Episode 25: Give Up Diets for the New Year with Molly Bahr, LMHC
Give Up Diets for the New Year with Molly Bahr, LMHC
On the latest episode of the Speaking of Hungry podcast, I speak with Molly Bahr, LHMC, a licensed mental health counselor and certified intuitive eating counselor with a private practice in Miami. She also provides virtual sessions to residents of Florida and Hawaii. Molly brings a Health At Every Size (HAES) perspective to the work she does as a therapist helping people with disordered eating, body shame, anxiety, depression, and trauma.
The focus of her practice is to help people make peace with food and their body while creating a full and meaningful life. Molly works with disordered eating, body shame, anxiety, depression, and trauma. She has worked in a variety of treatment settings including inpatient and outpatient programs for eating disorders, substance abuse disorders, and an outpatient transgender clinic.
January is a time we are hit hard with diet culture. Everyone is chatting it up about their newest detox or reset, TV and social media diet ads are relentless, and gyms are in full force marketing mode trying to convince you this should be the year you make big changes to your body. Molly and I chat about how to deal with New Year’s diet chatter as well as:
Molly’s personal experience with chronic dieting and how she started practicing intuitive eating both personally and in her work as a therapist.
How most people don’t consider their disordered eating or eating disorder problematic because diet culture has normalized restrictive eating and becoming hyper-focused on food, exercise, and the pursuit of weight loss.
Intuitive eating may be used by some as a “diet” when it’s really about healing your relationship with food and has nothing to do with weight loss and shrinking your body.
How restriction, diets, and disordered eating are used as a coping mechanism to avoid life situations, distract us, and also help us feel in control of something when other aspects of our life feel very out of control.
The importance of giving ourselves compassion over how difficult life experiences can be and remembering other ways to care for ourselves other than turning to food and our body size.
Emotional eating is always targeted as a problem but restriction can be far more problematic.
The importance of surrounding yourself with anti-diet, intuitive eating social media influencers, books, podcasts, and blogs especially during this time when the diet industry is in full-on advertising mode.
Taking a look at your own diet history and how it worked out in the end when you’re considering another diet and pursuing weight loss.
Remembering that we don’t fail at diets. Diets fail us because our body is wired to stay alive, stay fed, and not lose weight.
Molly’s body acceptance and anti-diet messages available on her Instagram account. Specifically, she has a “starter kit” on Instagram where she recommends various intuitive eating resources to help dig you out of diet behaviors.
The importance of having patience and give yourself time to go through the diet-ditching process. How long it takes varies for everyone. It could be months, one year, or a few years.
When you decide to ditch diets you may want to start with small steps vs. jump all in and there is no perfect order as to how you approach ditching these behaviors.
Molly explains what “body acceptance” is all about and not necessarily that you’re 100% happy with your body all of the time. She also explains “body liberation”.
Mentioned in this episode:
Anita Johnston’s book Eating By the Light of the Moon
Alison Barkman's online intuitive eating program
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