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

I'm your host, Kristi 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 122 of Food Psych. I'm your host, Kristi Harrison, and today I'm talking with Carmen Cool, an amazing psychotherapist, educator and speaker who has devoted her life and work to dismantling diet culture, healing our relationship with food and our bodies, and supporting the next generation of body positive leaders.

She's the immediate past board president of the Association for Size Diversity and Health, of which I joined the board this year.

It's a great organization for any professionals out there looking to deepen their understanding of health at every size, and she's also a committed advocate for health at every size, and just has been a huge inspiration to me and so many other people doing this work.

In this episode we talked about embracing anger against diet culture and the patriarchy. How to give yourself permission to engage in health promoting behaviors for non-diet reasons, and why that really comes at a later stage of recovery from diet culture.

Why intersectional feminism was so integral to her eating disorder recovery, her experience training fellow health professionals in a weight inclusive model, and so much more.

It was a really really fabulous conversation, and I can't wait to share that with you in just a moment.

Today's listener question is from a listener named Ashley, who writes, I've been working to implement practices of intuitive eating and anti-dieting, et cetera, to my approach with food and wellness for a couple of years.

But one issue that I still struggle with that I feel as a holdover from the diet mentality is late-night benches. I've tried eating more throughout the day and eating a bigger dinner, especially so that I'm not feeling deprived at night.

I've also tried making sure that I don't put off my quote-unquote treat, something I really enjoy eating until the end of the day is a kind of reward, because I know that typically creates a build up of anticipation for the item that is hard to satisfy.

Yet I still find that about half the time I have a voracious hunger that cannot be quelled, i.e. I want a whole box of crackers rather than just a few.

I know one factor is that I have more downtime at night than I do during the day, and that can create a sense of restlessness that maybe I turn to food for comfort.

But at the time it feels like genuine physical, not mental hunger, so the typical recommendations about occupying your brain or doing something else pleasurable don't really help because the physical need for food persists.

I'm working right now on not criticizing myself afterward or the next morning when I do binge, because I know the guilt compounds the issue, but I don't think that's going to get rid of the problem either.

I always appreciate your practical, kind, yet effective advice, so I'm hoping that you might have a new perspective that will help me see this in a different way.

Thanks very much.

So thanks Ashley for that great question, and before I answer it, just my usual disclaimer that these answers are informational and educational purposes only and aren't a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

Yeah, so this is a great question, and the first thing I want to point out is that a lot of times when people ask questions, I've noticed this in my online course with the Q&A's, I've noticed this here with the questions, people often will sort of have the answer to their question contained within the question itself.

And I think that points to the fact that your intuition really is stronger than you think.

So when you're asking a question, sometimes the answer is embedded within the question itself, and if you can sort of sit back and say, wow, is my intuition trying to speak to me through this question at all?

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