Episode 270: This week Aaron Flores returns to the podcast. We discuss anxiety, Aaron’s appearance on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, binge eating disorder and some of the misconceptions with it, feeling comfortable in your body, self-compassion, grief, anxiety and much more.
Aaron Flores is a registered dietitian nutritionist and Certified Body Trust® provider. With over 10 years of experience, Aaron has worked with eating disorders in a variety of settings over his career including the VA Healthcare System and Center for Discovery. He currently has a private practice in Calabasas, CA.
Aaron uses Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size®, and Body Trust® as the framework to help individuals develop a more compassionate, non-judgemental approach to food and their body. His work has been featured on the 10% Happier Podcast, in the New York Times, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Aaron is also a frequent speaker, presenting at national and international eating disorder conferences. In addition to his individual work with clients, he is also a podcaster. His two shows are Men Unscripted and, Dietitians Unplugged.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 270 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/270.
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 help clients to fully recover from disordered eating and eating disorders so that their days are no longer governed by fear and anxiety, and instead they can live a meaningful life that is in alignment with their values.
This week on the show, it is a guest interview. My guest today is actually a returning guest. It’s Aaron Flores. Aaron is a registered dietitian/nutritionist and a Certified Body Trust Provider. With over 10 years of experience, Aaron has worked with eating disorders in a variety of settings over his career, including the VA health care system and Center for Discovery. He currently has a private practice in Calabasas, California. Aaron uses intuitive eating, Health At Every Size, and Body Trust as the framework to help individuals develop a more compassionate, non-judgmental approach to food and their body. His work has been featured on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast, in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed. Aaron is also a frequent speaker, presenting at national and international eating disorder conferences. In addition to his individual work with clients, he’s also a podcaster. He has two shows, Men Unscripted and Dietitians Unplugged.
I’ve been a huge fan of Aaron’s work for a long time. I loved our first conversation, which is Episode 174 of the podcast, and I’ll add that to the show notes. In June of last year, Aaron started releasing his new podcast, which is Men Unscripted, and I became a listener and really enjoyed it. So I reached out to Aaron to get him to come back on the show.
As part of this episode, we chat about anxiety; Aaron’s appearance on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast; binge eating disorder and some of the misconceptions with it; having moments of feeling comfortable in your body; self-compassion; comfort versus pride; weight stigma; eating disorders while in a larger body; privilege; grief; and much more.
I should also add that while many of these topics were inspired by Aaron’s podcast, which is called Men Unscripted, these are ideas that are largely universal. It’s not specific to being a man.
I really loved this conversation. Aaron is such an incredible human being and he’s so easy to chat with and always has great insights and wisdom to share. At the end of the episode, I have a recommendation for something to check out, but for now, let’s get on with the show. Here is my conversation with Aaron Flores.
Hey Aaron, welcome back to Real Health Radio. I’m excited to be chatting with you again.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, me too. I appreciate the opportunity to come back and talk some more. Thanks for having me back.
Chris Sandel: Your first episode on the podcast came out in November of 2019, so well over three years ago, and a lot has happened in that time, especially in the world. We’ve had a global pandemic.
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For any listeners who haven’t heard our first conversation, do you want to just explain a little about who you are as a practitioner? Who you work with and what training you’ve done.
Aaron Flores: It’s true, a lot has happened in just over three years. It seems like more than we could even talk about has happened. But yes, the world has truly changed.
I’m a registered dietitian. I’m based out of Los Angeles, California, and I am also a Certified Body Trust Provider. I have a private practice and I work with clients working on healing their relationship with food and their body. Most of my clients have or have experienced eating disorders in their lifetime, and we spend a lot of time actually talking less about food and more about body image and the impact of weight stigma in the world and trying to navigate what it means to be at home in our body in a world that tells us it’s not okay to do that.
And then I have a podcast called Men Unscripted, which is something that I’m sure we’ll talk about as we go. But those are the things I do.
Chris Sandel: How have things changed for you because of the pandemic? What shifted in terms of your practice?
Aaron Flores: Almost everything, to be honest. One, my practice is all virtual now. I used to see people in my office. I still have an office, but I did not come here for about a year and a half. I worked out of my home as soon as the pandemic hit, and it wasn’t until about June or July of the following year that I finally came back to the office and started working from here.
I would say the pandemic affected me both personally and professionally, for sure. Professionally, I think what I noticed pretty quickly is that people really struggled. People struggled pretty intensely as soon as these orders to stay at home were implemented. I think that persisted for months and months. So I think the ways in which people were struggling increased.
And personally, I struggled. I mean, it was hard supporting people during that time. It was great; I was really appreciative of it, to do it. But it took a lot out of me. Definitely learned a lot about my own anxiety and my own experiences with depression and the impact isolation had on me, even though I have a family and I was with them and we were all thankfully safe. It was a lot. So I think what it taught me personally is reevaluating what’s important, what relationships outside of my family are important, where I spend my time, how I spend my time, how I take care of myself. Those were some really important lessons that I’m grateful for.
And I will say that it seems like a long time ago, but I think in a lot of ways, I’m still, and a lot of my clients are still, feeling the effects of the pandemic. So it’s been profound.
Chris Sandel: I agree with you on so many levels. Especially personally. It’s hard for me to tease things apart, because I also have a small child. At the start of the pandemic he was two; he’s now five. That has been a really difficult, in many ways, experience. We are still grappling with all that and grappling with how to be a good parent. I think that’s had a really big impact on me.
I also have noticed over the last couple years how much more I’m affected by anxiety or I’m affected by mood states, where I think I was a little oblivious before. There’s been things that’ve happened and I’m much more aware of those things. For the last – I think it’s probably the last year, I’ve been working four days a week. That’s just the way that it has to be because I don’t have the capacity to do more than that. I’ve got a young son, and at this stage we’re home educating because that’s the right thing for him right now. So yeah, there’s been this real feeling of how to navigate all of those different demands, whether it be work or family.
Aaron Flores: Listen, I can empathise with that 100%. I can’t remember exactly what the timing was, if this was during the pandemic or maybe before, but my therapist at some point was like, “I think you need to work four days a week. Is there a day that you could take off?” It really blew my mind out a little bit because I’m like, am I allowed to do that? That seems ‘lazy’ instead of compassionate and kind and actually nurturing. This whole hustle mentality, trying to make a lot of money or make enough money to survive, all of these things bristled with me.
But I did the same thing. I don’t work on Mondays, really. I do things like this, or I will do things on my own. But I don’t see clients that day, and it’s truly, truly helpful.
Chris Sandel: I totally agree. Friday is the day that I don’t work, so now it’s me and my son. That’s the day that we hang out, most of the time just the two of us because my wife by that stage is like, “Okay, I just need a break.” And he’s now got to an age where it’s really fun. We’re going swimming or we’re going and doing something that’s enjoyable where we’re hanging out. Last Friday it was snowing here. We went and had a ski day.
Aaron Flores: I love that.
Chris Sandel: It was just glorious. And it’s taken a long time to be able to get to that place.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, for sure. Again, I appreciate so much of that and draw parallels with my own experience as a father. Just noticing those moments, when you do get to have some time with your kids that is really quality – it’s not enough to be extravagant, just very simple things, but they mean a lot. I think mostly for me. I think, this is one thing that I am loving, and it’s simple and it’s small, but it’s quite meaningful.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. There’s been a lot of Monopoly played recently. [laughs]
Aaron Flores: [laughs] Yeah.
Chris Sandel: I know last time when we chatted as well, you were splitting some of your work time between your own practice and then also working with Center for Discovery. Are you still doing this?
Aaron Flores: Well, I did leave Center for Discovery in – again, time sort of melds together right now, but probably in the spring of 2022. Really it was just to focus on my practice. For no other reason. They were doing great things; I was really appreciative of how they were really focused on trying to be more inclusive around body size and giving me so much freedom to try to help bring that philosophy into their treatment centres.
Eventually I realised, my practice is growing and it’s sustainable and it’s ongoing. Really the lesson of the pandemic showed up right there: where do I want to spend my time? If I’m going to do this work and it’s really meaningful work, am I stretching myself too thin by doing two jobs, essentially? Maybe I want to spend most of my time in this space. And they completely understood. Again, I have nothing but good things to say about them in allowing me the space to do so much work there.
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Chris Sandel: One of the things I was super excited to see – and I don’t know when this happened. Again, time is weird at this point, so it could’ve been a year ago, could’ve been two years ago, but you appeared on Dan Harris’s Ten Percent Happier Podcast, which is a huge podcast. I don’t know his exact numbers, but he has a very large reach. When I saw that your name came up and you were on that show, I was so chuffed. How did this come about?
Aaron Flores: It was one of those things that showed up on my email and I was like, I think this is a joke. Who’s pranking me? But it came about – I was referred to them by another dietitian who does some collaborations with them, Christy Harrison. She was working on a project with them at the time where they were going to do something for the new year. It was going to be something in their app. It was going to be an interview that would show up in their app, and then eventually in talking to them, they were like, “This might be a really good episode by itself and we’d love to put it on the show.” I was like, “Okay, this is great.”
I’ll be honest, it took a little while just because they do so much content, and it’s so systematised and organised that it took a little while for them to say what date they want to fit me in, how it works within their overall content scheme of things. At some point I actually hadn’t heard from them for a couple months, and my inner critic was like, “Yep, they don’t want me.” Because I started with a pre-interview and I’m like, “Dan heard it. He doesn’t want to talk to me. Totally bombed that. Fuck, I just blew this opportunity.” And then literally like a day later they emailed me like, “We’d love to record it on this day.” I was like, of course that happens, right?
No, but I was so lucky and fortunate to be asked to be on. I will be honest, I was incredibly nervous. I have followed the podcast for a while; I followed Dan’s history. I respect it so much. Also, what I loved about his podcast, or what I continue to love about his podcast, is his episode with Evelyn Tribole talking about intuitive eating is amazing. What I love about it is you hear this shift in his thinking from the beginning to the end of the episode, so much where it’s impacted the show, and he’s had other folks on that I really have enjoyed these episodes.
To be included in that was so nice. And again, when it was over, recording, I don’t really remember what I said. I was like, I don’t know I did that well or not. It was a very out-of-body moment. But I’m really grateful to have been on the show, and yeah, it’s probably one of the shows I’ve been on that has the biggest reach, so I was just grateful to be able to talk to him.
Chris Sandel: For me, it was really nice to see someone with that size of platform talking about this and having you on and Evelyn on and Christy on and other people in that space, and really embracing it. There’s so many people who I think are doing great work in many areas, but then in this area, it’s terrible. So to see Dan be one of the few people of that calibre that I can think of talking about this was amazing.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. He asked great questions, too. I think there were some good questions to clarify things or help understand them on a deeper level. It was a great episode. My only regret is the bandwidth – you do podcasts; sometimes we save bandwidth by not having video on. We started with video on and it was so nice to see him, and I think it was probably on my end the bandwidth was cutting in and out. So we ended up not having video, which sort of freaked me out a little bit more because I couldn’t see his reactions. That was my only regret. I just couldn’t see him as we were talking as much. But Dan, if you’re out there, have me back. I’ve got way more information for you. The appeal is out there.
Chris Sandel: I’ve done podcasts before where the bandwidth has been terrible or bad, and it just puts you on edge. It stops being a really nice, flowing conversation because you’re in that place of being a little more worried. So I would imagine it’s not just the not seeing him, it’s also possibly the worry of “Is this going to get worse? Is this going to drop out?”
Aaron Flores: Totally. Yep, anxiety. Listen, there’s anxiety showing up in the middle of that podcast episode. That’s exactly it.
Chris Sandel: So you haven’t gone back and listened to it since?
Aaron Flores: I did listen to it. I didn’t get to preview it, which is fine. Most shows don’t do that. I just listened once it was released, and it actually took me about a week to gather the courage or the energy to listen to it. But I eventually did and I was like, this came out pretty good. More importantly, I think, the friends that I have that listened to it said I did very well and they appreciated what I said. So that means a lot, to hear the feedback from colleagues and friends.
Chris Sandel: Nice. I will second or third or fourth that. [laughs]
Aaron Flores: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Chris Sandel: I know personally the times where I’m like, “Ugh, I didn’t do that well” and then when I release it I’m like, oh, actually it wasn’t as bad as I remembered.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, it’s hard to be present during a lot of these things. And you’re right, sometimes we just don’t hear what’s going on in the moment, but you hear it back and you’re like, oh, that sounds pretty smart. I surprised myself that I said that so well.
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Chris Sandel: Something on your site, you specifically list that you treat eating disorder clients and binge eating disorder clients. I’d love to chat about binge eating disorder, as it’s something that comes with a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions. From your perspective, what are some of the things that people most misunderstand about binge eating disorder?
Aaron Flores: The first thing is that it’s the most common eating disorder. People assume eating disorders are – in the U.S. here, it’s some after-school special stereotype of anorexia, sometimes bulimia. But the reality is that binge eating disorder is the most common occurring eating disorder of all of them. That means a lot of folks are struggling and don’t know that they’re struggling.
The other thing I think is important for people to know is that binge eating disorder doesn’t come in a specific body size and that all people of different body sizes and races and genders will experience binge eating disorder. It is probably a more close prevalence between people who identify as male and people who identify as female, so it’s very common.
The other thing is that a lot of folks who have been traditionally seeking weight loss treatments are struggling with binge eating disorder and being prescribed weight loss without the understanding that what is going on here is a mental health disorder that’s an eating disorder that needs a very different approach. And weight loss is probably only going to exacerbate it.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. When I think about the clients I work with, restriction and trying to micromanage food or fears about food, etc., all of that is very much at the heart of binge eating disorder.
Aaron Flores: 100%. I love that you added that. I agree. Most people just hear the word ‘binge’ and assume that it’s that, when I agree – I think this is an eating disorder of restriction and anxiety around food, totally.
Chris Sandel: Just on the point of it being the most common eating disorder – one, I would say I think OSFED is more common, the thing that we talk about as being the catchall when someone doesn’t fall into one of these nice delineated groups about what categories and how many times a week you’re doing these kinds of things to actually get the diagnosis of binge eating disorder.
The other part I would say is I think if we didn’t have so much bias, there’d be a lot more people who would be getting diagnosed with bulimia or anorexia. But because of what we think someone with binge eating disorder looks like, that’s often the diagnosis that they get, because so many people that I see who’ve been diagnosed with this, I’m like, “You are clearly using compensating methods to try and deal with this. In theory, this should be considered bulimia.”
So yeah, I think part of the reason – and you tell me your thoughts, but I think part of the reason why it is the most widely diagnosed of the eating disorders is because of our biases.
Aaron Flores: Oh, I think that’s a great point. I think that would apply to, you’re right, all eating disorders. I think the prevalence of eating disorders is very much underestimated across all of the ways people will experience them. I definitely think more people are struggling with eating disorders than we attribute. You’re right, that is largely due to bias around how we screen for eating disorders and how we miss so many folks because of that bias. I would agree completely.
Chris Sandel: When people are coming to you, I know your job is not to diagnose, but how many people are coming where they’re saying, “I have or think I have binge eating disorder” versus when you’re going through their experience or case history, you’re saying, “Hey, have you thought about this? Maybe this is what’s going on”?
Aaron Flores: That’s a great question. In the States – I don’t know if it’s different in Europe or UK – dietitians don’t diagnose eating disorders. It’s a mental health disorder, and thus in the DSM-V, and therapists and people who are qualified will do the diagnosis.
The reason I think it’s such an interesting question is for a couple things. One is I’m very curious – people’s hierarchy of eating disorders – which are acceptable, which are not – is very interesting, and I think that’s steeped in a lot of bias. Like “I don’t want to be labelled as this” or “I’d rather be labelled as that because of a lot of different factors.” So I get curious about that.
I also think so much about maybe even, as providers, our bias of if we see that label or that diagnosis, do we maybe even unconsciously provide a different level of care, a different attention to certain things? How does that label bias our treatment course for helping people with eating disorders?
One of the things I will say often to clients is, the thing that is most troublesome about eating disorders are the behaviours. I’m less concerned about what they are; I’m more concerned about how they are impacting your life and how we can support that. Again, I guess I’m answering it and trying to say I try to check my bias in those things in reinforcing that hierarchy that clients might have, reinforcing the systemic hierarchy that shows up in treatment and treatment bias. But I also think that people’s eating disorders morph over time and change.
Chris Sandel: Totally.
Aaron Flores: As a clinician, I try to be as nimble as possible to think about what’s showing up now, what’s most important, and how to support the client. I don’t know if that answered the question.
Chris Sandel: No, it did. If I think about it from my perspective, I think it’s the same thing just playing out in different flavours. As you said, it shifts and morphs. My overview of all this is that eating disorders are anxiety disorders. They are disorders connected to avoidance. That avoidance can look different depending on what is going on, but when someone comes to see me, whether they’ve said that it’s binge eating disorder or anorexia or whatever it is, what I’m doing doesn’t really change. We’re still starting to have conversations about the same kinds of things. We’re still looking at what’s coming up. I’m definitely not thinking, “Oh okay, because you have binge eating, we have to do this” or “Because you’ve got anorexia we have to do that.” It’s like, no, these are all pretty similar.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. I appreciate that, for sure.
Chris Sandel: I am an avid listener of your new podcast, Men Unscripted, and just love hearing the conversations. I thought what would be useful was to use some of the ideas that have come up as part of that podcast for us to have a discussion on, because I think there’s really good themes that come up that would be useful for us to talk about.
Before I start with that piece, when we chatted last time, you said that your client load, roughly 30% was either male or male-identifying. Is that still the same since we last spoke?
Aaron Flores: Yeah. It’s pretty close. Maybe a slight uptick in that. It’s interesting; this question comes up every now and then when I am talking about this work, and it’s always interesting because I never think about it until the question comes up. But yeah, I think it’s a little bit higher than 30% at this point. But I wouldn’t say it’s all male-identified folks. It’s probably just under half. Just depends. But definitely a little bit of an uptick.
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Chris Sandel: For anyone who hasn’t listened to the show, do you want to explain a little bit about what it is?
Aaron Flores: Well, if you haven’t listened, how dare you, first off. No, just kidding. It’s a podcast where I’m interviewing anyone who identifies as male about what their body story is – what it’s been like for them to live in their body, what’s been their experience around food, and how it’s impacted their life. I think the key little piece of this is all of the interviews are anonymous. Everyone who’s been on the show has used an alias.
The hope in me doing that was with anonymity, I wanted people to feel like they could be as vulnerable as possible and know that they could share some really intimate pieces of their experiences without worrying that someone’s going to be like, “Oh my goodness, did you hear what Larry said?”
The other piece is these are all just people. No-one who’s been on the show, at least so far – it’s not a promotion thing. It’s not like, “I do this work and here’s where you can find me.” They’re just there to share their story. That’s the only benefit of coming on the show, like, “Hey, I just want to share my story with folks.”
I’ve done 20 interviews so far. I’ll probably do another 10 coming up this year in 2023. It’s been totally amazing to do.
Chris Sandel: A couple of things I want to mention. One is that what’s interesting for me when I listen to the show is that, yes, it is all men talking about this stuff – and some of that is very specific to being a male, but the vast majority is really universal and cuts across gender lines. It’s more about the difficulty of being a human being living in the society that we live in.
And there are just so many of the guys that have commented on the show about how grateful they are to have found you and for you to be doing this podcast because these conversations aren’t happening for men. They see that their wife has been able to do so much work on her eating disorder or her body image or self-compassion, and their wife could find so many podcasts and places online for this stuff, but for the men, this just isn’t the case. I think one of the guys specifically said, “I hadn’t heard my story so I’m not sure if it’s real.” So I think there is something very profound about doing this with men, even if so much of it is universal.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. I think that comment that you just said I was so surprised to hear, as people were opting in to share their story. Part of the reason was “I heard my story reflected back in Season 1, and I wanted to share my story because I know someone else probably will hear it and feel like they’re not alone.” So yeah, I think that really surprised me, that there would be some folks out there who would hear it and be like, “Oh my goodness, that is me. Someone else is experiencing what I experience in this world, and how helpful it is to know that I’m not alone.”
Chris Sandel: I also think, like the part you talked about, this isn’t someone who’s a podcaster, this isn’t someone who works in this space. It’s like, “I just want to have a conversation.” You’re hearing from real people where Health At Every Size isn’t their day job. It’s just they come across this work for very personal reasons and they want to have a conversation with you.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, absolutely. Here’s the selfish piece. Again, lessons from the pandemic. I realised I like these kinds of spaces. I like these kinds of conversations. So there’s a selfish part of it that is like, me doing this podcast is a way to talk to other guys. It’s really helpful for me to just sit there and listen and ask questions and share a communal space for a small period of time. It’s very emotionally rewarding for me to do this as well.
Chris Sandel: It’s interesting; one of the things we chatted about last time was the fact that you offer men’s support groups. I remember us talking about that last time and thinking that’s such a great idea, I’d love to be part of something like that. And then I had the opportunity to do so. Last year, one of my friends set up a men’s group. There were eight of us who did it, and I knew two of the guys and the others I didn’t know.
Honestly, it was such an incredible experience. I tend to think of my friends group as being pretty open and that we’re filled with fairly sensitive guys, but to have a group that was meeting up each week with the explicit goal of talking about our feelings or talking about things that we’re struggling with, it was just really huge.
Aaron Flores: Absolutely. I think that is something I noticed with my friend group also. There are certain things that we allow open conversation around, and some of it is pretty vulnerable, some of it’s not. But yeah, having this space is very different. It’s like, here’s the intention of it. Even though we might not have this long history, people in this group can come together and pretty quickly feel like, “Oh, my experience is really valid and I’m allowed to be able to share these things and get support and support other folks.” It’s really special.
Chris Sandel: It cuts through all of the kinds of assumptions that you make about other people’s lives.
Aaron Flores: Sure, absolutely.
Chris Sandel: All of the people on the call – I could be like, oh, they’re fairly successful, they’ve got money. And it’s like, oh okay, there’s a lot more going on behind closed doors than I would’ve assumed.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, that’s such a great point. I never thought about that before, but it makes me think about – as I’ve done this group and we’re introducing ourselves, folks introduce themselves by sharing some of their identity and their experience and what they’ve been struggling with or what they hope to get out of the group. Outside of that group, whenever I meet folks, it seems the first question is “What do you do?” That hasn’t come up in any of my groups as an introduction. It might come up over the course of eight sessions or so, but it’s not like “I’m showing up, I’m here, and I’m a dietitian and that’s my identity”, which is really awesome. I’m appreciating how you noticed that because it definitely shows up, and it is a great way for folks to connect without that comparison.
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Chris Sandel: Yeah. One of the things that comes up a lot and that you specifically ask your guests is about the way that they feel comfortable in their body. Can you talk a little about this?
Aaron Flores: I really wanted to make sure I asked that question to everyone, because being in our body is hard. It is. And depending on what we’ve experienced in life, it can be varying degrees of challenge and hardness, but it is hard. I wanted to make sure at least there was some time given to when we do feel connected to our body. What I find is there are times when we are connected with our body, even when we have some really intense body image struggles or we deal with a lot of history of trauma or whatever the story is why it’s hard to be in our body – but I do think that there are moments that we’re letting go or we’re letting slip by where we aren’t acknowledging that this is a moment when we’re embodied.
So it was important for me to give some context and some time to different ways in which people feel connected to their body. Again, it can be anything from – I remember one of the first interviews I did was a gentleman who had a lot of tattoos and was getting tattoos, and that was a way to feel connected to their body. Some folks it’s movement, and some folks it’s just playing music or performing. We’ve had a lot of performers on the show.
I think if people pause a little bit, they realise, “Oh, I think I was just really connected to my body for the last 10 minutes. I didn’t even realise it because everything was just going great.” Everything was in that flow state. Everything was going really great. Going back to what you said, being with your son in the snow on a Friday can be one of those moments when we get really connected to our body, like, “Wow, I am really present and I didn’t realise it until it was over.”
I think the question is there to help other folks realise there are moments when you’re connected; it’s okay to be present with them when they are happening in the moment and not hindsight.
Chris Sandel: It was interesting hearing people talk about the different activities that they do where they did that. And a lot of it was play. It was either skiing or singing or playing guitar or a lot of these kind of, as you said, being in flow or things I think of as being creative or play-like. And also the realisation of “I was doing that for a while and then that stopped for 5 years, a decade, for some length of time, and I’ve now come back to it and I’m so appreciative that I’ve now come back to it.”
Aaron Flores: Yeah, absolutely. That’s just an example of the things that we might give up when things are harder – how much of the embodied moments we let go of because of possibly shame around our body or possibly the stigma that we’re experiencing around our body.
Chris Sandel: It was interesting to hear the guy who said he played guitar – I think it was at camp or something – where he was like, “I would never do this normally, but if you put a guitar in front of me and you give me an audience”, he said he has this out-of-body experience and he just enjoys it, which is so different to how his day-to-day is.
Aaron Flores: I love that as well. I grew up doing song leading stuff at a camp that I went to. I think it’s a really awesome example of here’s this tool or this thing, and through that I have so much different access to my body. I think for so many of us there are those things, and we’re just not really thinking of them in that way.
Chris Sandel: Me asking you this question – how do you personally feel comfortable in your body?
Aaron Flores: It’s a very good question. Listen, I’ll be honest; I think the important thing I want people to know is that just because I do this work and I have this podcast and I’ve gone through this, doesn’t mean I have it all figured out and that it’s perfect. I think there are times where it is hard for me to be in my body, and there are days where I’m not very happy with my body, and there are also a lot of other times when I am.
I will say, some of the more connected moments for me really do centre around some experiences with my family. It could be, I don’t know, having – I know this sounds really weird, but my daughter and I just went through and watched The West Wing, which is my favourite show. I have 15-year-old twins, and my daughter is very political and very interested in politics, so we watched The West Wing and she got so into it. I’ll be honest, even though I wasn’t doing anything or moving, it felt so great to be sharing something with my daughter that I love and that she was enjoying, and it was – I don’t know, there was something about feeling connected to her that helped me feel connected to my body.
Another similar experience, I took my son to see Metallica with me over the winter break. There are three things you’ve got to know about me that I love, or maybe four: Metallica, The West Wing, Star Wars, and out here in the States, UCLA sports. So I took my son to see Metallica, one of my other loves. It was the first concert he’d been to like that. Being at a concert to me is very embodied. I love live music. I really love live music. I mean, there’s nothing like feeling the sound. If you’ve been to a really loud concert, you know what I mean by feeling that sound on you. Metallica concerts to me are like, “I’m with my people.” For a few hours, this is the one thing we all have in common, and I love it. But also just to see him enjoy it – I was like, this is a moment where I want to savour.
I think those are two examples. And I would say on a regular basis, some things that I really enjoy – I enjoy golfing. If I can hit a good golf shot, that’s a nice moment. Everything just worked. For anyone who plays golf, you know that a good shot only happens once a round, maybe. But yeah, I think those are moments that are really nice for me.
Chris Sandel: Nice. There’s a couple things I want to say based on that. One, I’m an avid golfer, so we’ll have to have a conversation off-air about that. I won’t bore everyone with that, but I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Aaron Flores: That’s a bonus episode for folks.
Chris Sandel: In terms of that sensation to live music, I also equally love and remember seeing Radiohead, who are my favourite band of all time, at Glastonbury. They played a secret gig on a smaller stage, and we found out about it that day and then went and saw it, and it’s hands down one of the best experiences of my life. Just so incredible. Yeah, I was very much embodied in that moment.
And then the other piece that you started with is the fact that you do this work doesn’t mean that you can’t have areas that you still struggle with or that you’ve got all this figured out. I recently watched the Netflix documentary Stutz. Have you seen that?
Aaron Flores: I haven’t watched it yet. I’m very intrigued to watch it, so yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Tell me about it.
Chris Sandel: The thing I really liked about it – there’s a therapist called Stutz, and he sees lots of clients in LA and most of them are in Hollywood or connected to Hollywood. One of the people who sees him is Jonah Hill, who is an actor and has been in a ton of different things. Jonah really credits Stutz with being so helpful in his life. So he wanted to make this documentary about it.
One of the things that really stood out for me about it was that despite the fact that Stutz was so good with helping all of these other people, there are still many areas in his life that he struggles with. He’s a guy who’s really struggled with relationships and has never had proper female relationships in all his life. It was just really interesting hearing that conversation about that and him being open about how much of a challenge that was for him.
Aaron Flores: I love that.
Chris Sandel: I really like that. Also, one of Jonah’s biggest struggles is his body. I didn’t know where it was going to go, and I was sitting there going, oh gosh, is this going to go in a not-so-great direction? But Jonah said something to the effect of, “He was the first person who said that I could eat food or use movement in a way of looking after myself. It wasn’t about guiding, it wasn’t about punishment. It was just like ‘I can take care of myself.’” I don’t think Stutz is Health At Every Size or anything along those lines, but the sentiment was really lovely. From what I’ve seen Jonah post online and talk about, he very much gets this stuff.
Aaron Flores: I love some of his posts, especially when – I remember one specifically from Jonah Hill where he was shamed in the media around – I think he was surfing one day or something like that. So yeah, I appreciate that voice. You got me inspired. I’ll have to check out that movie.
Chris Sandel: Yeah, it’s definitely worth a watch.
00:47:33
One of the comments that one of your other guests made was about choosing comfort versus pride, and the emotional effort that it really takes to speak up and make requests for things that could make the experience easier or more comfortable, but being in a larger body and having to make that request is just so challenging. Talk a little about this, either from that episode or just conversations you’ve had with clients.
Aaron Flores: This is a very common thing that shows up with a lot of the clients I work with. I think it comes from this idea that being in a larger body or having a body that doesn’t fit the ideal, even, is your fault, and it’s some failing that you’ve done or have committed or are not doing, and that’s why your body is this way.
It leads to this really intense shame of trying to hide, not bring attention to yourself, trying to fit in into so many things – and yet the world is not very inclusive. The world does not make a lot of space for fat bodies, and that’s really unfortunate. So there’s a lot of times where folks that I’m working with, especially the example of that podcast, are sitting in a chair and it’s digging into them on the sides. It’s easier to just sit and suffer in that pain than to ask for a different chair, or to ask for the seatbelt extender when you’re getting on a plain, or ask to not sit in a booth when you go to a restaurant. On and on and on. Or even in the doctor’s office, to advocate for yourself.
I think it is a really understandable thing, so I was so happy when it came up in the podcast because I think part of what helps us heal is validation, and knowing that that’s a pretty understandable coping. You’re doing the best you can to try to survive. I often mention we lean into the suffering we know, not the suffering of doing something different. Even though it feels horrible, it might feel safer to sit in the discomfort of the chair digging into us than the discomfort of using our voice and saying, “I’m here. You can’t ignore me. I need something to help me feel more comfortable.” That takes a lot of vulnerability and courage to do that.
The other piece is I think about advocacy a lot in our healing. It’s almost like upper division graduate level, PhD level work, advocating for ourselves. But there is something truly healing about getting out of the chair, both metaphorically and literally, and sitting in a chair that is comfortable, that fits us. Wearing clothes that actually fit and that aren’t tight or pinching or things like that. And it takes a lot.
So it’s just really understandable when people do that and don’t make their voice heard because it’s so hard. People judge each other and bodies so deeply.
Chris Sandel: Oh, totally. I think there’s the “This physical sensation of sitting in this chair is uncomfortable, but I don’t know how much more uncomfortable it’s going to get when I have to speak up and the emotional uncomfortableness of how that conversation may go, or when everyone starts turning around and looking at me when I’m doing this.” I completely understand that fear and that worry.
And also, the fact that you kind of get used to, as horrible as that sounds, the physical uncomfortableness of sitting in that chair. So that then becomes the status quo and the baseline, so then the discomfort is the discomfort of change, the discomfort of asking for something else. Because the discomfort of sitting in the chair is “I just know that. That’s what I already do. That is my baseline normal.” So it’s the discomfort of the change and the unknown that becomes more challenging.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, absolutely.
00:52:33
Chris Sandel: You’ve had a number of the guests on your show who are trans men, and one of the things they talked about is the difference in how they were treated based on their gender. I wonder if you can talk a bit about this – and you can also add from your experience of this with client work as well.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. The folks who came on and shared their story who are trans, again, I was like, of course you can come on the show. They were asking, “Is it okay if I share my story?” I go, “Yes, your story is really important here.” I was so grateful when they came forward.
The experience of privilege that they identified is really impactful. Like, “I gained some privilege as my body transitioned and I was passing more in a male body”, or a more masculine body, should I say. “People treated me differently, and it felt almost safer. People listened to me a little bit differently. I was treated in different ways”, again with more privilege, “of being in that masculine body.”
It’s such an interesting story. These stories are so important because I think what it shows is the ways in which experiencing bodies can be different based on gender and presentation in the world, because it highlights so much bias, for sure.
I think what also struck me in these conversations was definitely that feeling of having done some transition, whatever it was, or even clients of mine who are either pre or post or during transition – the word is escaping me, but the comfort or the letting out a deep breath, the sigh of relief to finally be in a body that is congruent with how they identify, and the real joy in that. And also knowing there’s a lot that is showing up around “If my body changes in any way, will I lose that privilege? I don’t want to be read as feminine in any way. What if that does happen?”
To me, in those stories, I appreciated so much of the way in which dysphoria and dysmorphia show up in this experience, and truly the nuance that is present in what it means to be in a body, and especially – listen, here in the States, the hate and aggression towards trans folks is horrible. It’s really shameful. A lot of folks feel very unsafe in the current climate. So to be embodied or be connected to our body in the current climate where folks are so angry and hateful is really hard.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. A couple of things of what you said there. One, just in terms of talking about the different privilege that they now have as passing as a male, and also just the different stereotypes of what is and isn’t appropriate depending on the gender – I remember one of the guys was talking about the fact that when he was presenting as a female, his shortness, no-one cared about. But now he’s presenting as a male, his shortness was more of a big deal that wasn’t there previously.
Also talking about – you said that joy of coming home and feeling like you’re finally in your body, talking about going through puberty the first time when it was shifting into a body that that person didn’t want to be in, and then the joy of their second puberty, in a sense, when they’re taking the hormones – and puberty is a shit time no matter what’s going on. So to hear someone be like, “It was so nice” – that alone tells you so much.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. I’m really happy you said that, because I think there’s a part of me that wishes folks who were here in the States who are so against gender-affirming therapy for folks could hear these stories, to hear how life-saving that was for them. It was nothing but positive. It was so important in helping them continue to exist and feeling comfortable, finally, existing.
Chris Sandel: What was also interesting was that it then felt very much like that was the beginning piece. It wasn’t like that was the final. With one of them, at the end, they were like, “And now I’m going to start dealing with my eating disorder.” It was like, “I’ve been given this opportunity to in a sense feel whole, so I can now start to look at the stuff that I want to be dealing with.”
Aaron Flores: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so grateful that those folks came forward and shared their story.
00:58:46
Chris Sandel: Self-compassion is another one that comes up so often in conversations, and often in the way of it was the door that then allowed for this healing to start or to take place. Do you want to talk a little about this? And again, with your own clients as well as with the guests on this podcast.
Aaron Flores: Before I did the show, self-compassion has been a theme that has shown up in my work for so long. To have that theme be reinforced in this podcast without prompt at all was like, “Oh, thank goodness this is coming up.” My clients probably think I’m a broken record because I talk about self-compassion so much.
To me, I think self-compassion, especially for folks who are socialised male and around masculinity, is a bad word for a lot of folks. Unfortunately, there’s this sort of ‘bro’ culture that sees self-compassion as giving up. I just think that’s utterly bullshit. When we frame it in such an ‘all or nothing’ space and such a negative way, of course no-one wants to access self-compassion.
But I think self-compassion is truly one of the entry points into healing our body story and being at home in our body. I think there’s this piece around self-compassion that makes me think about “I’m doing the best I can with the tools I have today. I don’t need to do this perfectly.” Part of the Body Trust Certification I did and the language in there is like, let’s just do C-level work. Just get a C. I know in UK they do O levels, right? Is that like grades, sort of?
Chris Sandel: Do not ask me about the schooling system over here. I’m originally from Sydney. I’ve been here 20 years and I still don’t have my mind around how the schooling system works. [laughs]
Aaron Flores: Got it. So essentially, just do average. Just be in the middle. A lot of folks don’t like that. That doesn’t sit well. Like “I always need to be getting an A or succeeding or optimising.” So the idea of just, “You know what, today the best I can do is to just unplug. I know I should be (blank, blank, blank, blank), but the best I can do today is to sit aside alone for a little bit and just feel my feelings. I’m not going to be able to do some growth work today. I just need some space to be alone.” Or “Today’s a day where I might emotionally eat today.” That’s okay. That might be the best that you can do today. Doesn’t mean it’s the best you’ll do tomorrow. But listen, if that’s the best you can do, then great. That’s what we’re going to do. It’s allowing for that our existence is really normal, and again, there’s other people who are experiencing something similar to me. I’m not alone in this.
A lot of this is framed within Kristen Neff’s work around self-compassion. She’s someone that I recommend to a lot of folks. But again, going back to what we said earlier, folks heard this podcast and said, “Oh, I’m not alone.” That is self-compassion. That opens the door to self-compassion. “I’m not alone in this. Other people experience this. It’s normal to struggle in this way. I need to give myself some grace to go through this process instead of shaming myself through it.”
Chris Sandel: The common humanity piece that Kristen Neff talks about.
Aaron Flores: Exactly.
Chris Sandel: You said this is so difficult because of bro culture, and I definitely think that is true. And I work with I’d say 95% female and female-identifying, and we still have the same issues. [laughs]
Aaron Flores: Totally.
Chris Sandel: Self-compassion just does not come naturally, and as you say, it’s that feeling of “This is giving up” or this idea of “Everything that I’ve had has come because I’ve been so harsh and such a critic of myself, and I push myself in this way; this is the answer to this issue” as opposed to maybe this is not the answer to this issue, and maybe this is the reason there is this issue in the first place.
Aaron Flores: Exactly. It’s such a systemic and societal pressure to always be successful or pushing past our boundaries, pushing past what we think is the limits of what we can do. I think it’s a very consistent message throughout many parts of our lives.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. I second Kristen Neff; I think she’s fantastic. Tara Brock is probably the other person that I recommend the most, and I think I say to most clients, you’ll typically get on with one and not both of these, is just the feeling I’ve had. Most people are like, “I like the way she explains it, I’m not so into the way she explains it.”
Aaron Flores: That’s interesting. I haven’t noticed that as much, but I’m going to keep my eye out for that.
01:05:00
Chris Sandel: One of the guests talked about how weight stigma has prevented him from getting the support that he needs – seeing doctors because of fear of comments. I know weight stigma is an area that you work a lot around or have talked a lot around, and I know you’ve done talks on this before. Share some of your wisdom in this area.
Aaron Flores: It’s an area that I think we need way more conversation around. Thinking about the episode you’re referring to specifically, the ways in which health care is so biased towards folks in larger bodies is so, so systemic. It’s hurtful. It’s doing so much harm to people. If – again, this hope, right? But if it were to shift, I think we would see such a difference in how people interact with health care.
I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of folks going to a doctor, a dietitian, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, psychiatrist, where they’re like, “Pretty much the main problem here is your body, and if you were to lose weight, it would fix everything.” And the ways in which health care is denied to folks because of their body size, the way screening is not done because of their body size. “We can’t do the screening because we don’t have a machine that’s going to fit you”, things like that. It makes understandable sense why someone would avoid going to the doctor. It has nothing to do with not caring about themselves. It has nothing to do with them not being concerned.
Again, it’s the suffering I know. I’d rather sit with the unknown than have someone shame me because that sucks, and it doesn’t help. So I’m just going to avoid this process. And it’s not just health care, but weight stigma is our friends praising someone who’s lost weight and saying, “Oh my goodness, you look so great now because you’ve lost weight.” It’s all the ways in which diet culture impacts us.
But the real thing is that weight stigma impacts people’s health. If we really wrapped our heads around that, we would truly start to do things differently.
And here’s the piece that is very important. I think there’s a lot of folks who say that they would be treating ‘obesity’ and focussed in this area and are talking about weight stigma in some useful ways – and it’s still totally contradictory, then, that they prescribe weight loss tools, medication, interventions in the same breath. You can’t do both. So I find a lot of conversations around weight stigma coming up more and more, veiled within this weight loss framework, which I think is really confusing for people.
Chris Sandel: Totally. A number of things you said there, I want to touch on. One, this last piece of talking about weight stigma and then recommending methods for how we can get rid of the weight. The thing that I’ve – I can’t remember who said this on my podcast. I think it might’ve been Fiona Willer. It’s like, “I am for gay rights and I think we should do gay conversion therapy.” I don’t know how you can do both. If you’re like, “Cool, we completely agree on gay rights and everyone should have it, and we should be able to do gay conversion therapy”, those two things are not really compatible, from my perspective. I feel the same way about the ‘weight stigma and I’m also a bariatric surgeon’.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. Again, I think it’s showing up more and more these days.
Chris Sandel: The other piece with this is – in November time, I hurt my knee. I was at a trampoline park with my son, bounced, something popped loudly in my knee, and I was in huge amounts of pain. I had to hobble over and then sit on a chair while he and my wife finished the rest of the session. I know now myself how at that moment, I was like, “I really don’t want to have to go and tell someone here that I’ve done something and ask for an ice pack or anything along those lines” – and I have the privilege of living in a thin body. I knew that I wasn’t going to be judged because of the size of my body, and still it was hard for me to say, “Hey, I’ve hurt myself. Can I have an ice pack?”
But then just going the next day to the A&E to have it looked at, I didn’t have any fear about I was going to get a lecture about my body or someone making a comment about “This has likely happened because of the size of your body. Have you thought about dieting?”, any of those things. I didn’t have that fear, and I was very cognizant of that fact – that if this had been a different situation, I would feel very differently about this experience.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. That moment – well, first off, getting old sucks. Those trampoline parks are great for kids, and for adults it’s just a recipe for some accident waiting to happen.
Chris Sandel: To preface this, we have a trampoline at home that I was always on, so that was also part of the shame. Like, of all the times that I could do this, I jump on the trampoline at home all the time, so why did it have to happen when I’m in a public arena doing this thing?
Aaron Flores: In public, right. Of course.
Chris Sandel: But I also agree, getting old sucks. [laughs]
Aaron Flores: Yeah, the joys of life, right? It’s interesting because I think there’s so much tied in to self-compassion right there that you said, too. I saw it on someone’s Instagram feed who was talking about PTSD and complex PTSD, and they asked a question of “Which is hardest for you to do: say ‘I love you’” – I forget the other two, but one of them was “I need help.” I was reading the comments, and so many people were saying “I need help.” That was the hardest thing for them to do.
I think there’s so much of how we were raised to say we don’t ask for help. To ask for help is really vulnerable. And yet it’s what we need. And you’re right, there was still safety for you in knowing that whoever was going to look at your knee was just going to say, “Okay, here are the things we can do” and not say, “Well, you did this to yourself. I can’t do anything until you’re smaller. You’re just going to have to suffer with it because we don’t do this intervention for folks who are above a certain weight.”
Chris Sandel: Yeah. I felt in that moment, that sucks. It shouldn’t be this way, that I get to walk into an A&E or hobble into an A&E and it’s one way, and someone else in a different size body gets a very different experience. Or just doesn’t even go to the A&E. They’re like, “I can’t face this.”
Aaron Flores: Exactly.
01:13:23
Chris Sandel: I know one of the things that comes up a lot in the podcast is around grief, and I think this is something that is universal in nearly all of the conversations because we’re grappling with body grief and grief of events that have happened. Do you want to talk a little about this and how grief and grief work shows up in how you work with clients?
Aaron Flores: If you would’ve told me when I was studying to become a dietitian that one of the areas I was going to spend the most time talking about was grief and sadness and anger, I would’ve been like, “Okay, what alternate universe are you speaking of? Because that doesn’t fit within what a dietitian does.” I was wrong then. It totally does fit in with what dietitians are going to talk to folks about.
Grief is one of those things that – I don’t know about in Europe or Australia or outside of the U.S., but in the U.S. we really suck at grief.
Chris Sandel: I think it’s universal that everyone sucks at grief.
Aaron Flores: We are profoundly lacking in tools to manage grief and to sit with grief and to know that it’s a normal part of the process for much of the things that happen in our life. With that preface, the fact that for a lot of folks, some of the hardest work in moving through this space is giving space for grief and grieving the bodies that we had, grieving the loss of the goal of being smaller, the grief of moving forward in acceptance that it could be hard – but we need space to do that.
I think one of the things that I find so meaningful in being on the other side of the call, being a clinician and working with folks, is making space for grief and saying, I think we need to feel these things. I think we do need to talk about this over and over. It’s not like it’s a topic that we only need to talk about once or that you need to feel guilty or ashamed of bringing up again. I think we need to make as much space as you need for it over the course of our work.
I find that in a lot of ways, what separates in some ways colleagues who are doing this work really well versus others is our capability to sit with grief. Because it is hard. I said earlier, the pandemic, this job is hard. I love it, I don’t want to do anything else, but it’s hard. That’s part of the reason it’s hard. But I love it. So I want to make space for grief, and a lot of folks maybe – again, my bias or my assumption is that it’s hard. “I don’t want to sit with that.” It’s probably easier to talk about how many grams of magnesium to eat rather than talk about grief and body grief.
I wish clinicians made more space for it because I think it’s one of those things that is truly, truly helpful in helping people feel more at home in their body over time.
Chris Sandel: I totally agree. A lot of the time it’s coming back to that grief.
Aaron Flores: Yes!
Chris Sandel: One, clients don’t want to acknowledge it or they’re getting annoyed with themselves, like, “Why am I still grieving over this thing? I should be past this thing” or “I’m a feminist, why do I care about this thing?” as opposed to yeah, it’s still a grief process.
I think the other one in terms of the different things people can grieve – and I talk about this a lot with clients – is the eating disorder is something they’re using as a coping mechanism, and it’s something that works really well if we focus on a very narrow experience and in the very short term. So there’s a lot of grief with the fact that “I’m now losing this tool that I’ve found and potentially the best tool that I have.”
Aaron Flores: Yeah, I love how you brought that up. I especially find that for folks who have been experiencing their eating disorder for years and they’re in middle age. They’re like, “I’ve never even done this work, and it’s been with me for tens of years. I can’t imagine what it would be without this tool.” So yeah, I love how you brought that up.
Chris Sandel: I think that’s probably one of the things that’s also changed since last time we chatted. I’ve started working with more and more people who are in their late forties, fifties, sixties even, and they’re now at the point where they’re like, “These things started in my teens and I’m staring to deal with it.” So there’s the grief of “I’m losing my coping mechanism” and there’s also the grief of “What have I done with these last 40 years of my life?”
Aaron Flores: Yeah. I find that also. I want to share one thing I usually say to those folks, and it might be helpful for other folks listening. I usually apologise to them. I usually say, you didn’t do anything wrong. The eating disorder world failed you in so many ways.
So for folks who might be out there who have been experiencing their eating disorder for 20, 30 years, it’s not your fault that it’s been this long. The eating disorder community has failed you in a lot of ways, because we didn’t give enough space for all of the presentations that eating disorders could show up with.
Chris Sandel: Hearing that, I hope that gets in and that people can take that on board. So often when I’m working with clients – we talked about self-compassion – there is so little self-compassion, and there’s so much anger turned inwards, like “Why did I do this to myself? Why am I still doing this to myself?” Almost like “I realise I have this thing that I don’t want to have anymore; why can’t I just be done with it?”
Aaron Flores: Yeah, totally.
01:20:36
Chris Sandel: Values is another thing that comes up in many conversations, and I imagine it’s something that you work on with clients as well. Talk a little about this.
Aaron Flores: I think it’s an interesting space to bring up as people start to move away from their eating disorder and behaviours. The question that comes up a lot with folks I’m working with is, “I don’t know how to eat now. I’ve been using all of these rules and parameters, and now I don’t know how to do this. I really just don’t know.” Instead of prescribing them something else, I think one of the interesting conversations to have is, what are your values around food and body? If we were to strip away all of the diet culture influence and influence of being in a smaller body or the ‘good versus bad foods’, what are your values? How would you want to implement them around food and body?
I think once we do that – and I would include movement into that also. People don’t know what kind of movement to engage in when they’ve had years’ worth of punishing movement. That’s been the mode of operation. I think about, listen, let’s connect to really who you are. What would it mean to apply all of these things based on your values, who you are as a person? What do you believe in?
It’s very similar to what you said around the documentary Stutz. You get to take care of yourself. It’s okay to do kind things for yourself. Can we explore what that would look like if it were just for you? It’s not based on anyone else’s 10-point plan to lift more or be faster or weigh less. What do you want?
I think within that, an interesting thing that shows up is consent. Like, “Oh, I’m actually really more attentive and choosing what I want. What do I want to let in? What do I need to set a boundary around?” I think when there’s consent, we do things very differently.
Chris Sandel: I definitely agree on the values piece connected to boundaries. That’s where things can get a little shakier, where they’re like, “I really want to value this thing, but it’s hard to have this conversation with my partner or my mother” or whatever it may be. It’s like, I know. This is tough, and it’s hard work. As you say, it’s like, aim for a C-. This isn’t you changing everything in a day. This is something to work on – and you said this thing is a value, so cool. If that’s the case, you can work towards that. How would someone who has that as their value want to act in this situation? And saying that without putting the pressure on of like ‘now you have to do this’.
Aaron Flores: Right. Again, if you would’ve told me as I was studying to become a dietitian that I’d be talking a lot about boundaries with people, it wouldn’t have computed. But it is something that shows up all the time: how do we set boundaries with the people we love, at work, with our friends, in life? And how helpful they are. And yet how hard they are. Both can be true at the same time.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. I agree with you on that one.
01:24:42
Another issue that guests talk about is bullying, or experiences when they were kids or in their teens and how those experiences decades on are still having an impact on them. Is there anything you want to share on this front?
Aaron Flores: It’s one of those things, as I heard it – I definitely thought about my own experience, but as a parent, it really made me think about my kids and their experience. Here’s the thing. In the broader context of our society, when we frame fatness as personal responsibility, as something that is a moral failing, that should be avoided at all costs, when we do that as adults and we do it systemically across so many different areas, kids see it. And they learn really quickly what is good and what is bad with regard to body size.
Again, I have compassion for the people who are being bullied, and in an odd way I also have compassion for the people who are bullying, because that’s what they’ve been taught – that it’s okay to do this, because they’ve seen everyone else do it. They’ve seen or heard their parents say, “Ugh, that person is so fat. That is disgusting.” They’ve heard them say that, so they say, “Oh, that’s okay to say.”
Those moments that people experience are truly traumatic, and it sticks with us. It sticks with us for years, sometimes our life. What I hope is – it’s not that bullying would just go away. It’s that when we know people experience it, that we give way more space for validating the feelings that come up around it, how we cope with it and treat it, rather than – I think so much happens where people learn, “If I just get smaller, I won’t be bullied.”
And that becomes reinforced in our society also. There’s this feeling, I think, of how shame is a helpful tool in helping people change behaviour. From even a public health standpoint. So I think it’s really understandable for someone at a young age to say, “I guess the fix is, to avoid bullying, I’ll just be smaller.” It’s truly hurtful and harmful, and it sticks with folks for a long, long time.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. This comes up again and again in the conversations that you have on your show and things that happen with clients of like “There was this incident when I was a teenager” or there was this thing or that thing, and it really sticks with them. I think the thing that you talked about there – there’s no way of actually processing this. There’s no “I had this experience and then I got to go and talk to someone and I was really upset and then they understood me, and no, I don’t want to go through that experience again, but to see that I was treated well and I was able to move through that, that’s very healing.” Versus “This is something I don’t talk to anyone about” or “This is the reason I’m going to Weightwatchers” or whatever it may be.
I think it’s such a thing. I’m just reflecting on myself; I’m working with a therapist, and so much of what we chat about is connected to when I was a teenager and stuff connected to feeling insecure in my body at that time and about emotions and being able to express emotions at that time. We’re decades on, and that’s still there.
Aaron Flores: Yeah. I just want to note two things as well here. One is I appreciate you saying you see a therapist; I think therapy, talking to someone, whatever modality works for you, is incredibly helpful. I see a therapist. I think most people probably should be seeing a therapist on a regular basis. So thank you for saying that out loud.
The second thing is, I hope folks listening to this are hearing so many connections to what we’ve talked about. When you say we need to help people process these things, it’s dealing with the grief that this happened, it’s the compassion that shows up once we know that this is an understandable experience, sitting with the discomfort of these things. So many of the things we’ve talked about are totally connected, and you’re giving a great example of how they can apply to someone even at a young age and how beneficial it is, because all of these things are interwoven. I think this healing work touches all of the things we’ve talked about, not just one.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. I hope we’re moving in the right direction with this. I reflect so much on my own experience – and like you talked about, what I want to happen with my kids. I want it to be a different experience, and a different experience where if something happens, they feel really comfortable in being able to share and talk about what’s happened as opposed to that being buried and it be shame.
Aaron Flores: I’m going to have to be a downer. I don’t know if I’m hopeful right now, to be honest. And the reason – again, not to be a downer, but just to be honest, I see what the Academy of American Paediatricians just came out with earlier this year in their recommendations for weight loss interventions for kids as young as two, and referring folks to surgery as young as 12 or 13. That worries me. It worries me how many medications are being prescribed for weight loss that don’t really show efficacy or long-term benefit towards this.
I’m saddened by – this is being recorded in March – how this movie The Whale was received in society and praised for this amazing depiction, which is actually really, really problematic, shameful, and hurtful. Not enough people are seeing that. So it’s hard to be hopeful right now, to be honest, because I think there’s so much shit that’s showing up that we need to work through. I think we can do it, but right now, oof, I’m feeling like there’s a lot ahead of me.
Chris Sandel: I agree with you on that downer of a note that it’s not looking good in many ways. The thought of doing a weight intervention on a two-year-old is horrible.
Aaron Flores: Maddening.
Chris Sandel: That just does not make sense. And I haven’t seen The Whale. I really like Darren Aronofsky for some of his other films, so I was disappointed when I saw this, and I don’t know what to think.
Aaron Flores: I haven’t seen it either. I’m not gonna. I think Roxane Gay wrote a great article about it, as did Lindy West in The Guardian just recently. So instead of seeing it, I would have folks read those two articles.
Chris Sandel: Cool. I think that’s a good idea. After this, if you can send them over, I will put them in the show notes.
Aaron Flores: You bet.
01:33:32
Chris Sandel: One of the things that one of your guests talked about was safety in being thin when other parts of his body felt wrong, which is something I see regularly, whether it’s other parts of the body feeing wrong or other parts of life feeling wrong. Maybe we’ve already covered all this ground, but is there anything you want to add with this one?
Aaron Flores: I think it’s an example of privilege. Again, go back 15-16 years, if you would’ve told me that privilege would be a really important part of the conversations I have with folks, I would’ve probably laughed in your face, or probably said “What is that?” But privilege is a thing, and the privilege of being in a smaller body shows up. For folks that are in smaller bodies, there is safety. It is easier in so many ways. You are not going to experience the same thing that someone in a large body is going to experience.
Again, connecting dots, understanding privilege opens the door for compassion. Of course you would want things to be easier. Why wouldn’t you? But I think acknowledging privilege is uncomfortable for folks. But we need to sit in that discomfort to understand the nuance of our body story and to understand that my experience is not everyone’s experience. If I don’t think about privilege, there’s a lot of biases that are going to show up. With those biases, we don’t see the full complexity of a situation. So I think privilege is one of those ways in which we begin to see so much more of other people’s existence rather than just our own.
Chris Sandel: A couple of things. One of the things that you talk about a lot with this – and your guests are also pretty hip to this as well – is just looking at the different layers of privilege. They’re able to say, “I have privilege in this area of being white or middle class” or whatever, and then “I lack privilege in this other area.” For example, “I’m in a larger body and I’m marginalised because of this.” It was really nice that you weren’t just having to explain this to everyone, how many of them verbalised this without you having to say anything.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, absolutely. Thinking about that, too, Chris, I think for some folks, part of the reason they struggle so much with this body image piece, especially if they have privilege in every other way in their life, is they might not know what it’s like to feel marginalised. Might not have the resources or resilience to know what that feels like and how to walk through life. It’s sort of like, “What the fuck? I’m not allowed to be in this body? In every other way, the world has been made for my existence, and now I’m not okay? I don’t know how to deal with that.” So yeah, I think it’s an important thing to identify that you can hold privilege in one area and not in other ways.
01:37:08
Chris Sandel: And then another thing connected to this – one of the guests was talking about coming to terms with having an eating disorder while being in a larger body. I know this is an area that you specifically mention on your site that you work on, so talk a little about this.
Aaron Flores: Going back to something I think we mentioned when we were talking around binge eating disorder, the idea that only someone in a small body is going to experience an eating disorder is so 20 years ago. [laughs] Maybe even 10 years ago.
Because that mentality has been so ingrained and taught, even through health care, people in larger bodies are not being even asked about their experience with food in a way that would try to uncover if they have an eating disorder. It’s not even on people’s radar that this person could be experiencing an eating disorder. I think it goes to also the level of stigma around experiencing an eating disorder, and that if you don’t fit the mould, there’s so much added shame that you are struggling with this. And especially for folks that are identifying as male when they’ve been taught for years that really only young girls are going to experience eating disorders. To then be experiencing it is more stigma and shame.
But the reality is that as people experience eating disorders, the longer they go without treatment or intervention, usually the harder it is – the road to recovery could be longer and harder. They might be seeking treatment when they’re more compromised than other folks. So the severity of their eating disorder when they do get treatment is usually pretty intense, and that makes recovery just a little bit harder. That’s the sad truth of what the eating disorder field is doing right now.
There’s some hope there for me, for sure, that there’s a shift in that space. But the reality is there’s still a long ways to go, and a lot of folks in larger bodies are going to be diagnosed much later in life. Again, that’s where my apology comes out to them. It’s like, yeah, we failed you in this way and we could’ve done better.
Chris Sandel: Just touching on what you said there about being more compromised, being more compromised doesn’t mean because you’re now in a smaller body. I work with so many people where this has been going on for such a long time, and yet their body still isn’t at some BMI that it ‘should’ be at, and they are suffering immensely. It’s not that they’re going to be in a worse place when their weight gets even lower. This has been going on for decades. Their weight isn’t going to get any lower, and yet they’re in a really bad place.
I think there can be this misunderstanding of what it means to be more compromised – and I know you don’t misunderstand that, but I just want to really point that out for the listener. The severity isn’t based on what is your BMI.
Aaron Flores: Right. Someone can be malnourished and underfed in a larger body and suffering the consequences of that. You’re absolutely right. I really love how you parsed that out.
Chris Sandel: There’s times where I’ll be having an initial chat with someone, a strategy call, and they’re like, “I can’t possibly have anorexia because I’m X BMI.” I’m like, “What does that mean? That doesn’t prevent the fact that you have an eating disorder or you have anorexia.” Or “I had an eating disorder but I can’t possibly have an eating disorder now because my weight has changed.” It’s like, no, that doesn’t preclude the fact that you can still have an eating disorder. So I really do think there are some real misconceptions around this.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, absolutely.
01:41:41
Chris Sandel: The final question I want to ask you is another question that you regularly ask your guests, which is what are you continuing to work on?
Aaron Flores: I appreciate that, I really do. Again, lessons of the pandemic. I’m trying to give honest answers when people say “How are you?” I think most of the time we say ‘fine’ and that’s not true. What I’ve found is sometimes people ask and they don’t really want to know the honest answer. I’ll be like, “I’m not good. I’m struggling with this”, whatever, and they’re like, “Oh… okay.” [laughs] Well, you asked.
But anyways, I appreciate the question. I will say this. I have learned a lot about my own anxiety through these past three years. Part of that is the pandemic, and oddly enough, partly is TikTok. There are some good mental health TikToks out there that I scroll through that help me understand the anxiety I experience. I think that is something for sure that I continue to work on.
Like I alluded to earlier around the Ten Percent Happier Podcast, my inner critic is pretty brutal. It’s something I continue to work on, noticing how my inner critic shows up in my life and trying to not let it take as much hold and have as much space.
And listen, being a fat dietitian is not the easiest, for sure, but again, when I say it’s something I work on, it’s just something I acknowledge can be hard at times. I think knowing that there are things that I will continue to work on for me is really important because it allows for those things to hold less space. They don’t ruminate as much. I told my partner, “I’m going to be anxious. We can’t take it away. It’s just going to be there. If there’s permission for it to be there, it allows me to experience it in a way with a little more kindness. It doesn’t have to be as present.”
So to say, yeah, there’s going to be times when I’m not going to be so happy with my body or comfortable in my body – that’s okay. I’m just going to say it out loud, or the people that I need to tell, I will tell, because it allows it to take up less space.
I guess I just want to say I think some people think the end of this work is like unicorn rainbow land, like “I’m going to love everything and it’s going to be great.” I don’t think that’s the end game. I think the end game is probably more that these things continue to be there; they just take less space. They don’t take hold as much. But yeah, those are the things, in all honesty, that I continue to work on.
Chris Sandel: Nice. Thank you so much for being honest and sharing there. I would agree in terms of the anxiety piece. For me, it’s like, how can I experience this without adding on a layer of suffering? I differentiate between the pain and the suffering. Pain is the actual anxiety; the suffering is the “Why am I going through this? Aren’t I better than this? Come on, why can’t you get your shit together?” All of that extra noise added on top is the suffering as opposed to, how do I just create space so that this thing is here and I am still able to get on with my stuff?
Before recording this, I was lying on the floor for 10 minutes doing some deep breathing because I’ve had a not-so-pleasant day, and it’s like, cool. That helped a little. I know I’m going to get on the call with Aaron and we’re going to have a good chat, and this has helped. And life is a bit like that.
Aaron Flores: Absolutely. I appreciate that honesty as well.
Chris Sandel: I love chatting with you. These are always such easy conversations. I highly recommend that people go and check out your podcast. Where should people go to find out more about you?
Aaron Flores: Equally, thank you for having me on. I agree, the conversation is so easy and very much appreciated. If you want to follow along with what I’m doing in the world, I’m on Instagram @aaronfloresrdn. That’s my website also, www.aaronfloresrdn.com. From there you can learn about episodes of my podcast, you can learn more about the men’s group I run. I run a group also for providers who are experiencing eating disorders and need some support, or working with me individually. Or whatever’s next. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next couple years. [laughs] There could be some new venture that shows up. So those are all the places to find out what’s going on with me.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. I will put all those in the show notes. Aaron’s been on before, and I will link to that episode as well. And we did in the first one talk about the group that you run with Rachel Millner. There’s lots of things that I was cognizant of not touching again because we covered it the first time. We covered all of your background and your history with food. So yeah, if you’ve enjoyed this one and you haven’t listened to that first one, then please definitely check out the first episode.
Aaron Flores: Yeah, for sure.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. Thank you so much. This is awesome.
Aaron Flores: Thanks, Chirs. It’s been great to talk to you.
Chris Sandel: So that was my conversation with Aaron Flores. I highly suggest checking out his podcast, Men Unscripted. And if you didn’t hear the first conversation that I had with him, then I suggest checking that out too.
01:47:48
I have one recommendation for you, and it’s a podcast called Bandsplain. It felt very apt that I discovered it right after recording this episode, given Aaron mentioning his love of Metallica and me talking about seeing Radiohead at Glastonbury. Bandsplain is a podcast where each week it looks at a different band. It’s hosted by Yasi Salek, and then she invites a guest on to explain a cult or iconic band going all the way through from their early beginnings right up to their most recent release.
It includes talking about the music and the band, but also playing songs in full from their albums, so you get to hear the music side of it too. These are long-form episodes, so often two or three hours long, but for some of the bands they’ve done two-parters, so the whole thing is 5+ hours, which I absolutely adore. If you’ve listened to my podcast for any length of time, you may know that music is a huge part of my life, so this kind of podcast is just an amazing find for me.
Yasi, the host, is in her late thirties, so a lot of the bands that are covered are from the ’90s or at least got their start in the ’90s or the late ’80s. I’m 41, so the ’90s were my prime music listening high school time, so the bands that are covered are really in my music sweet spot. Obviously, I scrolled through to see if there was an episode on Radiohead and saw there was and it was a two-parter, so that was where I started. And since then, I’ve been making my way through other bands that I listened to a lot in high school or shortly after leaving school – Smashing Pumpkins, Blink-182, Deftones, Modest Mouse. And then because of Aaron’s comment, I listened to the two-parter that they did on Metallica.
If you are into bands, especially bands from the ’90s, then I highly recommend checking out the podcast. It’s called Bandsplain, and it is on Spotify.
That is it for this week. I will be back next week with another episode. Take care, and I will catch you then.
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