Rewiring Nutrition Beliefs with Jenna DeKok, MS, RD

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I have Jenna DeKok, my incredible co-pilot and fellow registered dietician in my practice, back. In this episode, Jenna tells us her story of how following popular diet culture beliefs didn't best serve her and how she overcame and rewired her beliefs based on her experience. This is something most of us have gone through with popular diet culture and awareness around it is important.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• How popular diet culture narratives can shape your beliefs
• How we are motivated to change by desperation
• The importance & benefits of nourishment for the female body
• The benefits of healthy fats
• Be open with experimentation around food

For more on this topic from Jenna click here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyRrWEZpVLH/

ABOUT JENNA:
Jenna is a consulting registered dietitian via her business Nutritiously Jenna and associate practitioner at Less Stressed Life Nutrition. She started working with Christa in 2018 doing mentorship hours for her undergraduate degree. Since then, she's touched business operation roles, social media management, program content creation, and is currently working 1:1 with clients. Her passion for women's wellness came from her firsthand struggles with disordered eating that led to a variety of gut, hormone, and energy issues. This is ultimately why she loves to help women truly understand their bodies by diving deeper into the important but often not-so-talked-about areas of women's health!

WHERE TO FIND JENNA:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nutritiouslyjenna/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

WORK WITH CHRISTA IN FEBRUARY: https://www.christabiegler.com/fss

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're over medicated and underserved. At The Less Stressed Life, we're a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:26] Christa Biegler, RD: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:00:45] Christa Biegler, RD: all right. Today on the last stress life, I have Jenna back. So you may have remembered Jenna from some episodes right around December. We did a couple about how we like to practice now without getting burned out, et cetera. Jenna is an. Master's RD, which is registered dietitian nutritionist. She has been the co pilot or co RD in my practice for quite some time.

[00:01:11] Christa Biegler, RD: We decided that we've worked together since 2018 in some capacity during that time we've done, she's pretty much done all the things. And she's witnessed the whole rollercoaster of entrepreneurship that I've gone through for sure. She's helped. A cookbook done a zillion client handouts.

[00:01:24] Christa Biegler, RD: We see clients, we equally share client work together. And recently I saw her posting on her own Instagram about rewiring nutrition beliefs. And I think that this is a thing that we all go through. And so I wanted to have a specific episode where we talked about rewiring nutrition beliefs today. So welcome back, Jenna.

[00:01:43] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah. Thanks for having me again.

[00:01:44] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. So I don't know how we want to do this, but I think a little storytelling always makes sense first. And we all have our own stories. And I think there's a lot of professionals and clinicians and nutrition professionals that listen to this podcast. And I think so often about common questions.

[00:01:59] Christa Biegler, RD: I get, I think about a couple of things that happen. I think about people in our profession, it's the stats or that. About half the people that go into our profession, maybe have some disordered eating history. I think even in therapy and other similar experiences, like we're affected by a profession. So we find interest in it.

[00:02:16] Christa Biegler, RD: I also think that I have many people online, family, friends, people I've known that have sometimes asked, Oh, how do you learn this stuff? And that's sometimes a hard question to answer because there's a lot to be said about experiences. And I would say that. Our depth of experiences changes how we then see and project and perceive the world overall.

[00:02:36] Christa Biegler, RD: So maybe let's just start with your story and how things started for you around your nutrition beliefs, which are quite different than how they are now. So how did your early nutrition story affect you? So let's go back in time to the early dietitian, early nutrition student days, and the nutrition beliefs at that time that are very common.

[00:02:56] Christa Biegler, RD: And we see in even clients.

[00:02:58] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: No, definitely. And I'll keep this story pretty short because I feel like once I've reflected on my journey, there's like these key takeaways of what happened. So I feel very young. And honestly, it varies. I feel like person to person when you get exposed to say diet culture or learning more about nutrition and what's commonly, shared about nutrition.

[00:03:17] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: This was probably for me back in high school, definitely just started focusing on eating better, so minimizing like processed foods, so forth, saw the benefit of that, and I was hooked at that point okay so really though, I feel like a lot of the common narratives, I started believing around that time.

[00:03:36] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Was I guess you could think first and foremost going low fat or avoiding fat and a lot of my beliefs around that was like, Oh, what's commonly portrayed is that the higher like fat food, the more that you might possibly gain more weight gain so forth. And I know a lot of thoughts to at that time was like.

[00:03:55] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Food is calories. So that was all I was equating food. So how could I honestly reduce the amount of food I was eating to reduce the calories? There's the common 1200 calories per day for women to be eating. So yeah, started buying into a lot of different, not necessarily narratives, but more of those diet culture, stories we portray overall.

[00:04:14] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: And to speed up the timeline, so then definitely kept restricting food, ultimately was influenced to go plant based, because then there was a story around that animal based foods weren't as good for me, so I avoided those as well, but ultimately that kind of led to just a lot of symptoms, a lot of hormonal chaos, a lot of digestive chaos going on, so really I Had to ultimately come to this moment of what I was believing around food and nutrition actually wasn't best serving me.

[00:04:45] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: I was not showing up how I wanted to show up. I completely, I feel different personality and so forth as, yeah, I just wasn't ultimately nourished. I was buying into a very diet culture base. Beliefs perspectives when actually what I realized best served me was nourishment.

[00:05:04] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. It was like you were health conscious.

[00:05:07] Christa Biegler, RD: So we see this all the time, right? You were health conscious. You were not this standard American diet, but you're this kind of forgotten, but extremely common picture of over working under nourishing. That's been part of our cultural narrative for a long time, eat less and exercise more. And we're not taking into account the stress that plays on different systems.

[00:05:30] Christa Biegler, RD: And instead, what if we digest nourish? I would be curious how you first got started on like a low process diet. Like what kind of spawned your interest there? for me, like going back to high school, I did research for some clubs. I was presenting some. Topics around fast food and soda.

[00:05:48] Christa Biegler, RD: And I was just like so intrigued by the, it was like, no, better do better. And I was like, wow, everyone should know this . . But it was a very immature picture. It was good. It was totally fine for the time. But, and I feel that your story is such a common one we hear. I think it's really common.

[00:06:04] Christa Biegler, RD: In school for nutrition. I don't think it's necessarily always talked about as much as it should be. I am out of touch with how it's currently being talked about in classes or how prevalent it is now, but I would expect from the clients that we see. These are common. These are common history things that we've got this health conscious person who's controlling things that I would actually ask you if you think if you reflect on your story, if there was control around that, like sometimes controlling things.

[00:06:31] Christa Biegler, RD: Intake sometimes can have a lot to do with like perfectionism tendencies or just like not having as much control growing up. That was a little bit of a deep question and kind of personal, but do you think any of that played in there?

[00:06:43] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: I definitely think, like my Enneagram type is Enneagram type one.

[00:06:47] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So it's called like the perfectionist, I think like idealist so forth. So I'm just.

[00:06:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Reformer.

[00:06:51] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah I'm just very ideal in what I would like to do I'm very pro let me support my body, so when I originally learned oh I guess I feel like a lot of the media at that time where, you're influenced, I wasn't even necessarily influenced by my mother or anything of the sort, it was more just cultural norms, what you'd read in little magazines, like all the sorts on TV, just like buying into oh, if you eat less calories.

[00:07:15] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: That's healthy. So I was like, oh, that's the ideal thing to do. But Lo and behold, you realize, wow, that was not in my best favor,

[00:07:24] Christa Biegler, RD: and you're about, you're quite a bit younger than I am. And I find that women who are the decade above me or grew up with parents that were very much into lots of yo dieting, like you can really tell there's a certain vibe around them.

[00:07:39] Christa Biegler, RD: And there's a lot of shame around food when they talk about food. So I would say maybe. Late forties, fifties, women for sure. I would say I definitely noticed that trend in them. And then I don't know I'm not saying that there's , it's almost interesting. It's like how through the decades was each person affected a little bit.

[00:07:58] Christa Biegler, RD: So let me zoom into a few things that you talked about. You talked about, I was taught that food was calories, that fat was associated with weight gain. Let's talk about some other things or clues or what, how was like snacking or being hungry interpreted? Like, how did you have, what did that mean to you?

[00:08:15] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah. So I always felt like growing up, like being hungry or especially as again, you got in teenage years, like in school, like hunger, like wasn't viewed as something like. positive. It was like this annoying thing like, oh my gosh, I gotta eat more. I'm going to end up gaining weight if I eat more.

[00:08:30] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: If I'm hungrier, like should only be eating I feel like a common belief around food is only eating like the three meals per day. So you're not like incorporating a snack because it's not viewed as, beneficial. So like snacking to me, my mind would immediately go to, oh my gosh, that's like eating a lot of junk food.

[00:08:48] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So like you're eating your chips, you're eating your cookies, whatever. Obviously, all those foods can have a place, for sure, but that's where my mind was going, and I thought, okay, if I'm just snacking, that's just another time I'm, like, eating, and I'm gonna gain more weight. I'm gonna eat more calories. Just very Negative.

[00:09:04] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah. Just a negative mindset around.

[00:09:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Negative mindset. I tread lightly around the word disordered because I don't know. I am sure there's a clinical term for this, but it's like a little subjective, right? And what you're describing is actually just really common ways that we talk about food and food is, it's a, such a interesting thing.

[00:09:28] Christa Biegler, RD: My, a family member called me a week ago and said, I was wondering if you had any opinions about food sensitivity testing. I was like, how I am when I answer, I'm like, this is such an innocent question. What kind of answer are you looking for here? Like I can talk on for an hour about this topic.

[00:09:44] Christa Biegler, RD: But one of the things I told her was that. I don't really recommend this unless someone comes to me and they want it. And then we talk about the pros and the cons because it's an emotional thing. And and I work with really health conscious people like your, you, right? Like people like us clinicians, right?

[00:09:59] Christa Biegler, RD: And so a lot of people have come to us. I've already cleaned up diet and there are some utilities for that. There are definitely some very specific utilities sometimes, but I used to use that all the time and now I use it almost never. Cause now I really care about people just enjoying food properly.

[00:10:11] Christa Biegler, RD: I think we've really lost the joy in food. So To your point, I wonder if you were starting to feel that way. It was like, I was learning about nutrition. I was adopting these things that you thought were good. And even people project that stuff on you. I think when you're in school, sometimes they're like, do you remember people being ashamed to show you what they were eating?

[00:10:28] Christa Biegler, RD: And it's I don't care what you are eating. I really don't care what you're eating, but I think sometimes people have projected all those things. So tell me about a turning point you had. I know you said. That you were really observing, you observed that you had chaos in your body, your hormones weren't working well, all the things.

[00:10:43] Christa Biegler, RD: And it was like, this is how we are always motivated to change, right? We're motivated to change through dense desperation or inspiration. It's almost always desperation, right? So tell me a little bit about that kind of not great point and where you went from there, how like. This is why I think all experiences of success, because it's if you hadn't had a low point, then would you have been motivated to change if people don't have problems with an issue?

[00:11:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Like. Why would they ever change it? There's plenty of people walking around with this. I talked to a raw vegan the other day and she's really happy with her lifestyle. And I'm like, whatever. Fantastic. But what was, tell me a little bit more about that low point and like how you got awareness around what was not working.

[00:11:20] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Definitely. So this question weirdly brings me back to a specific point in college, sitting in one of the little cafes on campus, and I just remember again, wasn't snacking, was eating my however many calorie meals, and I never actually counted the calories, per se, but, a small portion of food, and I would just remember constantly, for Yeah.

[00:11:41] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: period of time going in between obviously lunch, had my afternoon classes, and then I would drive home and I would just be starved. I'm like, why? What is this? And then, yeah, so with that, though this is probably three, four years into undernourishment when the hormone symptoms were going on, just low energy, chronic fatigue picture, anxiety, like I had low progesterone from my low nourishment overall.

[00:12:08] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So yeah, I just realized this is not how I want to show up in life. There has to be another way. And you realize okay, so I was believing food as calories, but there's actually more to the story here. And when I started diving into women's health, that's when I started realizing, whoa, like, All of the diet culture narrative out there is like completely not based on what best supports the female body.

[00:12:33] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So like, why am I believing these narratives if they're not gonna support me? Because again, that's the end of the day. I felt like my goal is I want to support my health. So I originally found diet culture thinking that would be the answer, but in fact it wasn't.

[00:12:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, let's talk specifically about why that plant based diet wasn't supporting female health or hormone production, for example, just to make it really concrete for someone listening.

[00:12:59] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah, definitely. So I think lots. of factors here. So sometimes, or at least the very influential book I read that got me really down the plant based rabbit hole was, or at least from the perspective of or I feel like we're commonly taught in school that plant based foods are the more nutrient dense option, but that's not, again, the full story going on.

[00:13:23] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Animal based foods are a lot more bioavailable, in terms of women getting an adequate protein, very hard to do on a plant based diet. Again, especially when you're restricting your calories overall. Those are my initial thoughts. They're just like bioavailability of nutrients, getting an adequate protein, even fat too as well.

[00:13:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, for sure. Basically fat is the backbone. To making hormones, right? Like cholesterol, which is commonly talked about forever. And in school we get, fed these generic, like we have all these biochemistry classes. We have all these pre med classes and then we get fed these canned diets to give people with high blood pressure and heart disease.

[00:14:05] Christa Biegler, RD: And our people better know. No. So it makes us all want something better, but we get that talk to us. Whereas low cholesterol is not a badge of honor. That's, this is food for the brain, food for hormones is the backbone for the hormones. And to your point, getting adequate protein is really challenging.

[00:14:20] Christa Biegler, RD: And I see it as a huge issue. And most. Symptoms and issues because protein and protein digestion, which is huge, right? So if someone's Hey, I'm not eating protein because I just feel lighter and better. Maybe you weren't digesting protein very well. Maybe there's a quality issue there, but protein breaks down into amino acids, which are the backbone of neurotransmitters, AKA mood, anxiety, et cetera.

[00:14:41] Christa Biegler, RD: Phase two detoxification. If your detoxification doesn't work well, guess what you're going to have. Things that look, feel like crazy hormone symptoms. Cause you're not clearing out your estrogen, which is like a teeter totter with your progesterone. And then also just as simple as tissue healing, which we do a lot of, there's a lot of skin stuff. Again, it moves people to move. It moves. We don't have to really, I don't have to really advertise that I'm doing skin stuff, right? Those skin people just always find me. It's the people hear about my story or some story I've, or our interview I've done online and they are just,

[00:15:09] Christa Biegler, RD: that's the thing that moves people, right? They can have all these internal things, but they don't always change. And what's that breaking point for someone? And did you say the name of the book that helped you start to rethink some things?

[00:15:22] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Oh, it wasn't the name or the book that kind of actually influenced me to go plant based at the time was the China study.

[00:15:28] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So very influential. I feel like in that space overall. So read that in my really like young impressionable. Getting into nutrition years, thought it was, you read something, think it's amazing, but you, again, don't have the

[00:15:41] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: full story, yeah.

[00:15:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And sometimes I don't think we can shortcut our experiences.

[00:15:47] Christa Biegler, RD: I think you probably don't regret your experiences. I also, it's interesting because I've had other young women work for me and there was definitely like I saw a trend of plant based eating and I wasn't sure where that at all come from and whatever.

[00:16:00] Christa Biegler, RD: But. It's like someone planted something somewhere. And so my point is I was telling you offline. I remember talking to this person who'd gone through an IIN health coaching certification. So I don't remember how long that is six, nine months. So my knowledge, I think they go over a lot of types of diets.

[00:16:15] Christa Biegler, RD: It's pretty surface level. I think compared to the kind of stuff we Do it's no real association, but I remember spending some time with this particular woman. And I was going through, I was not very far out of my kind of like my, one of my rock bottom health moments, which was like the eczema flare stuff.

[00:16:35] Christa Biegler, RD: And she was really into fitness stuff, even though she had a lot of other stuff going on. And I think I remember her asking me like what are your goals around health and body composition or something? It was like a weird question to me, like a very superficial question. I was like, Oh, my goal right now is just like healing my body.

[00:16:52] Christa Biegler, RD: And like what it's trying to tell me I'm not trying to fit into this body composition box. I'm not training for a like, whatever. But I just remember this. Weird dissonance. I felt in our conversation of Oh, like, I'm sure it feels a lot like someone who is 50 talking to a 22 year old, it's like, you cannot just replace time, and Experience with things you can get mentorship and a shortcut things. I think that's, I've done that a lot in my life. And I think we should always seek out mentors. It's really intelligent thing to do to save us some pain because we truly just collect failure and pains to make ourselves change.

[00:17:31] Christa Biegler, RD: But it's interesting. It's it can't, you can't skip over the hard stuff that you experienced. So earlier you were talking about these common beliefs about food nutrition, like food is calories, fat could equal weight gain. We talked a little about the myths of cholesterol a little bit.

[00:17:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Being hungry is just this annoying thing. And it's you should be able to just eat and not be hungry between hand. And you're like, my body is telling me something different. And now we look at hungry as a very different way. So let's talk about. How you've redefined all of these things, right?

[00:17:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. From food to snacking to whatever.

[00:18:00] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah. So again, like just having the goal again of nourishing my body, I feel like completely changed up in the perspective. So as I began to like, learn more, learn, the fuller story around food, not just. the kind of diet culture perspective. So now like food to me equals nutrients.

[00:18:17] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So it's both like macro micro nutrients. So how can I better nourish my body? I need to get a nutrient. So I'm not looking to avoid food, minimize calories, like calories is the last thing on my mind, I guess at this point in time.

[00:18:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah.

[00:18:30] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: And then, yeah, so that's the change of perspective on food in regards to fat.

[00:18:34] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So we already talked about how essential fat is for hormone production. So I talked about, I went through obviously being plant based, eating a lower fat diet, lower fat things, like One really random side tangent was my husband is from South Africa, and when we met, the only thing they drank was whole fat milk, and never in my life had anyone ever bought whole fat milk.

[00:18:57] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Because, again the story on skim 1 percent milk, no Now you like won't find any skim 1 percent milk in our home, we'll get the full fat option. But so fat now healthy hormone production, it's satiety balances blood sugar. So keeping our blood sugar stable, so highs and lows, which brings like cortisol highs and lows and dips.

[00:19:17] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So Just again, a very nourishing perspective on fat.

[00:19:22] Christa Biegler, RD: Can I talk about fat for a hot second? So you brought up the milk, the skin versus whole milk thing. I saw the other day that there was some legislation working on being passed. I think in an individual state, I don't remember where around milk and I, there was a Senator speaking about it and talking about how, when we switched to skim milk in schools, we didn't do anything for body composition.

[00:19:41] Christa Biegler, RD: If that was the goal right around adolescence. And so it was like, we're missing out on beneficial nutrients in that fat. Fat is really beneficial for the entire cell membrane layer, honestly. And to your point about satiety and actually staying full, for one, it's freaking miserable to be hungry.

[00:19:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Like how many times? I like to remind us simple humans that like some hard workers, it's like, it can be easy to work through lunch sometimes, and then you'll know that you under ate at lunch. If at 4 PM, you're ravenous. And while you're cooking dinner, you're basically eating another dinner and snacks because you're so hungry.

[00:20:15] Christa Biegler, RD: I only understand this very intimately because I've experienced it very many times. And one other thing or just glimmer around fat that it doesn't get talked about a lot, but I think might be useful is think about new moms. So often like women are trying to get back to this. Post baby physique, and hopefully we're going to abandon that a little bit.

[00:20:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause it does take some time, but literally nature doesn't make mistakes. And it's sometimes when baby's really hungry, it's like you could increase the fat in your diet to improve the milk composition. So it's higher in fat and then literally sleep through the night. I remember doing that. I remember like massively increasing my fat and really seeing the effects of it.

[00:20:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Positively on my child and they will go through gross birth and they will suck up all of that, what it has accumulated on your thighs, whatever, it is. There's a lot to it and fat is very beneficial and it's so oversimplified. Like we're actually quite a bit more complex than the oversimplification that are, that we've medically or through marketing have arrived at.

[00:21:15] Christa Biegler, RD: It's So dated and just incorrect. All right, we talked a little bit about being hungry, right there. What else do you want to say about that? If anything?

[00:21:22] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah. So

[00:21:23] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: just again, formerly viewing like being hungry as honestly, like this burden or like just an avenue of potential weight gain, but honestly being hungry is a way the body's like positively giving you feedback, basically Oh, it's time to eat.

[00:21:37] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: You're running low on fuel. It's. It's a sign it's like your body is working in your favor, basically. And ultimately having healthy hunger cues is just like a sign, especially we talked with women about being hungry in the morning. That's just a great sign of having a healthy metabolism. Like you just went how many hours without food?

[00:21:57] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: You should be hungry,

[00:21:58] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: so to speak,

[00:21:59] Christa Biegler, RD: right? It's hard. It's if people have been fasting for a while, which there's benefits to that, but then there's a whole other conversation about when does that become less beneficial for people? Usually if they're already running on empty of nutrients, it's longterm,

[00:22:14] Christa Biegler, RD: can cause some challenges, right? It's like to the same point, it's just an under eating version, right? It's just another name for under eating sometimes. If not done in a really intentional way. And so people will come to us without history. And so regaining appetite and metabolism.

[00:22:29] Christa Biegler, RD: And to be honest, people end up coming to us and it's like a relief. Like they're like, Oh I'm happy to have that. And to be. Honest. I had that in my history too. It's I went through that phase. I've experienced all of the things that my clients have. I've gone through all of the things I experimented with all the eliminations.

[00:22:43] Christa Biegler, RD: I just, at this point want joy and I want to eat food and I truly do love it and enjoy it. Like it's, it brings me a lot of joy to be cooking for my family. And that's my relationship with food. It's never been I don't have a, say like an eating disorder history, but I just truly do enjoy food. And so you'll see that.

[00:23:03] Christa Biegler, RD: As an under or a foundation and a thread to how we currently work. It's I just want you to enjoy your life and to tolerate things. So you had a book that really influenced how you went plant based, and then you had this bottomed out. Thing and I'm sure there was education around really supporting these rewiring of nutrition beliefs to be more nourishing.

[00:23:24] Christa Biegler, RD: So do you have suggestions on resources that have been helpful in your journey now or maybe, information, or do you think that there's good questions women can ask themselves if they're assessing their own food relationship or nutrition beliefs?

[00:23:41] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah. So I

[00:23:42] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Just feel like obviously what you're doing isn't aligning or supporting, or what should I say? What you're And doing it and getting you like the results or the feelings you're looking for. I think that's a key sign in and of itself that maybe we should just dive a little deeper possibly change up perspective.

[00:24:00] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: I don't know. I love how, at least in working with you, you always encourage people to like experiment. There's no actually right or wrong at the end of the day. What's like right or wrong is what ultimately leads to success. You feel good doing and best supports you. So if you can honestly let go of some of that control and be like, open to experimenting, I think that is just huge and everything. No, you're not gonna get it right away if you've been in diet culture forever and, again, let's just even take the low fat to incorporating whole milk example. It's gonna feel a little weird right away drinking that, but ultimately, Give it a little bit of time.

[00:24:40] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: See how you're feeling after you do. So I don't think we need to throw like more information at this situation. And it's just like you tuning into your body. Ultimately. Yeah.

[00:24:51] Christa Biegler, RD: I will say that whenever we have clients come to us that say I started eating more pro metabolically, which is so sexy sounding right.

[00:25:02] Christa Biegler, RD: It's really born in roots of whole foods, synergistic nose to tail type backgrounds and foundations where it's not oversimplifying, but it's let's eat the whole food source, and get all of the nourishment from it. I will say that is. The corner of the internet that has emerged that I can finally get behind.

[00:25:23] Christa Biegler, RD: If someone needs to understand something and they need a label to help them filter information around it, because to your point really tuning in attunement, right? Really hearing and listening to your body is a very long term skill.

[00:25:39] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yep.

[00:25:39] Christa Biegler, RD: And I remember sharing quite a bit, like in the last year, it's sometimes you just notice things about yourself.

[00:25:44] Christa Biegler, RD: You didn't realize were an issue and they're not really necessarily a food issue. It's a, so an example I used to give people a lot is I used to say I've noticed I can't sit in front of the food or I just want to eat the food like mindlessly. And again, I don't feel like there was disordered eating.

[00:25:59] Christa Biegler, RD: I would call it a self regulation issue. And that is more of a whole emotional mental piece, that's presenting as food. And so it's just such an interesting thing that so much about food is not really always about food, but our feelings, our perceptions, our thoughts, and all the programming that we're born with.

[00:26:20] Christa Biegler, RD: This is just some of those, Hey, how do we think about these individual things about these stories? And do I want to challenge that story? Do I view that story? What's my own version, my own feeling, my own thoughts, habits, beliefs. What are my beliefs around this area of my life?

[00:26:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Because whether we want to consider or think about food or not, and I've met people that are like, They don't even want to think about it. They just keep doing the same thing. And as you dig into it, it's ah, I see why you did that. Cause it's so much other chaos in your life. It was easier to just keep doing the same thing.

[00:26:51] Christa Biegler, RD: And to your point earlier, it was like stopping assessing. And so often in this life and in this world, we don't really stop and assess. And I think it's really good for us to try to do that on a monthly basis, at least. I think that's probably a bare minimum. If we can try, it's a really good thing to just stop and say is there a couple of powerful questions that I can ask myself at the beginning of the month, am I living, am I operating the way I say I want to operate, am I showing up the way I say I want to show up and then it's what's the disconnect here?

[00:27:18] Christa Biegler, RD: And those are just hard things for us all. And these are human things. And I don't think that there's a shortcut necessary. There are shortcuts for sure. Mentorship getting help, but I think that our experience is just so valuable. And and I think your experience and your story is just very relevant, right?

[00:27:33] Christa Biegler, RD: It's very relatable. So thank you for sharing. Is there anything else you think that we should leave people with?

[00:27:39] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: No, I think that kind of summed it up. Just definitely knowing again, so many of our thoughts, beliefs, patterns, whatever, are so subconscious. But yeah, if you do take that moment to stop, assess, you can, and you have the opportunity to always change up your story, your beliefs, your actions.

[00:27:54] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Don't miss out on that.

[00:27:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Something I actually find inspiration in a lot is people getting a new career or making a major change at any point in life. I find those stories so inspirational because it's such a growth mindset, right? When someone starts a new career at 50 or picks up a new hobby at 45, like I am just, I'm.

[00:28:17] Christa Biegler, RD: My fourth guitar lesson was this morning. I've been saying, I wanted to learn how to play, a song or two for a couple of years and I didn't do it. And I was like, Oh, I need to go to a lesson. But the point is you can do any, I just love these stories of reinvention and you can do it.

[00:28:31] Christa Biegler, RD: You can change anything at any time, even if you thought what you were doing before was serving you well, it may not serve you in the future. And so anyway, I guess that's why we encourage experimentation because the more experiences and failures. I've had, maybe you've had, it's there's no shame here and it doesn't serve anyone to feel shame.

[00:28:50] Christa Biegler, RD: And there's a lot of shame around food, of course, as well as so many other things. So thanks so much for coming back today. Jenna, we'll do this again soon.

[00:28:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life. That's review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life.

[00:29:20] Christa Biegler, RD: And you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.