Niamh Orbinski 0:00
Because if that person has been told their entire life your body is wrong
and you need to fix it, it's very hard to love that body, then
so psychologically, we disconnect from the body and we can't take care of something that we hate.
Finola Howard 0:19
That's Niamh Orbinski, nutritionist, yoga teacher and psychotherapist, helping you rebuild your relationship with food, body and self. This is episode two of our three part series that's all about enshrining your health and well being into your success journey. This is the how we eat episode, because that's the fuel that gives us the energy for our success. But that's not all we touched on boundary setting the extra pressure on women, regarding image and more, take a listen.
I'm Finola Howard, Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart, and your host of the your truth shared podcast, I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared. And today I kind of wanted to talk about a topic that's sometimes a bit difficult and also a bit messy and
intertwined with so many different aspects of our lives. And it's the topic of food, and our relationship with food and how it can affect our relationship, can affect our success in life, our relationship with our own identities, lots more. So I have a wonderful person to speak to about this, and her name is Niamh orbinski. I'm delighted to have you here, Niamh today, and the reason that I wanted you here is because you took this
very interesting road
to give you this very holistic perspective and insight into our relationship of food and how we look at it. So I'd love to start there, if you're okay with it, and I'll give you a heads up or a starting point. The starting point that struck me in our first conversation was that your granddad died of heart disease, and
your nana was always big into health, so you always had this, but your granddad died of heart disease, and it really triggered your dad, and your dad, as a result, overhauled the whole how the whole family ate, and that's where we start. Is that okay as a place to start? That's absolutely fine, and I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I think that's a great place to start, because I feel like change is always triggered by an emotion.
Niamh Orbinski 3:03
And that's what happened in our in our house, of course, when I was 12, oh, my granddad died, and because he died of a heart attack, it really just triggered my dad into thinking more about how he can look after himself and how he can look after the family. And,
yeah, it was really, it was a really interesting start, actually, to the career journey, the career path into nutrition. And I actually quite love that my career path was triggered by an emotion. Because I think all the best decisions in life that we make are triggered by an emotional response. So when, when that happened? When I was 12, that planted a seed. And then as I as I got older, and I moved into my teenage years, probably I would say diet culture came in then around kind of 1516, and it came from not so much a place of nourishment and care, but a desire to look a certain way, to be a certain way in the world. And that's when I got into, you know, dieting and fixing my body and being in the gym, purely to look a certain way. And that then accentuated, I guess, my interest in nutrition. So it's interesting how it came from this really positive place, like, obviously from a, from a from grief and from a negative experience. But the silver lining was positive. But then as I got older, it came from a place of diet culture. And then after that, I segued again, and I went down a different path and moved away from diet culture.
Finola Howard 4:41
But I find it interesting that what diet culture did was in your language. Just now you said you went to the gym to fix your body. And that's such a common response, isn't it.
Niamh Orbinski 4:53
I feel like all especially all women, but definitely as men, as men as well. Probably most people experience that, where their intention to to change or to move into a place of looking after themselves, coming from a place of wanting to fix, wanting to fix the body, when really we don't need to fix our bodies. We've just been taught that we need to fix our bodies,
Finola Howard 5:21
even, even when the body's in pain. Do you think that's an incorrect assumption that it needs to be fixed in what way? So you, you you break a leg, or you strain your back, or you, I tore ligaments in my knee, having just had surgery, which delayed me getting up and moving around. And when you're in this healing process, it's so challenging to have patience with the body, to allow it to heal and allow it to heal itself. And when we're and sometimes we're in such a big hurry to fix it, we don't let it be. I don't know if I'm explaining that, right?
Niamh Orbinski 6:04
Yeah, no, absolutely. I feel like what you're really touching on is how we should listen to the body, and even if we take this from the perspective of movement, even if we're not talking about injuries, just being in the gym or being out for a run or being out for a walk, and I'll often hear people say, Oh, I just pushed through the pain. Yeah, that's Oh, discomfort is different to pain. So when we're when we're challenging our bodies, and when we're getting stronger, we're going to feel discomfort. That's normal, that's expected, but that's different to pain.
Finola Howard 6:41
Do we know the difference? I don't know. Do we?
Speaker 1 6:46
I think that's where a connection, a real, true, embodied connection to ourselves and to the messages our body gives us on a daily basis can help us really discern what's discomfort and what's pain we we did this a lot in when I trained as a yin teacher. Um, Yin Yoga is my, my favorite when it comes to yoga, and definitely my favorite to teach, because it's all about embodiment and connecting to the body and listening to the messages that it gives you, because we sit in postures for an extended period of time, anywhere from five to 10 minutes, usually. And our body goes through a process. So when we get into a deep stretch, our body initially will be like what is happening, and it'll feel very uncomfortable. And in yin yoga, we try to help people to understand what does pain feel like and what does discomfort feel like. So I would say it's fair to say that not everyone knows the difference between discomfort and pain, and to understand that requires an internal journey with your own body to try and disseminate
Finola Howard 7:52
to I love that, but I love this idea of this internal Journey with the body, and I mean I the idea of embodiment is very clear to me, or it's very important, especially when you're thinking in terms of success. Because often when when people have don't realize the success they've already achieved in their lives because they haven't fully embodied it. We're so disconnected in this society, disconnected from our own lives, that we don't actually truly appreciate all of the things that we have, either the gift that our body gives us, or the gift that our business gives us, or and then it's and then all the attention comes into this striving, striving. I had a conversation with someone really recently, and went, do you know how many people I speak to on a weekly basis, like new, potential, new clients, or, you know, you know, you know this idea of story being really important part of the marketing journey of, you know, bring your story. The story that I'm hearing all this time, all the time at the moment, is the story of burnout, and burnout like a badge of honor. And actually, and I'll say this really awful thing now that you really hate me saying but burnout is actually now boring and scary because it's boring because and it's boring because I hear it all the time. And I think that's connected to what you're leading us to in this conversation, this idea of being in ourselves, being in our bodies, being in our lives. What do you think 100%
Speaker 1 9:47
because when we think about burnout, and you know when you say burnout is boring, I suppose it's coming becoming so common to be burnt out or to experience burnout. And there's this great saying that. I'm sure you've heard Finola before, but it is if you don't learn to take a break, your body will take a break for you, and it probably won't be at a convenient time. Now, the body is giving you lots of different whispers before you get to that point when you know the body pulls up the handbrake and says, No more. And we've been taught to disconnect from those messages like the push to the pain, no pain, no gain. We have to work hard to be rewarded, and yes, okay, we do. But also we need to listen to our bodies and listen to the whispers that our body gives us when, how we're living, whether that's, you know, in work, whether that is in our personal lives, isn't serving us and isn't serving our health. And eventually we'll get to a stage where the body will completely take the wheel. We won't have control anymore, and that's when burnout happens.
Finola Howard 11:04
What are the share with us? The rest of some more of this journey. Because you've alluded to this. We went to diet culture, and then we got this idea that you studied yoga, but tell share with us what happened next? Yeah, so
Speaker 1 11:20
I guess when I to give you a little whistle stop tour. Yeah, my, my, my interest in nutrition started at that age of 12, and then diet culture pulled me a little bit more around 1516, I went on did an undergrad in Nutritional Science, then straight out of school, that's all I wanted to do. I was just nutrition obsessed. I was going to go to the UK to do it, if I didn't get the points here in Ireland it, I was super dedicated. And then when I got into my undergrad, and I came out of my undergrad, lots of my colleagues would have gone on to maybe jobs in quality or food science or policy, and that just wasn't my area. I really wanted to work with people and work as a nutritionist, but I kind of didn't know how to do that, because the landscape in Ireland is not very clear. It is for dietetics, but it's not so much for nutritionists. So dietetics and dietitians and nutritionists are different in terms of dietitians are clinically trained. They often work in hospital or clinical settings. Nutritionists work in more health promotion or public settings. So I kind of had to carve my own path, I guess when I left and I worked in a health store for a year after I left college, absolutely loved that. I remember walking out of the health store on a Saturday evening and just and I still remember it, and I remember in that moment thinking, I'm going to remember this day, I'm going to remember this feeling, because I was just so happy. It was just such a such a wholesome experience to realize I just love to chat to people and helping people with their health. And then that led me on. I went, moved into corporate then afterwards, and got my dream job at the time as a corporate nutritionist. And I worked a lot in in companies, developing workplace well being programs, and I saw 1000s of people over a period of about four years. And I used to do health checks with these people, there will be 15 minute appointments, very quick. And that's when I started to realize, wow, there's a lot going on here for people, around their bodies and around their relationship with food. And what struck me most in those sessions was the shame that people felt when they were weighed, and when they would see the number on the scales, and they'd be kind of justifying it to me, a stranger, obviously, that they just met, and that kind of that just never it didn't sit right with me. I'm thinking, Oh, is this the right way to go about it, weighing people and giving them the numbers and telling them the need to change, x, y, z. I'm
Finola Howard 14:09
really glad you've named that. You know that that idea of shame with weight, because there's so much shame with weight, so
Speaker 1 14:18
much and because it's, it's, it's kind of, we're taught that it's a personal responsibility. So if you are a certain weight, then you've done something to be that way, when in reality, you know, I often say a thin body is not earned, and that might be quite a controversial statement, and people listening might be like what, of course, it is you say, explain what you mean. We're all born in different shapes and sizes, and some people are naturally thin, and have always been thin, and in the society that we live in. So we being a thin person, you would probably experience thin privilege, and this might be something that people might not realize, but thinness gives us unearned privileges. So we might be seen in society as being a better person, or that we look after ourselves if we're thin when in reality, our the number on the scales doesn't tell us enough about our our diet and lifestyle. Okay, it might give us a little insight, but it's not the whole picture. I've sat with people you know, in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and they remember experiences when there were 5678, where maybe, I don't know, they didn't fit into the communion dress that a parent had bought them, or that was in the shop, and they always remember being a bigger child or a bigger person than was accepted in society. And this doesn't mean that it's wrong or that they've done something wrong. Some people are just born in bigger bodies. Okay, yes, we have influence over our body size and our diet and lifestyle influences that. But we need to move away from this assumption that just because someone is in a thin body, that means they're healthy, and because someone is in a large body, that means they're unhealthy, and that that person has done something to themselves that has caused that larger body,
Finola Howard 16:23
that they've broken their body and it needs to be fixed. Yeah, that
Speaker 1 16:32
leads to the shame you see, the shame around the body, and from my experience working as a as a nutritionist with people who struggle with this a lot, it just deepens the disconnection from the body. Because if that person has been told their entire life your body is wrong and you need to fix it, it's very hard to love that body, then so psychologically, we disconnect from the body and we can't take care of something that we hate.
Finola Howard 17:11
What do you say to someone who's I mean, I'm a heavier woman too. So what do you say to someone, I mean, I've come to I'd say I'm not fully resolved in this. I'm definitely not. It's not I'd say I'm definitely not fully resolved in this, but I know I'm at a place like I'm 55 I'm not in a place of I've watched the journey in my own weight over the years and and I remember going through a stage where I actively was grateful for where my body had taken me, and to nurture my body and to and to delight in in the ability to move now, I know that I want to move better and I want to move more because I'm conscious of my age and stuff, but so I don't believe that I hate my body. I don't believe that I fully love my body either, but I I love, I love where it's brought me, and I want to nurture it, to bring me somewhere else. That's where I am, so I've worked to do but what do you say to someone who hates their body,
Speaker 1 18:34
it's tough place to be? Yeah, first off, it's a really emotionally tough place to be, because the body that someone has, and we all have right now, is the only body we'll ever have in our lives. Yeah, and you were, you are born with this body, and you will die with this body. And we can't run away from the body as much as we might try. So firstly, it's just the, I guess, the validation of the difficult place that people find themselves in when they hate their body and that's really tough, and that's when dieting, you see, can kind of swoop in as like the night on a white horse, you know, but just change the body and everything will be great, and you'll Be happy and healthy and sexy and attractive and desirable, etc, etc, etc. So the first thing is just, it's really hard and it's really tough. And then if when we move from that place of acknowledgement and validation of all the feelings that a person could hold when they hate their body, is to move to a place of respecting the body as it is, because I have this body image hierarchy that I've built over the years. And it's, there's three layers. Bottom is body respect. The middle bit is body acceptance, or body neutrality, and the top piece is body love, which would be, you know. The ultimate place, the ultimate goal, and body love and body acceptance. When you say that to somebody who hates their body, they can't even imagine, like it's not in, even in their ether, what that would look like. So we need to start with trying to build in but more body respect. And that's where there are practical tools and practical ways that we can do that. So that might look like, back to what we're talking about around listening to the body. It might look like working on becoming more embodied in your life, listening to the messages that your body is giving you, and respecting those messages. So if your body is telling you this is too much when you're out for a walk or out for a run, take a break, other things like nourishing the body with food that your body loves, or drinking enough water. Or one of my favorites that I do with clients a lot is spending time with the body so that what that looks like is actually either looking at the body or massaging the body. Now this could be, you know, I would often start when people are really struggling with body image. I might start by trying to assess different parts of the body, how they feel about different parts of the body. So I might ask them to place their hands on their their chest or their belly or their arms, and kind of navigate what feelings are coming up as we do that. And for most people, we're starting with hands. So I want you to spend some time moisturizing your hands and really spending time with them. So not doing it while you're doing something else, I want you to take two minutes and massage your hands of body lotion or with hand lotion, and just say to yourself, these are my hands, so you're connecting with it. And then that over time, those acts of body respect grow into body acceptance or neutrality, and then eventually grow into body love.
Finola Howard 22:01
I just love that. That's just a gift. Yeah, I'm going to do more of that. Nave, that's a really beautiful gift that you've given everyone. What's interesting is, and I suppose this is the story that I wanted you to tell people, and so I'm going to tell it really fast. And it's this move that you went, that you and you correct me if I'm wrong on anything. You did the corporate wellness thing, and then you did take up yoga. And you can tell us, if you want, the reason why you took yoga, but it was this idea of the emotional connection with mind. Actually, do you want to say that why you took up yoga, and then you moved, just just to get you to this place of you moved, and you realized, because I loved this about you, that you realized there were topics like this, topic we've just been discussing, that just came up so much, this relationship with body, the mind and the body, our health and well being in the body. And you you said, Am I really equipped to be in this space like, am I, you know, can I actually help these people, or is this outside of my remit? And as a result, you decided to become a psychotherapist to help you in this work and tell us about that shift then that you go from nutrition to realizing this connection that's going on with everybody's identity, well, not everybody's identity, but this challenging piece that you knew need. You needed more help than simply nutrition. Yeah,
Speaker 1 23:34
so, so I started working with people one to one, very, very slowly, I mean, from probably 2018 just a few people come to me, and I'd take them on alongside my corporate job. And as I started working with more people, I realized, wow, there's a lot more going on here. Like this is not just simply, you know, here's the advice, implement it, and off you go. Everything's going to be great. When I got into the room with people, and I'm sitting one to one with people, I'm realizing that when we look at somebody's nutrition, we are also talking to lots of other experiences they've had with that in their lives. So I find that a lot of people who came to me were looking for weight loss advice, right? And that's probably, you know, anytime I tell people I'm in nutritionist, they'll say, oh, so do people come to you when they want to lose weight? Because that's kind of the biggest issue we see in our society around nutrition, right? So as I was sitting with these people, I realized these people have histories with their body. There is a huge amount of shame, there was a lot of judgment, there is a lot of feeling like they're not good enough as they are. And these people are highly intelligent, educated, diligent people that would sit in front of me. I mean, they. Had, they had studied. They are well educated. They have, you know, successful careers. They have a family. They're caring for elderly parents or siblings. And I'm thinking like, these are really intelligent people, you know, what's going on here? And they've dieted their entire lives, and they've succeeded at everything else that they have put their hand to in their lives, but yet, food and weight is an issue that was sticking around. So that's when I got really interested, thinking there has to be something that's going on here. This is not about a personal failure. So then when I did the yoga teacher training, and I kind of realized that when we center our bodies and we listen to our bodies, we go on an we can go on an amazing journey with it, because I completely trained, changed my relationship with movement when I became a yoga teacher, I hated exercise beforehand, hated it, hated it with a passion, and that was formed, you see, from all my my history with exercise. When I was in school, we used to have played football in PE out on the cold pitch, and I have, like, a problem with my ears. I got pain and wind, and it was just a horrible experience for me. And you know, I was never into sport, even though Ireland is such a sport and country, and you know, it's it's great, the kind of energy we have around sport, but was just never for me. So I kind of decided in my head, oh, exercise, not for me. That's for other people. Even though I was a nutritionist, my whole career was about health. So then I realized that we can change our story, we can change our relationship with movement and with food also. So from that, then I went down the route of intuitive eating. I explored a lot of that. I went on a journey with that. I mean, that was a whole personal journey as well, moving away from weight centric to weight inclusive practice. Because quite radical in Ireland moment to to work from a weight inclusive perspective, ie to say, let's not look at your weight as the main problem. I mean, that's when you say that in a room healthcare professionals, it's quite jarring. They can worry then about what better sending or what happens if we don't look at somebody's weight, but I've seen it in clinic when we push way to the side and we actually accept and I sit there and I say, I accept your weight as it is. Let's look at what else is going on for you, and see what we can do to help you and put you in a place where you can really care and nourish your body as it is today. And your body might change through that journey, and that's okay if it does, but it's also okay if it doesn't. So I'm not judging success based on the number on scales and where that person's lost weight. So as I as I started to sit with people and explore that, I realized there's trauma here. There is a whole mind body connection that is impacting this person's relationship with food. And I just was so intrigued and curious about, wow, if we could blend nutrition and psychotherapy together. And I often think about these like two circles that overlap and have this middle bit where they there's this sweet spot, I would say, what would that do for people's health in the long run, if we combine those two fields together? So that's when I decided to go on and do a four year master's in psychotherapy.
Finola Howard 28:36
But it's it just makes sense. It's beautiful. Actually, it's actually better than sense. Talk to me. Can you share with people a little so they can learn a little bit more about intuitive eating? This intrigues me so intuitive
Speaker 1 28:52
eating is all about centering you as the expert of your body, rather than centering external rules and restrictions around food. So in practice, right? I'm going to give you an example that might look like let's say you're on a plan, and the plan says, I eat at 8am I eat at 12pm and I eat at six, let's just say, and I don't eat past eight o'clock in the evening. And life happens. You're really busy at work, you don't get home until 7pm and by the time you cook the dinner, put it on the table, it's after eight now, your body is telling you I'm hungry. You're probably starving. Actually, at this stage, you only eight or 12? Yeah, it's a long time, and your body's hand you I'm hungry, but the plan says it's too late. So now we're stuck in this place where we do, we listen to the external rule, or we just do, we listen to the internal message. And Intuitive Eating is all about prioritizing. The internal messages of the body. So getting in touch with hunger cues, fullness cues, satisfaction cues, and allowing those internal cues to guide your decisions around food. Do
Finola Howard 30:11
you think those cues get confused? You know, the way, sometimes when you're you think you're hungry when in actual fact, you hadn't drunk enough water that day? Yeah,
Speaker 1 30:21
of course. And I And when somebody goes on a journey of reclaiming their intuitive eaters, they'll go through all that and process of learning what these messages mean and building up to trusting their bodies again. So I would sit with a lot of people who don't trust their bodies at all. They don't trust their hunger cues. They don't trust their fun as cues. They maybe don't even know what they what they're, what they look like, they sound like, what they feel like. So intuitive. Eating is all about trying to get you back in touch with those so that you're very clear. This is a hunger cue. This is not a cue for for more water, because I've already had, you know, a liter. Roar today. When did I last eat? It was three hours, four hours ago. Okay, that makes sense. So we're taking in what I would like to call brain knowledge and body knowledge. So body knowledge is the internal cue. Brain knowledge is kind of like the nutrition education, the realization that, you know, we need to eat regularly. Water is important. You know, vitamins and minerals are important, etc, etc, etc. And when we combine those two together, oh, it's like, like, people just say it's like, liberation and and it's, it just changes their life. The amount of times I've heard people say Intuitive Eating has changed my life, is I I couldn't even count it, how many people times I've heard it, because it is really liberating to go from this place of always having to rely on others, whether that's a plan or a nutritionist or a dietitian, or, you know, anything outside of ourselves, to get into a place where your body knows what it needs any one point, and if you can listen to that, it frees you up from all of that Pressure.
Finola Howard 31:59
How do you start that? Now, obviously, you have a book about this, and we'll talk about it in a second. So obviously we'd be saying, buy the book. But how do you start in a mindset to go, okay, I'd like to embrace this idea that I am the expert of my own body. I'd really like to hear my own expertise here. How do I start being hearing myself. How do
Speaker 1 32:22
I start? Well, the first step of intuitive eating, and the first step in no apologies in my book, is all about deconstructing die culture and rejecting die culture. And that can be quite confronting, actually, because we're unlearning, we need to unlearn what we've been taught that doesn't really serve us, and that is that we need to micromanage our bodies. We need to fix our bodies, and food is the primary tool that we use to do that, because if we're stuck in a place of subscribing to diet culture, it's very hard to listen to those messages from the body. Now, this is a process, and it's a journey, and you do not need to have fully rejected diet culture to start listening to your own body, but it is something that you need to begin looking at, because without that, you're going to be stuck in that place of that example I gave earlier, of do I listen to the plan, or do I listen to my body? And if you haven't looked at diet culture and the reasons why it's damaging and why it's actually more harmful than helpful, it'll be very hard to prioritize your body's cues, because you've been taught the plan is the most important thing to follow.
Finola Howard 33:39
Do you find that so much of because in your the first section of your book, you talk about permission, and there's a thing that the more conversations I have and the more work I do in myself and my own self awareness, permission is is so critical, like, it's like we are we as a society, the society has evolved that we keep handing over our power externally to ourselves, and therefore forget that we ever had any wisdom of experience or any kind of inner wisdom. And the more that time moves on, I keep seeing this return to ourselves, this and psychotherapists and psychologists all talk about this idea of coming home to yourself, grounding yourself, listening to yourself. We hear this in so many parts of society now like that, you get any sense that there is a shift now, that we are, that we are starting to trust ourselves again as individuals,
Speaker 1 34:51
yeah, but I still think we've a long way to go. Okay,
Finola Howard 34:56
all hope is lost. There.
Speaker 1 34:59
You. Not at all, not at all. And the great thing is that when I say we've a long way to go, I'm talking more socio culturally, whereas, obviously we all live and breathe in within sociocultural norms, right? And that affects us and how we see ourselves. But we can also choose. We do have also have agency and autonomy over how we live our lives. So we can choose to unsubscribe from all these messages around bodies, what's okay, what's not okay? And that doesn't mean it won't be challenging at times, because we live in, you know, the ecosystem of sociocultural norms, but it also gives us, like a bit of it's very empowering to think I can choose in this moment how I would like to react, or if I want to take on this information or not, if I want to trust myself and look like, I think, self trust. I mean, I remember years ago I I think I mentioned Steve before Finola, I had one of the first real emotional challenge in my life, and that was the moment when I really had to listen to my intuition. So I this is not just when we talk about food and our bodies. This is in life in general. I mean, our intuition is whispering to us all the time, and it can't be explained. And that's the thing. I think we live in this culture where everything has to be explained, when sometimes it's just a feeling, it's a felt, sense that this is not right for me. That could be the dieting, the way your relationship with food is, the way you relate to your body. It could be a certain relationship, it could be a job, and it could be the place that you live, it could be the lifestyle that you lead. And you know, people say, but how do I know? How do I know it's the right thing to do? And I'm like, Look, we just have to give it a go. Follow your gut and see what happens. And it might be the right decision, or it might not be, but you're gaining more information every time. So I feel like listening to that inner voice is something that you can choose at any one moment in your life. Even though society had, there's a lot more work in society to do, but we have the power today, tomorrow, next week, next month, to choose if right now, the way you're living your life is not the way that you want
Finola Howard 37:30
to continue living your life. You mentioned that you deal with a lot of C suite executives, etc, and ambitious, driven, successful women that and he talked about them a few minutes ago as well, and the fact that they feel that they're not good enough. And one of the things that you mentioned to me at the time, which really, really struck me was that this idea that image is still important in the workplace, but it seems to be more important, or not more important, but more important for women than for men, or they're judged more for image than men are. And say more about that, if you don't mind, it's an extra pressure. That's what you mentioned.
Speaker 1 38:13
Yeah, it is an extra pressure. And I saw this really interesting reel recently, and it was talking about beauty culture versus diet culture. And ours is the same thing, you know, and if we subscribe, subscribe to Beauty culture, are we subscribing to diet culture? And I was like, Oh, this is an interesting conversation. And this, she's a, she was a nutritionist based in Australia, and she was talking about all about the intention, the intention or the purpose of it is what's most important, which makes sense, right? So, you know, for example, I shave my legs and I shave my armpits because it makes me feel good, not because I feel pressured to do it by anyone else. Or I like, you know, putting on a bright lipstick and a bright color, or, you know, focusing on wearing a certain outfit when I go to a certain event because it makes me feel good, it changes how I feel right and, and that's absolutely, like, a positive thing, 100% like, if you it makes me feel good, you do it. But the difference is when we feel pressured to look a certain way, and we feel like there's no room for us to express ourselves authentically. And this nutritionist was talking about how it all depends upon back to the sociocultural norms that we're exposed to. So you know, for me, I work at from home, I work in body neutrality, body acceptance. You know, healthy relationship with food. Maybe it's easier for me to unsubscribe at times, because I don't feel like my career progression is going to suffer if I don't look a certain way. My whole my because it's my whole persona. It's my whole like, My job title, right? So. Whereas that might not be the same for every woman. So if you have a woman, you know, senior management, leadership position, and they feel like they need to, and this can be very unconscious as well, because of the pressures that are on women, and have been for, you know, a long, long, long time, 100 years is to be taken seriously. I need to I need to be thin, or I need to look a certain way.
Finola Howard 40:26
This idea of when you're overweight, you're invisible, and that's another because to be successful as a in that context, you've got to be visible. And if you're overweight, you can be invisible.
Speaker 1 40:40
Yeah. So, like, that's such a good point, such a good point. So when we're talking about this, and we're talking about accepting our bodies, there are all these pressures on, on, on women that maybe men don't experience quite as much, whereas a woman will be judged more for how they look, unfortunately. And, you know, we all know that image and appearance, especially in a certain position, okay, it does matter, right, that we take care of ourselves, that we groom ourselves and and I'm not saying that that's not important or that it shouldn't be present at all in the workplace, but this like unconscious bias that we all have around what a successful woman should look like. I think that's the piece that we need to kind of unpack and explore a bit more, because success is not determined by what you look like on the outside. Right, like we know that. We know that, but, but when I sit with women who are in leadership positions and they are exposed to these kind of experiences where they do feel pressure, it can add an extra layer to the personal side of their relationship with food and body image, if they feel like their career progression is attached to it. It's quite complex space. It is, it is, and I think that's why we need to look at each person individually, you know, and that the impacts of their their life and their circumstances on their relationship with food and body image and how we can best support that person, because, as I said, you know someone who works from home and works in body acceptance, they might not be as exposed as much pressure as someone in a corporate environment who feels like they have to go a certain way. Also, you know women who work in I've worked with women who work in fashion, women who are models or who are in the media a lot, and that can be really difficult because they they're in different environments every day of the week.
Finola Howard 42:45
What would you like to leave people with today? Eve,
Speaker 1 42:48
oh, big question. I mean, I feel like it's really important to hear that there is hope for a healthier relationship with food and with your body, and that when you work on this, it can really open up so many more doors for transformation in your Life, because if you can accept yourself as you are, and that includes your body and includes your relationship with food, then you're much more anchored in your sense of self. And if you're anchored in your sense of self, then everything in your life can shift. Everything in your life can change, because there's that inner confidence and inner power in who you are. So if there is anyone listening to this, and they feel like maybe they hate their body, or maybe they don't hate their body, but they feel like there's it doesn't feel quite right, there's like this little whisper that it could be a lot better. I like that person to know that there is hope and that it can be
Finola Howard 44:03
absolutely transformative to get to a place of acceptance around yourself. I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's actually a beautiful way to leave it. Thank you so much. That's it for this episode, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Make sure to connect with NIV on Instagram or on LinkedIn and tune into the other two episodes in this healthy Success Series. And thank you for listening to your truth shared. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to share it with your entrepreneurial friends and help them grow their business to even greater heights, and until next time, let's keep growing. You.
