[Recast] Ep 69 – Anti-Diet Approaches to New Year’s Resolutions with Maria Scrimenti

Hola amigos! Welcome back —–

Health goals are important, right? Tune in to learn about interoceptive awareness and why Maria and David think that goals are not pass nor fail, but an experiment.

Highlights of this episode:

• Personal training and disordered eating
• How much food is too much food?
• Challenges of Intuitive Eating
• Counseling through binge and emotional eating
• Real New Year’s Goals
• Weight assumptions in Chronic Disease

Introducing Our Guest

Maria is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor who helps people make peace with food. She specializes in “emotional eating,” body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating such as chronic dieting and binge eating. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Exercise Science from Belmont University and a Health & Wellness Coach Certification from the American College of Sports Medicine– affiliated Wellcoaches. Maria has almost a decade of experience in the fitness industry with 7 specialty exercise certifications. She has also completed nearly 20 graduate- level courses in counseling and is a fitness instructor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

FULL DESCRIPTION (not a transcript):

[00:00] Intro

We have a team of HAES trained RD nutrition professionals and work with a team of psychologists within David’s private practice, Orozco Nutrition. If you are struggling in diet culture or want guidance with nutrition, please do not hesitate to reach out. We want to hear from you.

We are taking a short break this September to work behind the scenes to bring you, the listeners, even better content. We’ll be re-casting episodes that we think are relevant before the holiday season comes. This episode is originally #69 from Jan 6, 2021.

[3:55] Maria’s Background

David and Maria connected within the Intuitive Eating Counselors forum. Maria started providing fitness training in 2012. She realized fitness was important, but there is more than that to health. She discovered intuitive eating (IE) and she realized how helpful it is. She focuses mostly now on IE and still has a foot in physical training world.

Maria has also started recommending yoga practice. Her boyfriend, Sam, is a registered yoga teacher. A team member, Emily, gets referrals to teach yoga from Maria’s private practice often. Yoga is so compatible and can amplify her clients’ journeys.

Maria’s first introduction to IE was through Body Kindness by Rebecca Scritchfield. Maria recommends all her clients – or everyone- read the same book. Maria realized she was dieting through self-restriction (not a fad diet). Maria values quality of life, which includes food. She was so confused about nutrition because of the fitness industry environment. She worked with RDs who gave meal plans, which are diets in disguise. Maria binged because of dieting. Her gauge was so low to recognize restriction. It took years, but she dropped the diet mentality. She made peace with food. She says that her dysfunctional relationship was revealed to her and IE was the “secret sauce.”

Everyone’s IE timeline is different, it is a process. She removed her food rules and stopped hyper focusing on nutrition. And her body is fine for it. Trusting her body was enough and focusing too much on nutrition was not serving her. There are so many mainstream ideas around eating that are from diet culture and IE helps break free from destructive dieting patterns. She wants to do it for the rest of her life. David said it took him 5-6 years to adapt to IE out of fear of losing clients. He didn’t trust it at first. Everyone’s timeline with IE is different.

[14:42] How much food is too much food? 

Maria recounts her former skewed view. Diet culture tells us to have a thin and emaciated frame through starving. She really thought, if I’m eating, I am eating enough. David points out there is a belonging piece of thinness in our world. Maria said her job as a personal trainer comes with selling your body as a business card. David can relate. He has a stomach pouch, he always wanted washboard abs. They share how this mindset was unconscious for a long time. Maria says individuals have to really dig mentally to get out of diet culture.

David and Maria share their thoughts on continued education within their fields. Maria thinks, get in the field, stay in the field. We are always learning anyway, without official academia.

[18:35] What was your childhood food culture?

In her Italian Catholic family, food is celebration and celebration is food. She loves that and wants to continue the celebration. Her matriarch line had a hyper focus of dieting and thinness. Kids pick up on all these things and apply it to their bodies. This played out in her performance sports growing up. Also, her dad was a politician, so their family was in the public eye, which places more pressure on appearances.

Later when she went to college in the south, and college provided so many fun foods. Maria remembers thinking, what is the limit? How much of this can I have? This all played into her later IE process of making peace of food. This is unconditional permission to eat, founded by Evelyn Tribole (of IE).

David explains, access and permission drives from life development and autonomy. Unfortunately, we often hear the message, “you cannot do, unless I tell you to.” The eating models of parenthood can be subconscious, inferred, or picked up on directly by kids. IE allows us to build interoceptive awareness with our body, which builds body trust.

[25:30] Do you see any of the IE 10 principles more challenging than others?

Maria says, interoceptive awareness can be difficult, idea of eating whatever you want, when you want, can be misunderstood that nutrition doesn’t matter. Like there are no consequences. Maria explains the consequences are an INSIDE job, not the (weight) scale. External consequences do not matter. You get to decide what the consequences are, by looking at mindful eating exercises.

One of David’s clients believes mindful eating cured his heartburn. David says its not magic, slowing down has real physiology benefits. Mindful eating cannot be practiced 24/7, David explains that when you can use these practices, it can help you during those other busier times. For example, start paying attention to what you are thinking. When eating, more physical cues come in when you don’t have distractions. There’s no cookie clutter way of doing IE.

[31:10] How do you help with Binge and Emotional Eating?

Many of Maria’s clients deal with binge and emotional eating. She works one-on-one to find out what type(s) of starvation is going on. It’s starvation that leads to the disordered pattern. Normalizing the behaviors and exploring those triggers is an incredible experience.

These two eating behaviors are related, but different. She loves to unpack them in her coursework. She works with people who are troubled by their frequent eating to cope with life’s problems.

Maria and David are curious…what are some sensitive ways to discuss emotional eating? What does it mean to different people? Can food be loved? Do I love food too much? They both work to guide clients to restore food to a balance part of life, loving food and loving other parts of life, to where it is not an all-consuming problem. Day 1 centers around self-compassion.

David mentions that a person’s control piece…control is an illusion. But we can manage things. You work it, not control it. Self-compassion is about empathy and management, not control.

[35:42] How do we build this New Year’s season?

Maria suggests trying flexibility, getting away from rigidity. Are there different ways to look at health? The principles Maria shares:

• Honor Your Hunger
• Get Clear on Your Meaning
• Drop the “Should’s”
• Pace Yourself, be Flexible
• Goals are JUST Experiments

[44:05] “But, I have to lose weight because of disease?!?”

Dr. Bacon wrote, “weight loss” is code. What is under that desire of code? “If I lose weight, then x,y,z, happens.” What if a doctor is encouraging weight loss? Remember that doctors are people too and can be products of diet culture. You can ask, “how would you provide a person in a smaller body treatment for this condition?”

Maria points out that weight stigma is ignored in obesity and disease research. David mentions that the horror stories from clients about doctors is too frequent and mind-blowing.  Those physicians are only coming from the same fears. We are all human and its not easy. One patient tip is that you can refuse the standard weight in. They (doctor’s clinics) don’t really use that information for many things. Weighing in can be the beginning of the scolding process and distract the conversation. Patients can have a conversation and set boundaries with their doctor if needed. Tell doctors about your other providers you work with, like a dietitian and therapist. David offers to send a letter to any physician for his clients.

Remember that your doctor works for you and diet culture parades as health!

[54:00] Closing Announcements! 

We are going to be taking a short break, and recasting some really great episodes to guide us through the upcoming months of holiday season. When we come back, we are going to have an even better show, that really invites you to be in the conversation.

Make a free 15-minute phone call if you want to work with us on your nutritional health in a weight-inclusive, anti-diet culture way.  Get the ball rolling by emailing us at info@orozconutrition.com or call 678-568-4717.

Where do I go from here?

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Links from This Guest: 

Maria Scrimenti:

• Website
• Facebook Page
• Facebook Group
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Youtube 

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