After years of dieting, the advice to "eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full" can feel frustrating and oversimplified…especially if you’ve been trying to “get” intuitive eating This week, fellow intuitive eating dietitian Julie Duffy Dillon joins me to help us understand some of the common roadblocks that keep us “stuck" and why reconnecting with your body’s natural cues takes patience. Most importantly, that healing is possible at any age, size, or health condition.

We explore why dieting’s pull is so strong and why there’s so much value in naming why diets have given you a spark of feeling hopeful or empowered.

With intuitive eating, weight gain can feel like failure, but Julie reminds us it's normal for our bodies to change — and why accepting this is key to healing and feeling like you’re making progress. Julie also shares insights from her new book, Find Your Food Voice, and encourages us to let go of diet culture so we can focus on healing from the trauma it’s caused.If you feel stuck, this conversation is a powerful reminder that you are not the problem in the intuitive eating equation!
 

Connect with Julie Duffy Dillon

The Website: https://julieduffydillon.com/
📚Grab the Book: Find Your Food Voice
 

Links Mentioned: 

EP 45: What Happens When PCOS Meets Midlife? with Julie Duffy Dillon

 

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TRANSCRIPT

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:00 

Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, Dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:50

Raise your hand if you have ever said I like the idea of intuitive eating, but it doesn't work for me. Or maybe you've heard somebody else say I tried intuitive eating but it didn't work for me because I can't trust when I'm full, or I don't stop eating when I'm full. Or maybe you feel like intuitive eating isn't working because your body's changed.

These are all the questions that Julie Duffy Dillon and I dive into in this podcast, so I'm really excited about this one, because talking this through with another non-diet intuitive eating practitioner is really helpful so that you can start to see the different ways that you can approach this with compassion and understanding without feeling like you need to get back into the diet mentality. So have a listen and let me know what you think. Welcome back to the Midlife Feast, julie Hi thank you so much for having me again.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 1:48

I'm so excited to catch up and reconnect.

Jenn Salib Huber: 1:51

Yeah, we've been having a little great conversation, kind of pre-recording, and there are some fun things happening in your life which we can talk about too. But one of the questions or the conversations that I have a lot which I'm so excited to dive into with you and I know that listeners will be really excited to hear this is answering the question what if intuitive eating doesn't work? So you know, because we both work with people who are trying to redefine their relationship with food, who are also kind of trying to lead or include health in the conversations, and it can get really messy the messy middle can get messier if it feels like it's not working. So tell me about when you hear that, because I know that you hear that, but how do people say that to you? What do you think is going on?

Why Intuitive Eating Feels Like It’s Not Working

Julie Duffy Dillon: 2:40

I think intuitive eating, when people first discover it, or maybe even if they've been near it for a while, it'll feel like, yeah, this doesn't work for me and I have my guesses. But I also think it's important for people to take their time to figure out why it's not working for them and for any kind of tool or any kind of advice we get. I really think what's important to keep in mind when it doesn't feel like it works for us. It's not that you or I are broken. It's that we just need either to sharpen the tool, add some more things to it, or we haven't really unpeeled all the layers to it.

And part of why I think intuitive eating doesn't work for a lot of people is because of how it's been filtered over the years. You know what? It's been 30 years since it's been around and and as I say that I'm like intuitive eating has changed. You know the authors have modified it over the years and I'm so glad they have. They've made it better every time they've published a new edition and what is like popular kind of knowledge about it oftentimes comes down to this, like filtering of eat what you want and eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full, which I mean those are all fine, but I think it's also something that is missing out on a lot of nuance.

Unpacking the Misconceptions Around Intuitive Eating

Julie Duffy Dillon: 4:06

And when I wrote my book Find your Food Voice, what I was wanting it to be was a book for someone who did feel like intuitive eating didn't work for them, or whatever non-diet tool, you know, because the thing that I want to lead with is every person deserves to have healing with their relationship with food, and there's so many values and priorities that will hold at the same time and it gets really heavy.

But sometimes we have to kind of sort out what's going to be priority one, two, three and what I encourage everyone to lead with is healing first. You deserve to heal your relationship with food. No matter what age you are, no matter what chronic conditions or illnesses you have, no matter what size you are like. Everyone deserves to have a relationship with food that is enough to eat, always the foundation you always deserve to have enough unconditionally and, dare I even say, like a pleasurable relationship with food. Everyone deserves that.

The Role of Healing in Your Relationship with Food

Julie Duffy Dillon: 5:13

Satisfying and adding more tools that really helps someone to shift the priority to healing is what I think is missing for a lot of people doing intuitive eating work. And it's not because the authors miss that. No, they talk about unconditional permission to eat and how recovery is so important. I just think I want to like pour rocket fuel on that. Let's just boost that up even more, because when we talk about eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full, it takes away so much of the nuance and it also is so rigid.

Like dieting, you're not a robot, right? We live in this world where there's climate change and funerals and weddings and births and deaths and all these different things happening all the time, and so if you think about just eating when you're hungry yeah it's you forget that you're not just this robot.

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:10

Totally. I 100% agree. As you were talking, I kind of had some real life examples come to mind that would be helpful for us to talk through, because you know a lot of times when people say I tried intuitive eating but it didn't work for me. One of the most common reasons comes back to hunger and fullness. Because people say I'm hungry all the time or I never feel hunger right.

Navigating Hunger and Fullness in Intuitive Eating

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:33

It's like one of those two or I don't trust myself to feel full, or I can't stop when I'm full, and that you know that's a really common experience, I think for people who've spent a lot of time in that dieting world framework and you know it can feel I'm sure it must feel really frustrating to try this thing that promises to be an alternative to dieting and to still feel like you can't get that right.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 6:57

Yeah.

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:58

So what, what do we say to people who have that experience, because it's a really common one? I'm sure you've heard it too. How do we help them? Kind of reframe that, I think anyway, it's part of the process to go through that messy middle of listening to hunger.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 7:15

Yes, yes, there's going to be a messy middle. Most people are not just going to be like, oh okay, I'll just eat when I'm hungry and then it just is smooth sailing. So my answer is going to sound kind of funny, but what I think is like the first step in that that moment is try to imagine we lived in a world where no one cared about our body size and I in the book I talk about like waving a magic wand, like what if we actually had this like magic where we could make it? So no one cared about our body size and food didn't change how our body looked. We still changed with age, but that was just like no one judged it. Wow, what a wonderful place.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 7:54

I know I'm fantasizing, but that's part of the exercise is like let yourself fantasize. And if that was indeed how we were all living on this planet, how would you decide when to eat? Then? You know, how would you decide, even with, like all your experiences you've had, if now it was no longer something like body size was just not something we talked about or cared about or valued, how would you decide when to eat? And I don't have the answer. Jen doesn't have the answer, like only you.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 8:27

The listener has the answer to that right. So, like it may be when you're hungry, but it also may be when I'm making, when I'm sitting down at the table with my family, or it may be when I don't know. Let me think about the biscuits are like you can smell them coming from the oven, or the cookies or something you know, like there may be certain things that are going to be for you. The time to eat may also be. Well, it's my break time at work, so I'm going to eat my lunch and as much as this is like, feels like such a like super hopeful, out of this world kind of fantasy, I encourage people to do this often because that's when you're connecting to your own innate food voice, like that part of your body that you were born with, and it may not be hunger and fullness, you know, because there's tons of people who just don't connect with that experience for whatever reason, whether they're just wired differently so they're neurodivergent, or because of lots of trauma or medication. Like you're still going to have reasons to eat, you know, and that's what I want you to find. And then from there it may take some practice and it may take some connections with a clinician, but to figure out, with those reasons to eat, like, how much do you need, you know, and hunger and fullness for some people is a way to do that, but that's just one guide.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 9:50

We could also look at energy levels. We can look at lab values. We can look at, not weight, we can look at, yeah, like energy and sluggishness and how you want to feel, and also kind of marry that together with this information that you're getting from your own food voice. Yeah, and with all that being said, coming to a place where you have permission to let it be messy, because it does, it takes time, like it's going to take, like sometimes years, to figure all this out, and it also changes, right, because if we're lucky enough to stay alive, we're going to be getting older and going through more change.

Why Permission to Be Messy is Key

Julie Duffy Dillon: 10:31

So the permission to like let it be messy and if there's one thing that diet, culture and the industry and all the systems that are part of it have taken from us, is the comfort with the mess, I think that's a part of racism, right, it's like everything has to be neat and tidy and perfect and that's just not how the world is supposed to operate, and I don't think it's a healthy way to operate. And our relationship with food is the same it's supposed to be messy and inconsistent, and it's supposed to be just what is what it is, instead of this exactness. And so if you can take that pressure off of that exactness, that's one of the big boulders you can remove to have access then to what does it actually mean to eat without dieting?

Jenn Salib Huber: 11:16

Yeah, it's such an important reminder that we have to, I think, really shift our expectations of ourselves and shift our expectations of the experience.

Jenn Salib Huber: 11:25

I'm reminded of a conversation that I had with someone just last week who was saying we were kind of struggling with this, or she was kind of having a hard time with this, how do I know when I'm full. And there, you know, was very much this expectation that, like you know, a bell would go off. And what we realized, though, through kind of experimentation and just permission, which is really what I find the most, one of the most helpful tools, is that she had to experience being quote unquote too full, but just meaning like more than she needed to feel comfortably full, without the guilt and shame narrative, in order to actually feel like she could come out of that stress response with fullness and be able to notice it.

Addressing the Guilt and Shame Around Eating

Jenn Salib Huber: 12:12

So I really think that you have to feel over fullness. Yeah, notice it. So I really think that you have to feel over fullness. Yeah, on multiple occasions it's kind of like you don't know. You know you don't appreciate like sun unless it's been like rainy for 40 days. It's kind of like that whole thing and you have to have all the experiences to know where you're comfortable. You're comfortable where I'm comfortable are going to be two totally different places.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 12:34

Right, and isn't that the thing that so many of us are missing now? Because everyone who's alive on the planet pretty much now goodness. I would love to talk to the exceptions, but we've all been brought up in the diet industry, so have we really had the chance to have that experience without guilt and shame? And some people still have it, but then it's kind of messed around with. By the time they get to maybe school age or they leave the house when they was, they are an adult.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 13:05

But like we're supposed to have multiple exposures to feeling over full, under full and like everywhere in between, and and to have it as just an experience, like you would maybe like riding a bike and falling down or typing. Do you remember learning typing and like making mistakes with the typing? But we didn't judge it, it was just like oh my, I'm not on the home row. You know, I need to be in a way to make this so I can set myself up to succeed Right. And so there's certain things that now, like on my keyboard, I can feel the F and the J keys because they are letting me be on the home row with like a little extra nudge, and we can do that with mealtime structures.

You know, like I want to make sure that I schedule my lunch break by one o'clock because I want to make sure that I don't get too hungry, so that at four o'clock I'm not sluggish and so then I can come home and make dinner and not be panic hungry. I don't know Like we can set up those kinds of things, but we need all that experience, like you said, like neutral experience. If you can get to the place where you have neutral experiences with food, it'll help you.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 14:17

And I think about people that I've worked with over the years who maybe were diagnosed with binge eating disorder or they felt like they maybe called themselves a food addict or they are emotionally eating or something in those kind of realms. I didn't see anyone ever just go from that kind of chaotic experience to then just eating when they're hungry and stopping when they're full.

The way people recovered is, through hindsight, like they needed to collect so much data to be like oh, this is what I need in order to feel less chaos with food. You know, and so much of it is like plucking it out one at a time, the shame and the blame, you know, like getting the tweezers out and just let's get all that out, see where it shows up. But then having that experience like oh, when I'm this amount of hungry, it feels really great to start eating, and when I'm this amount of full it feels great to stop eating, like everybody has their own, like little nuance, right. So, yeah, experience, neutral. Experience, for sure, neutral experience.

Jenn Salib Huber: 15:16

I love that word too, so let's talk about another one that came to mind. So another thing that I hear from people is intuitive eating isn't working for me, because I'm still wishing I was on a diet. So a lot of people say oh, I feel terrible when I'm dieting and I feel terrible when I'm following food rules. So I want to do intuitive eating, but I must be doing something wrong because I'm still now constantly thinking about dieting. So how do we respond to that?

Julie Duffy Dillon: 15:46

I think it's such great insight to have. That's what's keeping you stuck, because part of what has kind of filtrated through the system of like non-diet conversation a lot of us have witnessed like body positivity and how it became mainstream and so much of it. It was like everything's so shiny, happy and joyful. There's lots of laughing in the pictures. I think it minimizes the perks of dieting and I hate saying it. It's not like perks, but there are like short term outcomes that are really pretty great for dieting, depending on a person's lived experience and kind of the outcomes they're hoping for.

Certainly someone in a higher weight body losing weight even momentarily, it's gonna open up some doors and access and help basically just meet some needs and probably some safety as well. For some people it also like lowers blood sugar momentarily or it may do something with sleep or cravings in the short term, but it's the short term right. The other part of that too, if someone feels really trapped and wanting to get out, I think there's something else, even before these short-term results, that I think a lot about and it's the seductive side of dieting I talk a lot about like these like sparks, like this, like warm, fuzzy, hopeful kind of seductions that the diet industry has put out there, that like by you focusing on a solution ie fixing your body, losing weight, having your food, be so kind of concrete, how that is going to bring about something.

And for anyone who's saying I just can't stop dieting, I encourage you to really, like examine all the diets you've been on and like what were the things, what were your sparks, what was the thing that made you feel hopeful and what were you hopeful for? And like, make a list and then make another list of, like, the short term perks, like we can't ignore the positives that come from dieting. But then, of course, if we're going to do those two things, we need to carry it through. And like what is the long term outcome? What actually happens two to five years later? And you know, for working in this space for 25 years now, like I see some patterns.

Understanding the Short-Term and Long-Term Effects of Dieting

Julie Duffy Dillon: 18:20

Everybody has their different experiences, but I definitely see some patterns and the long term outcomes for many folks. Of course they blame on them, they blame themselves for this, but I know it's not because after 20 years do you kind of see like it's the tool, not the person, because these are 1000s of people now, but longterm it's what's keeping food chaotic? It's keeping insulin levels higher. I know in midlife that's something that so many of us, myself included, experience is these higher insulin levels, maybe higher blood sugars too, cholesterol levels, like all the things that we think that we should be doing to like why we should be dieting.

Breaking Free from the Diet Mentality

Julie Duffy Dillon: 18:56

The dieting long-term is making it worse. So holding onto all those like especially if you can figure out your patterns, like what are your sparks, what are your short-term outcomes and what are your long-term outcomes Like put it on a post-it note, put it on the mirror that you see every day while you're brushing your teeth and you can remind yourself and bring it out when you feel the spark Be like oh, here it is, and you can just predict the cycle and you know when you rent a car and you return the car, you drive over the spikes, but if you went the wrong way, they would burst the tires. I know there's a name for it, but I always forget.

I think the diet industry trap is the same way, like it has those spikes in a direction that kind of keep us in the loop over and over again, and so it's hard to get over those spikes with the flat tires that are burst. But basically by holding all of these things, like the sparks, the short term and the long term, it's going to give you the energy to be able to get over. And then every time you feel that spark again, you just kind of call it out and even more call out maybe the system of oppression that you're experiencing that's pushing you toward those sparks.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 20:08

And for many of us in midlife, ageism is a big deal. And then also I think about ableism and healthism. I'm someone who, again, I have insulin resistance and I also have migraine, like chronically. I hate it so much I'm like I'm hoping it's something that will go away once a menopause is done. But thinking about like the chronic side of or not the chronic side, it's like the way culture treats people who have chronic conditions and illnesses. It's not set up for us to have enough safety and rest and to get our needs met. And so naming those things that may be pushing us towards back in the dieting. And that's why when you said someone who's naming, oh, I can't stop dieting. You're there, you know that, that's the thing. So just peel back a few more layers. You're at the core, get to it and I love's the thing. So just peel back a few more layers, like you're. So you're at the core, get to it.

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:01

And I love acknowledging the spikes.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 21:03

Yeah, it's so important.

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:05

Because, you know, when we talk about the diet cycle, which you know lots of people are familiar with and if there are people who aren't, they can find it in my menopause nutrition and made easy guide but just that desire for weight loss, right, wherever that is coming from, whether it's coming from the medical side, whether it's coming from the ageism side, whether it's coming from the body grief side, your brain wants to know that you're doing something.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 21:31

Yeah yeah.

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:32

And so just the I'm going to do something about it doesn't matter what it is, your brain gets a little bit of like relief. And so I think for a lot of people who have, you know, turned or used dieting and diets as kind of coping tools for those uncomfortable feelings, we have to acknowledge that those sparks did go off right, they were real and so, even if that's something thinking about doing it again, those sparks can go off. So I love that you brought that up.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 22:00

Thank you so much. Oh, yeah, and I think it's so important to name that. That's part of the seductive side of getting stuck into diets and what keeps us stuck there for so long. But yeah, it's covering up something else and it reminds me that, as you, especially those first big steps away from dieting and you know anyone listening who's like oh yeah, I've been, I haven't dieted for 10 years Like there's a moment where you get to we're like, okay, nope, not going to any more diets, like it's just, it's just not an option anymore.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 22:30

We all have to go through some pain to get to that and it's not fair because it's not equal, but part of it is because you're moving away from that false hope. Really, it's a false hope, it's not real, but it's uncomfortable and there's a lot of grief. I think that happens with it and even though body positivity seems so happy and shiny and laughter, it's a lot of sadness and anger which can feel unsettling, especially if you're like me and was not trained to deal with my anger or like I didn't have permission to feel angry. So it's a new thing, but it's not wrong. That's the right direction. Yeah.

Jenn Salib Huber: 23:13

Love it. Okay, so last one's going to be a tough one, but I feel like it's a good one to end on. Okay, so last one's going to be a tough one, but I feel like a good one to end on, and that is intuitive eating didn't work for me because I gained weight, that is. You know, I often see people who have quote unquote, tried intuitive eating many times and they feel like when the body changes, if the body changes happen, that's their sign. It's not for them.

Why Weight Gain Doesn’t Mean Failure

Jenn Salib Huber: 23:41

They've got to go back to dieting and I welcome your thoughts and any advice you have for people who can relate to that feeling. Yeah, yeah.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 23:50

I hate that weight is the sign that something is in the right direction. Like there's so many layers to this part of the conversation, because I'm thinking about Mm-hmm, sugars and all that stuff. Because we know from like the last 100 years of research like diets don't work long term and that they also and by work I mean people aren't able to maintain it for the most part long term, and that they also cause this worsening health. And the still going back to that like if intuitive eating doesn't work work for me because of weight gain. I also want to say another variable is we're not eating in a vacuum. You're not doing intuitive eating work in your 20-year-old body.

You're doing intuitive eating work in your 50-year-old body, and I don't say that as a shamey thing, I'm just saying it as like it's normal to gain weight as you get older. It's a part of the aging process. I don't think a lot of people feel comfortable talking about that, but it's just like a really normal part. And so what would have happened if you never experienced a diet before? There's no way to know for sure what your body shape would be like, but all I know, yeah, and all I know too is that like we don't have an intervention that's going to keep you from weight cycling, like all we have are, like, temporary ones.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 25:26

So this non-diet option you know, connecting with your own food voice and deciding, like, how you are going to make decisions about eating outside of dieting like that's something that is sustainable and is something that will help you heal and help your. You know all those lab values we talked about earlier to help them stabilize.

We can't control them for sure because, again, aging, but we know that diets are just not an option that's going to be able to control it long-term. So it's a big decision, right, like you can do some short term stuff to mess around with it and maybe suppress your weight, but the long term it's still going to be there as something to talk about. And so you know you could hurt yourself and complicate your relationship with food and then complicate your relationship with family and friends and get in the way of relationships and all that stuff.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 26:18

Or you can, like look in the other direction just subtly. Sometimes I just think about that with folks stuck in like dieting, it's like can I just turn your head just slightly to the right and just have you look in this other direction as an option, of a possibility. And yeah, your weight may change and I don't want to minimize that, like that's going to be something for different for everybody. But but yeah, that's a real, like outcome possibility. And does that mean it's wrong? Yeah, that's the big question mark.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:50

It is and it's so hard to explain to people who are especially getting just started with it yes, I agree yeah. So what's gonna happen? Well, I don't know. Do you have a crystal ball? Because if you do, can I get in on that?

Julie Duffy Dillon: 27:07

Because they've been promised, right. The diet industry has promised that they will be the one that's to solve it for them, right, like they'll harden up Julie. And if they do it right, right you know.

Jenn Salib Huber: 27:14

So it comes back to this like, if I do it right and I want to know how to do it right, so just tell me what to do. And lots of us and I was a chronic dieter, you know lots of us were really good at following those rules. Yes so intuitive eating feels like it should be easier because there are no rules, and yet that's also the great unknown. So we don't know what's going to happen to people's bodies.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 27:36

We never knew Never for any reason.

Jenn Salib Huber: 27:39

Right, and what I often kind of interject with too, is that or just insert this idea that if the size of your body that you could maintain with restriction and dieting was smaller, you won't be able to maintain that with not dieting right.

Jenn Salib Huber: 27:57

And to be able to accept that that is not where you were comfortable. It is not where your body wanted to comfortably live. You were trying to force it into this really narrow box but it didn't want to be there. So we're just going to let the walls fall down and we're going to kind of support the experience of living in your body and not let what it looks like decide whether it's right or wrong, like that's the whole point right, but it's so hard and I know people listening are kind of like, yeah, but it still sucks and I'm still uncomfortable and I don't like it.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 28:28

All valid, all valid, 100%, 100%. And that's where I think it's really important to really examine how many times you've dieted. Has it been enough times yet and maybe it hasn't? I often would take clients through a timeline of like let's do the timeline of your life and all the diets you've tried and figure out your number. How many times have you been on a diet? And people have like a hundred plus that they've been on in their life, especially when I'm talking to them in their 40s, 50s or 60s or beyond. They've been on so many and when you look at that you're going to know like that is it enough yet?

Julie Duffy Dillon: 29:10

And I'm hoping we are, as you're listening you have met the need and the reason I say that is like how many times are you as the scientific experiment? How much data do you need to collect to know that diets don't work for you? And you get to decide. But we're hoping that it's been enough because there is another way. But yeah, you have to kind of let down that it was never real. But there was that promise that your weight would be controlled but in reality that was a big lie and so it's really just like sitting with that as a lie and that in itself is so much grief right Of just like okay, there is no long-term solution for me for that, yeah.

Jenn Salib Huber: 29:55

Saying all this reminds me of this survey. I don't know if you've seen the survey. It was out of the UK, I want to say like within the last 10 years, and I think it was done by like a bakery company, oddly enough, but it was a good number of people. I want to say it was like around 2000 people, and they did a survey of women over the age of 18 on how many times they've been on diets and they found that, on average, women by 45, women had been on 61 diets. Now my question to you, my question to listeners and answer wherever you're listening, because I'd love to hear people's answers to this Do you feel like that is low or a high estimate? Because that's like two diets a year.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 30:34

Yeah, that doesn't seem right enough to me. No, and what do you? And I would count like probably more diets than people would Like, I'm just getting healthy, I'm just going to do a lifestyle change. I'm like, nope, that's a diet too.

Jenn Salib Huber: 30:46

Whole 30 is a diet. Yes, all the plants are promised not to be diets. They're diets Anytime that you're controlling food for the purposes of trying to make your body smaller even if you're using health as a proxy for that is a diet.

Jenn Salib Huber: 30:59

Yeah, correct, but yeah, so I mean, it's pretty culturally normalized to be on a diet and to be trying to lose weight, right. So there are going to be moments where that feels really uncomfortable to not be following that track. But if starting a diet every Monday feels bad in your body, makes you feel bad about yourself and makes you feel like you're doing something wrong and it's not working, that should be what you listen to.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 31:29

Yeah, turn toward that. Yes, because that's like whose fault is that? Not yours, not mine, not yours, jen? That's like the diet industry Like it's time to like put the energy where it needs to go, like be mad at them.

Jenn Salib Huber: 31:44

I'm hoping that this is what your book is talking about. Yeah, listen and find your food voice, so tell us about this great book that's coming out.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 31:53

Thank you, yeah, so Find your Food Voice is this collection of tools that I've been gathering over the last 25 years, and each chapter starts with a letter from someone who has been in the throes of all the things we're talking about.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 32:09

And I want you to, basically, if you've had intuitive eating exposure in some way and you just found like it didn't work or you need more, this is another layer, basically another arsenal of tools for you to choose from, to help you to figure out how you can, once and for all, just say okay, I have enough now to be able to move away from dieting.

And, like, my promise to you is, like it is, prioritizing healing and recovering from, like the trauma that the diet industry has caused on you, and even just honoring that phrase the diet trauma, I think, is so important and, yeah, for you to be able to reclaim what you need. And then my hope is that, as you're doing that, that you'll do that for everybody else, because each one of us, as we move away from the diet industry, as, like the controller, it does help everybody else, like it's like benefiting the rest of society. So, basically, join us to give the middle finger to the diet industry and we'll have more numbers basically to fight back.

Jenn Salib Huber: 33:18

So so, yeah, I love it. We'll have the link in the show notes, but it's called find your food voice and it comes out on March 25. So this is today's the 17th, and so it will be open. It's available for pre order, right? That's correct. You can get it anywhere. Be open.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 33:29

It's available for pre-order, right, that's correct you can get it anywhere you want to get it? Yep amazing.

Jenn Salib Huber: 33:35

Um the last question, julie what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife?

The Importance of Rest and Pleasure in Midlife

Julie Duffy Dillon: 33:41

how many can I choose? Okay, I'll get it. I'm gonna do two rest and pleasure.

Jenn Salib Huber: 33:48

Oh, I love it yes, we need more of those, for sure.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 33:52

I've anything. I'm turning 50 in a few months, so that's what I feel like. The last year or two I've added abundant rest and pleasure. That's just and that's from now. That's the second half here. That's what I'm going to be focusing on.

Jenn Salib Huber: 34:07

Love it.

Julie Duffy Dillon: 34:07

Love it.

Jenn Salib Huber: 34:08

Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom. Thank Love it, love it. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom and I'm sure that this is going to be a well loved episode answering a very common question or two. So thank you so much. Thank you, jen, for having me on. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the midlife feast For more non diet, health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me, and if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.