Elyse Resch on Intuitive Eating for Teens and our 'Inner Teen'

Elyse Resch, co-founder of Intuitive Eating and author of the Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens (amongst many other books and publications*) joins the podcast this week and I couldn't be more excited to bring you this episode.

Elyse is nationally known for her work in helping patients break free from diet culture through the Intuitive Eating process. Her philosophy embraces the goal of reconnecting with one’s internal wisdom about eating and developing body liberation, with the belief that all bodies deserve dignity and respect. *

We talked about:

- What Intuitive Eating IS and is NOT

- How our natural ability to eat intuitively gets disrupted

- Where do we start?

- How we can galvanise folks into action and swim against the tide of diet culture

- What about movement?  How does it fit in?

- How social media has impacted our body image and our desire for thinness and invites constant comparison with our peers

- How do we best support our teens in terms of Intuitive Eating? 

You can find more about Elyse here or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

* Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-C, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND, is a nutrition therapist in private practice, with over forty years of experience, specializing in eating disorders, Intuitive Eating, and Health at Every Size. She is the co-author of Intuitive Eating, now in its 4th edition, the Intuitive Eating Workbook, and The Intuitive Eating Card Deck—50 Bite-Sized Ways to Make Peace with Food. Elyse is also the author of The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens and The Intuitive Eating Journal—Your Guided Journey for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food and a chapter contributor to The Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment. 

Please reach out if you would like some support with your relationship to food OR movement. Ela currently has limited spaces for Intuitive Eating coaching and if you'd like to reconnect with movement, contact Christine.

AND if you enjoyed this episode, please share and follow the 'Find Your Strong podcast' and if you have time, write us a short review. It would honestly mean the world. Love to you all, Ela & Christine x

Transcript

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Elyse Resch: So welcome to the find your strong podcast Elise fresh. I am so excited to have you here. How are you? Oh, I'm good, thank you so much for inviting me. II just love talking about intuitive meeting, and I appreciate I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. I love talking about it, too, and on that note, as we get started I would love you to talk a little bit about the beginnings of intuitive eating.

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Christine Chessman: And now I'm not going to ask and add too many questions, but as well as what it is and what it is, not.

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Christine Chessman: because there's a lot of preconceptions about intuitive eating out there, and a lot of people trying to co-opt intuitive eating, not gonna mention any names. But if you could just talk to the beginning started. And yeah.

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Elyse Resch: okay, so I've been in private practice 42 years. It was my second career. I was an elementary school teacher when I got out of college and went back to graduate school in my thirties. And of course, I was taught the traditional approach as a dietician, but there really wasn't any teaching about eating disorders at all.

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Elyse Resch: I did not learn about eating disorders, you know, mostly until after I was, you know, out of graduate school and and tending different clinics to to learn about it and reading and all of that. So but back to graduate school, I mean, we just learned to give out meal plans, exchange programs, you know, based exchange.

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Elyse Resch: and it never sat right with me. And I really wanted to do that kind of work. In fact, I was going to work with developmentally disabled kids. Cause that's where I did an internship for a year, working with kids, running their feeding clinic. And I thought, this is just a wonderful arena to help parents learn how to feed their children.

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Elyse Resch: But I wasn't getting referrals for that. I was getting referrals from physicians who would send clients to me with, you know, diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, etc., and they would always say, Have them lose weight, and it never that right for me. And of course, to this, today I see the you know, the the weight focused. You know, medical model which is so destructive

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Elyse Resch: but I didn't know what else to do, so what I did was I gave people meal plans. I didn't say there were diets. I didn't tell them that they had to eat exactly that way, but you know it was structured, and it was external, and

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Elyse Resch: and people would follow it, and then they'd fall off of it and feel bad about themselves. And and one day I had a young woman who came back after the first week when I'd given her this plan, and she came back, she said, II can't follow what I'm binging.

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Elyse Resch: and frankly, I didn't know what to do with it. I just had such a sad feeling of well, you know, I need more help with this. So in any case, I did lots of reading I was in therapy, learn so much from my therapists, and I finally came to a place where I said, This doesn't work to give external kinds and

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Elyse Resch: and there was just the burgeoning of the anti diet movement that was starting wasn't really a movement. Then there were just a few people who were talking about how Dives didn't work, but not a full blown you know. Intense review of that or anything.

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Elyse Resch: So I just came up with some of my own ideas. And I started writing a book. I started putting chapter titles. And you know all kinds of ideas on the computer at the same time my co-author, who

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Elyse Resch: was renting some office space for me in my office at the time. I didn't really know her, but I knew she was interested in writing, and one day I happened to see her, and she said, she didn't look very happy. I said, What's the matter. And she said, I'm writing this book with a psychologist, and she can't write. I'm so frustrated. Well, I knew I lots of psychological background, and I knew I was good writer, and I just.

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Elyse Resch: you know, kind of that moment of being. And I just said, I'll write that book with you, and that's how it began. And she had some similar ideas. So we collaborated. And that was back in 1993. And yeah, the first edition of intuitive reading came out 95. And it's now

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Elyse Resch: in its fourth edition that came out in 2020, and we were talking even about

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Elyse Resch: eventually doing a fifth edition at the moment we are writing the second edition of the Intuitive Meeting Workbook, and that's intense, very intensive. So maybe about you know, it never ends so in a. In any case, that's how it started. And I have put so much psychology

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Elyse Resch: psychological theory into my work, including a lot of inner child work with my clients, and it's just so wonderful people heal. They're free. They. They have that freedom to start retrusting their bodies and back to your question about what is intuitive eating.

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Elyse Resch: The most common definition is, it's a self care process that helps people get reconnected with the internal wisdom about eating. You know that they were born Bo born with. And it's based on 10 guidelines, 10 principles. They're not rules. They're just guidelines to help people get to to that place, but that doesn't really explain it. So I came up with

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Elyse Resch: a concept that I call the dynamic interplay of instinct, emotion and thought, and that comes from the brain, the parts of the brain. There are parts that that are instinctual and parts that are emotional, the limbic part of the brain and the cognitive part of the brain. And

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Elyse Resch: some people. One of the myths you were mentioning myths is that, oh, intuitive eating is just, you know, free for all. Just eat anything you want. Don't think about it, and that's not true at all. We have instincts. We want to honor our instincts, hunger, fullness, what tastes good! We also want to respect the emotions that we're going through that may impact

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Elyse Resch: our instincts as well as illness. You know people have they have a cold, and they lose, you know. Their interest in eating their appetite goes away, or with Covid. Oh, my goodness! The whole pandemic. I've had so many clients who've had covid, who have lost their taste in their smell, and to help them appreciate how much they need to eat, regardless of the fact that they're not enjoying it. You know those kinds of things. And so we use our cognitive part of our brain, the neocortex

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Elyse Resch: to tune into the instinctual part, and then see where it's not giving us accurate signals. mainly because of emotions, or perhaps illness, and make the choices for ourselves that

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Elyse Resch: help us feel good in our bodies, give us satisfaction in our food. So dynamic interplay of instinct, emotion, and thought is the best way to understand intuitive eating. Not a free for all, because free for all would mean you're not tuned into yourself at all. Are you really tasting the food. Are you really enjoying it, you know, is your body giving you a message that you've had enough, and you keep eating, and it feels uncomfortable.

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That type of thing

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Christine Chessman: I mean, it's it's such a difficult concept for a lot of people to get their heads around here, conditions

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Christine Chessman: to controlling what they eat. And certainly from my demographic. So a lot of people I work with are in the Harry to post menopausal years, and maybe 40 to 60, that kind of age group, many of whom have teenage kids, many of whom grew up in a special case, slim, fast generation with

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Christine Chessman: aerobics and fat burning, and it was all about weight, loss, fat loss. Atkins, diet, low carb it was that it's almost so conditioned in your brain

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Christine Chessman: that for me. Intuitive eating was something that took me a long time. I had to keep coming back to it.

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Christine Chessman: you know, over years. And then I did the did the training with yourself and Evelyn, and it was only then, when I really delved into and started doing the workbook which I love.

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Christine Chessman: that I started really questioning the beliefs that I held.

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You know we have to be kind and self, compassionate, kind to ourselves. Understand the power of dire culture.

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Elyse Resch: the what's behind eye culture. There are virtual origins. There is me. It's the patriarchy. It's the control concept, you know, that just filters down into an individual controlling their their eating. But where does that come from this belief that we can, we can be controlled. We should be controlled. So, looking at the roots of it make it even more

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Elyse Resch: understandable that we don't. Wanna. We don't wanna do that anymore. And then, looking at how much impact it's had on our own lives. I certainly had my own eating disorder back in my late twenties, where I was dieting, and then binging and dieting and binging and over exercising, and and didn't know, didn't have the slightest idea of how to help myself. I went to the therapist I had at the time, and I said.

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Elyse Resch: Do you think I have an eating problem? And she looked at me and she said, Well, do you throw up? And I said no, and she said, Well, no, you're fine. No idea that my my mind, the obsessive thoughts about food and my body, and and the wanting to be smaller, which had been.

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Elyse Resch: you know, so much programmed into me, not as a kid, not as a teenager, or in high school, not in my own home, but once I hit college, and, you know, started hearing what was out there in the universe.

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Elyse Resch: You start questioning yourself and thinking good enough, and you've got to do something, you know, to try to feel good about yourself. So yeah, the power of in response to what you're saying. Christine, the power of diet culture. It just gets its grips in you. So again, be kind to yourself and so grateful that you found another way, and it appeals to you.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, III could wax lyrical about it for hours. But I the the chapter obviously that maybe means the most to me is about movement. And I use it with clients. Quite a lot. I talk about intuitive movement. I talk about

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Christine Chessman: feeling the difference and noticing how you feel when you move and why we're moving and maybe moving for movement, sick rather than for a specific goal. Just, you know, checking in. And II just that has been a game changer for me, and and kind of how I work with clients. And yeah, of all the chapters.

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Elyse Resch: Well

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Elyse Resch: and sure, there are other factors that contribute positively to what you eat and how you move. I mean, I'm very aware that the reason I move while there's several of them. But one of them. It's like I can feel good in the morning, you know, who doesn't wake up a little groggy, and if I can move my body in the morning it wakes me up. It gets oxygen going to my brain. I'm also very concerned with keeping my bones as strong as they can be

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Elyse Resch: so, you know, bone density, immune system. II don't have to tell you all the different benefits of movement it has to be, Joyce. It has to be something that feels good. And I have so many clients that will say, Yeah, I just I hate it all. I hate exercise.

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Elyse Resch: I'll say, what about dancing? Yeah. I like to dance. Well, I don't wanna do it in public. Well, close your bedroom door and turn on some second. Just sway. Move your body a little and they're stunned. Oh, I could do that. Yeah, you don't have to join a gym and follow, you know. Follow some follow, some prescribed, you know, exercise.

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Christine Chessman: and it's you know, that's that really speaks to me because I think I spent many years running, and I convinced myself. I loved running, but really I was using it

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Christine Chessman: bit of a punishing regime to kind of control my weight or maintain a certain weight. And recently I've just. I've set back because I needed to. And now I maybe run with friends, and slowly, and only if there's coffee involved, and I think it's it's sort of floating the idea to people that actually any movement is good movement

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Christine Chessman: and finding what seems good in your body and untangling weight loss from movement.

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Elyse Resch: You know it's it thought is one of the goals that I have to sort of spread that message around, and it's getting free at least. But it's taking its time. It's you know, it is the narrative out there. If you don't move, you're gonna gain weight or lose weight moving. But the the truth is, with an intuitive connection.

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Elyse Resch: If you move more, you get hungrier, you move less, you're less hungry, you know. So so really, there is in effect, studies show that you don't lose weight because of movement. Exactly. So.

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Elyse Resch: yeah, it's it's unfortunate that it's, you know, it's seen in ways that actually, for some people keep them away from movement because it was so so connected as a child, even where, or a teenager where a parent is you gotta go out there, and you know, go out there and take a walk when they know that their parents want them to be thinner, so that gets connected, and then are resentful and rebel against it later.

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Christine Chessman: I mean, I often tell a story. I had a wonderful client who I loved.

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Christine Chessman: and we worked together for quite a while, and afterwards she said, I'm gonna leave and find a different trainer, because I've loved working with you. I feel much stronger and much better in my body, and I can get off the floor, and I can do a lot more things that I couldn't do. But I haven't lost weight, and you know that really struck me because

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Christine Chessman: she had gan so much. But that was the only focus that she had.

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Elyse Resch: you know, and she didn't see all the incredible progress that she had made in other areas. And II find that quite striking, really sad. I mean, we're brainwashed. I discovered a while ago that in the term diet culture there's the word cult.

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Elyse Resch: But I do believe that we get brainwashed by the powers that run dia culture. It's a over 90 billion dollar a year business for profit. So all that capitalism and it's not about tuning in to what a person really is when you think about it. It doesn't cost anything to listen to your body, or.

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Elyse Resch: you know, move in any way that you can move. I even had a client years ago, who was in a wheelchair, and and from.

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Elyse Resch: She had a fall, and it was terrible, and she became paralyzed. And but she knew that if she moved her arms and wheeled her own wheel chair she felt better. You know. So

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Elyse Resch: yeah. As I say, you know, tuning into yourself isn't gonna cost anything but buying all these diet programs.

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Christine Chessman: No, when we think about, I think there was an exercise in the work. But when you think about how much money you have spent, how many diets you've gone on, and how many fitness programs. And you know, it really stacks up, doesn't

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Elyse Resch: yeah? And the certain foods you have to buy when you're on certain plans to tell you don't eat this, eat that, and it's very privileged. Also, you know, so many people just don't even have enough access to food in our whole world. And then there are people who are. They wouldn't touch something. It's so connected with wellness, culture also. Oh, no, I won't touch anything that isn't

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Elyse Resch: perfectly nutritious, you know. So it's it's it's very troublesome

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Elyse Resch: diet culture, and a different dress. Isn't it different? So much behind the you should be healthy, then you'll lose weight, and you'll be healthier if if

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Elyse Resch: weight loss leads to health. No often leads to

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increased risk of.

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Elyse Resch: you know, things like cardiovascular problems and diabetes inflammation. especially the people that wait cycle, you know. They lose weight, and then they gain it, and then they lose it again and gain it back. And there are studies that support the fact that wait cycling is very detrimental to health. So it's a very screwed up connection that's out there

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Christine Chessman: 100. And you know what I was, gonna I was really interested to talk to you about today was us as parents.

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Christine Chessman: You know I was parents of teenagers in this day and age.

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Christine Chessman: I find old when I say that I'm in this day and age. But you know it. It's up obsess image obsessed. You know you've got the Kardashians at the helm. You know they they're ruling the world, the social media world and reality, TV. And every teenager

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Christine Chessman: is thinking about appearance in a way that even we perhaps didn't as teens.

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Christine Chessman: maybe because we didn't have mobile phones. We didn't have the same

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Christine Chessman: exposure to everything but certainly, as parents. I just wanted to ask you a bit about your book, which is intuitive workbook for teens. And you know, what point would you introduce this? Would it be better for parents to actually do the work themselves.

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Christine Chessman: and then talk to the kids.

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Christine Chessman: or what would you recommend without putting any blame or shame on parents

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Elyse Resch: but responsibility and a you know accountability. We have to heal our own relationships with food as parents. First, because I will tell you that 90% of clients I see, and I've seen thousands of them over the years, 90% of them will say to me on the first session, Yeah, my mother was on a diet.

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Elyse Resch: II have a young woman I'm working with now, and her probably late twenties who her parents didn't put anything on her. They didn't tell her she didn't look good, or that she should lose weight, but her mother was on a continual diet. You know they they mimic their parents. Their parents are role models, and it's so easy for a parent, even if they've decided. Oh, no, I'm not gonna talk about my unhappiness with my body, with my child. Things slip out.

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Elyse Resch: walk by a mirror, and they go, you know. Or gosh! You know. Where did that come from? You know I never had that way just sometimes they they connected with with, you know, pregnancy, and then, of course, makes their children feel even worse. But in any case, I think the first piece absolutely is doing a deep dive into one's own relationship with food and body and understanding. The impact that you have as a parent on, you know, on your child, on your teenager.

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Elyse Resch: and, as I say, no blame or shame in some home, maybe there isn't any. Ca, you know, problem with the parents, but there is the social, so many factors, the social media factors.

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Elyse Resch: TV

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Elyse Resch: movies, you know, there's so much focus on appearance and smallness.

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Elyse Resch: you know, having honest conversations with your children the workbook, my team workbook. It's it's interesting. I wrote it for 2 audiences

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Elyse Resch: I wrote. I wrote directly at teens. You know the adolescent years of my language that I used in there was to appeal to teenagers, but I was also appealing to the teen in each of us. II mentioned earlier that do a lot of inter child work, and I believe deeply that we carry with us the feelings of our child, our toddler, our teen throughout our lives, no matter how we are, we have that ability to tune in.

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It's almost a gut reaction to kind of tune into your to your teenager when somebody tells you what to do. It's like.

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Elyse Resch: Oh, yeah, you know. And so many adults have been using my intuiting workbook for teens to go, either. Go back to the time when their eating problems began, and it it has healed a lot for people, things that they've come to understand that they didn't realize prior to doing the work in that workbook. And

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Elyse Resch: it's, you know, a way to have language to talk to their own their own. Yeah.

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Elyse Resch: you know.

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Elyse Resch: That first chapter that I did on diet mentality. By the way, we have changed the principle to reject diet culture now rather than we. We keep evolving. You know, the book keeps evolving. And so and

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Elyse Resch: you know, really to take a look at

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Elyse Resch: how we are drawn to this idea of control drawn to the we as we were talking about before, drawn to the idea that you know something else in our lives is out of control. And look at teenagers. Everything is out of there, so they'll grab on to something that they can fix how they look

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Elyse Resch: especially.

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Elyse Resch: you know, admiring, as you say, the Kardashians or others out there in the media, and for a moment it gives them a sense of power, and of course

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Elyse Resch: it crashes, cause they either can't keep up with it, or they keep up with it to a point of an eating disorder, and then they need treatment, and so so sad. So I think that, having the language to talk to teens, so the book offers that for parents, if they read through, you know, if they read, it's not directed at them. But if they read the language in that, and then sitting down with their kids sometimes and doing the book together.

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Elyse Resch: you know, with their teenage, is very helpful. And the teams I work with they they enjoy it. They enjoy going through it and really reflecting on their experience and their relationship with food and their bodies.

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Christine Chessman: It's a great idea to do it for yourself. and then maybe work through it with your teams.

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Christine Chessman: I've not thought about that, and that's a really good idea.

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You know, and I think we've all got that. I certainly in my teens, and that's when my eating disorders started.

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Christine Chessman: And you know, to be frank, until I discovered intuitive eating, I still had disorder, dating and morphed into orthorexia and lots of other

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Christine Chessman: eating disorders, and you know it stays with you unless you do the work.

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Christine Chessman: And you know, sadly, as I mentioned she before we started recording. My daughter also has anorexia, which she developed at the age of kind of 12. And she's doing really well, which I'm so pleased about. But obviously I initially blamed myself

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Elyse Resch: because II modeled behaviors that were not.

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Christine Chessman: They were not healthy eating behaviors when she was little, and but, as you said, when you know better you do better.

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Elyse Resch: so let's

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Christine Chessman: please don't blame yourself. You know. How can you

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Elyse Resch: feel shame about it when you were so influenced by diet, culture, and no another way it it's not like someone gives you poison, says, Give this to your child and poison, you know. You just don't know until you go through the work as you've done to to understand.

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Elyse Resch: Yeah, go ahead.

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Christine Chessman: Sorry. At least it was just. It was more sort of letting people know that actually.

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Christine Chessman: even if it takes time, it's it's not something that will happen overnight. But you know it is worth the work, cause the place that I am now compared to where I was 5 years ago is.

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Christine Chessman: you know, it was transformative for me

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Christine Chessman: so I like to always talk about it anywhere I am. Get the word out there. But it's been. I've struggled like this is something I'm really interested to talk to you about. I've struggled with eating disorder treatments. In the Uk. There's a huge, it's over subscribed, and it's very very hard to get eating disorder treatment.

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Christine Chessman:  you know, and we were lucky to to have a team around us. But

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Christine Chessman: you know there is. No. I talked about intuitive eating. Nobody had any idea about it.

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It's very much Bmi calorie focus. So everything.

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Christine Chessman: And it's very much she has certain targets to meet, and if she doesn't, then she's made to fee. Oh, you didn't do very well this week, and I really have struggled I every time that I go. II have a week. I kind of lock heads with

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Christine Chessman: with her psychologist, because it's just there is no

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Christine Chessman: room to maneuver. And

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Christine Chessman: you know it's an area that I know that you've worked in and have a lot of experience in. And I'd I'd love to know when you introduce

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Christine Chessman: intuitive eating with a client who maybe has an activating disorder. Is it something that you kind of.

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Elyse Resch: do you? Gradually? Here's here's one of the myths out there that really upsets me, and the myth is, you can't use intuitive eating in the beginning of treatment of eating disorders, because people can't get in touch with their true hunger and fullness.

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Elyse Resch: Okay, has 10 principles, of course, of course, those signals are masked, or they're, you know, if someone is very malnourished, their their stomach emptying is slowed down. They're never gonna feel hungry, either, of course. But let's talk about dye culture. Let's talk about respecting your body in so many ways, the way you talk to yourself.

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Elyse Resch: how you care for yourself. Let's talk about movement and and movement in a positive way, rather than in a way that is just to burn calories. Let's talk about the the diet police out there, the people out there that are, that's dye culture that are constantly telling you how you should eat and shaming you for the way you're eating emotions.

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you know, finding ways of coping with your emotions satisfaction, which is to me the key to intuitive eating. Let's figure out a way that food can be

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Elyse Resch: more satisfying for you, figuring out how much you know. Diminishment of satisfaction comes with you telling yourself that that's bad food or fattening food, or whatever words you use. So I incorporate intuitive eating into treatment immediately. It's just not about the hunger and fullness immediately, and, in fact, the second edition of Intu of the intuitive workbook which my co-author and I are working on right now.

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Elyse Resch: I we added 2 chapters and one of them is that I wrote is incorporating intuitive eating into the treatment of eating disorders. Exactly. Now. So that's in there. And the other chapter, is on Social Justice, and something I wanted to mention in terms of

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Elyse Resch: the way in with so many of the teams I work with today has to do from a come from a social justice. Lens. II am so impressed with young people today who don't want people mistreated who believe

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Elyse Resch: people need to be equal, you know, treated equally and have equal value. And when I talk to them about that it's like, well, of course, I mean, you know, doesn't matter what persons, you know, with their color, or their religion, or their sexual identity, or their, you know, or any of their

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Elyse Resch: marginalized identities. Of course they need to be treated equally. And then I throw the bomb. Well, what about people in large bodies. Oh, and I said, well, the oppression of people in large bodies

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Elyse Resch: is as equally or often even more. Well, I won't say more, but there's an e, certainly. An equal impact on their well being their mental health because of the prejudice in the world that is promoted by their diet culture. And

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Elyse Resch: these kids kind of step back and they go. Oh, they see the cognitive dissonance that's going on, that here they're absolutely promoting equality and diversity and inclusion. And and yet they're trying to be thinner.

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Elyse Resch: you know, and we're all really connected to human beings. And the more that a teenager or any age, but is pursuing thinness, continuing to promote oppression of people on larger bodies. So it and I think that's something that maybe is not thought about enough.

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Christine Chessman: and I just went to see a wonderful film which was called Your Fat Friend

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Christine Chessman: Made by Jeannie Finley, and with Aubrey Gordon, and I met Aubrey, and she's fantastic. But it was a joy to watch. Because I think, she said, after the film, actually, it was really meant for people in smaller bodies.

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Elyse Resch: you know, who perhaps have a fat friend.

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Elyse Resch: and you know, because she finds that any abuse that's hurled at her, or any comments that she has. It's from people in smaller bodies, and which says a lot more about people and smaller bodies than it does about people in fat bodies.

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Christine Chessman: It's. And you know, Aubrey was sort of saying that she wants people to see it from her point of view, and what she has to struggle with just to exist in her body

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Christine Chessman: and this culture that we're in, and it was heartbreaking but beautiful at the same time. It's not on streaming, is it? I mean, we was a preview. So I think, nationwide soon. But it is a beautiful film and really worth worth the watch.

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Elyse Resch: Absolutely. No, Aubrey is great, and she's written. No, she's written 2 books. Yeah, which are fantastic. But it's, you know, that is an issue that I think

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Christine Chessman: kids maybe don't even think about. You know their their empty races. They're flying the flag for so many different causes, but it's not when they direct at themselves, and their fear of gaining weight. They probably don't put that together with.

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Elyse Resch: so am I throwing it in their faces. They have to think about it then. Well, I have an A/C exercise I do with it doesn't matter what age, person, and it's very helpful for them.

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Elyse Resch: I'll say, think about a person that you admire. Just think about this person. Don't tell me who it is. It could be alive, dead. A relative doesn't matter, old or younger. Just think about this person.

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and they say, okay? And I'll say, Why, why do you admire that person? What are the qualities of that person? And they'll tell me. Oh, my God, they're funny! They're a good friend. They're loyal, they're, you know. They're smart. They're, you know. They're doing things in the war. They go on and on and on with all these positive values.

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Elyse Resch: and when they're done, I say to them.

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Elyse Resch: you know what you didn't ever mention that they're thin, right? Well, that's because you value this is your value system. You value all of these aspects of this person that have nothing to do with the size of their body. So I'm doing a lot of, you know. Kind of in them, you know, pushing them to think more deeply about these things because it's such a you know. It's ingrained in them from the time they're born, almost when somebody comes up to them and goes. Oh, look at that fat baby, or you know just

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Elyse Resch: that there's so much commentary about a person's size, even from pediatricians, who are unfortunately, I think, are a real source of eating disorders. So

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Christine Chessman: you know, and and I think I've I've always asked friends never to comment. It's something that I feel so strongly about. Please do not comment on my daughter's bodies, whether you think it has been complementary or not. Please do not say anything I wanted to. Just would you advise parents? So I did. I saw a post today, which is.

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Christine Chessman: Ho! How to talk about your child's body, don't. And it was saying, you know, obviously with binderies and everything else, absolutely, but in terms of how it looks.

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Christine Chessman: you know, if you've got gained weight, if you've lost weight. Oh, you look! Just don't

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Christine Chessman: talk about it

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Elyse Resch: right and no, never I will say that occasionally being able to say to any child, Oh, my God, goodness! You're so beautiful is not in it

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Elyse Resch: because I have had people say to me. Never in my life did anybody in my family tell me I was beautiful, and I felt that I wasn't.

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Elyse Resch: you know, and so I think that we have to. We can't look at things in in binary ways and all nothing completely agree. Never make comments about a a child's body, or, you know. Put the focus on other values, and you can embrace your child and say, you're so beautiful, which encompasses the whole child. You know their insides and outside. So

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Christine Chessman: I love that well, I wanted to ask you before we draw things to a close, cause I know you're a very, very busy woman. Was, just what do you love to eat? What is your favorite food of the moment?

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Elyse Resch: Well, II think about this a lot, and I have several have several, because

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Elyse Resch: if it's one food, this gets into habituation the concept of the more of something that you have, the less exciting it is. So if I only I love Pasta, I mean, it's just one of my favorite foods in the whole world. I could eat pasta every day. But then I want different toppings on it, because I would get bored with it the same way. I also love ice cream and frozen yogurt, and if that's all I ate I'd be craving a salad. So you know, I think the top.

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Elyse Resch: the top tear would be pasta ice cream and chocolate.

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Christine Chessman: I love that. I love that I have them. I've had an habitation issue with not issue experience with peanut butter. So II could eat. Yeah, I could eat 10 jars of paint. Just just get me the spoon, and I'm just gonna pop. So I never bought it, never bought it, because I knew that I would just keep eating it. So

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Elyse Resch: now II did the intuitive eating work book, and I bought the peanut butter, and I I've I've got it for weeks. I have it when I want it, and I know I can have it again anytime. I forgot about that as a teenager. Every morning I wanna peanut butter toast for breakfast, and I remember my mother, whom I miss so much, who would say to me, no, mom, I just want peanut butter toast, you know, and I do. I adore peanut butter. I

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Christine Chessman: but I don't want it every day. No, you know I love it on an apple. I love it on toast. I love it on just on the spoon. It's hard to say which particular food, I guess that's the bottom line. Is there a number of them. Peanut butter and chocolate together are pretty good, please. My! If people are having listen to this episode are interested in

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Christine Chessman: sort of doing a deeper dive into intuitive. What book would you recommend starting with?

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Elyse Resch: Well, I think it depends on the age of the person, and I think if it's a younger person definitely that my teen workbook? I think if it's someone who is wanting to learn really the science behind it, to to understand it at a very deep level, the in the fourth edition of Intuitive Eating, which is extensive, and there's many different chapters.

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Elyse Resch: It's in an audio form also, although we were not given the opportunity to read it ourselves other than I got to read the forward, and Evelyn got to read the introduction, and then it's somebody else who reads it. But some people just like to listen. They like to take a walk and listen. So it's it's available that way. But those would be the the 2. And as we had talked about earlier I think, before we started, is geared not only to

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Elyse Resch: that age to teenagers, but to the teen in each of us, because I I've got a very strong teenager, and me and we all do. I think so. So those 2 would be the the ones depending on age and where you are and what you wanna do with it, like the team workbook gets you into thinking about how this all started, because the majority of my clients, their eating issues, they're disordered. Eating started very young.

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Elyse Resch: Yeah, there are some that start until adulthood. But the majority, it starts very young. So it helps them, you know. Go back and and heal that. Yeah, that's definitely. And the team workbook and the intuitive eating workbook are my favorites. But I'm gonna put all of the information in the show notes and where people can find you and I just wanna say a massive thank you for coming on today. I really do appreciate you and all the amazing work that you've done. Elise.

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Elyse Resch: Thank you so much, Christine. It's been delight talking to you. Thank you.