Welcome to Food Psych, a weekly podcast about intuitive eating, health at every size, and body liberation.

I'm your host, Christi Harrison, and I'm a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor.

Join me as I talk with interesting people from all walks of life about their relationships with food and their bodies.

Hey there. Welcome to episode 117 of Food Psych. I'm your host, Christi Harrison, and today I'm talking with Dember Guard, who is one of the founders of the health at every size movement.

And I'm super, super excited to talk with her today and share it with you all. She is a therapist who specializes in body image, eating, sexuality, health, and relationship concerns.

And she helped bring into the world the health at every size model, like I said, also the body positive dot com website.

In a book called Great Shape, the first fitness guide for large women, as well as numerous book chapters and research articles.

She's so well respected in this field and has really provided a lot of support and guidance to me and many of my colleagues on our journeys to becoming health at every size clinicians.

So I'm really psyched to talk with her in just a moment.

Before we jump into that, I want to read today's listener question. It's from a listener named Monty who writes, I have a history of binge eating and I'm currently struggling.

How should I fit in food around work, especially as I work in the gastronomy industry, so shifts are mostly from evening, like around 5 p.m. until late, like midnight plus.

We don't have time for a break in that time, and it's not really appropriate or reasonable to ask for a food break in this setting.

How do I feel myself appropriately while still being able to go to bed when I get home and not binge because I'm starving?

Yeah, so that is a great question. And before I answer it, I just have to do my quick disclaimer that these answers are not meant as individual nutrition advice or medical advice.

I'm not your individual dietitian. I'm just giving these for informational and educational purposes only not to diagnose or treat any medical condition.

So yeah, it's really challenging to fit in eating in some industries, and it sounds like you have a good sense at least that a way to prevent

binging is to make sure that you're fueling yourself adequately throughout the evening. And that's great. That is a huge insight to already have because a lot of people who struggle with binge eating don't even recognize that eating enough and feeding themselves consistently and not going too long between eating occasions

is one of the huge keys to avoiding binging. So that's a tip for anyone listening who's struggling with binging and not aware of that yet.

But for you, the listener who asks this question, it sounds like you really understand that and it's just a problem of trying to fit it in.

And I don't know if your workplace has family meal, a lot of restaurants have that at the beginning of a shift where everybody will get together and eat something in the kitchen.

And usually it's a pretty hearty meal. It's a good way to start off your shift and fuel yourself. So hopefully you have that. If not, maybe that's something you can institute at your workplace.

But yeah, it goes a really long time. So even if you have a really good satisfying family meal, it's not going to last until you're done with your shift, right? You're going to need something else. You're going to need a snack or maybe a couple snacks and another meal or a couple, you know, whatever way it sort of shakes out, right?

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