00:00:00

Intro

00:04:51

A bit about Sam’s background

00:10:23

Food growing up + how she developed an eating disorder

00:17:00

How she discovered intuitive eating

00:23:47

The most difficult part of switching to an intuitive eating approach

00:34:53

How to respond when people talk about diet culture

00:40:24

Parallels between peace with food + peace with movement

00:52:19

What food satisfaction looks like in real life

00:57:13

How nutrition fits into intuitive eating

01:01:57

How Sam works on body image with clients

01:14:52

Her experience with being asked if she was pregnant

00:00:00

Intro

Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcripts, the show notes, and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/331.

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 an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

Before we get started with today’s show, I just want to announce that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you are living with an eating disorder and would like to fully recover – and it doesn’t matter how long this has been going on, whether it’s a year, whether it’s multiple decades – I would love to help. I know the idea of full recovery can feel very far off and feel hard to get in contact with, but I truly believe that everyone can reach a place of full recovery, and I would love to help you be able to achieve that. So if you’re interested, you can send an email to info@seven-health.com and if you just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, I can then send over the details to you.

Okay, on with today’s show. Today it is a guest interview, and my guest today is Sam Previte. Sam is a registered dietitian, a certified counsellor, a certified personal trainer, and the founder of Find Food Freedom. She’s also a lover of all things media, hosting the Find Food Freedom Podcast, co-hosting the What the Actual Fork Podcast, and featuring in many segments, including NBC News, CBS Morning, and the Drew Barrymore Show. She earned her Bachelor of Science at Penn State University and then went to Adagio Health in Pittsburgh, PA, to earn her RD credentials. After completing traditional schooling, she went on to gain additional certifications in intuitive eating and body image, which is where she found her true passion and Find Food Freedom was born.

Find Food Freedom is a virtual private practice made up of a team of intuitive eating professionals dedicated to their mission of helping humans make peace with food and their body. Find Food Freedom is a fierce team of women who are committed to bettering the lives of everyone they reach. Sam spent many of her teenage years and into her early twenties trapped in diet culture, thinking that her life’s mission was to chase a smaller body. Overcoming years of disordered eating made her realise that you can’t hate your way to happiness. She feels grateful to share her story, paired with education to help others find food freedom and enjoy life again.

I’ve been following Sam for a while now. I’m not sure exactly at what point I found her podcast, the What the Actual Fork Podcast, and then found her Instagram. But I always love the content that she puts out. I love the way that she does it; she’s definitely got her own style. She can be very funny with things. She’s great, so I wanted her to come on the show and for us to have this conversation.

We talk about her challenges with food and her discovering intuitive eating and how this not only changed her own relationship with food but the trajectory of her practice. We talk about some of the different ways that that went with her in terms of discovering intuitive eating and how she was then able to bring that into how she was helping herself and others, and it wasn’t the smoothest of journeys, but that’s just often what happens with this.

We then hit on lots of different topics. We talk about physical restriction and mental restriction, what to do when people mention dieting when you’re trying to recover – and I know this comes up a lot for people with colleagues at work who are going to this family thing. We talk about the parallels and differences between peace with food and peace with movement. Sam shares a really great analogy for how food can become normalised and what that looks like. We talk about food satisfaction and what this means in real life, because I think we can have this idea of what this means, but I think it’s a lot broader than what a lot of people think it is. We talk about tools for dealing with body image and managing expectations with this, and dealing with when people make comments about your body. Sam actually shares a personal experience on this and how she was able to handle it.

This is a wide-ranging conversation. It was very easy to chat with Sam. It’s very evident she has her own podcast because it was a very great, easy, flowing conversation. So without further delay, here is my conversation with Sam Previte.

Hey, Sam. Welcome to Real Health Radio. I’m really glad to be chatting with you today.

Sam Previte: I’m excited to be here.

Chris Sandel: I’ve gone through your podcast, I’ve listened to – I mean, you’ve got multiple podcasts, so there’s a lot that we can talk about. But I think a lot of today, we’ll be talking about intuitive eating and body image and food generally.

00:04:51

A bit about Sam’s background

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?

Sam Previte: Sure, yeah. Oh gosh, this story could go on forever, so I’ll try to pare it down and then you let me know where you want more detail.

Chris Sandel: For sure.

Sam Previte: My name is Sam Previte. I’m a registered dietitian, a certified intuitive eating counsellor, a certified personal trainer, and the founder of Find Food Freedom. Find Food Freedom is a virtual private practice made up of a team of now 14 registered dietitians and certified intuitive eating counsellors, and our mission is solely to help people make peace with food and their body.

Our dietitian team, we do accept insurance in the United States, and we’re licensed in 22 of the states and always trying to add more. And that’s been newer for us. We didn’t always take insurance; we were a private pay organization for a really long time, and I found myself saying, “I want to help as many people as possible.” And then I found that the biggest objection of people being able to work with us was the cost. I thought about myself, how I always look for in-network providers first for any medical professional.

Insurance is a headache, I will say that, but it has been awesome to be able to help thousands of more people and grow an incredible team of weight-inclusive providers who specialise in everything from eating disorders, disordered eating, intuitive eating, body image, PCOS, diabetes, other medical nutrition therapy related to other diseases and conditions.

So that is the current day Find Food Freedom. You’ll see me more on the side of the PR, social media, working with different brands that we align with. And then like you said, I host multiple podcasts. We have What the Actual Fork Podcast where I co-host with a colleague of mine and then the Find Food Freedom Podcast, which is solo hosted, where we do a lot of FAQ on intuitive eating and things that listeners write in about.

But I was not always a weight-inclusive dietitian. I was deeply entrenched in diet culture for pretty much my entire teens and twenties, and I went into pursuing a nutrition degree in college with a very weight-centric view of wanting to find this magic answer about weight loss and how to be healthy and thin, and I was going to help other people achieve that. I remember graduating college with my nutrition degree; I also had a minor in kinesiology, which is fitness studies, and I was going off to my dietetic programme, continuing ed after that, and I was sitting there like, “I don’t have the magic answer, but yet I now have a nutrition degree. I’m going to be a dietitian.”

Fast forward through my dietetic programme and still had that same icky, weird feeling where it’s like, “Well, I don’t have this shit figured out, so how the heck am I gonna help other people do it?” It really wasn’t until I got into my first career as a dietitian – I was a retail dietitian working in supermarkets, which I absolutely loved that position because it gave me the opportunity to counsel, to do grocery store tours, to do cooking classes, to work with our community.

So I got to see nutrition in all these different lenses, and I started to see patterns of people having guilt and shame, and maybe they would lose weight, but then they would gain it back, and if they overcame enough guilt and shame to come to you to be like, “I need a ‘reset’” or “I was ‘bad’” – and I would just see it over and over and I was like, “This is not working; this is all bullshit.”

I was so lucky to have a colleague of mine who was a dietetic intern with me, Haley Goodrich, who owns INSPIRD Nutrition, and back in the day – this was before people were posting on Instagram as businesses; now it’s everywhere. But she started posting about intuitive eating. She specialises in eating disorders. I was like, “What is this intuitive eating thing?” I remember calling her and being like, “What is this?” She told me to read the book.

Once I read the book, I was like, “Oh, this is the magic answer that I’ve been looking for – that it’s not about intentional weight loss.” It just kind of exploded my brain. And I had a lot of unlearning to do. I had a lot of relearning to do. I had a lot of biases I had to get in check. I had so much to learn, and I still do every single day. Once I saw the intuitive eating side, I couldn’t unlearn it.

And I tried to fence straddle for a while, as Fiona Southerland calls it. I had one foot in diet culture and one foot in intuitive eating, and I was like, “I can help people with both.” But that did not feel good, and it basically got me to a mental breakdown. I was like, “I can’t do this anymore!” I just went full force with Find Food Freedom and weight-inclusive care, and I couldn’t be happier, and I get to do what I love every day now.

Chris Sandel: Awesome. Yeah, there is more to this that I want to find out.

Sam Previte: Yes, you take it wherever you want.

00:10:23

Food growing up + how she developed an eating disorder

Chris Sandel: Let’s go back before your teenage years. Yous aid “I was dieting all through my teen years.” What about you as a kid? What was food like at home and in your household?

Sam Previte: That’s a great question. I was a very fortunate child. For those listening who can’t see me, I am a white, thin, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual. I hold a lot of privileges that made my life fairly easy. Food wasn’t a big thing in our house. It’s interesting; my husband is Italian and food is love, food is everything to them. I’m 50% Greek, so with my Greek family, same thing: food is love, food is tradition, food is the centrepiece.

But with my immediate family, food wasn’t really ever a thing. It wasn’t really talked about. So it really wasn’t until my high school years where I started noticing my body changing and just a lot of comments on my body, and then it was really more my senior year in high school and then catapulting into college where I started binge drinking and binge eating and seeing my body fluctuate and seeing people make comments about it getting bigger or smaller, where I was very hyper-aware of that.

Chris Sandel: You said you started as an RD and you obviously went and did that at university. Was it really just that dieting for that last year of school that propelled you in that direction? Or “Before that I was always the science-y kid and I was interested in that piece”? How did you end up there?

Sam Previte: That’s a really good question. I was definitely always interested in science. I loved chemistry. I scored very low on the reading and things like that. I was very into more of the science of things. My favourite class in college was Organic Chemistry, which most people are like, “That was the worst.” But I really liked it. So definitely into science.

And I was an athlete. I danced competitively, I played lacrosse, I played basketball for all of my life up until high school and I just got burnt out with it. So I had a love for fitness and movement, until it took a turn in a negative relationship with dieting and feeling like I had to burn my calories and earn my food and all of that. So I definitely had an inkling for it.

I have never shared this on someone else’s podcast, so this will be a first, but I’ve shared it on my own: one of my best, best friends in high school was killed in a car accident my senior year, and my other best friend was critically injured and put into a coma, and I was supposed to be in that car.

Chris Sandel: Wow.

Sam Previte: I’m still best friends with my girlfriend who survived today. And when I really think back to that time in my life, that is what catapulted disordered eating. Not from a place of restricting/ binging, but turning to food as a coping mechanism and binging on food to cope. I only know that now because I can look back at that time and remember things, but in that moment, nobody knew that was going on. I didn’t know I was doing that. But I remember just coming home and really binging on things and feeling out of control. I was so fortunate to have food security, I had easy access to food. Many teens and children I see use food as a coping mechanism if they have access to it.

So that catapulted my body changing, and then I went to college shortly thereafter because my friend passed that spring of our senior year of high school. And then again, I go into college grieving, this very traumatic incident just happened to me, so that really catapulted – so it wasn’t even from the root of necessarily trying to restrict or lose weight, but then once the body changed and I noticed that, then that started some more of the disordered stuff.

Chris Sandel: Man, that’s a lot to go through as a high school kid. With the dieting – and you obviously talked about the binges as a way of coping – had the dieting already started by that stage?

Sam Previte: That’s a good question. My beliefs at that time were thinner was better, smaller was better. I’m a millennial, so we grew up with Seventeen magazine, MTV, TRL, Cosmo. You were reading about Jennifer Aniston’s diets. It wasn’t necessarily like I was trying to diet, but I looked up to that, and I looked up to this beauty standard. But again, I’d always lived in a thin body and had been praised for that. It wasn’t until I started gaining weight and not feeling comfortable and not feeling like I held this standard that then I started those disordered behaviours.

Chris Sandel: Sure. Part of the reason I’m asking is for the clients that I work with and how I see so much of the eating disorders, disordered eating, etc., so often what predates it is restriction. The person who then ends up coping with food, there is restriction that predated it.

Sam Previte: Yeah, that makes sense. It wasn’t necessarily the physical restriction, but more that mental restriction of like “I should be eating these healthier things. These things are ‘better’. These are more nutritious. These will make me a better human being”, all those internal beliefs, for sure.

Chris Sandel: Which for so many people seems counterintuitive. Like, “Hey, if I really cared about these ‘healthy’ foods and ‘good’ foods, I would then be not coping in that way. I wouldn’t be turning to food as my way of self-soothing and dealing with the grief.” It becomes “This is the thing I most fear or I’m most trying to control, and it ends up being the thing that I use in those moments.”

Sam Previte: Yes, which then perpetuates a lot of guilt and shame because you’re going totally against those beliefs that you have.

00:17:00

How she discovered intuitive eating

Chris Sandel: Let’s fast forward to the point at which you then found intuitive eating. You said you read that book, and it sounded like it was fairly eye-opening. It sounded like from the moment you read it, you were all bought in. But is that actually what happened? Or “Hey, it took me a while to get on board with this”?

Sam Previte: Great question. I definitely had this light bulb moment. I can remember where I was when I called Haley and was like “Oh my gosh” and all these things. But heck no, it took many, many years, because it’s like, “Okay, I could help people in this way, but maybe I could help people lose weight morally and ethically” – whatever that means, right? [laughs]

During this time when I was exposed to intuitive eating, that was the same year that I moved from New Jersey to Florida, where I currently live, and I started working in a private practice and started really ramping up counselling, and that’s where it mimicked what I told you before, what I was seeing when I was counselling in New Jersey, where people would have the shame and guilt. They would lose weight, gain weight, lose weight, gain weight, always need a reset, “Fix me”, blah, blah, blah. And it just felt really icky.

I was on a beach walk one day – I can remember this specifically – and I heard Christy Harrison’s podcast. At the time it was called Food Psych. I just couldn’t stop talking about it. I couldn’t stop listening to episodes. I just couldn’t stop taking in all this information. I was like, “I have to do this.” And I slowly started to integrate what I was learning into my practice. But it really took about three years. It wasn’t until end of 2019-2020, so almost four, let’s say, where I got to that breaking point of “I can’t do this anymore” because people would come to me and say, “I want to lose weight” and I wouldn’t say yes, but I would say, “Well, let’s talk and see.” I would almost try to convince them to do intuitive eating. And that was so exhausting because that’s not what it’s about. It’s not about convincing people.

So it was more so after I went to a seminar with Haley Goodrich and Fiona Southerland, and Christy Harrison was there. It was after the seminar, I was bawling to my mentors and I was like, “I have to do this! I can’t do this anymore!” And Christy Harrison walked up, and she was like my idol at the time, and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I was meeting her and crying. [laughs]

Anyways, long story short, it was then that I said, “I can’t do this anymore.” At the time I was working with someone else in private practice, and she had different beliefs than I did. She thought that you could teach intuitive eating and intentional weight loss. It was really hard for me, because I’d been a people-pleaser and all these other things. I was like, “Okay, I don’t believe that, so we have to just cut ties here.” Still have so much respect for her and the work that she does, but it doesn’t align with me.

It was in August of 2020 that everything really went full force, weight-inclusive, intuitive eating. And I was scared because as a dietitian, we’ve been taught that weight loss is our party trick, and when you tell someone you’re a dietitian, they tell you what they eat and ask you how to lose weight. So I was like, how the hell am I going to make a living off this when nobody wants to do this? That was probably one of the things that was holding me back the longest, too, like, I’m going to fail because everybody just wants to lose weight. But I can confidently say that is not the case today.

Chris Sandel: No. And I guess you got into this at the time when intuitive eating hit the mainstream and became a lot more aware by the wider public.

Sam Previte: Absolutely.

Chris Sandel: So that definitely helped. But what about your own journey with this? Obviously you said it took three-ish years to transition into doing this within your practice, but what about for you, someone who’d been dieting, who’d been in that place? Wha was your personal journey with it like over those years?

Sam Previte: It was funny; when I read the intuitive eating book, I think there was this part of me by that point of where I was at – I had already rejected diet culture, that first principle of not dieting anymore. I definitely wasn’t doing intuitive eating, but I just hadn’t dieted anymore. I was more in that rebellion stage of like “Fuck it, I’m going to eat anything and everything. I’m never going back to dieting.”

It’s funny, because I’ve been asked this question before. I never really went through this “I’m going to work on a workbook and I’m going to do this principle” and blah, blah, blah. It was more like as I was taking in all of the podcasts and learning from a professional lens, it was just having this ripple effect on my personal where I was soaking it all in. And again, my belief systems were changing, so then I was able to take what I was learning professionally and apply it personally.

I’ve gone to a therapist for four years, so definitely did some talk therapy in there, and she’s a certified intuitive eating counsellor. That was very important to me, to find a counsellor who was body positive, weight-inclusive, and understood the work I did. So that was helpful.

But it really was just by implementing it in my professional life that made it easier to implement into my personal life. I also want to stress to those listening, again, I live in a straight size body, so I think for me it becomes a lot easier of a process because I don’t have the discrimination, the shaming, the oppression that those who reside in larger bodies get every day for simply existing. Doesn’t mean I didn’t have body image issues, doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle. But it’s easier for me to show up in this world.

I say fortunately that helped me, but unfortunately, knowing the clients that we work with and support that’s just not the case. It’s very, very hard for those who are constantly getting told that their body’s the problem, their body’s the root of all their issues. That’s just something I want to stress as well.

00:23:47

The most difficult part of switching to an intuitive eating approach

Chris Sandel: For sure. It sounds as though your journey was fairly easy – and I know ‘easy’ is a relative term, but fairly easy in comparison to a lot of your clients. Were there any snags or sticking points or like “This bit was the bit that I felt was the most challenging for me to get over”?

Sam Previte: That’s a good question. I feel like for me, it was more my identity as a dietitian wrapped up in the worlds of diet culture and intuitive eating. Because especially for what I do for a living, a lot of my work is online and being present on social media. As somebody who is an intuitive eating dietitian, a weight-inclusive dietitian, people just assume that dietitians eat fruits and vegetables all day and count their calories and do all these things, so you’re constantly getting this narrative from other people and people assuming things about you. So pushing back against that, and then people finding out what I do, being like “You’re promoting” – o-slur, ‘obesity’.

All of these weird messages from the outside were probably the hardest because I was trying to do this professional huge switch, I was transitioning my own relationship with food and body. So to have all of these outside voices looking in – and people do not hold back on the internet, as I’m sure you know. So that was hard to navigate.

But got some really great advice from Evelyn Tribole, one of the founders of intuitive eating: If people aren’t reachable or aren’t teachable, don’t waste your mental energy thinking about them and trying to convince them. And then also from a work perspective, I think I was really impacted by negativity for a really long time on the internet, and it was Evelyn who had talked to me to say, find your core unit of people who you trust and you want their feedback. For example, if Evelyn Tribole came to me and said, “Hey, that piece of content you just put out didn’t land well. It could be really offensive”, I’m going to take that to heart. But if ‘JoeSchmoe12345’ with no profile picture tells me I’m a fucking idiot and blah, blah, blah – which I get all the time – that’s just going to go right off of me.

I think that was really hard to navigate, making peace with food and body, doing this huge professional switch, and having all these outside voices telling me that I was wrong or I was going to fail or whatever. So that was hard. That stalled my progress because it made me question my own intuition for myself and just professionally as well.

Chris Sandel: I think the getting better with receiving comments from the public – I think part of it, at least when I reflect on me, it just took time.

Sam Previte: You unfortunately have to get used to it, which is so fucked up, because it’s like, we shouldn’t have to get used to this. But we do.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. I remember once, years and years and years ago, some comments on a blog post or whatever, and it would destroy me for a couple of days and I wouldn’t sleep and I would feel so bad about it all. And now, it’s not that there’s nothing that fazes me. There can be times when something will.

But in the whole scheme of things, it doesn’t bother me the way that it used to before. I can come back to all of the wonderful comments that I receive, all the work that I do with people, and be like, “People have told me on many, many occasions I’ve saved their life or this has changed the trajectory of their life. This is actually very helpful for people.”

Sam Previte: Exactly. But it’s so easy, with our human brains, to focus on the negative. You probably get way more positive comments than you do negative. Unless your video ends up on the wrong side of TikTok, which I can promise you, then you just get thousands of negative comments. [laughs] But that’s neither here nor there.

Chris Sandel: For sure. What about in your actual real life? Because it’s one thing to receive hurtful comments online; it’s another when this best friend of mine or my mom or whatever is now questioning the direction I’m taking with this. Was there any of that with the way that you were doing it?

Sam Previte: Oh, for sure. I would say more with my immediate loved ones, no, but with extended family, aunts, uncles – you think about the people in your life that are entrenched in diet culture. Or even girlfriends. And I still have that. I have very close friends that we’ll go to dinner and they’ll be like, “Sammy, close your ears” and then they’ll say something.

That used to bother me, but now, I’m at this place where I’m like, everyone has body autonomy. I’m not here to convince or defend anything or tell people what they need to do. So now it’s so much easier. But again, in the beginning when you’re doing this huge – it wasn’t even just a shift of my relationship with food, my relationship with my body and my business, but it’s your internal belief systems. At that time I was so fragile with other people’s thoughts because it’s like, “Am I doing the right thing?”

But now I’m so grounded in the work that I do and the beliefs that I have that it really takes a lot to rile me up or to strike a nerve. But in the past, definitely. I would fight with family members at holiday events. But then you leave that feeling more discouraged and defeated. And again, back to what Evelyn said; if they’re not reachable or teachable, you close up shop. They’re not curious, they don’t want to learn, so don’t waste your mental energy.

Chris Sandel: For sure. I think the thing you said about your beliefs is so true. I think where people get really triggered by things and really struggle so often is about the conversation bias. It is about the things that they’re undecided or unsure about or trying to navigate through themselves. That’s then what shows up. But the more you become really confident in this and in what you’re doing, someone can say “I think this is wrong” and it doesn’t faze you in the same way because you feel fairly solid in what you’re doing.

Sam Previte: Yes. I just released myself of the responsibility of convincing people to do this. Because I think when you come to this work and you have this revelation – I don’t know about you, but when I found this work, you want to scream it from the rooftops. You want to tell everybody. You want to shake them and be like, “How didn’t we know about this?” You see diet culture everywhere and you’re so revved up. But then that leads to burnout pretty quickly, as I learned.

Then once you can step back and be like, “Oh, it’s not my responsibility to convince people” – and you can just sit back, and it’s like, “Oh, this is how we stay in it for the long game.” Again, it took years to learn that. Still don’t get it perfect, for sure. Can promise that. But it’s a lot easier as time goes on.

Chris Sandel: For sure. When I think about it through that lens as well, it gives you compassion for other people who’ve recently discovered keto. For them in that moment, it’s working amazingly, and they’re becoming really evangelical about it and want to tell every human on the planet that this is what everyone needs to do. It makes sense.

So rather than “Hey, now we need to be at loggerheads”, it’s like, “You do you. I’m not in a position where I’m going to be able to reach you with this, and that’s fine. I want to talk to the people who actually want my services or want to be helped in this area.”

Sam Previte: I love that point you bring up. That’s something with so many clients around the holidays, where they’re gearing up for those events, where they know their aunt Susan is going to talk about the keto diet or whatever. We have those exact conversations to be like, “Hey, hold up. Let’s remember that used to be us. We used to be the one at the events talking about the diet or the calorie counting or whatever.”

It’s funny how it – not funny. That’s not the right word. But it’s interesting how it goes from rage and anger when people are doing that when you first find out to then that compassion and that empathy of “Oh, that used to be me.” Like you said, it could be you when you figure out about intuitive eating, but just even 99.9% of the people, I feel like, that come to intuitive eating were chronic dieters or had clinical diagnosed eating disorder. Intuitive eating is just eating if diet culture didn’t exist, but the majority of us have been on diets our whole lives and used to shout it from the rooftops when we found our new magical diet. It’s that same thing.

Chris Sandel: Yeah, and I talk about the same journey that people go through in terms of that transition as they work through recovery and notice things change. In the beginning, hearing about Aunt Susie’s diet can be super triggering, and there can be a lot of rage of like “It’s unfair, you get to do this and I don’t.” And then at some point there is this compassion piece and the realisation of “Man, I probably triggered quite a few people by my behaviours and by my talking about certain things.”

And then there’s also the realisation of like “Thank fuck that is not me anymore. I’m so glad I’m on the other side of this thing and that this is not how I live my life.” I say this because when you’re at the early stages, it doesn’t feel like that’s ever going to be true. It feels like “I’m having to choose celibacy and this sucks and it’s always going to suck and it’s going to be horrendous for the rest of my life, and everyone else gets to go off and do all these fun things” and that’s just not true. In the end, there is a point where you’re like, “I’m so glad that’s not me.”

Sam Previte: Yes. And I think it’s important, these conversations. It’s so funny talking to another professional about this. To us, it’s like, yeah, this is what you go through. But sometimes I need to have these conversations to realise how important it is to level those expectations for people so then when they go through the angry phase or when they go through these phases, like, “Oh yeah, you told me about this.” But we’re just so used to it that you forget how important that is to show people what those expectations are.

And not that everybody’s journey is the exact same, of course, but I think when you’re going from tangible numbers and measurements and weight and calories of diet culture and then you come over to recovery, people feel like they’re flailing. So I think giving those expectations and those stages is really helpful.

00:34:53

How to respond when people talk about diet culture

Chris Sandel: For sure. I think you had either a post on it or a podcast on it of ways to respond when people start talking about diet culture, an event or whatever. Do you want to share some of this? Because this is one of those questions I get all the time from clients, like “What do I do? Someone’s bringing this up at work. How do I handle this?” What advice do you give in this area?

Sam Previte: This is a great question. I feel like we could go 20 different ways with this. My first disclaimer is always that it’s going to be different for every person depending on the mood that you’re in, the setting that you’re in, what other people are around, who you’re talking to – is it your boss, is it your partner? There’s so many different factors to this.

But I think the first thing that I’ll repeat – I feel like I’ve said it probably three times now – that I always start with is, are they reachable? Are they teachable? Let’s give an example: you’re in the breakroom, it’s a pizza party at work, and Sharon is in the corner talking about how she doesn’t eat pizza because carbs are bad and she doesn’t blah, blah, blah. You can already tell from her tone she doesn’t want to hear about intuitive eating. She doesn’t care.

In that sense, I usually will tell people if you want to, you can just say nothing. You don’t have to respond. You don’t have to say anything. And again, this is where everyone’s personality is different, because I’ll have clients be like “Well then I feel like I’m not standing up” – and again, it totally depends on the person. You can say nothing, protect your mental energy.

You can redirect; you could respond to Sharon and be like, “That’s awesome. Hey, did I show you the picture of my French bulldog I took the other day? It’s so cute.” Just totally redirect. And you could have a couple things in your back pocket for when these kind of comments come up where it’s like, “Hey, did you watch the season finale of Severance? It was so good. What did you think?” You just have these little tidbits in your head where you’re going to go and just completely take charge of the conversation.

Chris Sandel: As you were talking about this, I’m like, it’s like a politician. When they’re asked a question, they’re like, “I’m going to answer the question that I wanted to be asked and I’ll just tell you the answer to that question.”

Sam Previte: Exactly, yes. You just know in your heart, in your soul, in your body that you’re not going to engage in this type of conversation. So you get to choose. Depending on the situation, like I said before, where you don’t respond, you could also do a good old fake phone call. Nowadays no-one’s iPhone is ringing. Who keeps their iPhone on ring? So you can just look down and be like, “Oh shit, I’ve gotta take this call. I’ll be right back.” Just walk out of the damn room, pretend like you’re on a phone call. Boom, you’re out. There’s so many different ways.

So basically it’s like acting school, is what we’re going through right now. But the last one, though, could be so many different ways of setting a boundary with that person. If you feel like they’ve done it over and over and over and it’s very triggering and it’s very hurtful and you feel like it is right to stand up for yourself, then that’s important to do so. Maybe it’s saying to Sharon, “Hey, it’s really triggering for me to talk about food and calories. I’d really appreciate it if we don’t talk about that.”

And then again, I think the redirection helps here. If you want to pull it away and redirect it, you can. If you want to stop firm in your boundary – that can be scary sometimes. I think sometimes speaking up for ourselves can be hard, but I do think it’s really important in some situations, especially with loved ones that you’re going to see over and over and over and over again, because there comes a point where it’s like, is it worth it? How much are they triggering you in your recovery for a time being? That doesn’t mean you can never be around them, but maybe we need to pull back and have some physical boundaries for safety.

So those are the ones I go through, but I always love the not speaking back to them. Sometimes I just stare at my family members now. It’s actually funny. My husband will laugh because I just don’t say anything. Because they obviously know what I do for a living. They see my videos. Or the redirection. The redirection always works. It’s a good one.

Chris Sandel: The other one I was going to add – and it sits with everything you’ve said – is for some people, doing this in person is really hard. So there’s nothing wrong with you leave the breakroom and you compose an email.

Sam Previte: I love that.

Chris Sandel: That way, that gives you as much time as you want to put it in the exact words that you want to say or put it in a text message so that you feel, “Cool, I’ve laid it out the way that I wanted to.” I think just chatting with you, you seem like someone’s who good on your feet, pretty good in a conversation, feels pretty strongly about certain things and this isn’t going to be too big a deal. I know there will be some sensitive things, but I get your nature is –

Sam Previte: I’ve had some practice at it, too.

Chris Sandel: You’ve had some practice, yeah.

Sam Previte: That’s the huge part. The first time doing this, I remember the flush in my face and the increased heartbeat and the sweaty hands. It’s hard to stick up for yourself and to set boundaries. As a recovering people-pleaser, it is something I still am working on. Totally love that idea of putting it in writing, too.

00:40:24

Parallels between peace with food + peace with movement

Chris Sandel: Cool. So what I think would be useful is going through some of the principles of intuitive eating and just having a bit of a conversation around it. And I know what is in the intuitive eating book, I know what’s in the workbook, so if there’s stuff that you’re like “I do this thing a little differently” or “I always focus on it in this way” or whatever, I’d love to hear your take or your spin on it. We can work our way through the principles or you can just be like “Hey, this thing comes to mind” and just start.

Sam Previte: I think one parallel that I love to talk about often is when we’re looking at making peace with food and making peace with movement, those parallel journeys are so important to recognise, the fears that come up.

For example, when we’re trying to make peace with food, we have to have unconditional permission to eat. Now, most people, when they hear that ton social media, they’re like “You’re telling people they should eat pizza all day every day?” No, that’s not what I said. I said that they should have unconditional permission to eat these foods without guilt or shame.

Now, that first fear that comes up for our clients – rightfully so – is “I am never going to stop eating those foods if you give me unconditional permission to them.” And that makes sense because when they have gone through these dieting cycles, there was restriction. I always say the bow and arrow. We pull back that bow, restrict, restrict, restrict, restrict, and then we let go and say “Fuck it, I can’t do this anymore”, the arrow flies further in the opposite direction, we binge on everything, and that creates this false evidence in our head that “See? This is why I have to have restriction because I’m out of control.” Meanwhile, that restriction is what is causing the out of control.

It’s so normal to have that fear when you’re on an intuitive eating journey and starting to have that unconditional permission to eat because you think of those binges and you think “I’m always going to be out of control.” But the more we expose ourselves to those foods, the less scary they become and the more they just become neutral. Then we get to explore food, and that’s where it becomes fun – “What do I actually want?” and satisfaction and hunger and all of those things.

But I find this parallel with our relationship with movement when we look at the principles. Principle 9 is movement, feel the difference, where we have to have unconditional permission to rest in order to make peace with movement. And it’s that same fear that comes up: “But Sam, if you tell me that I have unconditional permission to rest, I will never move my body again.” It’s thinking about those times that maybe we were militantly working out and then we step away from it and then we got out of our routine and it took forever to get back to movement because we were moving for reasons – the intention behind the movement was to burn calories, to punish, all of these things.

It is so important, in order to make peace with movement, we have to know that we are allowed to rest unconditionally whenever we want, and that is where the magic happens of where we start to say, “Huh, I’m craving movement, but what kind of movement? I don’t even know what I like. What do I like?” And the same thing happens with food: “Huh. I’m eating all of this pizza or cake or cookies and I’m noticing that I want other things. What do I actually like?”

It’s so interesting to see those. And usually I find with clients that I work with, we’re working through making peace with food first, and later on in their journey, movement comes up. It’s really cool. I feel like they’re able to make peace with movement almost quicker – not always, of course; everybody’s different – but because they’ve lived through that with food and have been able to have a peaceful relationship with food. They’re like, “Oh, I’m doing the exact same thing with movement, aren’t I?” I think that parallel is really cool.

Chris Sandel: Nice. To respond to a couple of those things, I think on the food piece, I agree. Everyone feels like “Oh wow, if I just open the floodgates, it is never going to stop.” And the reality is this is just a novelty thing. You’ve created this high amount of novelty for these foods because they’ve been off limits, “The only times I get them are the times that I binge, or any time I have them, there’s this huge excitement added to them.” It’s just disproportional to the actual food.

And I don’t care about how much we’re talking about that these foods have been created in a lab and they’re so tasty and you just can’t stop and all that – it’s still just about you haven’t been doing this enough. Find the most delicious, amazing food; have it every meal. Do that day after day after day. By Day 3, by Day 4 – I don’t know how many days it’s going to take you, but the food that you think you can never, ever stop, after a while, you’re like, “I don’t want to see pizza again for a while.”

I remember I was listening to a golfing podcast, and it was a dad talking about the fact that the wife was away and he had the kids for five days or seven days or whatever, so he was like, “We’re going to go to all the best burger spots around where I live.” He’s like, “By Day 5, they’re like, ‘Dad, can we just not go and get burgers?’” It took them five days to be like, “I’m just done with this. I don’t want a burger anymore.”

And I think that’s true for everyone. And maybe for other people it takes a longer amount of time because of the restriction and all of the things that have built up around that, but no matter who you are or how long this has been going on, at some point it becomes tiresome. That food that you think is amazing is going to become just another piece of food.

Sam Previte: Yes. I love that point that you made. First of all, when you were telling that story about the golfing podcast, I’m like, why does golf habituate for my husband? Why can he just golf every single day and never get sick of it? But that’s I guess because it’s a hobby and it’s something he loves, right? I wish it could habituate.

Chris Sandel: I need to play golf with your husband, then. [laughs]

Sam Previte: Yes, come on over. But one analogy you made me think of – and you may have heard this – Evelyn Tribole taught this through her certification, saying “I love you.” Chris, do you have a partner?

Chris Sandel: Yes, I have a wife.

Sam Previte: Who said ‘I love you’ first, you or your wife? Do you remember?

Chris Sandel: I think it was me, but I can’t remember. That’s probably quite sad, but I can’t remember.

Sam Previte: Absolutely. But if you think about those first couple times of either you saying it or her saying it and hearing it, what came up in your body? It might be hard in this example if you don’t remember it, but what do you think happened?

Chris Sandel: Oh, I can still – even if I can’t remember that exact moment, you can still remember those early moments where it was like “Oh wow, this is so intense. This is so wonderful. I can’t believe that this human is saying this to me. Man, I will never grow tired of hearing this.”

Sam Previte: Yes, and you probably had physical things come up, whether it was face flushing, heart beating fast, hands sweating, all those things. Now, how does it feel when you hear ‘I love you’ from your wife?

Chris Sandel: It feels okay. [laughs]

Sam Previte: It’s just a part of life.

Chris Sandel: It’s lovely, but it’s pretty normalised by now, after 13 years, 14 years, whatever it is.

Sam Previte: Exactly. You’re on the phone, “Kay, love you, bye.” And it’s not that it’s bad. It’s not that you don’t like it. But it’s normalised. I love that analogy that Evelyn gives with food, like when we have these foods that we put on this pedestal, it’s exciting. It’s lustful. It’s “Oh my gosh, pizza, I can’t have that.” And then when we can have pizza whenever we want, it’s just pizza. It’s not that we want to ruin pizza and not like it and make it bad in any way, shape or form, but we want it to be just pizza. Pizza that we can enjoy.

Back to the examples you gave of the more you normalise it and have exposure to it, it becomes neutral. And it’s interesting how – we talked about expectations earlier, how through an intuitive eating journey, once you make food neutral, it can be kind of boring. And that’s something not everyone experiences, but a lot of my clients are like, “I just don’t care about food anymore because it’s not this lustful thing that I can’t have.”

So a big part of going through that is, let’s find foods that we do like. Let’s find flavours and textures and mouthfeels and temperatures and things that make food fun again, because it can be difficult when it’s not lustful anymore sometimes. It’s so interesting how that happens.

Chris Sandel: There can definitely become this disappointment of like “This used to be something that was really exciting, and yes, it was fraught and there were all these other things connected to it, but I miss that.”

Sam Previte: Yeah.

Chris Sandel: And then in terms of the exercise piece, I 100% agree with what you said. For the work that I’m doing at this point and the clients I’m seeing, really, I’m encouraging people to take a break from exercise, because as you said, it’s so hard to change that relationship if you don’t have the ability to actually rest. You’re not then actually able to decide, “What do I truly want?” Because we’ve already removed the option of rest, so we’re not even able to pick that. And we need to be able to bring that back in to then be able to say, “What do we want in terms of movement or no movement or stillness or whatever it may be?” I think that’s important.

And what I’ve found for people, even if this is one of the first things we change, is that, one, it’s people’s biggest fear more than anything else, stopping moving. And two, on average, this is the thing that improves the quickest. I know you said, “I’m doing it later so they’ve had this practice and that’s why it gets easier” – I don’t know if that’s actually true. I think there’s just something different about when you physically rest, you acclimatize to that quicker than the food piece. And I don’t know if that’s because we’re having something where there’s no grey area. You’re just resting. We’re not going to the gym a little bit. And if you’re doing the gym a little bit, then it’s really hard. But with the food piece, you’re always doing food in some form or fashion, so there is this real break.

Sam Previte: That’s a really great point.

Chris Sandel: I think in terms of the exposure therapy element of it, people get exposed to the stillness a lot quicker, so within a week, two weeks, three weeks, we’ve got on board with that a lot quicker. And way quicker than people expect to have that change.

Sam Previte: I love that. Thank you for saying that. That’s a really interesting point. Because yeah, we have to eat multiple times a day, and there’s so many different ways that we’re being exposed to food therapy. But again, with that rest, that’s a great, great point that you bring up. I love that.

00:52:19

What food satisfaction looks like in real life

Chris Sandel: Nice. What about some of the other principles? Are there any other things that come to mind for you?

Sam Previte: It might seem so simple, but I think that asking people, “What do you like to eat?” baffles them. The amount of times I’ve had people stare at me and be like, “I have no fucking clue” – because when you come from dieting, you’re making your food choices based on external influences. You’re choosing it because of the calorie count or the meal plan or the portion size or the ‘green’ foods versus the ‘red’ foods or whatever the fuck the rules are.

So when you come into intuitive eating and it’s like, what do you want to eat? What do you like to eat? And especially once we make peace with food, coming to this exploration phase of satisfaction and how to choose foods based off what satisfies us can be such an incredible experience.

There’s no diet in the world – and when I say diet, I simply mean an eating plan that the mission and the goal is intentional weight loss – there is no diet in the world, fad diet, that can promote satisfaction. Because deprivation, restriction, you’re always using some sort of restriction to get your end goal. That’s what I love so much about intuitive eating. People I think sometimes just think of it as making peace with food and making peace with your body, and that’s all very important, but you get to find out what you actually like to eat. I’ll have people in their fifties, sixties, be like “I don’t know, and I haven’t known for 40+ years what I like.” So that’s a really fun thing to explore with clients.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. I think the other piece connected to this is being okay with food being functional. I think sometimes people can try and go so far the other way where everything needs to be so satisfying, and “I’ve got to get this thing perfectly and that thing perfectly” – and there’s real importance to that, and I want to have those experiences so someone can really understand all the things that make a difference.

And we live in a world where, you know what, you may have five minutes between a meeting where you’re trying to cram a sandwich into your face and that’s all you’ve got. And we just need for it to be functional, and at that point, we’re getting in energy and that’s great, and then tonight when you’ve got a little more time, now we can prioritise satisfaction a little more. I think sometimes the pendulum can just swing too far in either of those directions.

Sam Previte: Totally. I’m so glad you brought that up. And I’m a huge proponent on social media of sharing ‘convenience foods’. Having two minutes to make something with two little kids, that’s a whole other podcast in and of itself. I’m sure you’ve experienced this at some point in your parenting journey, where “I don’t give a fuck what I eat. I just need to put something in my body so I have energy and can care for their needs.”

Food can absolutely be simple and convenient. It doesn’t always have to be this beautiful, Instagram aesthetic meal – which truly, mine never are. But it can be both. It can be convenient and satisfactory too. I love that you brought up that point, because I never want people to feel like they have to have these beautiful crafted five-course meals to be satisfied.

Chris Sandel: And there’s definitely times – today I had a 10-minute lunch where I heated up some rice from yesterday and then added a pouch of these bean things that we have, and I did it because it took me no time to do. I added some hummus to it. Was it the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten? No. But I actually enjoyed it. It was functional and it meant that I could eat really quickly and then I could come back and prepare for this.

I think just giving people that idea that food – because I think the thing with intuitive eating, people get latched on to so many parts of it and think it means this thing or it means that thing or “I always have to listen to my hunger” or “I always have to do this.” Like, no, no, no. There is so much nuance within this, and we can look at this element and that element. Sometimes we’re eating when we’re not hungry because we’re going to have a meeting at the point that we’d normally be eating. So we’re going to eat earlier. Or sometimes, as I said, we’ve got five minutes so we just need to cram something in.

So I want to have people understand that intuitive eating is more than what people typically think of when they hear that title.

00:57:13

How nutrition fits into intuitive eating

Sam Previte: Yes, 100%. And I think going off of that vein of just food in general, the 10th principle, honour your health with gentle nutrition – it’s often funny how on social, I feel like people don’t think that nutrition is a part of intuitive eating. Because we so often get those troll comments of like “You’re making people unhealthy” and blah, blah, blah. I’m like, no. We are registered dietitians. We have 1,400 hours of clinical supervised practice. We understand medical nutrition therapy.

It’s being able to myth bust when I get that question of “Can I do intuitive eating if I have diabetes? Can I be an intuitive eater if I have PCOS?” Enter any medical condition. Yes, absolutely yes. Because really, when you look at intuitive eating, you can integrate medical nutrition therapy without the guilt and shame. And we have so many studies, 170+, that show improved health outcomes in so many different ways – physical, mental, emotional – implementing intuitive eating.

I love when people ask that or I get a DM like “I have diabetes. Can I do intuitive eating?” I’m like, yes. We have so many clients we’ve gotten their A1C down dramatically, and we are not restricting them of carbs and telling them never to eat sugar again, which we know is not the answer.

So that is another one that I always love to talk about, because all of us, we have different blood levels. We have different medical diseases and conditions. We have different genetics. Maybe our parents have certain diseases and conditions that we’re aware of and we want to be mindful of with our nutrition. I think it’s an important thing to think about as well.

Chris Sandel: For sure. Even for me, when I think about eating disorder recovery, the thing I always say is calories trump everything else. If you’re not taking in enough calories, we can forget all the other bits of getting lost in the weeds with this thing.

And there are times where it does make a little more sense to pay attention to certain things. I’m thinking of a call I had with someone this morning, and for the first time in a very long time, I said to someone, “I don’t actually think you’re eating enough protein” because that is the thing that everyone does so much of us, and normally I’m trying –

Sam Previte: I was going to say, we never have to say those words.

Chris Sandel: No, normally I’m like “I think you need to go easy on the protein. You’re definitely getting in your required amounts. You’re not really eating much carbohydrates, you’re not eating much fat. That’s where we need to focus.” But for this person I said, “Hey, I actually think this is one of the things that is missing at the moment. And I don’t want you to cut anything out to bring this thing in; I want you to be adding it on top of what you’re doing. I want you to do this and we’ll run that experiment and let’s see what you notice from doing that.”

So yeah, there’s layers to all of this. It’s like, these are the big things that have to be happening, and then if we’re doing those right, let’s look at what the next layer is underneath and go into a little more detail to refine this thing. But if you’re not eating enough calories, then everything else just falls by the wayside.

Sam Previte: 100%. And I think a lot of times, people – rightfully so if they’re coming from diet culture – will come to an intuitive eating dietitian and be like, “Just tell me what to eat. Do it from your lens.” I’m like, well, it’s not that I won’t talk about nutrients or vitamins or macronutrients or those things, but I do think it’s imperative to make peace with food first before we dive into that, because it just feels icky if we’re going into macronutrients and micronutrients – and like you said, if you’re not eating enough, none of that matters. And the majority of the people we work with are restricting and not getting enough at some point.

But I love to myth-bust that we are dietitians, we do love nutrition and medical nutrition therapy and can help with that too – and we just do it without the guilt and shame. It’s great.

Chris Sandel: For sure. And actually, the things from a nutritional standpoint that make a difference can be “Hey, you need to eat more often. You need to be eating more food.” We don’t have to get into the tiny micronutrient details because there’s some really big, obvious red flags of other things that we need to work on here. I think people do it in the complete opposite direction, so often, like, “Tell me how much CoQ10 I should be getting in.” I’m like, “You’re not really even having lunch.”

Sam Previte: “Tell me what greens powder I should drink.” Okay, how about we eat food first, right?

Chris Sandel: Yes, exactly.

Sam Previte: 99.9% of us do not need a greens powder. Really 100% of us don’t. But again, another conversation for another day.

01:01:57

How Sam works on body image with clients

Chris Sandel: For sure. I think it’d be useful to talk about body image, because I know for me, this comes up a lot. I imagine it comes up a lot for you – and I can just start a broad, general question to start with and you can just go where you want to. How do you start with body image with people, or what are some of the things people are most struggling with where you’re like, “Hey, I normally go in this direction”?

Sam Previte: Great question. You even asking that is making me think back to when you were asking me about my personal story, and I find this to be true for a lot of my clients. When they get introduced to the anti-diet intuitive eating message, at first they’re like, “Yeah, fuck dieting! All foods fit!” And then when we hear the body piece of it, like all bodies are good bodies, trust your body, it’s like, “Wait, no, no, no, what?”

Chris Sandel: Yeah, “Other people can do that, but not for me.”

Sam Previte: “But not me”, right? I think that’s a really common experience I see: people wanting to get on board with the ‘fuck dieting’ piece, but then when it comes to the body changing, it’s like “Well, that’s where I draw the line.” And that makes sense, because we live in a completely fatphobic world. Like we talked about earlier, people who reside in larger bodies have an immense amount of shame and discrimination and weight stigma done to them. We know that people that are in smaller bodies are treated more kindly, they have more opportunities.

So there’s so much that goes into this, but if we pull it back to where do we start with clients, it’s really understanding their body image story. I like to use the analogy of a tree, like roots, trunk, and leaves and branches. If we’re looking at those roots deep underground that are firmly planted, those would be the primary messages that we’ve been given about our body. We’ll really work through this with a client, kind of like a flowchart.

So you put your name in the middle of a page – let’s say you put ‘Sam’ – and then I’m just going to shoot off all these different people – Mom, Dad, coaches, mentors, friends, teachers – and think about all the different comments that I heard about my body or bodies in general that have stuck with me and have become this primary message and belief system that I believe about my body and bodies in general.

Then we go from there, because that obviously influences our current relationship with body, and look at what that looks like. Then we look at, what do we want our relationship with our body to look like? What would a peaceful relationship with our body look like? We kind of explore this story or this timeline, and it really all comes back to belief systems about, what do we believe? Where were we taught that, and how do we challenge those belief systems?

Again, this could be probably five hours of a podcast alone, body image. There’s so much that goes into this because we have to think about the physical body. Pain and discomfort are valid, and if people are feeling that in their body, it’s not about saying, “Oh, no, no, your body’s a good body.” So understanding the difference between physical pain and emotional pain and separating those and getting resources for both.

And then again, coming back to the layers of fatphobia that exist. Vinny Welsby if one of my favourite fat activists that we’ve brought on multiple times to do education with our team and our clients of understanding the different levels of fatphobia – interpersonal versus ideological, and understanding what your part can be.

I know I’m rambling and going in so many different ways, but body image is so deeply rooted, and I think it’s truly something that our clients will always be working on, as humans we will always be working on, because our relationship with our body is the longest relationship we’ll ever be in, and it’s the most important one. And our body is always changing; therefore, our relationship with our body is always changing. So really bringing it back to self-compassion and starting with, “Why do we feel this way about our body and bodies in general?”

Chris Sandel: I think that comment of this will be something people deal with forever – and as you said, there are a number of reasons for that, but I think one of them is when you have prioritised this thing for a really long time, this is how you get your sense of safety or your sense of control. In a sense, your brain keeps coming back to this whenever there is a threat or whenever it is stressful. And that’s going to happen.

Even when someone fully recovers, there can still be times where “This was really hard, and wow, my brain generated the idea of ‘why don’t we restrict?’ or ‘gosh, it would be easier if these jeans weren’t as tight’” or whatever it may be. It’s so automatic. You don’t think your thoughts; thoughts think themselves, they come into your awareness. And when you change your state because of something occurring so that your nervous system has logged this thing as a threat, it’s amazing: certain things start to come up. And just being able to have that awareness, to be able to notice, “Huh, isn’t that interesting.”

And I know that sounds a lot easier said than done because in that moment, you’re probably really angry about this thing that the co-worker did or this thing with your husband or partner or whatever it may be. But it is amazing when people can start to have that ability to step back and notice, “Wow, those things come up and they always coincide with these other things that are happening. And this isn’t necessarily about my body per se; it’s actually about when I feel more lonely or upset or disappointed or whatever these other emotions are.”

Sam Previte: 100%. Totally agree. It’s some of the hardest work I think we’ll ever do as humans, but it’s some of the most rewarding work because when you start with a client, you ask them, “HOW many hours a day are you thinking about your body or food or calories or weight or what your body looks like?”, all of these things. And then through your work together, the goal is – it’s not going to be never. Like you said, you’re still going to have thoughts. We can control them. But the goal is to be able to live our life and do things that we love and that we genuinely enjoy without these obsessive thoughts about food and what our body looks like stealing the present from us.

That’s what’s so interesting: the body doesn’t have to physically change in order to get to that place. And it doesn’t even have to be that place; it could just be not having as many thoughts as a first step.

I think it comes back to, as well, the expectations piece we keep coming back to today. I think social media is a wonderful tool, and it can also stir up a lot of negative things. But I think sometimes there’s this false expectation of “I need to love my body, I need to love every roll, every crease.” I very rarely, if ever, have ever met a human that wakes up every morning and looks in the mirror and says, “I love my body!” If you do, great. More power to you. But can we level set our expectations to be “Hey, I just want to accept my body and not think about it as much” or “I just want it to be neutral. I don’t want to love it, I don’t want to hate it, I just want it to be there and again, be able to focus on other things that I’m passionate about and not have it take up all of my mental bandwidth throughout the day.”

Chris Sandel: For sure. I think the thing I would also add to this is when someone imagines that person who has the good relationship with their body, who isn’t thinking about it 24/7, they often think of this stereotype of “Oh, they must have all these privileges.” And sometimes that is true, but I’ve worked with people all across the weight spectrum who have had horrendous body image, and I’ve worked with people across the weight spectrum who’ve got to a place where they have really good body image.

Sam Previte: 100%.

Chris Sandel: Like you’ve said many times, it’s not that there isn’t weight stigma and bias and all these things in our society. Those things truly do exist and they do make it more difficult for some people than others. And that is not a complete embargo into someone being able to get to a place where they do have good body image and there is body acceptance and there is body neutrality or body autonomy or body respect, all these things where “Hey, I don’t have to love every part of my body, but you know what? I’m going to take care of it and I’m going to speak to it in a kind and compassionate way. Not always, but the vast majority of the time.”

Sam Previte: Yes. I feel like a lot of people have experienced some form of this. Like if they did at some point reside in a smaller version of themselves, you’ll have them pull up a picture and it’ll be like, “Okay, what was your narrative like in your head then?” And they’re like, “Oh, I still hated my body.” Especially the people that I’ve worked with that have dieted for 20+ years. They look at that picture and they’re like, “I wish I looked like that.” “But what was your narrative?” “Oh, I hated my body.”

So what makes us think that if we get into a smaller body now, we’re just going to, poof!, love ourselves? We can’t hate our way to happiness. It’s just the diet culture narrative being thrown in our face over and over again to make us believe that if we just get smaller, we’ll be happier.

And you could use that narrative for anything in life. “If I just get the partner, if I just get the job, if I just get the raise, if I just get…” – enter anything – “then I’ll be happy.” And that’s just not true.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. It feels true because things are relative, and when you’re living in that bigger body and then you reflect back on that smaller body, you’re like, “Of course I would be so, so happy to get back there.” But if you then get back there, what happens is that’s the new normal, and “Now I’m comparing myself to this other thing or this other thing” or “I’m recognising, man, am I having to do a lot to maintain this thing. I thought that I would be so confident and I would love going out to meals and I’d love doing this in that body, and yet I’m not actually noticing that that’s occurring.”

So even if I’ve got the ‘body of my dreams’ that I thought would make me happy, and even if I can recognise that it is a good-looking body by society’s standards, it doesn’t actually translate in the way that I thought it would.

Sam Previte: Yes. And I think something that is pulled into this as well is that external validation. That’s something that is so often remembered when we think of the smaller versions of ourselves or of bodies in general, because if you’ve ever dieted and achieved a smaller body at some point or another, you probably had people saying to you, “You look so good. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. Oh, you look awesome! Yeah, girl!”

I have vivid memories of the summer I came back my most disordered as ever, taking Adderall every day to try to not eat, and people just complimenting me out the ass. And what did that do? That just made me more disordered than ever because they were telling me that they loved, in that moment, my smaller body. In my head, that’s what I told myself. Like, “People like me more if I’m smaller. I get more attention if I’m smaller.” And that fuelled – that didn’t make me like myself more. That didn’t make me like my body more at all. It made me actually hate myself more and do more harmful behaviours than good.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. And now we tie all of my self-worth to this one thing as opposed to being like, “No, they like me because I’m a really compassionate person and I’m a good listener” or whatever it may be. “This is the only reason people are wanting me around.”

Sam Previte: Yep. Totally.

01:14:52

Her experience with being asked if she was pregnant

Chris Sandel: I know you had an experience – I don’t know how recently this was, but you had a family member ask you if you were pregnant.

Sam Previte: Yes.

Chris Sandel: I want you to talk about that. And asked if you were pregnant when you were not pregnant. So yeah, tell me about that experience and how you dealt with it and how you responded and what that was like.

Sam Previte: Yes, and I will send you a full podcast episode breakdown on that, so if this has happened to any of your listeners and they want to go deeper into this, they can click that as well in the show notes.

Yeah, what was I, not even six months postpartum – but that just shows you how little this family member knew about me and how distant we are. I ended up going to this wedding solo. My husband stayed home with our two kids because it was just easier, less expensive, all the things. And yeah, my family member pulled me off the dance floor and was like, “Do you have something to tell me?” and I was like, “What?” And then they asked it again and kind of like up and down. Nothing was registering in my head. I’m like, “What?” They’re like, “Are you expecting?” I was just like, in that moment, could not believe.

But then, honestly, I couldn’t believe it, there was anger, and then in my head – this is so fucked up – I was like, “This is going to be a great podcast episode.” [laughs] Terrible that I thought that way, but whatever.

But in the moment, I was like, I needed to get out. There were sirens in my head being like, “Get out, get to safety.” So I was just like, “No, I just had a baby” and then I danced away. Because I was on the dance floor; he pulled me off of the dance floor to ask me, so then I just danced away. And honestly – and I went over this in depth on my podcast – I was more angry at myself for how bad the comment hurt than I was at the comment in general.

And when I realised that, it made me really angry because I was like, even with the work that I do, day in and day out, with body image and all of this stuff, it made me so angry that that comment then derailed pretty much of the rest of my night. I couldn’t be present, I couldn’t shake it off. It just pissed me off. I ended up texting my husband because I was like, “What the fuck?” He was like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” But it made me so angry that it wasn’t the comment that hurt me; it was how I was reacting to the comment.

So I just let myself be angry. I just had to counsel myself in the moment like, “Feel whatever you need to feel. You know that this just speaks volumes of how he views bodies and thinks it’s okay to ask a woman that” and all of these things. And then I just let myself process and acknowledge that that sucked, that hurt, that stirred up some old part of me that did tie worth to my body and body size.

But then I was able to move on from it so much quicker and recognise that it didn’t spiral me into any harmful behaviours whatsoever. I continued to eat normally. There was no like, “Oh, now I need to change my body.” It was more so me texting this person to say, “Well, now you know to never ask a woman that ever again, and I’m glad I could teach you that lesson.” [laughs]

Chris Sandel: Sure. I think the thing with this – and this will be true for anyone listening or going through a similar experience – is you don’t choose that first response. It’s not that you heard that comment and you were like, “Body, get angry.” It just did what it did, and as you said, this probably connects to an old wound or stuff that is deep within us. We all want to be loved, we all want to be not ostracized and be the outsider. And for whatever reason, that comment got seen as a threat and triggered something within you.

I think what’s more important is, what is the thing that you’re doing after that? You reached out to your husband. “Okay, I need to allow this anger to be here. I’m going to give myself the space to feel these things, and I’m not going to start doing any disordered behaviours or do anything that is then going to add fuel to this fire or make things worse.” I think that’s the more important piece.

Sam Previte: Yes. Just allowing myself to feel it, getting that support. Like you said, reaching out to the support of a loved one. I was also so fortunate that earlier that night, I ran into a girl in the bathroom who was like, “Are you Sam from Find Food Freedom?” and I was like, “I am.” She was a dietitian from California. She was weight-inclusive. I was like, “No fucking way. Why didn’t I know you were going to be here? Why didn’t they tell me this?” So then I found her when the comment was made and was like, “Oh my gosh, I have to tell you about this.” So that was like an angel being sent from whatever powers above to tell me, “Hey, you can go confide in her.” So that was a fun little moment we had together.

But yeah, and that’s where, for so many people on their journeys of recovery – like you said, you don’t get to control how you react, but you also never get to control what people say to you. So these experiences, as much as they may suck, prove and give you evidence of how far you’ve come. Because again, if that was said to me in my twenties, I would’ve been starting a juice cleanse by that evening.

So it allows you to see how differently you react and fall back to self-compassion and not the harmful behaviours. So there’s a part of me that’s – not happy that it happened, but it’s really cool to see that growth personally. And then, again, there’s that professional side of my brain that’s like, “All right, this is a great story and we can use it as content to help other people.”

When I put up an Instagram poll, I think there had to be thousands and thousands of women that were like, “This happened to me this week. This happened to me three times and I’ve never had a child.” Again, I was postpartum. I had diastasis recti. I had a C-section. So there was a look to my body that I can understand that. And, going back to what we’ve talked about before, this happens to humans all the time who’ve never birthed a child. Again, back to that discrimination, oppression, fat shaming, judgment that people get in larger bodies that is just appalling.

Chris Sandel: For sure. When I saw your post about it on Instagram, one of the comments – and I think they said it’s from a comedian – which is, “Unless a woman is crowning, don’t ask if she’s pregnant.” [laughs] I was like, that’s a lovely idea that everyone should keep in mind.

Sam Previte: Yes. I love that.

Chris Sandel: Cool. Sam, this has been wonderful. I’ve loved getting to chat with you. I feel like we could go on for many more hours.

Sam Previte: We truly could.

Chris Sandel: But where should people go if they want to find out more about you?

Sam Previte: Probably the easiest place would be Instagram because all of our links live there. You can find us on Instagram @find.food.freedom, and if you click the link in our bio there, you can get your benefits checked. If you live in the United States, we accept Etna, Cigna, United, BCBS, many more. And the majority of people have free one-on-one counselling with our team and they have no idea that they have these benefits. So highly encourage people to come on over to Instagram and check us out.

Chris Sandel: Cool. I will put all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. This is awesome.

Sam Previte: Thank you.

Chris Sandel: So that was my conversation with Sam Previte. I really loved what we got to cover here. If you like what we covered, then I highly recommend checking out her other podcast, checking out her Instagram. I will put all of those links in the show notes.

As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you’re living with an eating disorder and you would like to reach a place of full recovery, then I would love to help. Just send an email to info@seven-health.com and put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and then I can get the details over to you.

Alright, that is it for this week’s show. I will be back with another episode next week. Until then, take care of yourself and I will see you soon!