Why You Don't Trust Yourself Around Food (and How to Rebuild It) with Fiona Sutherland

Whenever I talk about intuitive eating, women tell me the same thing: "I love the idea, but I don't trust myself around food." And when I talk to dietitians who help people shift from a weight-centric to weight-neutral or inclusive practice, they find it hard to communicate the idea of self-trust. If you can relate to either of these,  this conversation is exactly what you need!

This week I'm joined by Fiona Sutherland, an accredited practicing dietitian, author, and mentor from Melbourne, and one of the most thoughtful  and experienced voices in the world of nutrition. Together we explore why self-trust feels so hard in midlife, especially when your body, hunger, and energy seem to be changing overnight.

Fiona and I unpack how years of dieting can chip away at your confidence, why outsourcing your food decisions to a plan feels safer (and what it costs you), and what gently rebuilding trust actually looks like, starting with curiosity instead of control. We also talk about why reaching for support is a sign of courage, and the surprising ingredient Fiona believes most of us are missing in midlife.

If you've ever wondered whether you can trust yourself again, I think you'll leave this one feeling a little more hopeful. Listen now.

Connect with Fiona: Website: https://www.themindfuldietitian.com.au/ Instagram: @the.mindfuldietitian

If this episode resonated with you, come join us inside The Midlife Feast Community. It's where women in midlife come for evidence-based menopause nutrition, intuitive eating support, live coaching, and a community that understands what this season of life is really like. I'd love to welcome you there.
Learn more: The Midlife Feast Community: https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/themidlifefeastcommunity

Related Episodes:

#197 Menopause and Body Image: How to Accept Your Changing Body with Alli Spotts-De-Lazzer, LMFT, CEDS-C

#147 How to Stop the Cycle of "Starting Over" Every Monday 

#154 How to Appreciate Your Changing Menopause Body with Dr. Charlotte Ord 

➡️ JULY FREE CHALLENGE - How to Stop Overthinking Food. Save your free spot at https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/challenge

📚 I wrote a book! Eat To Thrive During Menopause is out now!  Order your copy today and start thriving in midlife.

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

Transcript

Why Self-Trust Feels So Hard

Jenn Salib Huber 0:00

What if the hardest part of intuitive eating isn't learning how to listen to your body? What if it's learning to trust yourself? Whenever I talk about intuitive eating, women will say, I love the idea, but I don't trust myself around food. Or when they hear about unconditional permission to eat, they'll say, Oh yeah, that sounds like a disaster. And I get it, because many of us have spent years, sometimes decades, being taught that we need someone else to tell us what, when, how much to eat. We've been taught how to override our hunger, ignore satisfaction, and to really second guess our own experiences. So when we begin to explore intuitive eating, we're not just changing how we eat, we're challenging a lifetime of messages and programming that told us that we can't be trusted. And I think that this conversation feels really important to anybody in midlife because our bodies are changing in unexpected ways and sometimes hunger, appetite, sleep, energy, everything feels like it's been flipped on its head. And so trusting ourselves can feel more difficult than ever. My guest today is Fiona Sutherland, an accredited practicing dietitian from Australia, an author, a mentor. She gives lots of training and resources to the dietitian community. And so I'm sure that she's a name that many listeners will recognize. But she truly is one of the most thoughtful voices in the intuitive eating space. And she's spent years helping people heal their relationship with food, reconnect with their bodies, and cultivate the kind of self-trust that diet culture often takes away from us. And so today we're talking about why trust feels so hard, what gets in the way, how diet culture can erode our confidence in ourselves, and what rebuilding trust actually looks like, not just with food, but with ourselves. And so whether you're an individual, somebody who's going through midlife and menopause and trying to learn about intuitive eating, or whether you're a dietitian or nutrition professional and you find it challenging to talk about rebuilding trust, I know that you're gonna love this conversation. Welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast that helps you make sense of your body, your health, and menopause in the messy middle of midlife. I'm Dr. Jen Sali Puber, intuitive eating dietitian, a naturopathic doctor, and author of Eat to Thrive During Menopause. Around here, we don't see midlife and menopause as problems to solve, but as invitations to live with more freedom, trust, and joy. Each week you'll hear real conversations and practical strategies to help you feel like yourself again. Eat without guilt, and turn midlife from a season of survival into a season of thriving. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dig in. Hi

Fiona Sutherland On Healing Food Fear

Jenn Salib Huber 2:56

Fiona, welcome to the Midlife Feast.

Fiona Sutherland 2:58

Oh, it's so wonderful to be here with you, Jen. Thank you so much for having me.

Jenn Salib Huber 3:03

Anybody who's listening will pick up on your accent. And so you are in Melbourne, Australia, correct? And but you are certainly well known around the world. Anybody in the professional space of eating disorders, you know, intuitive eating, any dietitians or nutrition professionals will be very familiar with your work. But I also think that your your message and your work carries over into kind of the individual work as well, which is where a lot of my uh listeners will be, although shout out to all the dietitians who listen as well. But maybe just tell us a little bit about your work and how you kind of came to being in this space.

Fiona Sutherland 3:41

Yeah. So I'll give you the too long didn't read version, Jen, of kind of broken up into a couple of sections. And so my clinical work from early on has been really divided across two different speciality areas. And one was eating disorders and one was sport. So I have worked with high performance athletes for many, many years and still do quite a bit of consulting for high performance organizations and still see some of the young dancers at the Australian Ballet School. And that is just a great joy for me to just keep in touch with how um how things are going out there in high performance land and how they are for young people, how they are for developing athletes, and you know, they're going through their own changes as well on various levels. So early on I kind of realized that there was significant crossover between what people were were telling me, both in my clinical eating disorders work and in my high performance athlete work. And I over time found a way to kind of bring these two things together and did clinical work for uh well over 20 years in in private practice. But probably about now, maybe 10 years ago, uh there was a real uptick in need for education, training, and supervision. And so that's what I've really been focusing on, much more so for the past two years or so. I still have a great love for professional development and really I I can't I can't undo that part of me that just loves to learn. And through my supervisees, I do feel um an ongoing commitment to continued learning and growth from that from that kind of side of my work. But you know, education and training uh specifically for dietitians has just given me such a renewed passion for the field and for the sector, and being able to support those who support others is something that just I'm I'm really passionate about and I find it extremely rewarding. Um yeah, so that's that's really, you know, education, supervision and training are my are my jams these days, but specifically still in those clinical areas of eating disorders, um sport and performance, and then everything that kind of lies in between, I suppose. I'm I'm very dedicated to weight-inclusive care and to trauma-informed care, uh, body image. I I run a course with Marcy Evans, who, if your listeners are dietitians, then I feel like they'll know who Marcy is and every everything amazing that she does as well.

Jenn Salib Huber 6:24

Yeah.

Fiona Sutherland 6:24

But yeah, that's just a little bit about my background.

Jenn Salib Huber 6:28

That's I mean, it's amazing. Certainly, the scope of work and experience that you have will really, I think, enhance the discussion that we're gonna have about self-trust, which really does apply to everyone, whether you're a clinician, whether you're an individual, whether you're somebody who has had an eating disorder, or just somebody who finds themselves in midlife feeling confused about their relationship with food. And whenever I talk about intuitive eating and self-trust, and especially that principle of unconditional permission to eat, women will say, my gosh, sure, that sounds great, but unconditional permission to eat is a disaster. Or if I allowed myself to have that, it would, you know, go off the rails. I could never trust myself. And when I've talked to dietitians and had those mentoring conversations about how do you bridge people from diet culture to weight, neutral, intuitive eating care, they'll say, I really believe in it. I know intuitive eating is a wonderful framework, but how do I communicate this concept of trust? And so I'm really excited to dig into that. So I'm sure you've had that similar conversation, probably with clients and patients in kind of the early part of your career, but with dietitians as well.

Defining Self-Trust Beyond Food

Jenn Salib Huber 7:48

So, how do you define self-trust?

Fiona Sutherland 7:51

Ooh, that's such a wonderful place to start. Let me have a think. I feel like self-trust is a connectedness, a sense of connectedness to our innate worthiness. A sense of or even a thread that connects us to who we truly are and how we want to show up in the world. So there's something there about connection, about a turning towards rather than away.

Jenn Salib Huber 8:31

Yeah, the insourcing instead of the outsourcing, right?

Fiona Sutherland 8:36

So uh yeah, that's not a definition of sorts. But when I think about trust, I think I do think about turning towards and turning in. I I do think about connectedness uh with ourselves, with within ourselves, and also with others and outside in the world as well, like the kind of the three multiple dimensions of trust. And that I feel like, and I know we'll get here, Jenna, at least I I I feel like we will, that we we can't really talk about self-trust without talking about the layers of things that we all as humans face that uh that that break trust over years, that are barriers to trust. You know, it's it's not something that we can we can really talk about as if, you know, it's it's a simple path, but you know, examining all the ways in which we have been taught implicitly and explicitly, often without our consent, that we are not to be trusted. And in particular, and in particular for for women and femmes and gender-diverse folks, that and other more marginalized folks as well, that we have been particularly like that that volume is up pretty loud about the many reasons why we can't be trusted, our bodies particularly so, and particularly a changing body, you know, just can't be trusted.

Early Messages That Erode Trust

Jenn Salib Huber 10:09

Yeah, and why don't we dig into that? And just to kind of touch though, on the especially that midlife experience, that's something that I hear all the time is, you know, my body just isn't doing what it used to do. My body is broken, nothing works anymore. And it almost always feels like a betrayal of our bodies. And that's that's a very, I think, vulnerable feeling. And it also would underpin a lack of trust, right? Like if you feel like your body is betraying you, how could you possibly trust it? Um, so let's dig into some of those things that erode at trust.

Fiona Sutherland 10:48

So from very early ages, we are exposed to messages, first of all, from outside of us about how our body should be behaving, about how our body should be moving, um, about how our body should be growing, um, which is very gendered as well. So from very early ages, we are kind of taught in many, many different ways from within the family, um, then from through peer groups and formal education. Um, and we we just begin to almost, you know, it's it's like going to a library and borrowing those books and not returning them, right? We begin to, you know, really just take on or what we would call internalize messages that are kind of taught to us or that are and or that are role modeled to us as well. So it's it's not only what is said to us, it's also what is not said to us, the kind of what's missing there. It's also what's a role modeled to us, what we see, what we observe. And importantly, one of the things that has been researched, um, but I have also observed both in my in my personal life as well, is that how other people's bodies are regarded in front of us is also a very, very powerful way that we internalize messages about our own acceptability. And so I hear, I have heard a lot in my clinical practice, people say, yeah, but I don't I don't really understand how I feel this way because nothing was ever said to me. And my next question is often, but what did you hear being said to other people? And that can be both particular bodies that were praised and also particular bodies that were devalued. And it doesn't have to, I think I feel like people feel like it has to be this uh big uh this big announcement or this big uh you know hurtful event. But actually that's usually not what people's experience is. It's you know the the the tiny little chipping away of our sense of uh who we are that can can really uh uh tell the story as we as we you know as we move through life and probably particularly mid midlife, where goodness, uh the the the burden of emotional responsibility is often, you know, being felt, especially women in midlife. And it's a time where we're re-evaluating things and we're starting to understand things through the lenses of our maybe our kids, our or you know, other children in our lives or young people. And it just really uh makes us really re-evaluate all the messages that we we ourselves have heard.

Jenn Salib Huber 13:38

And so many of them are normalized that you know you don't even see that they're problematic until that veil is lifted. And so once you see it, you can't unsee it. And then you just see how prevalent all of this messaging is about the thin ideal and what bodies should look like and what a good body is, and then good food and bad food and good diets and bad diets. We can really see how that default programming is influenced by all these different channels. It's not just the one event. Although many people do have an event that they can remember from their childhood, you know, being incentivized by a well-meaning grandparent to lose weight or, you know, going to weight loss programs with a family member. Like there are many, many people who have those memories. But you're right, lots of people will say, I'm I'm not a dieter. I don't, I've never been on a diet, my family doesn't diet. So that's not why I'm struggling. But when we unpack it, there actually are a lot of those hidden influences. But let's talk about chronic dieting for a minute. And

Dieting As A Proxy For Control

Jenn Salib Huber 14:46

that's kind of a term that I use to describe the people who started that first diet when they were 10, 11, 12, or kind of in their early young adulthood and have been on and off a diet for most of their life. How does that chronic dieting or persistent dieting behavior impact our ability to trust ourselves?

Fiona Sutherland 15:07

Mm-hmm. Well, there's a couple of layers there. The first is that for midlife folks who are listening, the diets that you started back in, I'm guessing maybe the 1980s, somewhere there, were some fresh version of hell, right? This was the era, if my memory serves me correct, and I did have a dieting parent, my memory served me correct. This was grapefruit, this was cottage cheese.

Jenn Salib Huber 15:38

Yep.

Fiona Sutherland 15:39

It was fat-free yogurt, like blur. And and I will say I quite like grapefruit. Like that's that's nice. I I'm a fan of citrus fruits, but I do have, I actually have an embodied memory of the sight of those foods, of the smell of those foods, of the way that that uh food was spoken about around that age group. And so there's there's that layer there of the of the very fresh version of hell that was the 1980s diet. It was it was Pritikan and it was Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, and it was, do you know, it was it was that you had all of those in Australia too. That wasn't just international, baby.

Jenn Salib Huber 16:28

It's so true though. Did you have did the cabbage soup diet make it to Australia?

Fiona Sutherland 16:33

Yeah, I mean everything. Everything, you know.

Jenn Salib Huber 16:36

I remember this photocopied version of the cabbage soup diet that was on everybody's fridge. Like it just was like permanently there. And uh, and it really that is the one that sticks out to me as being iconically like the home dieter, not the one who was joining a program, but like the home dieter would do the cabbage soup diet. I think it was like 14 days or 21 days or something ridiculous. Like, who can eat cabbage soup every day for weeks, right? Right. So the 80s were a problem. We agree on that.

Fiona Sutherland 17:08

80s were a problem. I mean, let's face it, Jen. 90s were a problem, 2000s are a problem. We've still got all these problems, right? It's it's just it the the wolf changes its clothing, right? So there's so there's that, there's that layer, which is, you know, very long history of, you know, and an early turning to these diets, which were highly restrictive, really low in, you know, really low in nutritional quality, really, just by virtue of it being low, low calorie. Um, but but also the way of our uh development of our trust. And so you've already said the word, so I'm going to jump on that. And that is that we when we outsource trust to to a diet, to a plan, to some to rigid sets of rules, to the shoulds, shouldn't'ts, good, bads, right, wrongs, then it uh it it really does start the process of chipping away at our sense of being able to turn back towards us, towards ourselves and ask questions like what do I need? How much do I need? Does this feel good? Does it not feel good? You know, and all of the the questions that actually are extended into life. Like if you think about it, uh those are questions that we might ask in as we're beginning to have, you know, relationships, maybe intimate relationships with others. How does this feel? Does it feel good? Does it feel not good? How much do I want? How much do I take? How much do you know what I mean? It's these are all parallel processes, as we as you and I would call it in our in our work, but these are these are parallel ways of that that humans develop. That dieting acts as a proxy for for something that we are grasping for, we're kind of wanting to control things outside of ourselves, and it gives this illusion of control. It's like the the the rainbow that never ends, right? You can never quite get there, never quite touch it. And that's essentially what what dieting does. And the earlier that we start dieting, and research certainly supports this, that uh the earlier we start dieting, then we start to outsource our trust earlier. And it takes us longer, I I believe, objectively and subjectively, it takes us longer to come to come back to ourselves because we don't really have an embodied memory necessarily of our knowing.

Rebuilding Trust With Community Support

Jenn Salib Huber 19:44

I hope you're loving this conversation about self-trust. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to speak directly to anybody who's listening who's thinking, trust myself? Yeah, that sounds great, but I don't even know where to start. If you have spent years following food rules, starting over every Monday, Googling whether something is good or bad, or wondering if you're eating the right thing for menopause because nothing works anymore, it's no surprise that trusting yourself feels hard. And the truth is, self-trust isn't something you can outsource, but it is something you can rebuild. And that's exactly what we do inside the Midlife Feast community. You'll learn how to navigate menopause nutrition without rigid rules, understand what your changing body actually needs, and build confidence in your food choices so that you're not second-guessing yourself every time that you have to eat. You'll find evidence-based education, practical tools, recipes, and a supportive community of women who get it, who are also learning to trust themselves again. One meal, one decision, and one act of self-compassion at a time. Because the goal is never perfect eating, because we're perfectly imperfect humans. The goal is feeling calm, confident, and well-fed in midlife. If that sounds like what you've been looking for, I'd love to welcome you inside. Just head to the show notes and you'll find a link where you can learn all about how to become a feaster. Now, let's get back to today's episode. That's such a great summary of what happened. And I remember talking to somebody early on in my intuitive eating kind of counseling who had had the experience of doing the cabbage soup diet. And when we were talking about it, she recalled that it was really that first time when she couldn't trust herself because, and these were her words and they stuck with me, I couldn't even trust myself to follow something as simple as the cabbage soup diet. And so dieting always promises to make it easier. It's like, oh, we're just gonna tell you what to eat. All you have to do is follow this plan, and everything will come up roses. You'll find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But what it doesn't say is that it takes more energy, thought, capacity to eat within that narrow. Range recommendation, or to only eat cabbage soup for however many days. Because it's not filling or satisfying. But it's interesting how so many people would internalize that as, well, I can't trust myself because I can't even follow a diet. When the diet was a problem, not you, right?

Fiona Sutherland 22:19

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it and it lays down very powerful beliefs that we have about ourselves, which, you know, if we're talking about trust around food, and then we layer that with, well, why can't I even do this? Then, you know, we can start to mistrust even other instincts. I know I already referred to, you know, to um relationships and friendships and even things like, I don't know, choosing subjects at school or university. You know, if I can't trust myself to choose food, then how can I trust myself to follow a career path or know when to, you know, know when to step away from a job where I'm being mistreated or it's not where I want to be. One of the foundations of of building trust, it just has these echoes and this flow-on effect right through our lives, which, you know, is really it breaks my heart to be honest. How many people I have spoken to who have spent most of their lives trying to kind of get their feet underneath them and regain a sense of trust and connection back with back with themselves that they felt like they, you know, left back in the 1980s with the, I don't know, the ra-raskirts and the white elastic belts, which seem as if they're coming back anyway.

Jenn Salib Huber 23:38

Oh yeah. Fashion is a whole other side conversation. Right, right.

Why We Crave Food Rules

Jenn Salib Huber 23:43

You know, why do you think that it feels safer to follow someone else's rules? Why is that so appealing?

Fiona Sutherland 23:53

Well, when we when we don't trust ourselves or when our trust is eroded, because it this is not a black and white thing. It's not like I trust myself or I don't trust myself. It's more like a volume knob, right? And there might be some situations where we can back ourselves. It could be in a work situation or it could be in a friendship situation. But I think what it does is it offers us a sense of certainty, but that that certainty is an illusion. And certainly, I'm just gonna put my dietitian hat on for a moment, you know, that we're trained to be educators, we're trained to essentially kind of tell people what to do somehow, which I mean, I've got so many thoughts on that, and that's probably another whole episode for us. But, you know, when people when people come to us, they want also often, often not always, they want us to tell people what to do. And and it can feel also like a bit of a reflex for us to tell people what to do. And so I will absolutely say that unfortunately our profession, Jen, and I feel like we're probably on the same page here, has done, has over the years, has really done a bit of a number on many, many people because we we have unwittingly, despite the fact that on the whole we're very caring, lovely people, unwittingly also kind of really joined on that bandwagon of, you know, trust me, I'm a dietitian, or you know, that that that we know better as well. And let's face it, it actually can it can feel good to us too, to teach people, to educate people, because if we are to lean into the reality that also we don't have the answers, that we can feel uncertain, my goodness, that that can ooh, that can be extremely uncomfortable. And so it can often actually, even as us as dietitians, can be a reflex to then tell people, you know.

Jenn Salib Huber 26:06

You know, and I think most people who go into any healthcare profession are helpers. They we want to help. Yes. And when, you know, I don't know what it's like in the dietetic programs and nutrition programs now, but 31 years ago when I started mine, it was very, it was prescriptive. It was when somebody comes in and you see somebody with XYZ, then these are the foods that you tell them to eat and these are the foods that you tell them not to eat. Right. So when somebody comes to you and says, tell me what to eat, I think it is a reflex to say, this is what you should do and this is what you shouldn't do. And that was probably one of professionally, that was one of my big aha moments, you know, 10 or 11 years ago of realizing that everybody already knows how to eat, what to eat. They already know what to eat.

Fiona Sutherland 26:53

They don't, Jen, can you say ate a few more vegetables?

Jenn Salib Huber 26:58

Exactly. And realizing that the disconnect was that I didn't have the tools to teach people how to eat, to trust themselves and to not feel like they need to always lean on outside resources. It's great when you have trusted resources that can give you information that you can then sit with, decide, does this interest me? Is this something I want to learn more about? Is this something I want to do? But it's really the how of eating that I think builds the trust. And it's not more information, which is what we're drowning in in menopause, in all aspects of nutrition, but especially in the menopause nutrition world, where we have everybody and their dog saying, eat this, not that, you know, make protein a full-time job. Now we're fiber maxing, like it's all of this outside information, but none of it is talking about, okay, nutrition is the science, but eating is the behavior. And behaviors require that you believe and trust in yourself. Right?

Fiona Sutherland 28:03

Yeah, that that's really true. And I wonder if it might be interesting to your listeners to get a little sense of the lineage of our profession. Because when you and I trained, Jen, the reality is that dietitians were very much clinically oriented. We were we were um employed to work in hospitals, in community centers. You know, the the private sector really wasn't that developed when we graduated, when we studied, when we graduated. Yeah. And so being in the private sector or being in private practice was really unheard of until well, you know, on the whole, unheard of. I remember, I remember at university when I studied dietetics, my good friend, her, both her parents were dietitians. One was the head of oncology at our big cancer hospital at the time. That was her dad. And her mum had started the very first private practice in Melbourne called Melbourne Dietetics. And we were all, like, I know we were all stunned because it was seen as unusual, very entrepreneurial, very business-minded thing that at some point in the future you might do, but no, you're you're really going to be working in a hospital. We were trained to work in a hospital or in kind of community settings. And I feel like worldwide still our training is very oriented towards that, despite the fact that the workforce has changed dramatically. And so what happened, and I'll be so interested to ask about this to you, Jen, is that but my memory of it is somewhere in the 1990s became the evolution of the media dietitian. And so this was when we started getting dietitians on TV, writing for magazines, writing in the newspapers, all print media, of course, back then. Um but this was when we started getting dietitians as spokespeople for food companies and you know things like that. And I believe that that was when clinical practice met weight loss demand. And so dieticians became, people began to turn to dietitians for everyday, not clinical medical stuff, but for everyday food advice, including weight loss or including weight control. And it I feel like that was when it was born. So so for your listeners, that is how new it is for nutrition and dietetics. It is with it's easily within the last 30 years. So we are brand new to this, which is why the counseling behavior change stuff is has been a little bit to be to be fair to our colleagues who are wonderful. I love them. We're a little bit slow on the uptake with that, because this is not the lineage of our training.

Jenn Salib Huber 31:13

Yeah, absolutely. The really interesting thing about your memory is that it really parallels mine. And so I did my undergraduate at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, and then I did my internship in Halifax. And, you know, the internship program in Canada, there was a clinical component, there was like a food service component, and then there was like a public health component. And you were, and then there was, I think, an elective of a few weeks, and there was literally one private practice dietitian in all of Halifax. And um, of course, she was always inundated with people who wanted to, you know, kind of preceptor with her, but of course she had limited practice. So yeah, even as little as 25, 26 years ago in in Canada, the private practice dietitian was not something that was mainstream. And so yeah, our clinical work was very guided by clinical guidelines because we were working in clinical settings. But then as we moved into maybe something that's a hybrid between community and public health and that clinical setting, we really needed to lean into the behavior change more so than the information. Thank you for that, history. I think that's going to be interesting for lots of people.

Fiona Sutherland 32:25

Well, I think it just in terms of kind of having some insight. And I know so I teach at a couple of the universities, and I often will talk about that, the lineage of our profession, to our students because, um, and this is no fault of theirs, so I'm not throwing shade in that direction, but they don't know. They're not aware. And so one thing I do say to them is I say, when you meet anybody over the age of, I would say maybe 60, they will have a very specific belief about what a dietitian does. And just be prepared that it might not be great. Yeah. Because yeah, just just just be prepared for that. And I share that with them so that they are able to really dial up the thoughtfulness around our community members' understandings of what a dietitian does. I will never, ever, ever forget the number of times when I was working in the UK, working in a diabetes service, and I'd meet the most gorgeous people, and my favorites were always men who would come in and they'd call me Sweetie and Love and all of these names, you know, and they would say, just don't make me eat lettuce leaves. And I thought to myself, oh my goodness, my darling, I'm not gonna do that.

Jenn Salib Huber 33:52

Yeah, they definitely do, you know, even today, like if I meet somebody and you know, they say, What do you do? And I say if I say that I'm a dietitian, I'm an atrophic doctor, they'll say, Oh, don't look at what I'm eating. And I'm like, and we all love food. Like, that's the thing. Like, if you want to talk to somebody about food, like we're it for all the right reasons. No one gets more excited about food than dietitians. Like, give us a buffet and we're like happy. Yes. So let's think a little bit about the how do we start building this trust?

Curiosity Tools For Hunger Signals

Jenn Salib Huber 34:24

And whether that's an individual or whether that's a dietitian who's working with someone. You know, one of one of the things I hear all the time, and this was a question that came up in my community the other day, is how how do I not fear this increased hunger? How do I trust my hunger? Right? So why don't we start with that?

Fiona Sutherland 34:43

Absolutely. I think one of the things that I notice over the years, and this goes for both dietitians and folks out there who are looking to who are looking to reconnect with their innate, their innate wisdom, their innate knowing. In other words, you know, you want to trust yourself more, particularly around food, that remembering that it's it's not something that you can purchase at a store. For example, you don't have it or you don't. These are actual, and this is both the good news and the bad news because these are skills that we build over time. It's not, yeah, it's it's not something we kind of get over a very short period of time. But the skills that we are drawing upon, and again, I want to uh for the dietitians listening, I'm talking to you. And for the for your beautiful community members uh who are listening, I'm also talking to you. And that is that uh the kind of skills that I'm talking about are things like building a sense of non-judgmental curiosity towards our own experience. So often in my work and in my previous clinical work, we would start there is really building that muscle because it is an internal muscle of uh of developing an awareness, but a non-judgmental awareness for the purposes of learning more about ourselves, not for the purposes of some big self-improvement project, not getting curious, but for the purposes of doing of doing things to ourselves, if that makes sense. And I think that's one of the really important anchor points is that often uh, you know, even things like compassion, um, self-inquiry, uh, gentleness, rest is kind of weaponized for the purposes of how can I use this to do more? How can I understand myself so that I'm uh better at quote unquote controlling myself. And so that's where I would usually start is developing a deeper sense of awareness of my own experience. And I believe, I'm a big believer, that that is with training and you know, supervision and support, that this is very much in the domain of a dietitian, you know, it doesn't take a therapist to do that work, although a good therapist is worth their weight in gold, I will say. But these are these are these are starting points where we can understand more about our own embodied experience. And if we're talking about something like hunger and fullness, then, you know, something very practical that I would often do with people is we just get out a plain piece of paper. It's not one that I have developed. It's not a pre-made one or anything like that. I used to do that, and then I was like, hmm, this still sounds a little bit like I'm controlling this ship. So we would get out a large piece of paper or even a whiteboard, and we'd just draw a line across it. Doesn't even need to be a line, it could be some circles. You know, we we make it ourselves and we might think about, you know, what do I notice when I'm most hungry? Just noticing. What do I feel? What what what feelings do I get if there's an emotional state, if there are thoughts, if there are sensations that we notice, and we're just noticing them. We're not saying they're good or bad, we're not saying they're right or wrong, we're just simply noticing them. And then we might, if we're drawing circles, we might move outwards from there from most hungry to least hungry, or we might draw a line, and then we would start with, and then we would move to fullness as a separate kind of thing. So we're not going most hungry to most full. I stopped doing that a while ago. But thinking about them as two different constructs, you know, most hungry to least hungry, most uh least full to most full. Because what I found over time through conversations with people is that least hungry doesn't always match with a particular place on the fullness spectrum either. We might just be not interested for a particular reason. And so that's a very practical thing for dietitians that you can practice with your the folks that you work with and for the folks listening is, you know, if you if you're a person who loves to get out, you know, your your journal or your paper and pen, and you don't have to do it like that at all. You can really make it make it your own to just begin a gentle exploration of essentially what this is, is is appetite signaling, I suppose, and becoming more familiar with it, but not from not to get anywhere or do anything, but just for the purposes of curiosity.

Jenn Salib Huber 39:48

And the curiosity piece I cannot agree with more. And certainly people in my community will recognize the you know, the phrase observation without judgment, or to use some of the intuitive eating kind of language, you know, being that, putting your food anthropologist hat on and food behavior and just kind of observing, you know, when do I feel this way? What else is happening? Why do I react with certain thoughts or behaviors? And how does that feel? Most importantly, how does it feel when I do this? Not is it right, is it wrong, is it good, is it bad, but how does it feel? And I 100% agree that really leaning into that curiosity, I think allows us to maybe explore some of those areas of our relationship with food that we didn't even know existed because we've always just been trying to compare it to a checklist of what's good and bad. And, you know, learning to trust ourselves is learning to say, like, actually, I don't like eggs. I don't care that they're a perfect source of protein. I don't care that lots of people love them for breakfast. I don't like eggs. I might like an egg on a Caesar salad, but I am hardly ever going to make eggs for breakfast. It's just not what I like. And that is something from my own experience that I really had to trust because I was always trying to eat eggs for breakfast. And it was making me dread breakfast because I hated them. Yeah. And so I think that's the curiosity part that can actually become kind of fun. You know, when I work with people with it, they're they do get excited at seeing how perceptive they can be when they're insourcing instead of outsourcing. So instead of always looking for the best plan, actually asking, what do I like? What feels good in my body? And how does it feel when I connect those two things?

Guidance For Dietitians And Midlife Joy

Jenn Salib Huber 41:36

This has been such an amazing conversation. And I feel like we could really, you know, kind of take this, we we could keep going for hours and hours. And you've certainly given us lots to think about. What I want to just kind of end by talking to the dietitians maybe a little bit more, because you know, lots of dietitians, especially I think once you've been in practice for a little while and you realize that what people need is the support with the how and it's less about the what. I think that can feel really vulnerable to be this qualified dietitian, health practitioner, maybe you're you've been working for many years, and now to all of a sudden feel like actually, I don't know how to do this. What would you say to that person who might be listening thinking, all this sounds lovely, but there's no way that I can learn how to do this?

Fiona Sutherland 42:30

I encourage dietitians who are curious about this way of working, first of all, to take your time. It is such a reflex for us that we our enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of us and we want to be masters of the domain that we are enthusiastic about as soon as possible. And I would say that, you know, intuitive eating and and weight-inclusive approaches are also one of those things that people want to kind of master um as soon as possible. And I will say, you know, 25 years down the track, a good luck with that. Because the one thing that I feel like Jen Yu and I will share in common is that the wonderful thing about working with humans is that we learn that we will never conquer, we will never master what it is to be human, and that that is something to be embraced and celebrated as opposed to something to be ticked off a list. And so, um, okay, so there's that that would be my first suggestion is be willing to take your time. My second suggestion is that the ri our richest form of learning, arguably, is actually from our clients. And I remember early in my career where, oh gosh, this is it's just dreadful. I I worked and lived in the UK doing clinical work for a couple of years, and then I worked and lived in Canada for a couple. Of years, but didn't didn't work as a dietitian at the time. But came back, needed a job, and so I ended up in this in a weight loss clinic. And I will share this with you, Jen. That was my richest source of learning because that is where people shared their kind of distress with me. Uh and where I really understood uh human emotion, really, and I understood all the layers of how food and eating was so intricately connected with our human experience. So although I I feel like my eyes are twitching every time I think about that particular workplace, because it was beyond, beyond awful, I'm in so many ways, but the people that I met took me on the steepest learning curve ever of my career. And I'm forever grateful for that. So that's the second point I would say is that your clients and the humans that you come across will be your richest form of learning. And when we can be curious and humble with what we have to offer, then that can be a really nice place where we can learn about the human experience. What else? I don't know. What would you add to this? I feel like I feel like there's like 10 things that, you know.

Jenn Salib Huber 45:22

And you know, I to your point about, you know, want the master trying to master this too quickly, I say the same thing to the women that I work with, the individuals that I work with, is that everybody wants to speed run the process. Once you see that diet culture and dieting behaviors are not the answer to all the problems that you're trying to solve, of course it's human nature to want to get to the better solution as quickly as possible. But there's quite a bit of unlearning that I think has to happen. And that's where the time needs to happen. You need to examine your beliefs with curiosity, not judgment. And you need to, you know, kind of systematically sometimes unpack them. And of course, that's the value of having mentorship, right? Is having somebody who can, who's been there with many other people. But even as an individual, to anybody who's listening, thinking like, oh my gosh, this is what I need, understand that you can read the intuitive eating book. You can, you know, listen to all the podcasts and follow all the people. And it can all make perfect, lovely sense. And implementing that in your own life may require support. And so to both individuals and dietitians who are listening, I would probably add that it's okay if you haven't been able to figure this out on your own. It doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. It just is an area that often requires support.

Fiona Sutherland 46:47

Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I was reading a piece of research just last week, Jen, that was saying that support seeking is one of the greatest barriers to people in healthcare. And it was the the research itself was about mental health and eating disorders, but they did make a point that reaching out for help requires some vulnerability. And that again speaks to both dietitians and to community members as well. That saying, hey, I I don't know it all, I need some support, it it doesn't, it that doesn't indicate a deficit in us. It actually indicates courage, I think, is to say, hey, you know, I I've got something here, I've got my experience here. And again, that goes for both dietitians and community members. And and and I feel like I would really benefit from the support of others.

Jenn Salib Huber 47:42

Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Okay, so we need to wrap this up because I feel like we really could talk forever. So what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife?

Fiona Sutherland 47:54

I think the missing ingredient that I keep coming back to again and again and again is fun. I have historically called fun vitamin F because it vitamin F, of course, doesn't exist, so that's a that's that's ridiculous. But I love ridiculous so much. And I remember when I first met my now very good friend Marcy Evans, who I've already mentioned once and of course mentioned again, when I very first met Marcy, and we were talking about values. We were talking about the values that drive our life. And I said to her, I said, I'm I'm I'm actually a little bit embarrassed to tell you that fun is is in my top three ahead of others that probably should be in my top three. And we laughed and laughed, first of all, because she said, same, fun's in my top three, and then she's like, and then we were we were saying, oh, stuff family, stuff connection, stuff compassion, stuff curiosity. It's all about fun. And of course, we were making, we were making, you know, making fun of ourselves. But I really feel like a missing piece is good old-fashioned fun. And for me, the most fun I have, no offense to my husband, no offense to my kids, it is actually with my girlfriends. Um we just laugh and love each other to bits. And so I just I'm I just I love my girlfriends and I think fun is the missing.

Jenn Salib Huber 49:32

I I love that. Thank you so

Resources And Closing

Jenn Salib Huber 49:35

much. If people want, especially dietitians who might be listening who want to learn about how to work with you or what kind of supervision and mentoring you offer, where's the best place for them to go?

Fiona Sutherland 49:44

Well, the best place to go is the wet is my website, which is themindfuldietitian.com.au. Um, so of course, if you're a dietitian, you know how to spell that, don't you? It's with two T's, not a C. And um, yeah, so that's that's that's got kind of everything that you'll need there. Information about supervision and education and training and tons of resources and some freebies and all the good all the good stuff. And then the other two places that I'm probably most active is Instagram, where I am the dot mindful dietitian. And then I have regained my mojo over on LinkedIn, which is really unusual for me. I did not like that place for years, until a colleague of mine who I really respect said to me, I really think that you need to. And do you know what? I will say, I'm having a bit of fun on LinkedIn. It's completely different to the other platforms, but actually I really enjoy it. So if you are kind of more into the collegial, you know, professional space than LinkedIn. I just have fun on Instagram, really, more than anything.

Jenn Salib Huber 50:52

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us.

Fiona Sutherland 50:55

Thanks so much for having me, Jen. It's been such a pleasure.

Jenn Salib Huber 51:00

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Midlife Feast. If you're ready to take the next step towards thriving in midlife, head to menopausenutritionist.ca to learn more about my one-to-one and group coaching programs, free resources, and where to get your copy of Eat to Thrive during menopause. And if you've loved today's conversation and found it helpful, please share it with a friend who needs to hear this and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps so many more people just like you find their way to food freedom and midlife confidence. Until next time, remember midlife is not the end of the story, it's the feast. Let's savor it together.