around food, body image. It’s a pretty spot-on resource, I think. Most people find me through my blog, at Isabelfoxenduke.com. I would also suggest, if you like my blog, and you think that I’m on to something, I have this little free guide that I give out called How to Not Eat Cake. Actually the full title is How to Not Eat Cake Really Fast, Standing Up, When Nobody’s Looking. And I would sign up for that, and then you’ll get weekly coaching emails from me, which are also really fun and really helpful.
My coaching emails are like my bread and butter, as far as that’s where most of my following seems to be hanging out. That’s what they seem to love.
Chris Sandel: Cool. Well then, it’s been fantastic talking to you today. You have just a great insight on all of this stuff. I follow your blog all the time, I love reading your stuff. And I’m really looking forward to the Stop Fighting Food program.
Isabel Foxen Duke: Yay, me too.
Chris Sandel: Cool. I hope you have a good rest of your day, and yeah, hopefully, speak to you soon.
Isabel Foxen Duke: All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Sandel: All right. Take care.
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Yes, focusing on mindful eating, and getting rid of the emotional attachment to thinness, and having a non-attachment mindset to weight loss and being thin is the way to a happier and healthier life.
HOWEVER, when everyone who speaks about this issue is thin, it makes people believe that they won’t be successful or happy UNLESS they DO lose weight. Look at both of you- you speak about weight loss and claim that you don’t tell anyone there will be weight loss with your program – but you are both slender.
I’d like to see if there are any people who are NOT thin doing programs like this, and if people will even try a program presenter by an “overweight” person. This is a true conundrum.
Hi Lianda,
You say “when everyone who speaks about this issue is thin, it makes people believe that they won’t be successful or happy UNLESS they DO lose weight.” I have to disagree with you on this. There are tons of people preaching this message who are all shapes and sizes. And the interesting thing is, apparently no one is the right size to deliver this message. When I say it, people say “well that’s easy to say because you’re thin”. When some who is overweight says it then people respond with “well of course you’d say that, you’re fat”.
And you are probably right, maybe it is easier for someone who is thinner to sell a program like this. This is the unfortunate nature of the society we live in and thin privilege is definitely a thing. But as someone who is thin regardless of what I do, where does that leave me? Should I not talk about this stuff that I believe in? Should only people who are overweight be allowed to create products of this nature? What’s the solution?
[…] Isabel Foxen Duke explains the difference between ’emotional deprivation’ and ‘physical deprivation’ on Chris Sandel‘s podcast Real Health Radio Episode 6. […]