Ep # 324 Diet culture, health and body image in your 40s and 50s

Welcome to The Run Your Best Life edition of the Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a GenX woman whose brain still feels like a member of the breakfast club but the person you see in the mirror is starting to look a lot like your parents, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Jill Angie and we’re gonna dive into all the weird shit Gen X women are facing right now, so you feel less alone and a lot more empowered. Are you ready? Let’s fucking go!

Jill: Well, hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Run Your Best Life interview series, where I talk to experts in the field on issues affecting Gen X women. And today we’re going to talk about diet culture and body acceptance in your 40s and 50s with the amazing Pam Moore. Now, Pam is an occupational therapist turned award winning intuitive eating coach and journalist.

She has written for the Washington Post, Runner’s World, Self, among many, many others. Pam is also the creator of the Real Nourished newsletter, where she shares evidence-based tips to help women detach their weight from their worth. And she is also the host of the Real Fit podcast, which features conversations with women athletes about body image, enoughness, and tons more. And wink, wink, check out episode 46.

And despite, or more likely because of being picked last for every team as a kid, Pam is also a certified personal trainer, six time marathoner, and two time Ironman finisher. So, she’s truly not your average runner.

Now real quick before we start, if you are a member of Run Your Best Life, Don’t forget to download the podcast companion from the members area to help you go deeper into this episode.

Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my beautiful friends. I am back today with the amazing Pam Moore, and we’re to talk about. Diet culture and hey, what if actually you do want to lose weight and how about if you just want to feel better in your body and everything all related to that. So, Pam, thank you for joining me.

Pam: Jill, I am so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Jill: Yeah, we’re going to have a good conversation today, I think. So I just want to kind of set the scene because this is something that I, and this whole series has been like basically shit that I am personally going through that I just have people on to talk about. But I think one thing that, that I’ve gone through and a lot of my friends have too is, okay, you know, I’m 56 years old.

I’m done with diet culture. I’m done with all of that. I need to be skinny, blah, blah, blah. But also. I do want to feel good in my body and right. And I’m noticing that as I get older, like, you know, when I was in my twenties, I could literally eat whatever I wanted and still feel fine. And now it’s like. Oh, well, wine doesn’t make me feel good and caffeine isn’t too good. And like too much sugar, I don’t feel good. And, and like, I’m like, okay, so I want to, you know, craft a way of eating that makes my body feel good. But I also don’t want to trigger diet mentality where I’m like, ‘Oh, I can’t have this. And I can’t have that.’ And so, I think I just like to sort of lay that at your feet as the opening for our discussion today.

What are your thoughts on that?

Pam: Okay. I just love that. We’re diving right in. Like no bullshit. Okay. So, let’s see, this seems like a multi part question. So, the first part, I, as I want to make sure I’m answering the question I was asked part one, how do we optimize our diet to make us feel good? Okay, I would say treat yourself almost like an experiment, like, okay, wait, let me back up.

It, it just so depends on the person because there are people who will hear treat yourself like an experiment and they will, if they have a history of disordered eating or if they have a tendency toward anxiety or over tracking or just becoming totally crazy, for lack of a better word, that could send them down a really bad, dark path where this experiment is like overtaking their life.

So, you know proceed with caution. Obviously, this is not like medical advice, but looking at this like on the one hand we are inundated with messages that we see on social media that we see in regular media from friends family like cut carbs cut carbs. That’s the key, right? And I would say it’s not super scientific to just cut carbs, right?

And then maybe you feel bad. Maybe you feel like you have no energy. Maybe you feel hungry, bitchy, irritable. And you’re like, oh, well, I did eat that one piece of bread. That must mean I’m not cutting carbs enough. And then they double down and they feel worse, say. That’s not super scientific, right?

That’s sort of buying into diet culture. Truly experimenting. Is looking at yourself and going, I’m, this is a, this is an experiment with a sample size of one. So, I make a change what happens? And so that’s where I would say the scientific approach includes changing one variable at a time, don’t go changing everything.

I think everyone’s probably tried that and we all know how that ends. Like it’s highly unsustainable. It’s no fun. So, change one thing and maybe don’t even change that thing. Doing a 180-degree change. Like if you’re thinking maybe I eat too much sugar, I would say, okay, well, that doesn’t mean you have to eliminate all sugar for the next 30 days.

It could mean you cut back on sugar a little bit or even just eat normal for a week and see how you feel. Make notes about it. And that doesn’t mean weighing your food or measuring your food and like writing down everything that you ate, just sort of observing, noticing, and then changing one thing, be like, all right, what if I didn’t have an extra helping of ice cream, or what if I didn’t have any ice cream?

But not like on one day, not like every single day. Do you know what I mean?

Jill: Yeah, well, and when you say eat normal, you mean like just eat your usual stuff like with no attempt to change anything?

Pam: Exactly just to kind of establish a baseline.

Jill: Yeah, I love that and I was talking to a friend of mine because we both said, you know, 2024 is a year where we want to really prioritize our health and also, you know, there’s no dieting. There’s none of that. We’re like, we’re going to, you know, the body I have right now, I want to optimize my health in that body. And that was one of the things that we both came up with is like, ‘Oh, maybe we should start now, like literally right this moment and start just sort of taking notes on what our current routine is.’ Honestly, I could tell you like the broad strokes of what I eat, but not in detail.

Right. Cause I’m not really paying attention to it. And, and we’re both like, okay, well that actually doesn’t feel that hard. Like I can just scratch it down on a post it note, you know, after each meal or at the end of the day or whatever, and not, it doesn’t have to be quantities or anything like, and then maybe like a note or two about like, oh, I slept really good tonight or, oh, I didn’t sleep very well tonight.

And to me, that feels good. And I think to other people, maybe they want to get into the granularity of it, but I hear you giving us permission to just say like, just do you.

Pam: Yes, that is what I’m saying. And the other thing I would even say, and this is along the lines of doing you. Back out even farther, maybe first define what health means to you.

I think that we have so much information coming at us about like metabolic resets, which I kind of think are bullshit. And like all this, you know, weight loss equals confidence equals feeling good equals health. Like so many ideas of like what other people are trying to sell us on what is health, but that’s irrelevant.

What is health to you? You know? Yeah. And also, like, just numbers. What are your labs like at the doctor? Like, what’s your cholesterol looking like? What’s your blood sugar regulation looking like? All these measures you know. What are they telling you? And what is how you feel telling you? And how do you want to feel? Like, what is health to me might not be the definition of health to somebody else. So first get clear with yourself. What does it mean?

Jill: I love that because it, right? Like, I used to get all kinds of comments on my Instagram with people saying, ‘Oh, well, You know, you’re fat, so you’re not healthy’ and I’m like, ‘tell me what health is.’ And there I’m like, ‘there’s no definition of health.’ And they’re like, ‘yes, there is.’ I’m like, ‘well, please give me the data.’ Nobody could ever actually say this is what healthy means. And I, what they really mean is you must be unhealthy because you’re not thin.

And I’m like, I know plenty of thin people that are unhealthy. And I know plenty of fat people that are perfectly healthy. So like, but that’s my definition of health is different than somebody else’s. And so, yeah, I love the idea of like define it for yourself and whether that includes numbers or, I mean, so you said like looking at your data, looking at how your body feels, like, what are some other indicators that people might use?

Pam: Yeah. I would say for themselves. Yeah. Do you feel well? These are just, I’m just going to throw some out there, pick up what resonates, leave what doesn’t, but I would say like, do you feel rested? Do you feel like for me, like, do I feel creative or do I feel like I have time or permission to be creative?

That to me, cause mental health is health, right? Like I don’t want to differentiate because they really go hand in hand. Like if you have chronic pain, for example, you’re probably not going to want to like pick up your paintbrush and draw, you know? But maybe you find that if you do. You can get out of your head for a little bit get out of your body and experience some joy and creativity.

Yeah. Creativity. Are you feeling nurtured in your relationships? Do you feel close to other people? Do you feel seen in your relationships? Do you feel valued? Does at least some of your work utilize your talents. You know, are you active? Like, do you even want to be active? Some people, like, don’t want to be active, and I think that’s okay. That is your prerogative to not be active. I’m not here to, like, yes, does the American Council on, I can’t even recall, like, which authority it is. I think, is it the CDC? But they said, like, you need your one, minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity per week to ward off all these diseases. Like, that’s not even that much.

So, like, Is that a good idea? Sure. Were you probably going to feel better if you walk 30 minutes a day rather than like not? Yeah. But I’m not going to stand here and tell you that you need to do that if that doesn’t matter to you.

Jill: Yeah, well and also like what if you only have time for 20 minutes a day? Is it like okay? Well, I can’t if I can’t get 30 minutes. I shouldn’t do I should do nothing. No, right. Like you do what you have time for and what brings you joy. And I feel like there are some people that are like going for a walk sounds like the worst day and, but you know, there’s other things that they would rather do, but I love, I just want to step back to how you brought mental health into this because. I think that we, we think about health as the numbers, right? The number on the scale, our cholesterol, our A1C, our blood pressure. And we, we kind of like forget that, like, first of all, like, don’t you think mental health actually has an effect on those numbers, right? And also like, if you have perfect data, you know, quote unquote data, but you’re miserable in trying to achieve that. Like. It doesn’t sound like a great life to me and I, you know, I’ve definitely not are like ortho orthorexic and they’re like obsessed with like getting their cholesterol under a certain level and so they, they’ve like sucked all the joy out of their life because they can’t, they’re like, this is what I have to do this I have to do this so I can live a long life. And I’m like, do you really want to live your whole life being like miserable about your, about your cholesterol?

Pam: There’s longevity, and there’s how many years you’re going to live, but there’s also quality of life. Like I would like to have good quality of life. And like, personally, I remember being in my twenties, I had some really disordered eating habits. I was obsessed with losing weight. And yeah, my eating habits were crazy and weird and erratic. It was like, I was. Either restricting or I was sort of going nuts and I was, I remember drinking a lot of diet soda because I was totally unsatisfied with my diet. If I did eat quote unquote bad or unhealthy foods like cake, I would, I was one of those like weird, like I’m going to have a bite and walk away and never have another bite and then walk back and have another bite. I would never like act like that. And I would basically sit down with a piece of cake and eat it, which would have been highly satisfying. And I probably would have eaten less of it, right? But I was like sneak eating, not fully enjoying it. And I, I do recall the diet soda at the, at work. And I could never figure out why I had these debilitating stomach aches by 4 or 5 o’clock. Just debilitating. And I look back and I’m like, yeah, because you were eating like salad and fruit for lunch, which is just way too much fiber for me at once. Topped off with a diet soda for dessert, like of course I had a stomach ache and I was . It was awful. And I look back and I’m like, that wasn’t health.

And did I have lower blood pressure back then? Yes, I did. Not like significantly, but yes, it was lower. Mm-Hmm, . My blood pressure is still in a healthy range. Yeah. I’m so much happier now. Yeah. I mean, that counts for a lot.

Jill: I love that. And so like, just kind of bringing it back to your original point of like defining health for yourself.

I think like taking all of those factors into account. You, you might find that like relinquishing the death grip on getting your blood pressure under a certain number, especially if you’re like, you know, it just has to be five points lower or whatever, relinquishing that death grip and like allowing yourself to work on mental health or social health or whatever can. You know, bring, like, might even change your blood pressure in the long term, but like, you know, enhances your quality of life. And I think that’s what it’s all about. Right? Like, you know, to our original, our original discussion point, like, you know, aging and wanting to feel better in your body, you know, that’s really it. Like, we just want to have quality of life. Nobody is out here going like, Okay. Well, maybe there are some, and if that’s you, then then that’s cool. But I feel like there’s not a lot of my listeners are like, Oh, I want to, you know, be a female bodybuilder you know, age 60 or whatever. Like that’s, I think most of us are just like, I just want to be able to go up and down the stairs comfortably and play with my grandkids and my kids and like, and go for a run once in a while, or, you know, be active and just not feel like.

Everything’s falling apart.

Pam: Totally, totally. Yeah. And so it’s all about like, yeah, what does it mean to you? Let’s experiment. Change one thing at a time and see where it gets you.

Jill: Okay. And I think, like, what are some signs that diet mentality might be sneaking into your experiment? Because you’re, you know, you’ve seen all of the, all of the sneaky little signs. Cause I think, like, we know that, alright, if I’m counting calories and I’m obsessed with it, or if I’m weighing myself ten times a day, like, yeah, then you might, you, if that’s you, you might be, like, seeing diet mentality, but I feel like there’s a lot more subtle signs, and maybe you could share some of those with us.

Pam: Yeah, yeah this might sound kind of woo, but I’m gonna throw it out there It’s kind of like what is the energy behind what you are doing if you can pull back if it feels a little funny if it doesn’t feel like I think we know the difference in our bodies of what feels like something one way of putting it is like what feels like a push and what feels like a pull like Let’s say a pull. I mean, I guess you could define it either way, but let’s say a pull is like I’m doing this because I want to do it versus that push of like, oh, I’ve got to. It’s like, do we have a death grip or do we have like a confident walking toward? What are you feeling when you engage in this behavior, whatever it is?

Like I noticed it in myself. Either last summer, the summer before I started thinking about signing up for a bike race. And I thought, what’s behind this? Like, am I going to, is this going to turn crazy? Cause I have this thing of like, yeah, it’s, it’s fun. I enjoy it, but there’s also that line of like, okay, but also is this compulsive. Is this going to get weird quick? Am I going to start under fueling? Am I going to? And it was like, well, let’s observe. Let’s just sort of observe what feelings are coming up when I think about this bike race. Is it excitement or is it like anxiety? And I thought, you know what? Actually I’m feeling into this and I feel more excitement than anxiety. So I’m going to go for it.

So it’s like, what is behind this decision? And I was, I was actually thinking about this a lot this week because I one of the things I never used to do before, and I’m just going to say this example in case it like resonates with anybody before I embraced intuitive eating, I was scared of bread. I thought. Gluten was bad. It was going to give me a stomach ache and it was just bad, right? And I thought, ooh, if I’m gluten free, this is just an easy way to cut out like kind of an entire food group and save a lot of calories, right? Because carbs are so bad. So I never ate, you know, so bad in air quotes. So I avoided bread. Then I got into bread. I was like, wait a minute. I have permission to eat bread. Yeah, I’m going to do it so a lot of times my breakfast includes some toast with butter. Cause I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but like, to me, there’s no point of toast without butter, right? It’s going to include, but it just has,

Jill: I mean, unless you’re putting like hummus or Nutella like that on it, but yeah, I agree.

Butter and toast go very nicely together.

Pam: Yeah. And it’s such a joy and I love it so much. Yeah. So I’ve been eating like that for a few years and just recently I was like, man, I hope this isn’t too much information for your listeners. I was like, I’m really constipated right now something has to change.

And I thought, okay, like it doesn’t have to be some weird magic bullet. It doesn’t have to be a supplement. It doesn’t, what if it’s just eating more fiber? So what if I subbed out the bread for fruits or more vegetables? Like that wouldn’t kill me. Add an orange or maybe an orange and the bread, maybe orange instead of the bread. Cause that’s like, I don’t want to. You know, so I’m like experimenting with this and I’m noticing, wow, I’m feeling better. And then it’s like, but I don’t feel deprived. I don’t feel bad about not eating my toast because I’ve replaced it with something that I and I, like we talked about before, like the goal really is to feel better and it just feels better to have a little more fiber in my diet.

So it’s sort of like what, and there’s this choosing fruit feels very different than the way it used to feel like does my plate look the same as it did, you know Five or six years ago when I still had a lot of the disordered eating Yeah, my plate looks a lot like that, but my head and my heart feel different.

Jill: Oh, that’s so I think that’s the key right is A lot of times we know how we want to eat, but when we try to eat that way, it sort of triggers that, Oh, this is how I’m supposed to be doing it. Or I, you know, I have to do this for my health or like a lot of the have to’s and a lot of the anxiety versus when you’re just giving yourself permission to eat how you want and letting your body sort of like teach you, then you might end up eating the exact same way, but it’s not forced and it’s not. It’s like, I mean, to put this in terms of running, I have, you know, I have some clients who just the joy of running runs so deep with them and any running they can do they’re happy if they can get out for 10 minutes, if they can get out for 2 hours, it’s all good. And then I have other clients who have this belief that like, it has to be at least 45 minutes to count and right. Like, otherwise I’m not doing it right and so forth. And some days they might only be able to run for 20 minutes because of their, you know, their job or whatever. And then other days they, they go out and they’re like, well, now I have to make up for it and they’re right. So they might actually end up having the same running routine as somebody else, but it’s coming from a totally different place. Cause it’s this like perfectionistic health. Like, almost like the health morality police are there, like, you’re not doing it right, right? Yes. And I think that’s another, I know we haven’t really talked about it cause it’s not necessarily the same as diet mentality. It’s more like this morality around health that people who are quote unquote healthier, however the fuck we’re going to define that, whoever, whoever out there has defined it, but that like people who are healthier are somehow morally superior to people who aren’t. And I’m like. Okay. So if I’m in perfect health, does that make me morally superior to somebody who has unfortunately contracted cancer or something like that? Like the whole thing doesn’t hold water, but no, but when it comes to, you know, our body size. And, and how we eat and like, are you prioritizing your health? And Oh, you shouldn’t do that. It’s not good for your health. Like there’s this morality piece of it that it gives me the ick. I will tell you. And also full disclosure, I have participated in that cause I was raised in that belief system that like morale that, you know, you’re a better person if you are healthy and it’s taken me years to get rid of it. Well, like once you see it, you can’t unsee it, but. I think that drives a lot of our decisions. So it’s might not even be diet mentality. It’s like this.

I don’t even know what the word

Pam: I would venture to say it’s weight bias because like you said we’re not like mad at the person who has cancer or we like think it’s cute when the skinny person is like downing skittles all day. We’re just like, right. We’re not like, oh, you’re so unhealthy. We’re like, oh, well, she can get away with it. Oh, that’s so funny. Oh, she just eats skittles. That must be nice, you know, but You wouldn’t say the same thing to someone in a bigger body. And I think people, I think if you have a reaction to somebody in a bigger body’s behaviors around food and exercise, then you need to interrogate where is that coming from?

Because I would venture, it’s not coming from you. It’s not coming from like your higher self or your best self. That’s coming from everything we’ve internalized from diet culture.

Jill: Yeah, I love that. Actually, it really is weight bias. When we look at somebody who’s, who’s, you know, again, quote, unquote, overweight and they’re not following the health rules then. Yeah, it’s definitely weight bias. Yeah. But like, let’s okay. So let’s talk about somebody who maybe was. You know, and actually, let’s just regardless of what their weight was earlier in their life, somebody who has put on weight, you know, in their forties and their fifties, and, and maybe they’re eating the same way they used to and their activity levels the same and all of a sudden, like, hormones are changing and their body is like, hello, let’s just hold on to this fat because we might need it later. And, oh, let’s move it from this place to this place..

Pam: Yeah, which is basically every woman around perimenopause and menopause, right? That’s going to happen. I mean, if it hasn’t happened to you, it probably will.

Right. Maybe not all of us, but most of us that’s it’s normal. Yeah. So what would be,

Jill: yeah, unless you have a full time onsite personal trainer and chef, like it is really hard, like it’s going to happen. So like, I feel like. You know, there may be there. I think there’s a lot of women that in midlife are suddenly like, Oh wow like my body is changing and. I need to lose weight to fix this like, that’s, what’s going to make me happy because you know, my body’s been this size most of my life and now all of a sudden it’s 20 pounds heavier or what have you. And, and there’s this belief, like all of a sudden my body feels creaky and achy and you know, you get, we all know that feeling when you like get out of bed in the morning and you stand up. And you’re just like, wow, everything hurts right now.

Pam: It’s like the inventory of like, what’s going to bug me today?

Jill: Exactly. And I think it’s like, it’s very tempting for us to say, well, if I hadn’t gained that 20 pounds, then my body would feel fine, but I don’t think that’s true.

So I’m like curious what your experience is.

Pam: Yeah. Well, I have a lot of thoughts on this. I would say, well, first of all, full disclosure, I’m not quite there yet. I’m 45. I’m like, Oh, you’re there girl. You’re there. Well, I haven’t had, I haven’t had like the, I’m definitely having like some aches and pains that weren’t there before, but overall, I kind of still feel like my old self.

Jill: Oh, that’s good. Okay. Oh, congratulations.

Pam: I’ve always been a moody bitch. That’s like consistent my whole life, but so that hasn’t changed. But here’s a few things I would say, if that is your experience. And if you’re just like, I’m not gonna listen anymore. I’m done listening because this person hasn’t been through it, that’s your prerogative.

That’s fine. But I respect that. But I would also,

Jill: you’re on the cusp of perimenopause though, and I think that’s the thing. Like this is really the time when the changes start happening and so forth.

Pam: So yes, and I, and I would also say like, I’m sure you’ve seen a doctor who like, hasn’t had migraines themselves or, you know, yeah.

Maybe you’ve seen a male ob, like, I don’t necessarily think that like you are. You know, whoever you’re listening to as to necessarily have had lived experience like, you know, as an OT, I work with people who had spinal cord injuries and knee replacements and strokes. I never had all those things. I think I was serviceable to them anyways.

So with that caveat in mind, I would say number one, if you’re feeling bad that you gained weight. For whatever reason, whether it’s because you perceive it to have interfered with your health or because you just don’t look like, like, enjoy looking in the mirror the way you used to, you’re just like, damn, I miss my old body.

I will say that’s okay. I think that, especially for those of us in these spaces who want to be like. Body neutral and who don’t and who acknowledge the influence of weight stigma and diet culture in their lives, there’s this push or this pressure internally to be like, oh, but that doesn’t affect me.

I’m above that. And you’re feeling like, oh, my God, but I’m not above it. I do want my old smaller body. And now you feel guilty. You feel guilty for wanting that. Oh, why can’t I just love myself? God damn it. Like, okay, no, do not add shame and guilt to the mix. You already feel bad. It’s okay to feel bad because I don’t think it makes you like an anti fat asshole. I think it just as a symptom of living in a weight centric diet culture space. That’s where we live. This is so, so give yourself space to feel bad. It’s okay.

And maybe, maybe you want to grieve. That old body that you had. Acknowledge that you don’t have it anymore. Feel all the feelings. I don’t think it is healthy to go, Oh, there’s no point of being sad about that. What’s next? I gotta fix that. I gotta just feel better.

No. It’s really hard to feel better if you don’t let that sad feeling, if you don’t give it some air. Let yourself feel sad. Yeah. Yeah, and if you’re like, oh shit, but I’m like dragging through every day. I feel super sad This is a little like I don’t know hack or trick or something to try give yourself space to feel absolutely as sad as you want to feel for a certain time each day If you can do that go hey from 4 to 4:30 that’s my sad time That’s my like melancholy listening to Nick Drake time like journaling whatever But other than that, I’m going to try to do my best to push through, but I have that sacred time to just feel as sad as I want to feel.

So feel your sadness. And then, number two you have a choice. If you want to still try to lose weight, okay. Like, you have body autonomy. You can do that. But I would first ask yourself, what am I giving up in order to do that?

First of all, first of all, our bodies are wired to gain some weight. And we do gain weight in specific spaces, places for protective reasons.

I, Don’t quote me on this. I don’t have like the research at my fingertips, but I’ve read that like there are biological reasons why we store fat in our abdomens. It’s not necessarily, yes, visceral fat is known to be associated with cardiometabolic disease, but it can be protective, I think, against some types of like ovarian cancers.

Not totally sure about that, but I think I heard that. Okay. So and, but all the mechanisms that we use to try to lose weight often just leave us feeling like under fueled. They make it hard to enjoy life, they make it hard to go to parties, and like, let’s face it, everything we do that’s social, and we know that being with friends is good for our mental health, there’s study upon study that shows that we don’t need studies. We know that we feel good when we feel more connected. And most social events revolve around food.

So if you have hang ups about food when you go to social events, that’s going to interfere with your ability to fully be present at the event. So it’s really up to you. What are you willing to sacrifice for the body you think you want?

And also, and then also at the same time going, wait a minute. Is it that the, is it the body I want or is it the feeling that I think I’m gonna have when I have that body that I want? Maybe ask yourself, did I really feel better in my previous thin body? Did I? Or did I also back then never think it was good enough?

Jill: Exactly. I mean, how many of us go back and say, oh, I wish I had like realized How good I looked, you know, 50 pounds ago, instead of hating that body. And so, is it possible that like, you could just stop hating the body you have right now? Because you know that like, you know, if it changes again, you’re gonna be like, even madder, you know?

So, yes. And I also, like, I also wonder, like, we blame so much of how we physically feel in our body on our weight. And I think like, yeah, you know, losing 50 pounds might take a little bit of the pressure off of your knees or whatever so like, yes, there may be a little bit of like structural relief that comes with weight loss.

I believe that like most of how we feel in our bodies is driven by you know how we’re taking care of our body and what we think about our body. And so, you know, if you’re if you’re focused in on hating your body And blaming it for everything like yeah, you’re gonna notice every little creak and every ache and pain Because you’re looking for it. You’re looking for evidence that your body has betrayed you.

Pam: Totally. You find what you look at, right? What you focus on expands. And so you know, I think it’s important to remember that and again, like we’ve been indoctrinated this idea that like thinner equals healthier, but weight is not a behavior.

Actual behaviors are behaviors. Those include. Eating fruits and vegetables. Those include avoiding or cutting down on alcohol, sleeping well, moving. You can do all of those things and still not lose weight, but chances are your health will be better. Whether that means your lab values or just how you feel in your body. Like you mentioned before, you don’t drink. I stopped drinking also and it’s not necessarily drink.

Jill: I just can’t drink wine anymore. Yeah. I just, I’m like, Oh, I’d red wine. It’s off the table for me. Yeah. But I love red wine. And I love looking at other people drinking red wine. And I, but I had to come to like, you know, I had to have like a come to Jesus moment of like, well, you can keep drinking half a bottle of red wine or you can sleep.

Pam: Right. And that’s, that was my, that’s exactly where I’m at. Like, I don’t, I value my sleep more than I value feeling a little more emboldened at a party. I value feeling clear headed at a social gathering than, than not. Like, I just, I don’t even feel bad anymore when I see other people drinking. Like, yeah, there’s that pain of like, oh, I kind of want that.

And then I’m like, no, you know what I really want? Is to feel good and have something in a fun glass. So, you know what I do? I order like a soda water with a splash of grapefruit and some, and as many cherries as they’ll give me, cause I’m like 12 in my heart. And that’s what I want. I want that festive drink. I want to be holding a drink. I don’t actually care about the alcohol. That’s what I want. I just want to feel good and I want to sleep well. And so like, I don’t even miss drinking. Cause I know I feel better. Yeah, without it, but okay, but I feel like we got off the topic. Are we, how did, where did we go?

Well, how did we get back?

Jill: I’ve completely lost the thread, but I, I’m with you on the putting like the, you know, the club soda and like the whatever, like in the fancy glass, because honestly, like holding the wine glass is half of the experience of drinking the wine. And honestly, yeah like drinking a little bit of seltzer or something like that is, is. You know, it’s actually pretty, it’s pretty satisfying, right? Especially if you’re thinking like I got to get up the next morning and I don’t want to be tired and cranky and I want to be hydrated. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you feel like, like you hit, I feel like I hit 40 and suddenly like being hydrated became such a priority cause I’m like, it’s such a simple, easy thing to do. To just drink extra water and like, it’s like, it’s free for the most part and, and everything and I just feel so much better when I’m hydrated and I’m like, I look back, I wish 25 year old me could see what my priorities are now, like getting to bed on time and sleep hygiene and being hydrated. It is. I don’t know. It is like not sexy, but it feels really good.

Pam: I’m right there with you. You know, it’s funny about the water drinking. I used to be super on top of my water. And I looking back, I’m like, I think a lot of that was diet culture. It was like, Oh, you’re hungry. Drink 25 ounces of water. Oh, you’re hungry. Just you’re probably dehydrated. And now, now I’m like, no, if I’m hungry, I’m I’m hungry. If I need food, then I don’t need water. I need food, right? But so I cut back on my water drinking recently, partly out of laziness and partly out of like, just going, Is this legit? Or is this diet culture? And what I’m, like I mentioned before, I’m kind of constipated. I’m like, let’s bring the water back in. And see how you feel now. I’m like, okay, I do need all, I actually do need all that water. And it has nothing to do with weight, weight loss, anything like that. It’s back to, I just want to feel good.

Jill: Yeah. And I, it’s so funny you say that, but the, first of all, that’s like the true level of experimentation, right?

Is like, I know how I feel when I’m doing it this way. Let’s take this out and see what happens. And now, you know, and you’re going to put it back in. But it is. I’ll tell you a funny story. So years ago, Oh gosh, I was probably like 23, 24. I was really young and I was on a diet of course. And it was this, it was like this weight loss group where we weighed in once a week. And so what I would do the day of the weigh in is I would drink only water, like I would have no food and weigh in was at like six o’clock at night. I would have no food all day and I would just drink water. And one day I was like, I’m going to see if I can drink two gallons of water today cause I was just peeing it and peeing it.

I know. And then I started peeing blood because, Hey, you actually can drink too much or you can drink too much water. You really can. And like, FYI, for anybody who’s out there, like thinking I’m going to over hydrate myself two gallons of water a day. I was peeing blood. I was like, well, that. Didn’t work out the way I expected.

And so like, that taught me a really fast lesson of like, you can, there can be too much water, but there’s also like, I’m like, okay, I’m just going to find my sweet spot, but you’re right like, I feel like that was diet culture. Telling me like, all you can drink is water and and then you can, and then I would go and eat this like huge meal afterwards because, and then I would like fall asleep on the couch because I was like in a total food coma.

It was like such a, it was like such a stressful way to live and I lost so much weight. And then. You know, I was like, I can’t maintain this. And so, you know, Oh, and then you feel so terrible when you gain it back. And so like, yeah. Yeah. But I’ll tell you, yeah, you’re, you are not wrong. There is, it is possible to drink too much water and I, it is very diet culture related because like, you know, I’ve, I might have my mom’s voice in my head because I would, sometimes I’d be like you know, Oh, I’m hungry. And it’s time to go to bed. And she’d be like, drink some water. And I’m like, well, I would drink some water and then I’d have to get up and pee in the middle of the night. So it is, Oh,

Pam: I mean, I would say this whole like, Oh, ignore what your body wants. Oh, you’re hungry drink water. Oh, you want a crunchy chip? No. Have an apple, have a carrot. This is all, I feel like part of a bigger, a bigger trend of separating us from our true nature and what we truly want and like being powerful people and I feel like this time in our life in a way, it’s kind of cool that like this weight gain that our society is telling us is no bueno is coming at this point in our lives where I feel like most of us have lived enough to go fuck that I am done with the people pleasing I am done worrying more about how I’m perceived than how I’m actually living my own life and my like word for 2024 is bad bitch. Okay. It’s two words, but I’m like today I had to send an email to somebody work related and I started to get really stressed out about how I should respond and I was on the verge of getting up. My husband and I both work from home. I was on the verge of getting up and being like. What do I do? I’m, I don’t, I don’t know. Are they going to, is this too much to ask? Is this, and I thought, no, Pam, what would a bad bitch do? A bad bitch would say what she wanted in plain language and then let them come back to me and say, yeah, sure. Or, or that doesn’t work for us and go from there.

And I’m like I want to step into my bad bitch era, and I feel like the intuitive eating sort of preceded that, because we know what we want based on, like, emotions, and I feel like this patriarchal, patriarch, the patriarchy is telling us that, like, emotions are stupid, but emotions are full of wisdom, and When you are checking with your body multiple times a day to figure out what should I eat? What would make me feel good? What am I hungry for? How much should I eat? When should I eat? Not like what is my noom telling me to eat? What is intermittent fasting telling me when I can eat again? What do I want? You’re practicing on like a micro level, tuning into yourself and getting more and more experience with, wait a minute, what do I want here? What is this bad bitch inside of me? Actually want yeah, and that’s really important.

Jill: I love this. Let’s just let’s just call it bad bitch energy like there’s big dick energy and there’s bad bitch energy and I think that is like I feel like that’s a whole program you should teach, the bad bitch’s approach to intuitive eating.

Pam: That’s 2025. I gotta like really embody my bad bitch in 2024. 2025. Find me at bad bitch. Actually, do not go to badbitch. com. You will probably get a virus.

Jill: I love that bad bitch energy because it really is like, Hey, I don’t care what other people are telling me to do like what works best for me right now in this moment. And you know, sometimes it might be saying like, I know this is going to make me feel terrible tomorrow morning and I’m going to do it anyway. Cause I, cause of reasons. Right. And other times it’s like. I know everybody tells me that I should do this, but I know it doesn’t feel good.

So I’m not going to do this thing. Right. So I love it.

Pam: Yeah. Yeah. And just on cost benefit analysis, like, is this worth it? Yeah. Is, is being thinner, is it really worth it?

Jill: Yeah. It, I mean, I feel like some people for some people, maybe it is. But I think for most of it, the effort that it takes to maintain our body at a certain size is like, it’s just, not all of us are meant to be really, really thin and like, once we kind of give ourselves permission to just eat, you know, how, how it feels good in our body and let our body decide what size it wants to be I think that’s. You know, and then like, we don’t need to be like, Oh, I should, I should weigh, you know, whatever my doctor tells me away. Like, no, fuck that. Like, create the body that feels good to you through whatever means. It doesn’t drive you crazy, right?

Pam: I love that. I love that. And I would also say like an easy, like kind of a low hanging fruit for most people.

When you look back to the question of what do you do, you’ve been a stable weight your whole life. Now you’re perimenopausal or menopausal. Things have shifted. Now what I would say you know, if your budget will allow it, go shopping, buy clothes that fit you. You know, you’re not supposed to fit into the clothes it’s the other way around. Something as simple as. A waistband not digging into you and like making you feel like something’s wrong with you. That’s so, that’s a simple fix. Something is wrong with the pants if the waistline is digging into you, get new pants.

Jill: Yes, exactly. And you know what? It is perfectly okay to wear yoga pants all day long.

Pam: And if you go to like an actual job, I think, do you know Beta brand? I don’t work for Beta brand.

Jill: I’ve never purchased from them, but I, I stock them a little bit. Yeah.

Pam: Those, I will say though, I, my friend gave me hand me downs of the petite kind cause I’m five feet tall and like they were still too long on me. I would have had to get them hemmed, but, oh, that’s, but they were on, I loved it. I was so excited.

Jill: I was like, Oh, I just, you project a much taller persona.

Pam: I’m already in my bad bitch era.

Jill: You are, right. I would have put you in at least five, nine.

Pam: You just made my day. That’s awesome. But like, honestly. When it comes to like, how do you want to feel good?

Like doing things like this, this makes me feel good. This is not athletic, but this feels good. You can do stuff like this. Like I just did stand up comedy for the first time on Sunday night. I took a class and we had a show. It was fucking amazing. And just like getting out of my comfort zone. Yes. It was terrifying like, will they think I’m funny? Like, will they not? I’m going to find out. Thankfully they did, but like that was so empowering. Just, you can do empowering shit. That’s not athletic.

Jill: Yeah. Oh, I love that because it, whatever it is, like, if it taps into that, that part of you that thinks, oh, I shouldn’t be doing this or like, this isn’t, this isn’t for me, but I still want to do it like, whether it’s signing up for a half marathon or taking stand up comedy lessons, like, if it lights up that piece of you. That just is like, wait, maybe I could do this. That like kind of, I don’t know, like lights up the bad bitch inside you. I think, Oh gosh, I love that so much. And really like, and that builds your mental health and it builds your confidence.

And I think a lot of times when we feel confident, we’re less focused on like aches and pains and this and that going on with our body. And we’re like, Oh, this is just my body. Let’s go. Let’s rock and roll.

Pam: Yep. Totally. Totally. And the other thing I would say, I mean, if you are dealing with aches and pains, like carve out some time, like prioritize yourself, go see a PT, see what you can do. There’s help for you. Try swimming. I freaking love swimming. Swimming is almost, I mean, I’m going to be like. Oh, swimming is the answer to everything that ails you, but it could be worth trying if you don’t hate it or you know how to swim. Oh, and like you said, before you said, what can you do that makes you not like, where you’re not hating your body?

I think it’s really important to acknowledge that even just not hating your body can be super helpful. Like the goal doesn’t have to be loving your body. If, if that just feels out of reach, fine. Don’t, don’t give yourself another thing to beat yourself up about like, Oh my God, I still don’t love my body. That’s okay. Yeah. It’s like kind of impossible to love your body in America in 2023, you know, as a woman,

Jill: but I love that. Like, let’s just focus on just not actively hating the body, like. I mean, there’s plenty of people in the world that I don’t actively hate, but I wouldn’t say I love them. They’re just out there. They’re just people, right? Like just one way or another. That’s right. Like people that I interact with, like, like the person that delivers my mail, I’m sure that, that they are a lovely person. I, I definitely don’t hate them. I definitely don’t love them. Sometimes they forget to deliver the mail, you know, but like most of the time they’re very reliable and I’m like, okay, I have a very neutral relationship with that person.

And I feel like, you know, we can,

Pam: can your body be your mail person, basically. Can that be the title of this episode? Let your body be your mail delivery person.

Jill: I love this. Yeah, I think that would be terrible for SEO, but very good for the curiosity factor. So we might just have to do that. I love that.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. What, where can people find you? Cause I know that you are many different places. So give us all the information.

Pam: Thanks. Best place is pam-moore.com. And if you go there and you’re like, Oh, what do I do next? Sign up for my newsletter. I have a newsletter called Real Nourished. I send it every other week and I give what I hope are like insightful, fun stories about, you know, intuitive eating and self compassion and and I’m most active on LinkedIn when it comes to social media.

If You’re looking for another podcast to add to your repertoire. My podcast is called Real Fit. Jill was a guest. It was episode 46. We had so much fun. But yeah, the podcast, LinkedIn, and the website are the best places to find me.

Jill: Perfect. Okay. And we will have all those links in the show notes. Thank you again for joining me today. This has been a delightful conversation. I really, I wish you lived on the East coast or I wish I lived in like in Colorado because I think we would have a lot of fun hanging out together. So I would definitely stand up.

Pam: Yeah. Oh, thanks. I will, you know, if you’re in Colorado, I think there, I think tentatively we’ve got another show on the calendar for February 1st. All right. Yeah. Like I, I came into it like, Oh, maybe I’ll never do it. I’ll just try it. But I’m like, Oh, I am definitely doing this again like I need this in my life. So I’ll be doing me. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do like a national tour. I’ll come to Philly.

Jill: Maybe you could like YouTube it. And like, you could have like a whole separate YouTube channel of just your comedy stylings.

Pam: I have it on YouTube, but it’s unlisted. It’s unlisted because I am like a still a little bit like What if in a professional capacity, you know, I work with like some corporate clients as a writer Like I’m an intuitive intuitive eating coach, but i’m also a writer. What if some of my corporate clients are like, oh talking about your like vagina and cursing does not align with our brand. So I haven’t fully put it out there yet. I’m still deciding.

Jill: Well, I will tell you, friends that are listening, if you want to know if we shared the link to Pam’s comedy session, you will have to go to the show notes to find out cause I, it’ll be a surprise. It’ll be a surprise. I love that. Oh my gosh. All right.

Well, thank you so much for joining for joining all of us, me and all of our listeners. And yeah, we’ll talk soon.

Pam: Thank you, Jill. It was a blast.

Jill: Real quick before you go! If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out Up and Running. It’s a thirty-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to notyouraverageunner.com/upandrunning to find out when the next class starts. I’d love to be a part of your journey.