I'm celebrating a huge personal milestone—10 years of embracing intuitive eating and un-dieting—and I’d love for you to join me as I look back on my journey. 

In this episode, I’m sharing what it’s really been like to navigate the ups and downs of perimenopause while also unlearning the harmful messages of diet culture. I'll explain why intuitive eating is more than just another set of rules. It’s a mindset shift that can free you from the exhausting cycle of diets and body shame (but one that takes practice and lots of self-compassion!)  

I’ll also share what I’ve learned about body neutrality—what it means to feel good in your body without the pressure to love every part of it, and why the messy middle of intuitive eating (the “screw it” phase) can actually be a valuable part of healing. 

Whether you're just starting to rethink your relationship with food or feel stuck in the messy middle, I hope my story offers encouragement and solidarity.

Links Mentioned: 

Episode 136: Health vs. Weight: Debunking the Biggest Wellness Myth with Val Schonberg, RD Episode 137: 5 Tips for Spotting Nutrition Misinformation

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. Hey, everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast.

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:56

So it's 2025 and I realized that it has been about 10 years that I started my own undieting and intuitive eating journey and that actually kind of crash landed, as I've said before, with perimenopause. So I'm turning 48 in a couple of months and it was around 37 that perimenopause kind of showed up in my life uninvited, unexpected, but I had to deal with it and at the same time, my relationship with food was in a really complicated place. Back in December, I shared in an email newsletter about how it was 2015 that things just really started to unravel. I was very much still into dieting, exercising in a way that wasn't healthy, it was very disordered and I was starting to feel panicked because I was very clearly in this perimenopausal shitstorm for lack of a better description and I felt like I needed to do something quickly because things were falling apart. But, as I like to say, the unraveling happened. But I built myself back up with intention and it was really at the end of 2015 that my undieting and intuitive eating journey started. So I'm kind of calling this year my 10-year anniversary, I guess, of becoming an intuitive eater, or starting the process, I should say.

Jenn Salib Huber: 2:20

And a few months ago, somebody asked me a really great question that I thought I really want to turn this into a conversation or a story on the podcast. But it sometimes takes time for these ideas, these questions, to ferment into a coherent conversation that I can record and that will make sense. So the question was knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? Know now, what would you do differently? What could you or would you change that would make the process easier, more smooth, maybe even faster. So that's what I want to share with you today is five things that I've learned that I would do differently if I was starting as my 37-year-old self, in this uncomfortable place of not feeling like myself anymore, feeling like nothing is working, feeling kind of crazy about food and thinking about it all the time, but desperately wanting something different, wanting a more peaceful relationship, not just with food, but just with my body and life.

So I hope that this podcast helps someone, lots of people. If you have questions, I would really love to talk about this one. So if you're listening to this in the third week of January, so the week of January 20th, definitely come hang out on YouTube or on Instagram, because I'd love to hear from people who are in this messy middle where I was 10 years ago of I have to do something, but it feels like what I'm doing isn't working, but I have to do something. If you're in that place, I want to hear from you. But if you're also somebody who is on the other side and feel like you're an intuitive eater and you're in this kind of good place and have an experience, a story, some wisdom to share, I want to hear from you too. So let's dive into what some of these things are. So the first is that I wish I had known that I would have to unlearn a lot.

Unlearning Diet Culture: Why It’s Essential for Food Freedom

Jenn Salib Huber: 4:21

So remember, at 37, I had been dieting for 25 years, because I went on my first diet at 11. So more than 25 years. I'd been a dietitian. For 15 years, a naturopathic doctor for close to that as well, I was immersed in diet and wellness culture. My whole life, personal and professional, revolved around controlling food or thinking about food, prescribing food, cooking food. I was in it, and when I started exploring intuitive eating, I 100% turned it into another diet. I was just like, okay, 10 principles, let's just call those rules, let's just try and follow them step by step. Because I was good at dieting, I was good at following rules, I was good at tracking my food.

Jenn Salib Huber: 5:13

But it didn't work because it was never going to be sustainable in the way that I had been led to believe that diet culture and even my education had taught me to believe that if you just did it well enough, it would work, and if it wasn't working, it was your fault. So if I had known that, I really just needed to press pause and instead of jumping into learning this new thing called intuitive eating that I would need to spend some time on learning, I think would have been helpful, and it's not just about the information. So the first episode of the year was with Val Schoenberg and we did a really great cover dive of why weight and health are not the same thing and why we need to stop making weight a proxy for health.

So if you feel like you need some unlearning in that area, definitely check out that episode, which we'll link below. And Dr Emma Beckett was on last week talking about how to spot nutrition misinformation, and so these are kind of tangible things to learn and unlearn that I think are helpful. But the other thing that I wish I had known about unlearning was how to make goals and how to, I guess, unlearn what I thought I knew about habits and goals.

Rethinking Goals: Aligning Your Values with Intuitive Eating

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:34

So most of the time when we're dieting, our goal is related to I want to be a certain weight, I want to be a certain size, I want to fit into this clothing or I want to look a certain way. Those goals aren't going to feel as good as I want to be able to feel this way so that I can live more present in my life. So, for example, if we're talking about, you know I want to to change my emotional relationship with food. So let's say that you're an emotional eater and how you reach for food and how food is currently fitting into your emotional eating toolbox isn't feeling good.

Your goal may be to stop emotional eating. You may even have like one step beyond that and my goal is to choose something else. But unless your goal is tied to how you want to feel when you get there, so I want to change how I feel and how I respond to these strong feelings so that I can just feel more peaceful, so that I don't feel like I go into this spiral every time I have a bad day or how you interact with others.

Jenn Salib Huber: 7:49

It really the way that we set goals needs to be aligned with our values, and that is one thing that I was never taught. That was definitely not part of our education. When it came to kind of teaching people, it was just give them information and tell them they have to do it, and that was kind of how I felt like I needed to treat myself. And so when that didn't work, when I couldn't just tell myself do it because you don't like where you're at or you want something better. It just didn't work. And so understanding that we have to focus on how we want to feel and how the change that we're trying to implement will make our life better or easier in some way, but also tying those goals to our values, because when we identify what's important to us or why, it is a lot easier to connect it to the process of behavior change and much less so to the outcome.

So when I realized that my values some of my values, for example, were around truth and fairness and compassion and curiosity and peace, I could see that dieting and pursuing a number was not in line with my values. So I had to unlearn that piece about setting goals and also unlearn kind of the habit piece and relearn right.

The Power of Habit Change in Intuitive Eating

Jenn Salib Huber: 9:13

So habit science is super fascinating. We use it all the time in the Midlife Feast community to make change and talk about how do we change our behaviors, but understanding that it's not about setting a rule, our behaviors, but understanding that it's not about setting a rule and sticking to it, that it's not about willpower, that it has to include capacity in ways that you can adjust to your capacity and that we can also. I don't want to say trick the brain, but we can work with your brain. We can learn to habit stack, for example. So kind of building on existing habits and also understanding that we need to make that habit easy and obvious. We can't just say I want this brain make it happen. We have to make it easy for your brain. So kind of summarize I really wish that I had learned that there was some unlearning to do before I could start applying the principles of intuitive eating in a more intuitive way.

Accepting the Beginner’s Mindset in Your Intuitive Eating Journey

Jenn Salib Huber: 10:04

I guess the other thing that I wish I had known, or the second thing was that I wish I had known. I wish I'd been able to accept that I was a beginner. And that's hard for me to do on a good day because I don't. I have a tendency to speed run. That is my instinct is just like oh okay, great, we're going there, let's just go do that. I'm a fast walker, I'm a fast talker, I'm a fast eater. I speed run things, probably a function of my ADHD brain, but it's just how I work. I had a really hard time at 37 accepting that I was a beginner with intuitive eating and that a lot of my personal and professional experience around nutrition wasn't actually going to help me.

Jenn Salib Huber: 11:41

So now I use this analogy of like you're learning a new language, and just like learning a new language, you start with the foundational words, the words that you use all the time. So when you're thinking about intuitive eating, that might be focusing on how do you think about food, how do you talk about food? What are the words that you use when describing food, which is getting out of the diet mentality? So if you're used to thinking of foods as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy any of those kind of labels you need to start by changing your language. And if you're learning a new language, you first start with those common words.

But also, just like learning a new language, you have to practice and you have to make mistakes, but it's a lot easier if you immerse yourself in the culture where that language is being used. So if you're trying to learn French and you're not watching French TV, you're not reading French books, you're not listening and talking to people in French, it's going to take you longer. You'll still get there, but it's going to take you longer.

And so it's one of the reasons why I always tell people clean up your feed, do not avoid or miss the step of creating an environment that is supporting you learning this language, and it's one of the reasons why I think that learning in community so joining a community, like the Midlife Feast or any other intuitive eating while you're learning intuitive eating is going to make it a lot easier. So I wish that I had learned and wish I could accept which was hard that I was a beginner.

Body Neutrality vs. Body Love: Shifting Your Perspective

Jenn Salib Huber: 13:27

The third, which is, I think, probably one of the hardest, is I wish I had known that I didn't have to make liking or loving what my body looked like the goal. So when I was a beginner with intuitive eating, I still was thinking like oh well, when I get to, when I'm an intuitive eater, I will not be dieting and I'll like my body. Because when I was dieting, when I was in diet culture, the goal was to have a smaller body which would make me love it. So it took me a long time to disconnect that. I didn't have to. I didn't have to like or love my body to feel good in it, and that may not be new If you're a longtime listener or if you've worked with me before we talk about how you feel in your body is different than how you feel about your body.

Jenn Salib Huber: 14:16

And when we're trying to make our body smaller and we're trying to control what it looks like, we're very much focused on how we think about our body. But I want you to consider that it's your thoughts and your feelings about your body that need to change, it's not your body. So if you have moments body image moments, bad body thoughts whatever you want to call them where you're like if only my body was smaller, I wouldn't feel this way, we can challenge that, but also kind of pushing back and saying like do I have to like or love my body in this moment to enjoy this moment? Or do I have to change my thoughts and feelings about my body?

And or do I have to change my thoughts and feelings about my body? And this is body neutrality in a nutshell. So I wish that my body neutrality and body acceptance appreciation journeys had been happening in parallel with my making peace with food journey, so my intuitive eating journey, instead of treating them separately.

And maybe that's a necessary step for some people all people, I don't know but looking back, I'm like I wish that I had had more insight into that particular aspect of it that I can just focus on the body neutrality piece instead of body love, and I'm not saying that it's easy, and I would say that most people the body stuff, the relationship with your body, is harder than changing your relationship with your food, but I think they can happen in parallel and I do see that a lot now. So now when I'm working with people, we actually try and merge these things whenever we can, because I think that it helps to make sure that you're moving in the right direction or in the same direction.

Understanding the Messy Middle: Breaking Free from Diet Cycles

Jenn Salib Huber: 16:01

The fourth one is we're going to talk about the messy middle for a minute. So when most people start intuitive eating or they want to stop dieting, let's say, maybe you don't even know what intuitive eating is, but you know deep in your soul that you cannot open your app one more time, one more day, track, one more meal, whatever it is, and you're like that's it, I'm not dieting anymore. And the place that you kind of live for a period of time after that is often what some people call like fuck it eating or screw it eating, or just like whatever I'm not dieting so I can eat whatever I want, whatever I'm not dieting, I'm not doing keto anymore I can have all the bread that I want, and I think that that's a necessary place, especially if you're coming from a place of restriction that has been your default. So if the only thing you know is either being on a diet or not being on a diet, and you hit midlife and all of a sudden you're like, screw it, I'm not doing this anymore. I wish I had known that. This stage of not dieting and just kind of sitting with that and not responding to the discomfort immediately, like kind of sitting in the suck for a little bit, sitting in that place of just rest, really I think it's like a mental, emotional rest from getting out of the diet cycle that that's a required step. But I also wish I had realized that not thinking about or not, I guess I wish I'd realized that it would be easy to go back into the diet cycle if I wasn't paying attention. Because when you get into that, screw it.

Jenn Salib Huber: 17:42

Eating. That for a lot of people leads to the desire to diet again because it feels like, oh, here I go, I'm out of control, I'm eating all the things. I have no guardrails anymore. So the only way to fix this is to go back to my plan. So a lot of times when I meet people they have been not dieting for a long time and they've been trying to do intuitive eating. But they keep coming back to this place of saying well, intuitive eating just doesn't work for me because I'm not. If I'm not following a set of rules, if I allow myself to eat whatever I want, I will eat whatever I want and I'll never stop. So if we can just recognize that this is just part of the journey, it doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong. It doesn't mean that you necessarily need to do anything about it right away, but that you can just kind of see where it takes you and avoid the diet cycle, you will get to the place which is where everyone wants to get to, which is just that normal eating island where you eat when you're hungry most of the time until you're full.

What is Gentle Nutrition and Why It Matters

Jenn Salib Huber: 18:46

Most of the time you can choose satisfying foods and this application of gentle nutrition comes pretty easily, which is kind of the fifth thing or the last thing that I wish I had known that trusting or knowing that gentle nutrition would happen as a result of undieting and unlearning and learning the principles of intuitive eating. Just knowing that that would happen. I wish I had been, I wish I had known that, and so that's what I often tell people from the get-go. Now is I know you want to get right to gentle nutrition because that feels like your safe place. You know how to follow rules, you know how to follow a plan and you don't want to diet but you still want to structure in some framework. So you want to jump to gentle nutrition.

You will get there. You will get to normal eating island where you're not constantly worrying about food, you're not constantly thinking about food. You will choose salad and you will choose chips and you will be able to put both on your plate. The reward from eating will be mostly just normal. You will enjoy food, but you won't feel rewarded or the need to reward with food in the same way that maybe you did when you were avoiding foods you enjoyed.

Jenn Salib Huber: 19:59

So in my dieting days, friday was cheat day and that was always the day that I could have whatever I want, which usually turned into the weekend of whatever I wanted, which turned into starting everything over on Monday again, into starting everything over on Monday again. And on normal eating island that doesn't happen, because I'm not thinking about have I earned my food. Have I been good enough? Do I need to, you know, be good tomorrow because I was bad today? And so the reward of eating foods that I used to consider bad just isn't there anymore?

I might still enjoy them and I definitely still choose them, but I'm not feeling that impulse, that craziness where I can't stop because it tastes so good. And gentle nutrition is that sweet spot between what your body wants and what your body needs. And when you quiet the food rules, when you quiet all the noise that is existing in your head about what you should and you shouldn't eat and are you being good or bad, it's very easy to lead with satisfaction. Add gentle nutrition to your plate, eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. It really is, and I hear that and I see that all the time.

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:18

We just finished up at the end of December in the Midlife Feast community. We did kind of like a cheers and challenges for the year, and so people who had joined after last year's non-diet resolution were now coming up kind of on their 12 month anniversary and just reading about the you know the peace that people have now, it's like I haven't weighed myself in a year. I stopped counting and tracking, I was able to start moving my body again because I wasn't thinking about is this burning enough calories? People who you know. We've watched this evolution of people who hated cooking who are now having fun and being curious and adding all kinds of foods, including more vegetables, to their plate.

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:59

And I think that what's really important is to look at the research that we have about intuitive eaters, and intuitive eaters eat more of the things that we would typically consider healthy, report feeling more comfortable in their bodies and often have improvements in measures that you know you might be measuring blood pressure, cholesterol, movement, muscle. So gentle nutrition is the last principle of intuitive eating for a reason, because it is where you will end up once you have undieted. So you've ditched the diet mentality and you've learned to listen to what your body is asking you to do and just have an easy, peaceful relationship with food that's based on attunement and not rules and restriction.

So, all that to say, I don't know that I could have done all of these things differently 10 years ago. I think that, like most people who are in the thick of perimenopause and this constant question of is this perimenopause or am I going crazy? And I was sleep deprived and life was really busy with my family and the ages that my kids were at. So I wasn't sleeping and my mood was all over the place and I was anemic and my capacity was pretty low. So I can have compassion for the me of 10 years ago that I was doing the best that I could with the information and resources and capacity that I had at the time.

Jenn Salib Huber: 23:31

But, like anything, if I can help someone else get to where I am now more quickly, with fewer bumps in the road, with fewer trap doors, taking them back to the diet cycle, that is my mission.

Jenn Salib Huber: 23:45

That is why I'm here and that's why I wanted to share this with you and it's why I would love for you to join me.

Jenn Salib Huber: 23:52

If you're listening to this anytime between January 20th and 24th and you have not signed up for the seven day empowered eating challenge which starts on the 24th, do it now. If you're listening after that, check the show notes, because I hope to be able to have kind of a self paced option available for anyone else to kind of tap into at any time during the year.

But the live challenge only happens once a year and I really recommend this if you are in the messy middle, if you are new to intuitive eating, if you're in perimenopause or menopause and you're thinking, oh my God, I do not know how to feed myself and I'm just feel like I'm going crazy, join us. I promise that in seven days you will be much closer to normal eating island and hopefully you'll have pitched your tent. So thank you for joining me for this episode today. As always, let me know if you have any questions and watch for that question if you're listening this week on YouTube and Instagram.