Life's too short to count almonds (Meg & Susan)

Welcome to our podcast! Who are we and why did we call our podcast 'Life's too short to count almonds'?

Social media is not going anywhere and can be a useful way to build community, feel connected, get new and fun ideas, but it is also a cesspool of bad nutrition advice, predatory marketing and impossible beauty ideals. Today we discuss what to watch out for, and ways to curate your feed to create a supportive feed that encourages body trust, connection and food freedom. Couple of our favourite instagram pages to get you started on improving your metaverse algorithm- by no means a definitive list! beauty_redefined your.latina.nutritionist fionawiller feelgooddietitian thenutritiontea untrapped_au shreen_beyoubefree

This week we chat about the incredible virtual conference 'Bodytalks; FEASTival of Anti-diet Ideas' that our friend and colleague, Clinical Psychologist Louise Adams is putting on in May. Having catered for Louise's 'Untrapped Program' retreats. Louise asked us to 'cater' for this virtual event. So how would we cater for people we don't know, across countries, timezones and seasons, with widely varying preferences, budgets, food values and health conditions? Tune in and find out!

We went and saw a comedian this week, ended up in the front row and Susan got picked on. #sorrysusan When asked, "What do you do?", her first response cannot be repeated without checking the 'explicit content' box on the podcast. So in this episode we answer the question what is a non-diet dietitian? Talk a bit about what we do we do with clients and why is it a tricky concept for people to get their head around?

Meg made Susan cry by making her watch the Dove 'Cost of Beauty' video. You can watch it too if you're up to it - heads up, it's very emotive and challenging so give it a miss if that's not going to be helpful for you right now. 

So we talk about the video and a bit about protecting our kids from toxic messages on social media. We discuss how even though not everyone who diets, or consumes diet culture messages, will develop an eating disorder that doesn't mean that dieting doesn't have a significant cost.

If you asked Meg or Susan 'what is the one thing that helps you with managing food/feeding the family/saving money on food etc' we would both answer 'meal planning'. Sometimes people are surprised that we are such supporters of meal planning because for many people, meal planning has always been a way of 'sticking to the diet' or controlling and limiting food intake. In today's episode we get quite distracted talking about things we have cooked, but also talk about meal planning 'the non-diet way'. How can we use meal planning as self care and keep it in it's place as a support not a straightjacket?

Within a week of #blueygate the producers of the episode that created the social media storm had removed the 45 seconds from the beginning of the episode #winning! So, these storms can lead to great change...but there was a lot of belittling, abuse and dismissing of people who spoke out. So do we have an obligation to speak out? How can we protect our own health and wellbeing and contribute to change? This episode was recorded before the Bluey episode was updated but it's not really about Bluey anyway.

Our eating is often impacted by those around us. Sometimes this is really helpful as it can help us explore new or different food, eat more regularly than we might or help us develop our skills of 'making do'. But quite often, the impact isn't so helpful. 

In this episode we chat about 'the space between' parent's and children's eating behaviour, helpful and unhelpful impacts and get really distracted talking about food we've cooked and eaten recently and an update on Meg's #recipetinchallenge 

This week we’re talking about pleasure. Pleasure gets a bad name in food and nutrition. Pleasure is associated with “bad” or forbidden foods.

However we know that when people have a peaceful a relationship with food and mostly eat foods they enjoy their nutritional intake is richer and more varied.  

Also note the fancy dietetic terms ‘alimentary atresia’ and ‘sensory specific satiety’. Also listen out for Meg’s tummy rumbles!

Meal Planning link to book https://www.megandsusan.co/offers/joKcNMHu/checkout

Unfortunately Diet Culture gets it's tentacles in soooooo early. Today we chat about an, unfortunately not isolated, incident when a health professional gives restrictive diet advice to a toddler. As I'm sure you can imagine, we were unimpressed and ready to rant, and reminded of other similar stories we have heard over our years working in this space. In this instances we have been aware of, there have been resources and grounding to identify the advice as wrong and harmful, ignore it and move on, but this won't always be the case. We chat about the risks of advice based on weight and what we can do instead.

https://www.megandsusan.co/offers/joKcNMHu/checkout

On this episode of Life's Too Short to Count Almonds, we answer a question from a listener this week about weight loss and diet culture.  We explore the harmful effects of diet culture and it's obsession with weight loss and delve into the concept of mindfulness as a tool to help break free from the pressures of diet culture.  

We know that triggers such as a change in seasons or fitting into old clothes can be very disruptive and make it difficult to break free from harmful beliefs fuelled by diet culture but the good news is that practicing skills and building strength over time can help to weather the storm of diet culture.

Join our Meal-Planning the Non-Diet Way Challenge before 22 July here.

[00:00:45] Cooked veggies and lamb: traditional and delicious.

[00:04:56] Catering recipes available on our website.

[00:07:53] "Success not measured by weight - relationships important."

[00:09:52] Lose weight without diet culture possible? Maybe.

[00:15:22] Mindfulness not for future goals, red flag.

[00:16:45] Body image and health choices complexities.

[00:22:18] Diverse sources will help resist pressure, impulses.

[00:24:19] Weight loss pursuit harms well-being, joy helps.

On today's episode we chat about a couple of things we have seen on social media recently that have caused us to have some 'thoughts'. Both were concerning diet culture messages directed at or out of the mouths of preschool aged kids. 

Missing both an understanding of developmental stages and capacity for kids to understand nuanced and abstract nutrition concepts, and of the harms of diet culture messages is a recipe for harm, confusion and disordered eating. 

Resources mentioned include, The Curious Nutritionist, Sunnyside up nutrition and Foost. 

We went, we ate, we reflected. We saw Nagi Maehashi (aka Recipetin Eats) live! 

We were please to see a love of food without an obvious side of diet culture and Meg was so hungry that she ate a chip made of of bugs! 

A pretty light and fluffy podcast his week we hope you enjoy it! 

Join us today for a quick mid school holiday chat.

As always we share the best thing we ate this week and discuss a few strategies for dodging diet culture bullets from online 'influencers'.

If you don't yet have it, and need some more help reducing your exposure to unhelpful information online, check out our guide for 'detoxing your metaverse'

Shoutouts to http://funkyfood.com.au and https://www.recipetineats.com/ and Megs country trip lunch https://www.grazewillowtree.com.au/restaurant/

Excellent podcast https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/kris-kneen-burgeoning-body-fat-acceptance-size-life/102404190

AI is coming and being used in a huge range of online programs, from course development, to podcast support and even meal planning. We've had a bit of a play with a few AI products and unfortunately, there is a huge risk of AI simply proliferating more and more diet culture saturated information.

Sign up to our mailing list for special offers and first access to our upcoming course.  

"Have a delicious day" lol

"Hi Meg and Susan,....I've dieted for so long I don't know what I like. I'm confused I just want to eat normally...."

This was a question we received from a listener and it's a good one and one we have certainly heard in the past. Dieting and diet culture has made food and eating so hard, we hope our chat helps make it a little easier.

It has become so hard to confidently navigate our food choices and eating behaviour because we live in a culture that breeds insecurity, doubt and and disempowers.  

This is the whole reason we have teamed up and developed our first online course! We want to help you build resilience, reclaim certainty and know how to stop diet culture from stealing your confidence in feeding yourself and your family. 

We're so excited to announce that after months of planning and development we are just about ready to launch our course and have opened the waitlist! 

It's a short course, 4 models over 4 weeks each with a range of video lessons, skills training and resources as well as a weekly live zoom Q&A session. 

Click here to learn more and join the waitlist to get 20% off the course price when doors open next week. 

We're getting personal today and sharing our own food and body stories. While they have definitely been more straight forward than many, we've had our ups and downs, missteps and learnings along the way.

We firmly believe that our past experiences shape our present day thoughts, feelings and behaviours so it's important to understand and appreciate where we have come from to help move forward in the direction that we want our food and body story to go in the future.

Doors to our first ever online course are now open! Click here to find out more and use the code 'NDWPOD" to get 20% off the full price.

Just a quick catch up, planning to just tell you what we're eating but stumbled on a topic that comes up for us with clients quite often.

Enjoy! We'll be back September 7 to kick off Season 2.

Don't forger to sign up to our mailing list at www.megandsusan.co 

After a break to focus on our first course, 'The Non-Diet Way' fundamentals, we are back!

We have loved getting to know some listeners in person as they joined our course and we will be launching again ASAP.

In the meantime we have also been working hard developing a Webinar for The Butterfly foundation's as part of their Body Kind Families initiative. It is free and we'd love you to join us, you can register here.

Here is the article we mention about the risks inherent in nutrition education if you're interested in that and the "clean up your metaverse" guide. 

We're glad to be back, hit us us with any questions or comments via our social media.

The was recorded when we were still having all the feels about The Matilda's World cup campaign. We have a chat about the shifting focus from weight as a measure of performance or progress, encouraging athletes to connect to and trust their bodies.

The risks of eating disorders hiding in plain site among elite athletes, 'state not weight' philosophies and fuelling for the work athletes are doing.

Sign up for our FREE 'Diet Culture Spring Clean' Webinar here.  

And see the giant cabbage at our instagram! 

In this episode we discuss a new diet book. Strap in it's a long one.

The author is doing the publicity tour and ended up on a podcast that we usually love...we did not love.

It was a mixed bag but mostly the same only story - big claims, kernels of truth and a whole lot of weight bias. Join us to discuss the good, the 'meh', and the rage inducing.

Mentioned in the podcast - Dr Joshua Wolrich's book " Food isn't Medicine' and Maintenance Phase podcast

Restaurant Meg had her 'best thing' at was Hello Auntie in Marrickville.

Our FREE Webinar 'Diet Culture Spring Clean' registration page.

In today's episode we answer a listener question we received about supporting a 'fussy' teen to expand their horizons.

Download our 'Make Friends with Salad' salad builder here.

Ellyn Satter Institute resources.

Our webinar Diet Culture Spring Clean is on Thursday October 5, 730pm AEDT sign up here

Doors are open to The Non Diet Way you can sign up here

Doors to our course 'The Non-Diet Way' Are OPEN! Click here to learn more and sign up.

For the final time this year we are running our 4 week Non-Diet Way Fundamentals course and we'd love you to join us.

Have a listen, why did we make this course and what's it all about.

And, there's still time to join our FREE 'Diet Culture Spring Clean' webinar which is at 7:30 TONIGHT!

Lovedale Smokehouse Brisket slow cooking class information here. 

We've had a number of conversations recently with people who are worried about their kids bodies. It happens at this time of year every year and we think we might know why. With school holidays often leading to inconsistent eating, more reliance on takeaway, drive through or convenience options and less movement we can feel 'bleugh', a bit sluggish, a bit lethargic, just not quite right.  At the same time the weather is warming up so we are seeing more of our body than we are used to.  Also this does seem to be a time of rapid growth for some of our kids who haven't finished growing yet.  Put all these ingredients together in a culture that fears weight gain, at the time that diet ads are ramping up and its a perfect storm.  Join us for a chat and some strategies for getting through this time.

Quarterdeck Narooma https://merivale.com/venues/quarterdeck-narooma/

Tiger Milk Dressing https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/browse-all/ceviche-classico-with-leche-de-tigre-14188

Selfcare is not all bathtubs and pedicures.

In fact, they are pretty useless or inaccessible sometimes in moments of struggle. Today we chat about some of the unsung 'selfcare heroes'. From things we use or find helpful to things we have learned from clients and the nuances of things like exercise and food as self care.

Self Compassion guided practices we mention are here.

As always, get in contact via our social media if you have any questions or comments. And we'd love you to leave a rating or review if you like what we're doing here. 

We are so excited for this one. In this week's podcast we have special guest Alicia Edge. Alicia is an Advanced Sports Dietitian, Owner of Compeat Performance and The Compete Academy and all around amazing dietitian for athletes of all levels from weekend warrior to The Matlidas.

We've been fan's of Alicia's for years but her profile really took off when she posted a potentially controversial instagram post explaining how and why the no longer do regular body composition measure including weight. We chat about that, the problem with 'everybody knows' beliefs about body composition and performance and about Alicia's own transition from a prescriptive, weight and body composition focused sports dietitian to one with an eating disorder informed, behaviour focussed, whole person approach to sports performance and wellbeing.

You can find Alicia's instagram post here, her own podcast here and, for dietitians listening, you may be interested in The Compeat Academy.

And here is the recipe for Alicia's 'best thing I ate this week'. Vietnamese Caramelised Pork Bowls, YUM!! 

Today we chat about an all too common phenomenon, when a strong weight-focus by family members distracts from clearly seeing the actual situation with someone's health and wellbeing.

Both Susan and I have had clients with siblings who are lower weight than them, and despite our clients objectively having better physical, nutritional, social and mental health than the thinner sibling they are constantly compared to the sibling in a negative light with the thinner (but clearly less well) sibling being held up as an example. It is weight stigma in action.

So why does this happen and what can we do about it?

We also go on a lot of tangents.

https://julieduffydillon.com/podcasts/5-help-my-daughter-who-is-fat-like-me/

https://youtu.be/H89QQfXtc-k?si=LjjW8nhG2wnz5SCR

Total we talk to Non-Diet, fat positive dietitian Nina Mills. Nina is both a fantastic clinical dietitian but also founded 'Butter Digital' to help other non-diet, weight inclusive health professionals to build their website and online brand.

We chat a bit about her clinical work especially with client who experience Binge Eating Disorder and the things that commonly co-present with BED such as PCOS, anxiety, chronic dieting and weight cycling. WE also discuss how  sometimes people aren't ready for non-diet ideas and philosophies and how we can better spend our time to get the non-diet message out there to the people who want it and are ready to hear.

We also talk about the importance of having your website clearly aligned with your non-diet values and what Nina is doing to help more dietitians get their website up and running with a low cost DIY kit. Join the waiting list here.

Check out Nina's work on instagram or her Butter Digital website . 

Total we talk to School teacher and nutritionist Kelly Fullerton aka 'The Curious Nutritionist'.

Kelly is an experienced primary teacher who has completed further training in nutrition and feeding therapy. She has combined her education and nutrition knowledge to cultivate curious conversations about food with school communities.

Kelly advocates for positive and developmentally appropriate learning experiences about food. She has worked with various community stakeholders in Australia and abroad - schools and other organisations to advise on safe approaches to nutrition education, create curriculum resources as well as teacher and health professional support materials and professional learning. 

We chat about Kelly journey from typical diet culture to becoming a non-diet advocate and educator and she gives us some great ideas for advocating for our kids in a productive and constructive way that supports teachers.

Resources Kelly mentioned for getting creative in nutrition education 

https://phenomenom.com.au/

https://research.csiro.au/taste-and-learn/

https://www.butterflybodybright.org.au/

This is the link for the little song we mentioned, it's lovely. 

We started working together, doing this podcast and building courses to have a greater impact in the eating disorder space. We love our one on one work, but it's so limited and we want to reach more people.

Recently, Meg has had the opportunity to do this having been invited to get in front 195 primary and high school students in one day running 3 workshops for the first time since 2019.

So what has change? Why is a dietitian mostly talking about body image rather than food and nutrition and how on earth do you manage sessions with 75 students aged 12-17 in the same group??? Great questions. 

Listen to find out. 

The Try Guys photoshop challenge youtube video

This is the recipe Susan mentioned which looks delicious. 

if you want to book us for school workshops or events, get in contact via our speaking page. 

Today we chat about the activities and tasks done in schools that our clients have identified as triggering, reinforcing or fanning the flames of their eating disorders.

We talk about why we bang on about safe nutrition education, where the risks lie, what to look out for and what to do instead.

We have also developed a resource for teachers so head to our freebies page to download and share with the teachers in your life!

This is the recipe for the best thing Meg ate this week. Enjoy!

Today's episode is a bit different. Mostly a good excuse for Meg to pick CJs brains about homesteading and chicken keeping.

We're not tackling a lot of diet culture issues but having a fun, light hearted chat about food, farming, homesteading and backyard chicken keeping with Farmer CJ Steedman.

We chat about different ways to attend to your own food values and priorities, decision making around animal welfare, animals as food and food producers, and some of the wonderful challenges and benefits of growing your own food.

This was a super fun episode to record and if you want to hear more from CJ or even take the leap to backyard chicken keeping check out CJ's Facebook page, instagram or have a listen to her podcast 'Not The Farmer's Wife'.

Happy Christmas!

Today we are chatting Christmas food. Mostly just talking about what we love and how we celebrate with food at this time of year. We also touch on some of the food things we know are challenging for lots of people at this time of year.

Things we mention...

This beautiful podcast episode with singer song writer Gregory Porter. We generally love this podcast but some episodes unfortunately get a bit diet-y and includes weight talk, this episode if great though. Season 1 doesn't have as much but tread carefully if this is something that is not good for you.

Christmas crack recipe! Amazing, enjoy.

Cassata recipe that looks as close to Meg's mum's one as we could find.

If you're not on our mailing list sign up here to get our 12 days of Christmas special emails starting Christmas Day.

We're back for 2024!

Thanks for joining us, we hope you have had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year. Apologies for the audio glitch at about the 30 minute mark, we get it sorted so please stick with it.

Today we chat about a bit about exercise particularly about the trickiness of The New Year period as diet culture get's it's tendrils in to advertising, conversation and choices. 

We also talk about the best food we've eaten since our last podcast. We have a little series in January where we talk to our favourite Australian non-diet, weight inclusive personal trainers and exercise physiologists so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

This is the salad that was one of Meg's favourite things. 

And the Banh Mi place Susan was trying to remember was https://mylunchncafe.com.au in Osborne Park WA. 

*******Movement Mini Series********

Welcome to the first episode in our Movement Mini Series. It's peak 'New Year New You' / New Year's Resolution Season and the diet culture vultures are out in force. So we thought it the perfect time to provide another perspective.

In this series we speak with 5 wonderful Australian Fitness Professionals to provide some support in navigating movement.

Today, it's Shelley Lask, Personal Trainer and founder of Body Positive Health and Fitness. We chat about her path to becoming a Personal Trainer, the challenges of an industry that so often reinforces the harmful and wrong messages that the sole purpose of exercise to change physical appearance to the detriment of clients and trainers alike.

Find out more about Shelley's online 'Daily Gentle Movement Break" group program here.

*******Movement Mini Series********

Welcome to our Movement Mini Series. It's peak 'New Year New You' / New Year's Resolution Season and the diet culture vultures are out in force. So we thought it the perfect time to provide another perspective.

In this series we speak with 5 wonderful Australian Fitness Professionals to provide some support in navigating movement.

Today it's Exercise Physiologist Ellen Masson, founder of Your Movement Space. Ellen is passionate about helping people build (or rebuild) a positive relationship with exercise. Ellen shares about their background that led them to find themself in the fitness industry, the harm that was done to them by that environment and how they were able to find support and healing which now drives them to 'be that person' for others. 

Ellen practices in person at Flourish in Kirribilli, online and has their own podcast 'Into the Red Zone'.

*******Movement Mini Series********

Welcome to the third episode in our Movement Mini Series. It's peak 'New Year New You' / New Year's Resolution Season and the diet culture vultures are out in force. So we thought it the perfect time to provide another perspective.

In this series we speak with 5 wonderful Australian Fitness Professionals to provide some support in navigating movement.

Today we speak with Chloe Sutton, Personal Trainer and Founder of The Selfcare Sisterhood. We hear about the positive impact the Movement made on Chloe's Chronic Health Conditions and how that led her to a career in the fitness industry. We touch on the barriers to practicing in a weight inclusive way, the harms done in the fitness industry, and the limited knowledge that most personal trainers have once they get their certification. Chloe is passionate about not staying 'surface level' with body positivity but continuing to dig and learn (and unlearn) the roots of fatphobia and how it relates to other forms of oppression such as racism.

*******Movement Mini Series********

Welcome to the fourth episode in our Movement Mini Series.

It's peak 'New Year New You' / New Year's Resolution Season and the diet culture vultures are out in force. So we thought it the perfect time to provide another perspective.

In this series we speak with 5 wonderful Australian Fitness Professionals to provide some support in navigating movement.

Today we speak with Shreen El Masry. Shreen is a body positive writer, personal trainer and intuitive eating counsellor dedicated to helping you find body peace, food freedom and a fun relationship with exercise. We chat about Shreen's transition from the music industry to the fitness industry. We talk about her recovery from an eating disorder which taught her to think completely differently about her body, exercise and drives her to help other people heal and live free from poor body image and disordered eating and exercise behaviours.

Shreen is the author of 'Be You Be Free' a 12 step Body Positivity plan, and provides online personal training that is eating disorder informed, body positive and helps people reconnect with their body and exercise in a safe and supportive way. Check out her website and instagram.

*******Movement Mini Series********

Welcome to the final in our Movement Mini-series.  It's peak 'New Year New You' / New Year's Resolution Season and the diet culture vultures are out in force. So we thought it the perfect time to provide another perspective.

In this series we speak with 5 wonderful Australian Fitness Professionals to provide some support in navigating movement.

Today we chat with the incredible Natasha Korbut, founder of Diverse Personal Training.

We get practical today with Natasha giving us a bunch of fantastic tips for getting moving in a supporting, sustainable, enjoyable and healing way.

We chat about her background in prosthetics and policy and how that impacts her work as a PT, and her involvement in the 'This Girl Can' campaign to help inspire women of all walks of life to get moving.

Natasha does individual and group training online, you can find out her new 8 week group programs or check out her website for all the options. 

She also has a YouTube channel with a range of different workouts from a 3 minute dance break to 40 minutes high intensity workouts and everything in between.

Check out her brand new E-book "One Fit Size All, a beginners guide to joyful movement."

That is the last in our movement series, we hope you have enjoyed it. We will be back Thursday!

Back to 'regular programming', we hope you enjoyed out Movement Mini Series, let us know if there is a different 'mini series' topic you'd like us to do. 

Today we have a bit of a rambling chat that reflects our headspace by this stage of the holidays. We have loved holidays but we are ready for a return to routine and to some alone time! 

We chat about some of the challenges that summer holidays can kick up, especially for parents of teens. This the podcast episode Susan was a guest on to talk about the worst board game ever "YiYo - energy in Energy out" which is unfortunately still available and advertised to teachers as "Literacy is supported with pictorial association, and colour coding and icons are used to indicate nutritional characteristics including fruit and vegetable serves, dietary fibre, added or ‘free’ sugar and energy load. Available in kilojoules only" and even sold in the Perth Children's Hospital's fundraising shop! Gah! 

We announce that we are working on 'a teen thing' - probably an intensive week of live webinars for parents of teens who are having concerns about eating, dieting, body image and want some practical help in how to help their kids through this challenging time. you can sign up here to stay up to day for when it launches. 

This was the burrata salad mentioned and the restaurant where she had the scallops and wants to eat steak (it wasn't Woodcut, ti was Black Bar & Grill) and this is the Spanish Restaurant that was Susan's fave. 

Please share rate and review our podcast if you like what we're doing. 

Today we chat with fellow dietitian Mari Harrison.

Mari is a non-diet dietitian with lived experience of Type 1 diabetes working with people with eating challenges with diabetes, chronic dieting and after bariatric surgery.

If Mari's 'best thing I ate this week', Joulutorttu, sounds good, check out the recipe she developed especially for our podcast audience!

Check out her 'Am I Hungry ' group programs here.

We mentioned these 2 TED talks - Dr Renee Engeln 'An Endemic of Beauty Sickness' and Dr Michelle May 'Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat'.

This week we chat more about the challenges of parenting teens in a culture obsessed by weight and dieting. We suggest some eating disorder and body image red flags and some strategies to get ahead of things before they become entrenched and how to be your child's lifeguard. Helping them learn to swim and develop their endurance and strength, understand rips and tides, remember to wear suncream and call for help if they get into trouble.

Resources mentioned;

National Eating Disorders Collaboration

Eating Disorder Families Australia

Feed Your Instinct

The Butterfly Foundation

Sign up to be first to know when we launch "Lifeguards: The Non-Diet Way For Parents Of Teens." https://www.megandsusan.co/NDWTeen

Today we chat with Dietitian and PhD Candidate Melissa Eaton. Melissa is a Mental Health Dietitian with Keeping the Body in Mind (Primary) located at UNSW (currently on extended maternity leave), an NSA Registered Nutritionist, and a former dancer and teacher - having completed a Master of Nutrition and Dietetics, a Bachelor of Science (Food and Nutrition), and a Bachelor of Arts (Dance) with a Bachelor of Education.  Her PhD research explores nutrition and mental health, with a focus on weight-neutral approaches, eating behaviour, disordered eating, and weight-stigma.  She is also a new Mum of a baby girl and is currently navigating the mum, work, life, juggle.

We first met Melissa when she was a student dietitian who 'got it'. She already had a super firm grounding in weight bias and weight inclusive care, not to mention a really cool and popular instagram page where she shared great non-diet information to her many followers.

Now as a mum of a toddler she's a bit shocked and horrified by the pressure she sees being placed on new mums to lose weight, control their child's diet and weight and how this can do a lot of harm to both parents and children.

We also chat to Melissa about her PhD research into mental health and experiences of weight bias that patients can have when accessing health services.

If you want to go back and listen to our interview with Alicia Edge it is episode 24, you can find it here

You may have seen on the news this week a lot of chatter about a 'ham ban' and a 'fairy bread ban' in Western Australian and South Australian schools.

We've done some digging to get to the bottom of the headlines, what the actual situation is, why changes have been made and what it means. (Spoiler alert - ham is not even banned!)

For more background of the 2016 classification of red/processed meats as carcinogenic check this article by Dr Tim Crowe of Thinking Nutrition.

We also touch on some unfortunate reporting and commentary (from our own profession gah!) that decided to bring in 'overweight and obesity' rates into the discussion about the supposed ban. We mention a podcast episode by our colleague Dr Fiona Willer, it is super helpful for anyone interested in learning more about weight classification / BMI and health risk, you can watch it here or listen here. 

Finally our 'Helping Your Teen Eat Well in a Food Confused Culture' is ready and available for purchase. It's only $33 for over 90 minutes of practical help for parents to open discussions with their teens, look for red flags, help navigate social media diet messages and protect them from eating disorders. Click here for more information. 

Susan's favourite thing this week was from this amazing restaurant and this recipe is pretty close to Grandma's Carrot and Feta Lasagne.

Today we chat about a phenomenon that we have both seen in our practice. And that is when the drive for the "perfect diet for health" actually completely undermines health and wellbeing. Whether trying to get to the bottom of unpleasant symptoms, achieve a particular aesthetic or to 'be in the best health possible' when people head down a path of excluding foods for pretty much any reason, invariably we see a reduction in most measures of health and wellbeing including dietary quality and social connectedness.

We touch on values, how elite sports can be a risk for an over focus on nutrition at the expense of health and wellbeing (check out our episode with Sports Dietitian Alissa Edge for more on this) and of course the conflicting messages we get from social media. 

You might enjoy ABC's The Checkout Michelle Bridges skits ' Source of Confusion' Part one and Part Two that we mention.

Find Meg's favourite roasted carrot recipes here and here.

Join the waiting list for 'Lifeguards : The Non-Diet approach for Parents of Teens or to get some great info for "Helping your Teen Eat Well in a Food Confused Culture" RIGHT NOW check out our webinar here.

Today we dive back into the ocean of social media.

What are the common sharks and rips, what can we do to protect ourselves while still enjoying a swim?

Check out our 'Detox your metaverse' downloadable guide here.

Join the waiting list for 'Lifeguards: The Non Diet Way for Parents of Teens" or sign up for immediate access to our "Helping your teen eat well in a food confused culture" masterclass.

Head to our socials for a post about our favourite social media accounts to provide floatation devices and suncream for your day at the beach.

Today we spend the whole episode chatting about Meg's Recipetin Eats Challenge and it's a long one. 

In 2023 Meg cooked every single recipe in Nagi Maehashi's incredible debut cookbook 'Dinner'.

Nagi's website was already a favourite 'go to' place for recipes for both of us, it's super accessible, has an amazing variety of cuisines and meals and THEY ALWAYS WORK! So when she released a cookbook it was always going to be great. 

We chat about why Meg set herself the challenge and what she learned, how it changed her kitchen, especially her spice rack, her cooking and meal planning. You can check out her instagram where she posted photos of most of the dishes. 

This link to Khao Pla restaurant in Chatswood with the incredible eggplant chips and the best Thai food Meg has ever eaten, the Tom Yum is off the charts. 

Susan's favourite thing recipe inspiration here. 

Meg's favourite thing this week and maybe of all time - one for the coriander lovers! This is all we've found online and matches Meg's copy of the original recipe which is scrawled on a piece of paper. 

Want to help your teen navigate eating well? Check out our downloadable, on demand webinar here. 

Sign up for the waitlist to be the first to hear about our extended eating disorder prevention online course for parents 'Lifeguards : The Non diet way for parents of teens". 

Today we dig into the topic of Ultra Processed Foods or UPFs. There's been a lot of noise and chatter on social media and a lot of scary headlines on the back of a large review paper that was published in late February finding associations between UPFs and a wide range of physical and mental illnesses. 

So what defines a food as an UPF? To answer this Meg took a deep dive into the NOVA system that is widely used to classify foods into 4 categories from group one; unprocessed or minimally processed, group 2 ; processed culinary ingredients, group 3, processed foods and group 4 Ultra Processed Foods. 

We dig into what this review paper (and the studies it was reviewing) actually says and what that means for how we eat. 

We also chat about Meg's recent, first ever visit to Costco where you can get lots of UPFs...but also plenty of unprocessed foods too. 

This is the link to the Turkish Bread Pizza we mention, delish!

Want to help your teen navigate our food confused culture? Check out our $33 webinar here and sign up for updates so you're first to hear when we launch 'Lifeguards: the non diet way for parents of teens'. 

We got a fantastic listener question this week.

"Hi Meg & Susan, I really enjoyed your perspective on Ultra Processed Foods. It did make me reflect how our family is eating and I was surprised at how high the proportion of these foods is. I'm not worried about them but would like to reduce them but unsure how to do it without feeling restricted or making the kids feel restricted. Do you have any advice?"

So we jump into this topic, and hope you find it helpful.

Meg's favourite thing this week was the Recipetin Eats cookbook Vietnamese shaking beef and it was blade steak, not chuck! And this is the cucumber salad.

Parent of teen? Check out our 'Helping Your Teen Eat Well in a Food Confused Culture' for more tips on helping your kids eat well. Sign up for our weekly email here.

Off the back of Meg's interview on The Happy Families Podcast we dive into some of the nuances of how we see weight inclusive care 'working' in the real world. There was a good question and some discussion on Justin's facebook page that we thought worth exploring.

It was a question about a child in a larger body with low strength and fitness.

Few resources we mention - The Emerging Minds online course (free, targeted at teachers & health professionals but helpful for parents too).

The Size Inclusive Health Promotion resource we mention is here. 

The Love, Food Podcast Episode "Fat Like Me"

Sign up for our weekly updates here or get on the waitlist for our upcoming program for parents of teenagers 'Lifeguards : The non-diet way for parents of teens'.

Recipe for our favourite thing is here - this is not the one but the only online one I could find and is very close. 

Today we chat about our day today when we headed to the University of Wollongong to run a 2 hour workshop on the non-diet approach and weight inclusive care.

We also address a couple of articles recently criticising or critiquing the non-diet movement despite clearly not understanding the approach at all. You can check out Fiona Sutherland's (The Mindful Dietitian) instagram post about the Australian article on her page and a great response to the Washington Post Article here. We're very tired and a bit incoherent but we hope you get something out of this chat!

We're taking a 2 week break over the school holidays and will be back week 1 of term 2 ready to jump in and launch Lifeguards : The non-diet way for parents of teens. Join the waitlist here to be the first to know.

Meg's favourite thing was the Gochuang chicken skewers from Gami Korean Fried Chicken.

We're back after a little school holiday break.

Today we chat mostly about the food we enjoyed over the break and then dig into a bit of how we mange food once the evening sport activities are back and the change from summer to winter.

We also chat about our 'Instant Pots' and what we have used them for so far. 

Today we chat about the stories we can tell ourselves about our food behaviour, and how food and body comments, especially about appetite,  can get sticky and create harmful beliefs and stories, especially for kids.

We share some examples of times we have heard things come out of our own mouths that on reflection could potentially be unhelpful for our kids. We invite you to be curious about your own food stories and to be careful with any food any body commentary. 

This is the Maggie Beer recipe that was Meg's favourite thing this week. 

Parent of a teen? Check out our 'Helping Your Teen Eat Well in a Food Confused Culture' for more tips on helping your kids eat well. Sign up for our weekly email here.

We're really pleased to announce doors are open to Lifeguards : The Non-Diet Way for Parent's of Teens. Use the code LGPOD for 20% of the course price. You can find more information and sign up here https://www.megandsusan.co/lifeguards

Today we dive into the troubling but seemingly growing phenomenon of teenage students not eating at school. There can be lots of reasons for this, they're not always disordered. These can range from genuinely feeling too busy to stop to eat, poor appetite due to medication or sensory and strong preference concerns (lukewarm yoghurt anyone?). In these cases we would be wise to get to the bottom and troubleshoot to ensure some nutrition is taken on but they may not be the 'red flag' emergency of an emerging eating disorder.

So we chat about some ways we can get to the bottom of it and some strategies that can be tried if parents or teachers are concerned that it is wrapped up in an eating disorder, or if they suspect there's a culture of not eating within a year group emerging. This could put teens at risk of developing an eating disorder and make recovery a lot harder for those already experiencing one. 

********* We're really pleased to announce doors are open to Lifeguards : The Non-Diet Way for Parent's of Teens. Use the code LGPOD for 20% of the course price. You can find more information and sign up here https://www.megandsusan.co/lifeguards Doors close midnight Sunday! **********

Ever since it first emerged in 2018 'The Carnivore Diet' was the most baffling fad diet trend we've ever encountered. There is literally no evidence that fewer plant based foods is beneficial for our health.

Proponents advocate for eating zero plant based foods but rather only eating meat, offal and low carbohydrate dairy (butter and cheese). They aim to have such low carbohydrate diets they they force their body into ketosis believing that this is optimal for human health. One of the 'leaders' of the movement who wrote a very popular, book released in 2020, has quit the carnivore diet less than 4 years later, declaring that ketosis is not healthy for humans (duh!). 

So much harm has been done to people who have tried this diet - physically, things like gallstones, high cholesterol, heart attacks and starvation syndrome and psychologically unnecessary stress and anxiety, and the triggering of eating disorders and yet the loudest proponents just move on, take no responsibility and start selling the next version. 

It's a good case study of the fad diet cycle and can be used as an example for teens of why it's not a good idea to make the way you eat part of your identity, to appreciate that these fad diets come and go and people can sounds super "sciency" and confident selling absolute nonsense.

Is it rage bait or disordered eating?

Today we chat about social media....again! Yep, it's a constant source of topics, interest, joy and well, rage. The constant trend of people trying to make 'healthy' versions of classic food. This week it was a horrible looking concoction of rice cakes, yoghurt and cocoa to make 'Tiramisu'...no thanks! .

But what can we learn from it and other social media trends, and, as we are in the middle of running our Non-Diet program for parent's of teens how can we use content like that as part of teaching our kids to navigate social media well. 

Restaurant where Susan had her favourite thing of the week was The Rocklea Pub, menu looks delicious, and the accommodation was https://oakhillestateglasshouse.com.au/. 

Today we chat about a recent Dietitians conference that we attended. It was a mixed bag and the ongoing clash of weight centric and weigh inclusive ways of practicing was obvious once again.

We also talk about our change.org petition we have just started to make some noise and try to have 'That Sugar Film' removed from being showed in classrooms across the country. Is remains listed as a 'key resource' in the Australian Curriculum and it has to go!

Please sign and share the petition that you can find here.

Susan tried her first ever oyster at this fancy pants restaurant and the pickled peppercorns are these and they are totally delicious..but possible no longer available and you might have to try making your own!

Interested in group or individual clinical supervision with Meg or Susan? You can find our profiles on the Dietitians Supervision Resources Australia website. You'll have to sign up but membership is free! 

If you listened to last week's episode you'll know that we have started a change.org requesting ACARA to remove 'That Sugar Movement' from the list of resources in the Australian Curriculum. Recently there has  been some great changes to the food and wellbeing curriculum resources with the inclusion of eating disorder organisation's recommendations and school supporting programs as well as some clear recommendations in the supporting documentation recommending ceasing the use of BMI, not doing any activities that label foods good and bad and not doing and calorie tracking activities. This is great but undermined by the presence of 'That Sugar Movement' as a key resource really undermines it.

There's been a good response and if you haven't signed yet we'd appreciate your support. The next step will be getting the message out to teacher who are using it that it is incorrect, harmful and a terrible example of the use of science. In a time where the critical consumption of media has never been more important it's pretty horrifying that this is show in classrooms around the country to 'teach' about sugar. It needs to go so please sign and share.

Today we share our reflections after watching 'That Sugar Film'.

Yep, we sat down and donated 90 minutes of our life so you don't have to. It was even worse than we expected. Please do not let your kids watch this movie. If you haven't signed the petition to get this awful movie out of Australian schools please do that here.

This was the restaurant where Susan had her birthday dinner and Meg's breakfast wrap was from here and we highly recommend making this carrot cake. Delicious!!

Jump on the waitlist for our next round of 'The Non-Diet Way', 4 modules over 5 weeks with a live zoom to debrief each module and answer your questions. 

Back for the final episode before we take a little break we thought it was a good time to revisit 'Boring Self Care'.

We last spoke about this in October last year but in winter and summer we often need different ways to look after ourselves. From skin checks to bulk cooking, from deciding between early morning movement and a bit of extra sleep, we chat about what helps us, especially in school holidays when the routines can be thrown out.

Meg's favourite thing this week was this cake by the fabulous Yotam Ottolenghi closely followed by Nagi's laksa which makes an appearance on the pod everytime she makes it! 

The Frozen Green Pea and Ham recipe Meg mentioned is also here as promised! 

We're preparing to launch another round of The Non-Diet Way. Our online program that steps you thgough the work we do one on one with clients who want to get off the diet merry-go-round but aren't really sure what that means. Jump on the waitlist for our next round here. 4 modules over 5 weeks with a live zoom to debrief each module and answer your questions. 

Welcome back to Season 4.

Today we chat about dry July and alcohol consumption in general including the weird rise of 'low carb or low calorie' alcohol beverages being marketed with a 'health halo', cultural factors influencing alcohol consumption and some tips for reflecting on your own relationship with alcohol.

We have a really big few months coming up. We are launching the Non-Diet Way for the last time this year. Click here to sign up for updates for when we launch in August.

Meg's favourite thing this week was Recipetin Falafel - give it a crack, it's delicious.

Susan's was inspired by this instagram post and if you want Meg's 'meal matrix' you can get it here.

We're thrilled to bring you today's chat with the fabulous Dr Emma Beckett. Food Scientist and Nutrition Scientist, Science communicator and all round excellent human.

We chat about Emma's new book "You are More than What You Eat", how she got into food and nutrition science, her excellent food print clothing style and much more.

You can find Emma on Facebook and Instagram and fabric designer Kasey Rainbow here if you want to make your own food themed clothing! 

The Non-Diet Way Round 3 is coming! Click here to jump on the waitlist and get a discount code!

Meg's favourite Carrot cake recipe is here.

This is what happens when we haven't caught up in a while and don't have a topic planned.

We hope you enjoy our chat today, we talk food, cottage cheese getting out of it's scope of practice by pretending to be a wrap and then go off on many tangents.

This is the butter chicken recipe Meg loves even more than 'the one in the book' and this is the braised fennel recipe that was Meg's favourite thing this week, just amazing with grilled lamb (cutlets or chops) dusted with Chinese 5 spice and a little salt.

Susan also mentioned the delicious slow cooked brisket.

Title of today's episode taken from Adam Buxton's excellent podcast and Films to be Buried With and No Such Thing as A Fish are also podcast's that we love.

We are opening doors to The Non Diet Way in August, we've had to delay by 2 weeks but it's coming! Keep an eye on your emails for more details. If you aren't already on it, you can join the wait list here and also read more about the program and get a discount when we launch.

At this goes out we are halfway through the Paris 2024 Olympic games. 

There's bodies on display and a lot of body commentary. Some of it is great, positive, inclusive and recognising that 'fit' doesn't have look and celebrating all the amazing things that different bodies can do. But unfortunately, a lot of it is awful. Objectification of both men and women, body shaming, and criticism, so we chat about that. Makingthe most of the good and managing the bad. 

We are loving Ilona Maher's instagram posts as well as lots of Olympic themed memes and humour.   

Meg's favourite thing this week was Recipetin Eats Dahl - cheap, fillig, meat-free and delish!  

Join us for our FREE Diet Culture Spring Clean webinar Thursday August 15. Sign up HERE.

We are opening doors to The Non Diet Way in August, we've had to delay by 2 weeks but it's coming! Keep an eye on your emails for more details. If you aren't already on it, you can join the wait list here and also read more about the program and get a discount when we launch.

Today we chat about how important it is that we don't continue to pass down diet culture from generation to generation but make a change. We have some practical suggestions on how to do this (cough, cough, come to our FREE Diet Culture Home Detox Webinar tonight!) and share some wins that we have experienced or heard about.

 We are opening doors to The Non Diet Way TODAY!!!  

Check it out here, we'd love to see you inside! 

Meg & Susan

We have a short (and high energy) chat for you today. We took the opportunity of being in the same room to record an episode straight off the back of our live "Diet Culture Spring Clean" webinar.

We chat about an episode of the 'The Rest is History' podcast about the history of Italian food which is very different to the myths and assumptions that are made about it. It's fascinating and you might want to listen to it here.

Meg's favourite thing this week was Recipetin Eats Dahl - cheap, filling, meat-free and delish!  

Doors are OPEN for The Non-Diet Way. 

The Non Diet Way empowers you to see through the toxic messages of Diet Culture and live life on your terms. 

Course Outline

Module 1: Looking Back to move forward - How did you get here? Your food and diet story. 

Module 2: Body Trust and other influences on our food choices - Understanding what influences our food and eating behaviour.

Module 3: Mindfulness the superpower for conscious eating.

Module 4: Planning and Food Choice the non diet way - Non-diet planning for Values aligned eating.

Click here to find out more or to sign up! 

This week's episode features Susan's middle and youngest daughters, and their takes on watching That Sugar Film in PE. In a shocking turn of events Susan's youngest daughter got in the car one day last week after school and said "Guess what WE watched today" and sure enough it was That Sugar Film.

Argh, this film refuses to disappear. A heightened conversation ensued!  

We thought it might be interesting to recreate the conversation minus Susan's swearing. The interview is in two parts as it was harder than it should have been to get everyone all in the same place at the same time. You'll hear both girls are fairly steady in their feelings about food and their body, and are fortunately not swayed by the film.

This is exactly what we talk about all the time. We are working hard to change the world, but until we can we need to protect our children from Diet Culture by making our homes a safe have from it.

You can sign the petition to remove this film from schools here

Unreliable Narrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

Good experiment design https://nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources/key-elements-well-designed-experiment

We love a lot of the non-diet content we see on social media.

It's such a great way for people to feel connected and less alone and is often the first introduction people have to a different way of relating to food. But, it can leave people feeling a bit stuck or uncertain. So we chat about what can get missed and some options for ridging the gap.

Mentioned in the episode was The Intuitive Eating Workbook and Christy Harrison's 'Anti-Diet' book and our 'detox your metaverse' and positive social media resources are available fro free download here.

Annabel Crabb's Glass potatoes that we both want to try cooking recipe can be found here.

You may have seen in the news that a report has been released by the Australian College of Nursing making the recommendation put more nurses in school (great) to weigh kids (not great.)

Thankfully the pushback has been swift, clear, measured and evidence based and we share our thoughts on the idea. We thought Dr Kyla's response and The Embrace Hub response on The Project were both great ***trigger warning for stigmatising images in the edit*** 

The Mexican Corn Salad recipe Meg mentioned can be found here, it's delicious. 

Just s short episode today, we squeezed in recording this just before watching a webinar on body dissatisfaction.

Entitled ' What to do When Kids Don't Like their Bodies' you would think as Eating Disorder Dietitians we'd be thrilled that more people are talking about this issue. We usually would be.

Unfortunately the 'Special Guest Expert' is not a clinician, not a psychologist but a 'weightloss expert' and 'obesity researcher'.

As soon as Meg saw it advertised she immediately reached out to the host (a parenting expert with a background in education) to flag her concerns about someone who as a (self described) weight loss expert actively contributes to diet culture and fat phobia which are the key drivers of the horrendous body dissatisfaction rates that we are seeing.

Unfortunately she didn't hear back so decided to buy a ticket, keep an open mind, strap in and watch, hoping to be proved wrong.

We'll jump in to a deep dive of the webinar next week but spoiler...we were not proved wrong.

Today we go through in depth a summary of the webinar that we watched on body dissatisfaction. The good, the bad and the dangerous. Unfortunately we simply can not recommend this webinar for parent needing help helping their kids with poor body image.

Much of it was not about body image at all but about how to improve nutrition quality and get kids moving and the bits that were about body image unfortunately were very surface level or impractical. It was missed opportunity and we were pretty disappointed.

If you do want to access some 'on demand' body image help we do recommend our 'teen masterclass' : Helping your Kids Eat Well in a Food Confused Culture. It includes a big section on body image, practical suggestions and extra resources. It's only $35 and we have a 50% discount until the end of October using the code NICK50 making it a total bargain.

Popping back for a bonus episode to give you a nudge to get along to a screening of 'Your Fat Friend'.

The story of Aubrey Gordon (of Maintenance Phase podcast) who first rose to some recognition for her anonymous work blogging as yrfatfriend.

The movie delves into the lived experience of living life in a fat body. The impact on relationships, especially with her parents, on food and eating, movement decisions and interactions with the medical field. It's definitely worth a watch so check out the fanforce page to find a screening near you or even host one if there's not one you can get to. Our session was completely sold out so get in quick.

Best thing(s) we ate this week...

Thai from Thai Riffic in Parramatta

Tacos from Gringa in Wollongong

Small plate deliciousness from The Punthouse in Bateman's Bay

We're back and we have some news.

After 2 years creating, podcasting and running courses we have decided to stop...for now. We're not sure how long but we both need a bit more time back to focus on our other commitments. We've loved this adventure and hope it has been helpful to thoses who have come along with us.

Favourite things this week - Recipetin Beef Biryani - it's a book exclusive but there's a chicken biryani recipe on the website.

If you're in Narooma check out Honorbread Bakery and Lynches Pub.

Fancy a salmon dish, substitute the beef in this recipe for some skin on boneless salmon which was Meg's favourite thing this week and if you are in the Hunter Valley Baume is a great family restaurant.

Today we chat cultural foods and how diet culture undermines and devalues enjoyment, culture, nostalgia, connection when it comes to food.

This was as close as we got to finding the original source for the Thai/Swedish research that we talk about. 

We mention 'Your Latina Nutritionist' who talks a lot about this and it great to follow.

We chat about the new RecipeTin Eats cookbook Tonight by Nagi Maehashi who is having a fantastic influence on the cooking habits of Australians!  

Today we chat Halloween.

Celebrating Halloween continues to grow in popularity and both Meg & Susan have had some positive community experiences that have changed their minds a bit on Halloween.

We share how we deal with lolly overload in our homes, talk about our favourite sweets and as always share the best thing we've eaten this week.

Resources mentioned include The Gamer Educator Instagram account.

Today we chat gut health.

We explore the different things that impact out gut, why jumping straight to restriction or elimination of certain foods or a low FODMAPs diet is not recommended. We touch on prebiotics, probiotics and the impact of trauma or out emotional state on our gut functioning.

A couple of gut health specialist dietitians we like are Marnie founder of Fork That and Joanna at Everyday Nutrition.

We also mention this episode of The Imperfect's Podcast with Professor Felice Jacka.

The best things Meg ate this week were from Flower Child in Chatswood (seriously food cold brew and food) and Bo Larn in Bondi Junction.

For our last podcast episode ever we enter the Dream Restaurant and share our dream menus.

With a format ripped directly from our all time favourite podcast Off Menu. Lots of special foods and restaurants mentioned...not necessarily in this order.

"A margarita" meme

Sonoma bakery - Seeded sourdough baguette or mission bread

Ripples Milson's point

Barangaroo House

Box on the Water at Ettalong

Sonoma La Crema Chardonnay 2018

Black Bar & Grill

Sake Restaurant

Loulou Bistro Milson's Point

Lisa McGuigan & Thomas Wines dessert wines

Messina Pistachio Gelato

Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz

Penfolds Grange

The Signet Glenmorangie Scotch Whisky

Laphroigh Scotch Whisky