Episode 269: This week I speak with Naureen Hunani, the founder of RD's For Neurodiversity.
Naureen Hunani is the founder of RDs for Neurodiversity and a neurodivergent registered dietitian with 18 years of experience. In her private practice, she treats children and families struggling with a variety of feeding challenges through a trauma-informed, weight-inclusive and anti-oppressive approach. She has extensive experience working with neurodivergent people and has had the privilege of sharing her knowledge and expertise at national and international conferences. She’s also had the honour of developing courses and training for healthcare professionals, teachers, and therapists.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 269 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at www.seven-health.com/269.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach, and I can help you to fully recover from disordered eating or an eating disorder so that your days are no longer governed by fear and anxiety, and instead you can live a meaningful life that is in alignment with your values.
Before I get started with today’s episode, I just want to mention that I’m currently taking on clients, and at the time of recording this intro I have just one spot left. Client work is the core of my business and is the thing I actually enjoy the most. After working with clients for 15 years, I feel confident in saying I’m very good at what I do. So if you want to get unstuck and reach a place of full recovery, then I would love to help. You can head over to www.seven-health.com/help, and there you can read about how I work with clients and apply for a free recovery strategy call. The address, again, is www.seven-health.com/help, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.
On to today’s show. This week, it is a guest interview, and my guest today is Naureen Hunani. Naureen is the founder of RDs for Neurodiversity and a neurodivergent registered dietitian with 18 years of experience. In her private practice, she treats children and families struggling with a variety of feeding challenges through a trauma-informed, weight-inclusive, and anti-oppressive approach. She has extensive experience working with neurodivergent people and has the privilege of sharing her knowledge and expertise at national and international conferences. She also had the honour of developing courses and training for health care professionals, teachers, and therapists.
I discovered Naureen and RDs for Neurodiversity last year. Laura Thomas, the host of the former Don’t Salt My Game podcast, has a new podcast called Can I Have Another Snack, and Naureen was one of the guests on that show.
As part of this episode, we talk about Naureen’s background and how she got into being a dietitian and her experience with the training she received. She talks about having kids who are neurodivergent and how this caused a shift in the kind of clients that she was working with and really sparked the interest in this area, and how it also led to her discovering she was neurodivergent. We cover her site, RDs for Neurodiversity – what the site is and why Naureen set it up. We also cover trauma-informed care and how we need to rethink what trauma means when we think about neurodiversity.
This is a shorter conversation than usual, but it is no less helpful. I’m a huge fan of what Naureen is doing and want more people to be aware of her site, RDs for Neurodiversity. I should also note that it was because of Naureen and her site that I found Stacie Fanelli. I talked to her in Episode 262 of the podcast, where we go into eating disorder recovery and neurodiversity and we go into that in a huge amount of detail. So if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, then I highly suggest you do. I’ll add it to the show notes. Again, it’s Episode 262.
I will be back at the end with a couple of recommendations, but for now, let’s get on with the show. Here is my conversation with Naureen Hunani.
Hey, Naureen. Welcome to Real Health Radio. I’m excited to be chatting with you today.
Naureen Hunani: Thank you for having me on your podcast.
Chris Sandel: I’ve become aware of you because of your site, RDs for Neurodiversity, which I love. A lot of today’s conversation is going to revolve around the topic of neurodiversity, your experience with it, and the work you’re also doing in this area.
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Just as a starting place, do you want to give listeners a bit of background on yourself? Who you are, what you do, what training you’ve done, that kind of thing?
Naureen Hunani: Yes, absolutely. I am a multiply neurodivergent dietitian and activist. I guess my background is in dietetics, human nutrition. I graduated from Yale University almost 18 years ago. I have a private practice in Montreal, Canada, where I support children, adults, families with various feeding and eating concerns. And about two years ago, I founded RDs for Neurodiversity, the platform you just mentioned, which is a neurodivergent-affirming online continuing education platform for providers.
Chris Sandel: Nice. If we just stick with you for a moment, if we go back, what was your relationship with food like as a kid?
Naureen Hunani: I find that to be such an interesting question. I grew up in Pakistan, and fortunately my parents didn’t face a lot of the struggles that many parents do now, especially in the Western culture in North America. That’s where I am. So it’s very interesting when I reflect and think back. I think I grew up having really positive experiences with food. I have great, fun memories. Food is definitely a huge part of our culture. My dad owned a restaurant, so we were always exposed to a variety of cuisine from all over the world.
It’s interesting because even though it’s a huge part of our culture and a huge part of my childhood, there wasn’t a hyper-focus on it like the fixation that we’re seeing now with a lot of the parents. It was great when I was offered my favourite dishes, and sometimes we just had dinner. We would eat because you have to eat. Sometimes the food was not the best choice or my preferred food or whatever, but definitely I have really pleasant memories around food, and from a cultural perspective, food is definitely a huge part of the South Asian culture.
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Chris Sandel: When did you move to Canada and what was that experience like?
Naureen Hunani: I moved to Canada when I was 10 with my parents and two siblings. That was a very interesting experience, and I think a lot of – I guess my relationship with food did start to change as I went to school here, college, university. Because obviously, you see that there are certain types of foods that are valued here and certain types of eating. I remember in university, a lot of the lecturers, there was no BIPOC representation really. The majority of my teachers – well, none of them really looked like me.
And on top of it, a lot of the cultural foods are demonised and pathologized in the Western culture, labelled as ‘unhealthy’ or ‘refined’. So that was a very interesting experience because I didn’t know how much that negatively impacted my relationship with food until much later on because I was just trying to comply and fit in and learn. I love to learn new knowledge.
So as I reflect back, I feel like a lot of the questioning around “Am I eating the right food?” really started to happen during university for me.
Chris Sandel: Were you ever putting your hand up and disagreeing with anything that was being said, or that’s just not your personality type, so whatever the lecturer said about your foods, you just took their point of view?
Naureen Hunani: It’s interesting because certain things – I was one of those students who always sat in the front. I’m neurodivergent, and sitting in the back with all the distractions and all of that didn’t work for me. I was always the student in the front asking a lot of questions. But not necessarily questioning why cultural foods were demonised. And to be honest, during that experience, I didn’t really fully understand what was happening until much later, because the Eurocentric diet is something that’s put on a pedestal here in North America, like ‘this is how you should be eating’. I didn’t really fully understand the racism and all those subtle things that were happening in the classroom until much later, honestly. I was just like, “I’m going to be a good student.”
Then I remember going home and telling my mom, “You’re putting too much oil” and “You shouldn’t be cooking with this” and “Our vegetables are not good” – because we cook a lot of our vegetables. In our culture, we do have some raw fruit and vegetables, but a lot of our vegetables are cooked. I just remember learning a lot of this information and going back home and telling my mom and starting to police her a little bit, like, “You need to be healthier” and whatnot.
So yeah, I’m so glad that over the years I was able to process what happened and how problematic the system is and how we’re taught here especially in North America.
Chris Sandel: Even when I reflect on my nutrition education, everything was like one week ‘milk’s bad’ and then the next week ‘this thing’s bad’. There was so much chopping and changing of things until much later on when I had a much broader view of everything. But I do just remember how much the education would start to impact on my beliefs because they’re trying to teach you new ideas that are now quite questionable.
Naureen Hunani: Absolutely. My programme was a Bachelor of Science, and a lot of us went into it because we’re passionate about science and health. But critical thinking is not something that’s encouraged. It really is about compliance and prescriptive approaches. So you’re not necessarily encouraged to question anything.
I know for myself as a neurodivergent person, it is not safe for me to start questioning, even, in an environment where we’re not supposed to ask questions. I think that’s an environment that we need to cultivate, but that’s not something that’s cultivated in school. It’s really all about compliance and very authoritative – it’s about the power dynamics, even when it comes to student-teacher and how that shows up. It can be a scary place. [laughs]
So many of us – there were quite a few BIPOC students because there are a lot of international students that are very attracted to McGill, and none of us really questioned anything until much later.
Chris Sandel: What area did you want to go into? When you were first starting as a dietitian, what was the specialty you wanted to work in?
Naureen Hunani: When I initially graduated, I knew that I wanted to have a private practice at some point. That’s something that really appealed to me. I was pretty sure that I wanted to specialise in supporting adults. I didn’t really have an interest at that time in working with children. So that’s what I did for five years. I had a private practice and got several opportunities to work in different environments – basically, long-term care, rehab centres, hospital setting, community. I did a lot of different – food service. This is again, something when I look back, I feel like I need a lot more stimulation compared to my colleagues, so this is what kept me going.
And then there was a point when I realised, maybe this is not for me, because it just didn’t feel right. When I graduated I was pretty much working within a weight-centric model, and at some point I was like, “What is really going on? I can’t help anyone” because people were not able to sustain weight loss. A lot of what I worked on, what I supported folks was weight loss. That’s what we’re taught. Then I realised, “I can’t do this anymore” because I just did not feel satisfied. I just didn’t feel right telling people what to eat, taking away pleasure from them and policing folks. It just didn’t feel right.
Chris Sandel: Had you discovered Health At Every Size and anti-diet at that point?
Naureen Hunani: Exactly, and that’s what saved my career, I guess, at that point, until I started realising there are a lot of challenges in that area too. So initially that’s what really made me stay, because it felt so liberating to not have to tell people what to eat and not demonise food and really support people in a way that felt affirming.
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Chris Sandel: I said at the top I found you because of your site, RDs for Neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is something that I’ve become more aware of with clients probably in the last handful of years. When did you first become aware of this? When did it come on your radar or something you wanted to be investigating?
Naureen Hunani: For me personally, you mean?
Chris Sandel: Whatever came first, either with you personally or because of the work you were doing as an RD. How did it first show up for you?
Naureen Hunani: Like I mentioned, earlier in my career I was working with adults and realised that I would never work with children – and then I ended up becoming a parent. My kids are neurodivergent. That’s what really led me to explore a little bit like, okay, how can I be an affirming parent? How can I support my children? Both of my kids had feeding differences. Initially, feeding was difficult. When I had questions and I looked for support, no-one could really support me in a way that felt good.
That’s when I started to really look into, how can I support my neurodivergent children? And really realising that these feeding differences that I’m seeing are related to their neurodivergence. So how do I support that? I started to specialise in paeds almost a decade ago because of the needs of my own family. And that’s when I started to open up my practice to paeds and started seeing more and more children, and so many kids that were showing up with feeding differences were also neurodivergent.
So that’s how I got introduced, I would say. It’s a very long story but that’s a shorter version. [laughs]
Chris Sandel: What were some of the feeding challenges you were noticing with your kids? I should also say, I have a five-year-old son; he’s neurodivergent, so we’ve had various challenges connected to food, connected to other things, so I’m also happy to share.
Naureen Hunani: I think that for me, honestly, when I look back, the challenges were not really challenges, but they’re challenges when you live in a society that is steeped in neuro-normativity and throws all these ‘shoulds’ at you and neurotypical milestones. To be honest, feeding differences are very common in my family. If I reflect, there’s so many members of my family that have different ways of eating, but this is not something we necessarily pathologize. But when you’re given this guide, like “This is how it should be, and by 12 months your child should be able to eat like the rest of the family and they should be able to eat a variety of textures” – when we start throwing ‘shoulds’ at people, it is really paralysing and it disconnects people from their own intuition.
This is what, in my opinion, the medical industrial complex thrives in. These challenges were only challenges because of the environment I was raising my children in. As soon as I started to adjust the environment and also understand it’s okay if children develop differently, it’s okay if they can’t eat a whole lot of textures – there are certain foods it takes my kids a really long time to chew, and that’s related to their oral motor differences and oral motor planning needs. Like, no, they don’t have to eat raw carrots if it takes them 10 hours to chew them, you know? It’s things like that that I started to challenge.
Growing up, I was always encouraged by my father to think critically, and the education system took that away from me for a little bit, but I was able to gain that back because I had to be an advocate for my kids. All that wisdom was there; it was just muted for a bit because I had to survive the education system. But then I started to listen again to my own voice, and that really helped me advocate for my kids. And my clients as well.
Chris Sandel: That’s great. From our experience here, our son, we did baby-led weaning, and he ate everything. It was great. I was a really picky eater as a kid and he was eating everything, and we were like, “Oh cool, we’ve got this nailed.” And then at about two and a half, everything changed. We had quite a long stretch of everything being very, very beige. And even now, there’s a lot of limits on what will be eaten.
I know you had a great post recently on your Instagram about something to do with making separate meals for the family and actually that’s an okay thing, and that’s often what has to happen here. We will make something different for him because that’s just what has to happen for him to eat because he has limited stuff that he’ll eat. And I feel very grateful that I went into this with a good relationship with food myself, that my wife has a good relationship with food. We already knew about Ellyn Satter’s division of responsibility.
And also just not getting neurotic about the nutrition side of everything and just being able to take a bigger picture approach of like, it’s more important that we have a healthy relationship with him than getting him to eat particular foods.
Naureen Hunani: Absolutely. Yes, the idea that feeding has to look a certain way for all families just doesn’t work for a lot of neurodivergent families. The important thing is really prioritising the feeding relationship and safety.
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Chris Sandel: Am I correct in thinking as well that it was through looking at your children’s neurodivergence that you discovered your own neurodiversity?
Naureen Hunani: Yes, but it took me a while. [laughs]
Chris Sandel: Can you talk about that experience?
Naureen Hunani: Absolutely. It’s so interesting because I’m a neurodivergent person, I was born this way, this is how I’ve been my whole life, but when we talk about neurodivergence and we talk about specifically autism, ADHD, learning disability, there are certain profiles that we’re shown, like ‘this is how it should look’ or ‘this is what it looks like’. A lot of the studies also are done on young boys, so women in neurodivergence, this is something that hasn’t been explored until very, very recently. So it took me a while because, well, all we see is how it presents in young children. It’s really, really difficult when you’re not provided the right information.
Eventually what happened was I started, through social media, connecting with a lot of neurodivergent parents and groups for neurodivergent folks and groups for parents of neurodivergent children, and a lot of these groups were run by parents that were also neurodivergent and adults sharing their experiences. I was like, “Wow, I see a lot of myself in this. This really resonates with me and my experiences.” So eventually, yes, I did start to question. Again, it took some time to get there because you just don’t have a lot of resources, and not many professionals even specialise in assessing adults, AFAB, women. It’s so complicated.
So it did take me time, and I wish it didn’t take me that much time because it is one of the most liberating things for me to be able to really have a name for my experience and to be able to relate to others who also have similarities and interact with the world in a similar way.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. As I said, this is a topic I’ve been looking into more in the last couple of years, and I think in the same way as we have this very stereotypical view of what certain eating disorders look like, we have a very stereotypical view of what different neurodivergent types look like. For so many of my clients who are females, it’s them finding in their thirties or forties or even fifties that actually, this is them.
I think one of the things that comes up a lot is because of just the masking that happens, and for females there is more of this ‘fitting in’ that happens that isn’t necessarily so prominent with the boys or the men with this. That’s just something I’ve noticed. It becomes a lot more internalised. So many of my clients, when they’ve shared this with friends, their response is like, “I would never have picked that.” I don’t know if that is something that you’ve noticed.
Naureen Hunani: Yes. It’s just so interesting because I find it such an interesting time. So many of us are openly talking about our experiences, and neurodivergent studies are also offering a lot of perspective. For me personally, I think that my experience was – well, after becoming a parent, demands really increase significantly. We’re able to manage and mask and do a lot. Even the executive functioning demands increase significantly when you become a parent. It just becomes really, really hard to cope.
I feel like for me, that was a huge moment as well, where it was just so difficult. The whole sensory experience of becoming a parent and the noise and the diapers and all that stuff. [laughs] Like constant sensory overload. And because I didn’t have the language, I would just think I’m just anxious. And that’s what a lot of us experience. A lot of adults that are neurodivergent – and anxiety is also a form of neurodivergence, but a lot of us have other forms of neurodivergence that are not diagnosed, and everything is just labelled as anxiety.
Chris Sandel: I would definitely agree with that. With a lot of clients, it’s been this blanket term of ‘anxiety’, and then when we start to really understand the different sensitivities, etc., there’s a lot more colour to this than just anxiety.
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What was your reason for wanting to start RDs for Neurodiversity?
Naureen Hunani: The reason why I started RDs for Neurodiversity is as I started doing this work – I’m located in Canada, but people from all over started to approach me because what I had to say was so different. There was openness, thankfully, which allowed me to speak on several platforms and share a lot of what I experienced and my model.
Eventually, I realised that there is a huge need to have a platform, a space where people can access weight-inclusive and neurodiversity-affirming courses and resources. So that was one reason, where I felt like there was a huge need. People were open, and I was constantly getting requests to speak and share my expertise. So that was one reason.
The other reason why I wanted to start this platform is because there’s so many neurodivergent providers out there as well that feel incredibly isolated, and I wanted to offer a platform for providers as well, where they can also share their knowledge and wisdom. So I offer series where I invite people, providers of all different backgrounds, and the majority of the speakers are neurodivergent themselves. I felt like it would be really nice to build a community, a network this way.
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Chris Sandel: So what is the neurodivergent-affirming model?
Naureen Hunani: The neurodiversity-affirming model I created over the years, and it’s basically not a model that is prescriptive, because a lot of the models out there and frameworks and best practices and all of that, it’s a lot of very prescriptive, step-by-step kind of approach, which doesn’t work for people with divergent minds. I wanted to really focus on offering care that’s really focused based on inclusion and acceptance.
It’s an anti-oppressive methodology that’s informed by social justice education, disability justice, neurodiversity studies. It was developed really to intervene against the current oppressive models that centre individualism and that are fatphobic and ableist.
Chris Sandel: Nice. Is this then at the core of everything that’s taught through your site?
Naureen Hunani: It’s I guess the essence, yes. I think for a huge – if I look at the current culture environment, if we’re looking at HAES-aligned spaces and weight-inclusive spaces, ableism is not something that is ever talked about. So I think it’s really important to bring in the disability justice piece and the anti-ableism piece. So yes, it’s the foundation, and the majority of pretty much all the courses that I teach align with this model. And when I do invite speakers, it’s really important for me to know that we have similar philosophies and ways of working just so we don’t create confusion.
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Chris Sandel: I know on your site you talk about with trauma-informed care, you want to move beyond the ACES and look at nontraditional forms of trauma. Can you talk a little more about this?
Naureen Hunani: Yes, absolutely. When we talk about trauma-informed care, especially in the context of the paediatric population, often we refer and reflect on the study, the Adverse Childhood Event Study. That looks at a variety of factors. When we look at trauma and stress of neurodivergent people, it’s very unique because often it’s ongoing trauma, ongoing stress for the majority of us. We don’t think about sensory aversion as a form of trauma.
Trying to navigate different environments where our sensory needs are not met is traumatising. Social bullying, social trauma that comes from being different or communication. A lot of us communicate differently. So this is an ongoing challenge that a lot of us face, which impacts the way we view ourselves, the way we view our bodies. It also impacts our ability to access food. It’s all very much connected.
So I’m hoping to bring more awareness to this piece, expand a little bit in terms of what trauma-informed care can look like, and really look at all the different pieces and how they show up and how they are connected.
Chris Sandel: And when you think about this piece, were there some specifics of things you tried or helped with your kids to try and protect them from that trauma?
Naureen Hunani: Definitely. Neurodivergent parenting is very different than how we’re told to parent. It’s interesting because I’ve been having a lot more conversations around authoritative parenting, which is supposed to be the gold standard, and for a lot of kids that can feel like gaslighting. If you listen to your needs but then you end up doing what you think is right, that does not work for a lot of kids.
And kids who are given a voice will advocate for themselves. They will question you, and that’s what my children do. They question me all the time. And a lot of the answers – you have to ask the ‘why’. Why do we want them to behave a certain way or do things a certain way? A lot of it relates to – it’s a social construct. It all has to do with fitting in and functioning a certain way, which, again, is steeped in neuro-normativity.
So I think that when we truly embrace our children for who they are, it can be really a beautiful thing, and it can be very liberating. But at the same time, we know our kids have to go outside and have to figure out how to function and also live in this society. So definitely we can equip them and support them. But the idea that they have to change who they are to fit in is traumatic.
But that’s what a lot of the neurodivergent adults are dealing with. It’s the unmasking and trying to figure out, who are we really? We have been trained to function a certain way that’s not working for us, so how can we find that authenticity and be more authentic?
Chris Sandel: This is a question I’m constantly asking myself as a parent because it’s trying to figure out, when is some level of push useful because that then turns into “Okay, I figured out I can do this difficult thing and I’m really grateful for that” versus “Actually, this is too much and this is not helpful and this is creating overwhelm and stress.”
With our son, Ramsay, at this point we’re home educating. I don’t know if that will be forever, but at this point, him going to a school and sitting in a classroom would be incredibly traumatising for him, and he wouldn’t be able to do that. So we’ve made the decision at this point to do home education. I feel very privileged to be able to do that, but it’s just one of the many things I think about as a parent of like, how do I create the right kind of environment that does allow him to be the best adult that he’s going to be able to be, and to have the experiences that really allow him to be that person?
Naureen Hunani: Yes. That is what I find so beautiful. I think that parents taking control and really making decisions that are right for their families, for their children, is such a powerful thing. I think this is how we’re going to change our culture, this is how we’re going to embrace neurodivergent culture. So many parents choose to homeschool, unschool, because they see what’s happening, and a lot of our children just cannot survive in these environments. So yeah, definitely I think it’s great that you’re able to do this.
Chris Sandel: It was something that was never on my radar. I never even considered this. It just wasn’t even something that I thought about when I was growing up because it wasn’t something I needed. But it just is so apparent that that is the right way for us to be dealing with this at this point.
Naureen Hunani: Mm-hm.
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Chris Sandel: Can you talk about the Neurodivergent Nest, which I know is part of your site?
Naureen Hunani: The Neurodivergent Nest is a peer support group that I offer, and it’s open to neurodivergent providers to connect, be in community with each other. Like I mentioned, so many of us feel so isolated. A lot of us are not openly neurodivergent because it’s not safe for us to be openly neurodivergent. So there is such a need – and burnout, a lot of us are constantly struggling with that.
So I wanted to offer a space where providers can connect and be in community and rejuvenate and find joy. It’s a really wonderful group, and it’s something that I absolutely love offering.
Chris Sandel: Nice. I’m glad that you do offer it, and I’m so glad that you’ve set up the site and you’re doing what you’re doing. Where can people go if they want to find out more about you, Naureen?
Naureen Hunani: I have two accounts on social media. For my private practice, it’s Naureen Hunani Nutrition. I’m not super active there, but I do post every now and then. And then there is the RDs for Neurodiversity platform, and I have a Facebook page and I’m also on Instagram. That’s where I’m more active these days.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. I will put all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed chatting with you.
Naureen Hunani: Thank you so much, and thank you for your wonderful questions.
Chris Sandel: So that was my conversation with Naureen. If you or your kids are neurodivergent, I highly suggest checking out her site, or if you are a dietitian or a therapist or a nutritionist, then I also highly recommend checking it out.
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I have two recommendations of things to watch. While they are different, I kind of put them into a similar category, with the category being hobbies or passions that aren’t mainstream, but for the participants they have a huge impact on their life and are also part of their identity.
The first documentary is called Skips Stones for Fudge. It’s all about the sport of stone skipping. You’ve probably picked up a stone before and tried to skip it across a pond or a lake, like I know I have, and maybe it skips for a couple of times and then falls into the water and that’s it. Well, what these guys are able to do seems to defy the laws of physics. They throw a stone and it just keeps going and going and going.
The documentary follows a number of the best stone skippers in the world as they each try and win different tournaments and also each try and get into the Guiness Book of World Records for a stone skip that they’ve caught on camera. There’s something very simple about this documentary. It’s definitely not the best documentary that I’ve ever watched, but there’s something about the affinity that these people have for stone skipping. For one of the main people, who lives a very simple and fairly isolated life, stone skipping is how he fills his time. It’s just a really interesting story to think about, at least from my perspective, thinking about what his life would be like if he wasn’t into stone skipping because it is such a big part of his life.
It’s only 50 minutes long, and you can watch it for free on YouTube. From my perspective, it’s well worth a watch, and I still cannot get my head around how they’re able to get a stone to go as far as it does. It’s called Skips Stones for Fudge.
The second documentary is called The Speed Cubers and is all about the world of speed-solving Rubik’s Cubes. Like skipping stones, this is an obscure and niche sport, and just like with skipping stones, I also can’t get my head around how quickly they are able to solve the cubes. The story mostly focuses on two of the best speed cubers in the world and the two guys who hold all of the Guiness World Records for speed cubing.
It’s a really sweet story. One of the guys, Max Park, is autistic, and that has had a huge impact on his life, and it’s really through discovering the Rubik’s Cube and then starting to go to tournaments that his life greatly expands. A big part of this is because of Feliks, who is the other main competitor, who is incredibly supportive of Max. Despite the fact that one lives in Australia and the other lives in the U.S., they have this really great friendship.
I enjoyed this film because I got to learn about this niche sport or hobby and had my mind blown with what they’re able to do, but also because it really does show the best of humanity and how common interests can bring people together – and common interests not of things that we hate together, but common interests of something that we both really love and are passionate about. It’s called Speed Cubers and it’s on Netflix.
So that’s it for this week’s show. Asi mentioned at the top, I have one spot left in my private practice right now. If you’re wanting to recover from an eating disorder and you want to reach a place of full recovery, I’d love to support you in this. You can head to www.seven-health.com/help for more information.
I’ll be back next week with another episode. Take care, and I’ll catch you then.
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