The Midlife Feast
The Midlife Feast
#152 - Intuitive Eating in Menopause: A Conversation with Evelyn Tribole MS, RDN
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In this episode, I get to bring you a very special guest, someone whose work has transformed my whole practice, and who has been helping people heal their relationship with food and their bodies through intuitive eating for three decades!
In this conversation, Intuitive Eating co-founder Evelyn Tribole shares why this compassionate, research-backed framework is more relevant than ever—especially during menopause.
We explore how symptoms like sleep disruption can throw off hunger cues, why decades of dieting create a fear of "losing control," and how that fear is actually your body trying to protect you. Evelyn breaks down the biology behind these patterns and offers a deeply freeing perspective for anyone tired of blaming themselves.
You'll also hear why intuitive eating works even with midlife health conditions, and how shifting from restriction to "nutrition by addition" can make food feel joyful again. Most of all, this episode is an invitation to stop fighting your body—and start finding what truly lights you up.
☀️ Ditch the “I’ll be good today” loop in 5 days with the Midlife Morning Makeover Email Challenge ➡️ https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/morningmakeover
Connect with Evelyn:
The Website: https://www.evelyntribole.com/
Instagram: @evelyntribole
📚Grab any or all the books!
Links Mentioned:
EP 70: From Dieting Rock Bottom to Intuitive Eating: 3 Common Mistakes
EP 138: 5 Things I Wish I Had Known About Intuitive Eating 10 Years Ago
EP 146: What to Do When Intuitive Eating Doesn’t Work with Julie Duffy Dillon
Head to menopausenutritionist.ca/morningmakeover or hit the link in the show notes to get started.
Click here to hang out with me on YouTube!
Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free guides and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.
Jenn Salib Huber:Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast. I have a very special guest this week. Evelyn Tribbley, who is the co-founder, along with Elise Resch, of the Intuitive Eating Framework, the book and the workbook, is joining me today to talk about intuitive eating. Now, intuitive eating has been around, believe it or not, for 30 years. That is when the first book was published, the first edition of the intuitive eating book, and I wanted to ask Evelyn so many questions. One of them was just asking what has changed in the last 30 years? What do they notice about the world that we're living in and the conversations about food, and how does that tie into this framework of intuitive eating that has changed so many people's lives, including my own, and so we talk a little bit about that.
Jenn Salib Huber:But we also talk about kind of the intersection of intuitive eating and menopause, which, of course, is kind of my passion, and talking about how intuitive eating can help us to build confidence and regain confidence in ourselves and our bodies, but also about how things like hunger, cues, can you know, change in midlife and menopause, and how we can still use the intuitive eating framework to help us have a more peaceful, healthy and nourishing relationship with food and our bodies. So please settle in. This is a wonderful conversation and I know that many of you will find Evelyn's insights helpful, regardless of where you are on your intuitive eating journey. Hi, evelyn, a heartfelt welcome to the Midlife Feast Likewise. So, as I'm sure many listeners will have heard of you or heard you on other podcasts or may be familiar with your books, but for anybody who isn't familiar with you and your work, can you maybe just give us a quick introduction about who you are and your ties to intuitive eating.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, so I am the co-founder of Intuitive Eating, the framework and the book, along with Elise Rush, that we created over 30 years ago, which is just a while to think that it is just continuing to grow, not only in popularity but also in the research world. There's now almost 300 studies on our work validating the benefits and the correlates with intuitive eating are looking really, really good in terms of well-being, prevention of eating disorders and all kinds of things, so it's very exciting, yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:When I did the first part of my intuitive eating training and I can't remember if it's 2016 or 2017 now, but I did my sessions with you and at that time I remember being blown away that there were over a hundred studies, and you know to think of how much research has come out since then and continues to be published. Is is really something.
Evelyn Tribole:It's exciting and it just keeps, it keeps growing. I now get you know emails from researchers wanting some input on their studies, which I'm happy, happy to do because it helps all of us to get the validity of intuitive eating out there, you know, yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:So I've heard you share the story on other podcasts and in other places about how you and Elise, you know, came to realize through your practice that this was a missing gap, you know, in the work around people's relationship with food and nutrition. But since it has been 30 years, I'd love to kind of get your perspective on what's changed since you first created this framework.
Evelyn Tribole:Oh my gosh. And you know if I can go back just a little bit in time too, I mean it was more than a gap. We were just seeing so many of our patients suffering. You know that was at the root of why we were doing this, and we did analysis of the research, of current books that are out there, plus our own, you know, clinical experiences to get into this model, and so we can say it was originally research inspired and now we have lots of research on our work showing the validity. And so what has changed? You know we are now in, we have the fourth edition of Intuitive Eating and we just signed a contract to begin the work on the fifth edition, which will be out probably in a couple years from now.
Evelyn Tribole:And the reason, you know, fifth edition is we continue to grow and evolve. I mean, first of all, just acknowledging that we really we were not grown, we were not born rather hating our bodies. You know this is something that is in the water that we swim in. We got so frustrated with looking at all the research showing that dieting doesn't work. Dieting messes you up, dieting actually predicts the opposite, that you'll gain back more weight. And in spite of the body of research being out there. The fact that it causes harm, research and policy isn't changing. So we started looking at other models, you know, looking at sociology and so on, and there's this concept called Bobby Hero's Cycle of Socialization, and what that describes is how any kind of prejudice happens. You know it gets transmitted. You know we're born innocent, we're not born hating our bodies or other people. But then we get these messages from the people that we love and our caregivers. And then we hear it from institutions like our schools, our churches. It gets codified in health policy and it's this big cycle and unless we do something to disrupt the cycle, it continues to go and go and go.
Evelyn Tribole:And so part of what our work has changed is acknowledging the systemic effect of diet culture. In fact, in our second edition of the intuitive eating workbook that just came out this year, we have changed, we modified slightly the principle on reject the diet mentality to reject diet culture. If we didn't have diet culture, the diet mentality wouldn't be so profound. And then even when we're looking at, you know, bodies and body image, if our culture wasn't so pathologizing on an individual level, it wouldn't be as difficult to get into the healing aspects of this. So our work has gotten broader, broader rather. It has appreciated the complexity, the intersection with racism and, oh my gosh, even looking at the flaws of BMW and all these other kinds of things.
Evelyn Tribole:And so, you know, when we did the fourth edition of Intuitive Eating, we decided to go back to the first edition and, with a fine tooth comb, and look at anything that needed changed, and Elise and I were actually wincing at some of the languaging that we wrote. That in hindsight now, you know, was really rather fat phobic, and I'm happy to say that we grow and evolve and we change as we learn. And so the thing that's so different today is, I think, diet culture is even more entrenched. It has been medicalized now. I mean, now we've got you know, big pharma pushing, you know GLP-1s and this idea that you know the size of your body is what health is.
Evelyn Tribole:And we look at research showing there are so many missing pieces and that association is not causation. I mean, often what's missing are confounders like social connectiveness, weight stigma, social determinants of health. And there's a whole new area that has my attention we'll probably end up writing about it and that is commercial determinants of health, and that is, you know the powers that be that make money off of our bodies also has an impact, and it's not just the money that they make, but it's the money they throw towards policy, towards lobbying and other kinds of it just blows my mind. It's so complex and you know. All of this to say it's just to help us understand more about the healing process, you know, in cultivating a healthy relationship with food, mind and body. And the thing that really just gets me now at least I've been talking about this is how, basically, malnutrition is being celebrated, you know with the.
Evelyn Tribole:GLP-1s. I'd like to see some really good research looking at the intake, the energy intake and the nutrient intake of people on these medications and, by the way, no shame or judgment on people who are on these medications for whatever reason that they are on, but there's so many missing pieces. And what I look at is you know, in 2024, the International Olympic Committee updated their paper and their position on relative energy deficiency syndrome, and that is, when athletes don't get enough to eat, what happens to their health and what happens to their sport? And what they said is it basically affects every health system, and you don't have to have an eating disorder to qualify for this. It affects every health system and has an impact on performance, and then, especially, it gets amplified with a low carbohydrate diet. So we hold that idea in place.
Evelyn Tribole:Then we take a look at what's happening in the eating disorders field, and that is the recognition of atypical anorexia, which is basically anorexia nervosa in people who have larger bodies, and what research has shown over and over again it has is just as harmful, has just as many side effects, and so what we're seeing is malnutrition is a problem, and so why are we, why are we advocating that? What is going to be the long term consequences down the road, the epigenetic aspects of all these things, the low calcium. You were seeing reports now of the hair loss, which is kind of minor compared to other other issues that are happening in terms of gastroparesis, but it's, it's a, it's a smoke, it's a signal, you know. So these are some things I think they were all wrestling with. As as a culture, and as someone who's trying to move away from diet culture, it can be really challenging.
Jenn Salib Huber:Absolutely and to your point about, you know, the malnutrition, the undernutrition. That's a really relevant conversation in midlife, because we get to this point in our lives where we are thinking about how do I age, my independence, my mobility, my strength? You know, whatever parts of my health that I do have some control over or some influence over, and undernourishing ourselves won't get us there. We need nutrition and when people are choosing food based on its caloric value or its ability to produce a caloric deficit, they're undernourishing. And I think that that connection to dieting is relevant at any age, but it's especially relevant in menopause.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:When I was thinking about what has changed. When you wrote the book in 95, there was no social media.
Evelyn Tribole:Oh, my God right.
Jenn Salib Huber:You know you weren't, you were dealing with diet culture, but it was still I mean, it was baby diet culture compared to TV. Yeah, to what we deal with now, and you know, I think about the influence of media in all of the ways you know.
Jenn Salib Huber:I think about the influence of media in all of the ways. But I think I have to think that that really has changed the level of exposure to diet culture and why intuitive eating is needed more than ever. But that must be part of what has changed. And how do we even begin to kind of tackle that level of change?
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, you know, and I think you're making a really great point. You know the amplification, you know just the stuff that I do. I'm not bigly active, that's not even a word. I'm on social media but I'm not doing a lot of social media. But I'm still surprised about the ads that find me in my age group about aging and PS I'm 65 right now, you know and getting into a better body and all these things like, oh my gosh, and I'm not even looking at social media that deals with these kinds of things and yet this demographic has found me somehow, and so the market. So there's a couple issues is, yes, social media and the influencers, but then there's also the advertising that goes on and the algorithm that amplifies all these kinds of things.
Evelyn Tribole:Now, the good news is a lot of people have found intuitive eating through social media. They've gotten exposed to it. It's kind of like a double-edged sword. It's the reason why now, when people say that, oh, I love intuitive eating, or you know, I ask well, what is intuitive eating to you? Because if they take what they see on social media and define that as intuitive eating, it could be problematic because there are people out there who are doing damage, you know, with our work using intuitive eating, co-opting it, and then, you know, doing things that are harmful. But the good news is it's gotten a lot of exposure on social media. There's like over 2 billion with a B hashtags on TikTok alone. And with that kind of attention, it was a couple of years ago that New York Times tracked us down and we ended up doing about seven interviews, including eating dinner out with a. They flew a reporter out from New York to have dinner to see what is intuitive eating like with, you know, the co-founders. It got their attention through it, through all of that, and so it's.
Evelyn Tribole:It's it's a mixed bag and so, looking at, I've had patients have this misbelief that intuitive eating is just about eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full, and if you don't do it precisely, you're doing it wrong. It's like no, no, no, no, no. There's no pass or fail with intuitive eating. And, yes, those are two principles, but there's 10 principles and they are greatly integrated. And, as you know, intuitive eating is not about changing your body, it is not about weight loss, it's about cultivating a healthy relationship with food, mind and body, and that's the other part that has evolved in the description of intuitive eating and that is the neuroscience behind it.
Evelyn Tribole:And that is something you know called interceptive awareness. And it's through interceptive awareness which is our ability to perceive physical sensations in the body which might sound ho-hum until we start looking at what that really means. It includes states like a full bladder, it includes hunger and satiety cues, but it also includes emotion and basically what this is all about. It's about getting you into balance biologically and psychologically, which is just. It's beautiful. It's a treasure trove of powerful information.
Evelyn Tribole:But if you are at war with your body, if you hate your body, dissatisfied with your body, you're not likely to trust the messenger or what I call the text messages of the body and you lose out on these kinds of things. And I think, in part, you know, when people say that intuitive eating is life-changing. It's changed their life. I think part of it is because of this connection to the core, interceptive awareness. That has been called by one of the big scientists in this area the global emotional moment, because interceptive awareness is happening right now. It's not in the past, it's not in the future, it's happening right now. And when you're connected to all of that, it is profound.
Jenn Salib Huber:Absolutely, and it's emotional regulation right, it's connected to emotional regulation. When we're trying to control our body, when we're dieting, when we're restricting, when we're feeling uncomfortable in our body, when we feel like our body is failing us, when we're at war with it, that's all very dysregulating and it makes it so hard to be present. And really that's what we're here for, right? We're here to be present.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, it affects our relationships, affects our connections to others. Yeah, Okay.
Jenn Salib Huber:So I want to come back a little bit to the changing body. So many, many people I'm post-menopausal at 47. And many people who go through perimenopause experience this changing body. A human body is a changing body. That's normal.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:But it feels like it's changing without our permission and it is one of the that's a great way of describing it Difficult things to you know to help people with, because you know weight is not a behavior, we don't choose what our body weighs and there's a lot of peacemaking that happens as we go through this transition. How would you say that intuitive eating can help people who are feeling this way to reconnect with their body?
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah. So first I'd like to say it's so understandable to be at odds because of the culture that we're living in and, as I was describing, the targeting that happens through social media and other kinds of things, and so it's understandable that people are focused on this and this idea that our bodies don't change when we know that they actually do. And in your question is really the answer. And it's about getting back to self connection, getting grounded in your truth, whatever that happens to be, and it becomes so powerful because ultimately, what it needs, you know, one of the what I call the universal attunement questions is how are you feeling right now? And answer it one of three ways pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. And what's really cool about that question? It's not asking how hungry you are, it's not asking what your mood is, it's just asking in general how do you feel right now? Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
Evelyn Tribole:I've never had a patient not be able to answer that question. In part, our brain naturally organizes that way. We're constantly labeling, you know, like dislike, neutral. And so when we can start asking that question and you start discovering, maybe at some points that I'm feeling unpleasant, then we can get curious and ask well, why might that be. You know, what is it that I might need right now, whether it is nourishment, whether it is rest, whether it is stimulation.
Evelyn Tribole:And so, the more that we keep making changing the body a project, we're moving, moving further and further away from this self-connection. And the more we outsource our eating decisions to others gurus, plans, whatever it happens to be we do so at our own peril in terms of disrupting self-trust. It's one of the biggest missing pieces I see and hear. Even people have read the book. They said, you know, it sounds amazing for other people. I just don't know about my body, I don't trust my body, and trust is a core component, too, of interceptive awareness as well, and it's just now really getting big time in the research. You know, a lot of psychological modalities, especially around trauma, involve the body and the connection to the body. So I would say it's a way for us to tap into our power and it's a way for us to tap into our knowingness of whatever it happens to be and tapping into our wisdom, which is one of the gifts of aging, you know, is the wisdom of our experiences, right.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, and I think that one of the things that I experienced I wouldn't want to speak for everyone One of the things that I experienced and what I hear from a lot of people is you know, there's this unmasking that happens as we go through this menopause transition, as we, you know, go through this stage into our next season and I think that the calling I guess you could say to listen to ourselves, maybe for the first time in decades, becomes so strong that, even if you don't know what you're listening for or you know what to look for, that wrestling, or that, you know urgency to just do something different than what you've always done and to turn that inwards seems to be much stronger, and so I call that the gift of midlife really.
Jenn Salib Huber:Oh, that's great, that inability to ignore that you know 10, 15 years ago, when my kids were young and I was busy meeting other people's needs, I could ignore it. I did ignore it, but as I, you know, was going through this, this menopause transition, I couldn't ignore it anymore.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, it's profound.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, so what advice do you have for people you know who are trying to learn intuitive eating and you know often people will come to this place of midlife with decades of dieting history.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:Many of them have don't know what life is like not on a diet, because it has been part of who they are since puberty and they're terrified of losing control. And they love the. It's like. I love the idea of intuitive eating for someone else, but there's no way that it could work for me because I don't have control. How, what advice do you have? Or you know? How can we reassure people?
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, and I really get it. And in fact, you know, sometimes, when people ask me that question, this fear of losing control, regardless of what your age is, my question sometimes is you know, do you have a fear, like you're one bite away from a binge? And they'll often say yeah, that's part of the loss of control, and what that usually points to me is levels of restriction and deprivation, and you know it's part of your, it's actually part of this knowingness. There's part of your body that knows, biologically, you need more to eat and whether you're restricting just total amounts of food or whether it's just specific foods, it can be really, really powerful. And so I think sometimes, knowing, there's a cause and effect to this. So, number one, it's understandable. You would have this fear and a lot of patients who have this fear.
Evelyn Tribole:I will ask if this has ever happened before and they'll say yes and they'll describe loss of control, eating, usually related to under eating, and then are going too long without eating, and then this loss of control. And what I will say is you know, I understand that that was very oh, you didn't like that at all. It was uncomfortable, it was urgent. But what I want you to know this is your body working. This is your body trying to get into balance, and the thing that's so sad and true is that ever since people have been on this earth, famine has existed, and I've been doing a deep dive into famine research and famine statistics, and because famine has existed, I mean marked amounts of famines. Our body is wired to survive famine and so when you withhold food, even though it's intentional and there's food all around, on a biological levels, our cells are, oh my God, here we go. We got to buckle down, and when, anytime food is present, it's going to be coming more of an inhale and more of an obsession and a focus as a way to try and get you to eat. It's no different that you know if you were to hold your breath for a long time and then suddenly, you finally get to breathe, it's a huge gasp, it's not a polite, it's a, you know, huge inhale and no one says, oh my God, you have loss of control. Breathing it's, like everyone knows, it's a natural compensatory mechanism when you haven't had ox air for a while, and the same thing with eating, and so part of the part of the issue then is can we work in the beginning on on having enough to eat, sufficient amount of eating. That's something that's newer, that has evolved with intuitive eating as one of the core principles on the honorary health of gentle nutrition.
Evelyn Tribole:We used to say you know variety, balance and moderation. What we've seen? The term moderation has been weaponized for restriction and so instead we said sufficiency are you getting enough to eat? You might have plenty of money to buy the food, but on a biological level, are you getting enough to eat? Let's put those things into place first, and then this feeling of this loss of control will lessen.
Evelyn Tribole:Then there's this whole area in psychological research called the restraint theory, which is also known as the what the hell effect, and that is. This group of researchers found classic restrained eaters who are basically restraining what they eat for the purpose of either losing weight or keeping weight less off. And what they found was this phenomenon where something would come along and break the restraint, whether it was hunger, whether it was an emotion, whether it was an event. Not only would it disrupt the restraint, it would end up into what they call the what the hell effect of eating. It's not the piece of cake, it becomes the whole cake, and that's the power of psychological restriction. So if you have both happening biological and psychological restriction it can seem incredibly powerful. But again, what these are doing is just helping to serve to get some nourishment into your body.
Evelyn Tribole:And I would say, if this idea, on the one hand, is really enticing and at the same time so scary, you know, maybe it means it'd be a good idea to work with a health professional who's been trained in intuitive eating, or maybe get into the workbook, where there's a little more guidance in terms of the how to's on this. But what I would say to everyone, it is really normal to have reluctance and fear because food has been presented this way Food which is a gift of life, which is a way we connect to other people, and the way we celebrate major events in milestones it's something to be enjoyed. But when it has been so pathologized, there's always you know, I've come to view nutrition kind of as fashion it comes and it goes, and comes and goes. There's always something that's going to kill you and something that's going to cure you as far as superfood or something along those lines. And so now it's kept my sanity as a health professional, and right now the big old boogie boo is, you know, ultra processed foods and everyone gets all afraid of ultra processed foods.
Evelyn Tribole:And yet what's fascinating is, first of all, that's a poorly defined term, even in research and even when there's some guidance around that one of the biggest areas of ultra processed foods is vegetarian and vegan products, and I don't hear anyone denigrating those, you know. So there's all of this, this narrative that creates this, this fear. So it's understandable that you're connected into that, but there's a way out. So the way I would say is that you know, when you're stuck in diet culture, for whatever reason, it's suffering and intuitive eating is a pathway out of that suffering, to reclaim your life and you deserve to thrive. And especially if you're in the process of launching your family or your family's been launched, it's like, oh my gosh, this is your time, you know.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, that it's actually a choice, that it doesn't have to be dictated, is so foreign to anybody, I think, who is alive, really, because everything that we've been taught is that you can't trust your hunger, you can't trust your fullness, you can't trust your cravings. You know, diet culture calls taste hunger, tricky hunger, like all of these things to make us believe that somehow our body is working against us.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:When the opposite is clearly true. Our body wants us to survive.
Evelyn Tribole:Exactly that, exactly yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:So I'd like to touch on hunger and fullness for a little bit, because I don't know what your experience was around menopause but one of my worst symptoms was sleep disruption. Oh yeah, worst symptoms was sleep disruption and the mood changes and, you know, stress. Those were really big attunement disruptors and it made tuning in to my hunger cues and my fullness cues a lot more challenging. And you know what are some practical tips. You know whether this attunement is being challenged by perimenopause or anything else. What are some, you know, tips for tuning in to those hunger and fullness cues Because they're such great compasses right Towards that interceptive awareness.
Evelyn Tribole:It is. It really is, and you're giving a good example on why we need to get to some of the root issues. You know, it's not an issue someone doesn't know how to do something. It's an issue of what I would call capability. In the moment, and that is when you're sleep deprived, it's really hard to be capable to connect to these things. It has nothing to do with your intelligence, and so one of the things I'd be looking at is self-care, and that is what can be done, or what are you doing to help in this process of sleep. You know and it's I did go through that it was actually very, very profound and it's horrible. You know it's horrible.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, so, looking at whether it's, you know, sleep hygiene, whether it's working with the sleep behavioralist, whether it's looking at, maybe you know, hrt in ways that aren't going to hurt you, and so on when I say HRT, I meant hormone replacement therapy then it's going to become more doable to access hunger and fullness. But the real question really is well, how long is that going to take? You know, like the sleep question is a big one, and so sometimes what we need to be looking at is what I would call nourishment as self-care, and that is either when hunger is offline or it's disrupted or dysregulated. It is really okay to eat based on what we'd call practical hunger, and that is my body. As a human being, we need to be fed biologically, and the more and it was really interesting is, if we don't get enough to eat, that's also another disruptor of sleep, and so it becomes this really vicious cycle, and so I would be looking at those kinds of things in terms of, okay, what is the way I can honor my body with the energy that I have or don't have?
Evelyn Tribole:Or consider the energy, it's often a missing piece, and so if someone is not getting enough sleep, you don't have a lot of energy. You're not going to be wanting to put together these amazing meals, even if you love to cook. So it's getting realistic with the energy that I have, what can I provide myself? That sounds good with my energy level, or maybe not even sounds good that I can tolerate. You know, sometimes people think that intuitive eating has to be a 10 nirvana every time you eat, and it's like no, sometimes it's like a sensible pair of shoes, and that's really really okay, depending on what's going on in your life, and that there's nothing wrong with that.
Jenn Salib Huber:I love that sensible pair of shoes and I often talk about capacity, so my listeners will recognize that.
Evelyn Tribole:I love that.
Jenn Salib Huber:We do capacity check-ins when I'm working with people. You know you may want to have, you know, this great day of intuitive eating and you may have put all these plans in place, but if life has gotten lifey and you're, having a low capacity day you have to honor that capacity.
Jenn Salib Huber:You cannot demand more than what you have and you know, I think that's the challenging part. So you know, having low capacity ways to honor hunger and fullness and higher capacity ways to honor hunger and fullness so that you're still honoring it, like you know, with practical eating or practical hunger, without feeling like you're just in that all or nothingness of. I'm either doing it right or I'm doing it wrong. I think that's a really challenging thing for people.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, I love that capacity. Or sometimes I hear it described as spoons. I don't have any spoons left.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, the spoon theory. That's such a great analogy for sure.
Evelyn Tribole:Yeah, and it doesn't make you a bad person. It's actually, you know, what it boils down to often is about authenticity, and that is, if I look at what's going on realistically, basically your capacity check-in. I don't have the energy, and that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you a bad mom Just because you don't want to throw together, you know, some kind of gourmet meal, you know? Yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:So kind of last big question. So the other thing that is, I think, different when you know women are in midlife, going through menopause and trying to maybe redefine this relationship with food is that we're often dealing with some real medical changes, whether that's an increase in cholesterol or blood pressure or some other change in our health or concern about our health. That brings food and nutrition back into kind of that inner sphere. And a common question that I get is well, can I still do intuitive eating if I have a medical concern, or can I do still do it if I'm having to watch my cholesterol? How do you, how do you answer that?
Evelyn Tribole:The answer is yes, and.
Evelyn Tribole:And the and is is it's we get more into the on your health, the gentle nutrition, but it's nutrition by addition. So, for example, you know with you know cholesterol I've been looking at what foods can we add, that we know help to lower cholesterol and that tastes good, you know. And that's often a missing piece when we start getting into medical nutrition therapy. And one of the things I really like to emphasize is that, yes, you can do intuitive eating with a medical condition. With medical nutrition therapy. It can be integrated, but it often means you're going to need to work with somebody who really has expertise in that particular condition and also training in intuitive eating. In fact, there's a new book out I just read on intuitive eating for diabetes. So well done. That really describes the challenges and the process. It's a really good example of how you integrate, keeping in mind all the cutting edge research and also what's going on with you. There's ways to really personalize it and I think that the thing I would be emphasizing is what can I be adding? Because there's so much focus on what I have to take out, but the other thing and this takes a little more work but the other thing and this takes a little more work is really asking the question on is this true in terms of how I need to change my eating? I'll give you an example.
Evelyn Tribole:So the condition with fatty liver most people who are diagnosed with that will be told you need to lose weight and yet when you do a deep dive on the research, what we find is that exercise without weight loss will lower fatty liver and the intervention studies that have looked at weight loss and fatty liver have exercise in it and or the studies have been too, too short. And what's really interesting is when we start looking at the dieting research weight loss research is that weight loss perpetuates weight cycling or the pursuit of weight loss? Does the pursuit of weight loss I can't even say it Trying to lose weight perpetuates weight cycling? We're getting and losing, getting and losing, and there's a lot of research coming out showing it has an impact on health, including increasing fatty liver. And so just because there's been a tradition of recommending weight loss, I would say that's actually harmful. So, looking at that, so it's working with someone who's knowledgeable sometimes it means pushing it back against the medical establishment who've not been trained in this, and I know there's a lot of really really good doctors out there, but you know it's interesting in terms of their training and nutrition. They don't get that many hours in their training.
Evelyn Tribole:In the United States there's this new group I'm so excited about. It's called the acronym is awesome A-W-S-I-M and it's the Association for Weight Inclusive Physicians, or medicine rather, weight inclusive medicine and they just created it. You don't have to be a physician to join and it's so encouraging to see all these doctors who do not want to center weight as the issue. Let's get into what the problem is. Let's look at the cholesterol. What needs to be done here? So it often means we need to advocate for ourselves and sometimes, when you're not feeling well, that's the last thing you feel like doing. You know.
Jenn Salib Huber:And I want to thank you for bringing up the point about working with someone you know. Getting back to our point about social media and the internet, I think that one of the big harms that has come out of that is DIY culture with our health, yeah, and the idea that we should be able to just know or do everything ourselves, that we should be able to just know or do everything ourselves. And you know there is a reason why most health professionals, you know why there are regulations and regulated bodies to help, you know, ensure that the level of training and education and, you know, protection is there. But it's also to make your life easier, so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel, that you don't have to do all the trial and error you know of all the people who have gone before you. So thank you for bringing that up.
Evelyn Tribole:That's a really good point. And you know what? It's amazing we have gosh over 26 trained or certified intuitive eating counselors in 64 countries now, so it's growing and there's more access than ever than before. So what was the number? 2,600 or 2,600 health professionals in 64 countries and growing, yeah, yeah.
Jenn Salib Huber:And I'm very proud to be one of them. The training definitely, you know it changed my practice entirely. I've been a dietician for 25 years and a naturopathic doctor for 20. And the first 10 or 15 years was very traditional. You know food is medicine and you know we count calories and macros and we learn what food is and we tell people how to eat and there was really no consideration of the big picture. And so I thank you for that, because Intuitive Eating broadened my scope significantly and my perspective and my professional fulfillment, because it was not fulfilling to put people on diets Right.
Evelyn Tribole:That's what I was going to say. It's so gratifying to work in this way. I've worked with health professionals, especially dietitians, who are thinking about leaving the career because they just it was so unsatisfying until they found, oh my God, there's another way we can work, you know. And then with all the research, with intuitive eating, it makes it easier to start looking at that framework, to be working with your clients and patients. So yeah, Amazing Evelyn.
Jenn Salib Huber:this has been the most amazing conversation and I feel like it was really good.
Evelyn Tribole:I enjoyed it.
Jenn Salib Huber:I've heard other questions, but I will ask you the question that I ask everyone. And that is, what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife?
Evelyn Tribole:You know, the first thing that comes to my mind is fun, finding out what your fun passion is. So maybe discovering what that is, because often in midlife is the first time you have space and time to discover that or discover that oh, I don't know what that is, and I will say personally, my discovery has been surfing. I have never been so passionate about an activity and have met so many women, amazing women of all ages in the surf community. And it doesn't matter about your ability, you know, and it matters about the connection and having fun. So that's one thing I think it's missing.
Jenn Salib Huber:That's what I love about your social media is you share your surfing pictures and your stories and it's great, like the joy and that joyful movement comes through loud and clear. That's awesome.
Evelyn Tribole:That's awesome.
Jenn Salib Huber:Thank you so much for your time and sharing your wisdom with us today.
Evelyn Tribole:Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation, take care and sharing your wisdom with us today. Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation.
Jenn Salib Huber:Take care Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast For more non-diet, health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in.
