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What's The Juice

CAN WEIGHT LOSS & BODY POSITIVITY COEXIST? - Michelle Shapiro on restrictive diets, the “right way” to lose weight, and functional nutrition for anxiety & gut health

What's The Juice

Olivia Amitrano

Organic, Organicolivia, Plantmedicine, Herbalremedies, Herbs, Medicine, Alternative Health, Education, Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Health

4.92.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2023

⏱️ 103 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ep 80. This week's episode is with none other than the amazing Michelle Shapiro! In this insightful conversation, Michelle, a Holistic RD and self-proclaimed "Queen of the Middle Ground," shares her expertise after years of working with over a thousand clients. Michelle's approach to functional nutrition involves understanding the unique story of each individual, their environment, and the timeline that led them to their current situation. By identifying the root causes, she aims to heal issues rather than just managing them superficially. For instance, there's a big difference between avoiding certain foods for acid reflux versus understanding the deeper reasons behind the issue.

Here's the juice:

  • how Michelle lost 100lbs the WRONG way before becoming a dietitian (and how this led to hypothyroidism)
  • how almost anything that happens emotionally manifests physically, giving a whole new level of validation to symptoms that are "all in your head”
  • anxiety is a sacred messenger telling you something that needs to be addressed in your body (nutrient deficiencies, blood sugar dysregulation, etc.)
  • the root causes of anxiety and digestive disorders
  • what “intuitive eating” actually is + misconceptions
  • the extremes in the nutrition world of “no foods are toxic everything is a chemical" vs “all food must be perfectly clean”
  • why there are no “gut healing foods” that work for everyone
  • emotional and physical factors that contribute to binge eating and how to have compassion for our bodies trying to cope with big emotions

Connect with Michelle

Connect with Michelle online: HERE

Follow Michelle: HERE 

Connect with Olivia:

Follow: HERE

Shop herbal formulas: HERE

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Well, hello, pod fam. Happy Monday and happy day of one of my favorite guests to ever be on this show,

0:09.4

Michelle Shapiro. I cannot wait for you guys to hear this woman speak and how balanced and informed and

0:17.3

nuanced her approach to nutrition really is. Michelle Shapiro is a functional registered

0:23.0

dietitian and she is one of the only people I've ever met that really gets the middle ground.

0:28.9

She actually calls herself the queen of the middle ground, but she's truly in the middle

0:32.7

when it comes to the spectrum of extremes that we see in the dietary philosophy space today. I think that

0:40.5

there's this issue where there's this one camp of traditionally trained dietitians saying no foods

0:46.0

are harmful. There's no such thing as chemicals in our food. You know, everything is a chemical,

0:51.8

everything in moderation. Food can't possibly cause or reverse disease.

0:56.6

Food is just food and it's disordered to think anything otherwise.

1:00.2

Then there's this other camp of wellness influencers and more holistic nutrition coaches on the internet

1:08.4

saying, everything is toxic.

1:10.8

You can never eat anything that's not organic.

1:13.2

How dare you have seed oils? How dare you have almond milk instead of raw milk? You can never have

1:19.3

a skittle again in your life because even a drop of red food dye is going to kill you. And yeah,

1:25.7

I'm not someone who loves to eat any sort of artificial

1:28.3

food dyes. I wouldn't choose that. I probably would go for the organic candy that has the natural

1:32.9

food coloring in it. But I think that that camp can be equally as extreme as the camp of nothing is

1:40.7

toxic. And so Michelle is actually in the middle where she's saying there's nuance.

1:46.5

Yes, food can absolutely help to heal and reverse chronic conditions. And it can contribute to

1:53.1

the etiology of chronic conditions. However, being overly restrictive with food and having an all or nothing mindset and restricting

2:02.7

yourself for the wrong reasons is going to cause way more stress than some of those, quote,

...

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