56// Stop the Diet Culture with Mindful Eating that Actually Works with Tanya Strieck
Tanya is a midlife mom, and dental hygienist turned non-diet nutritionist, on a mission to normalize aging, by helping women make peace with food and their bodies. She will help you go beyond measuring and manipulating food and your body, to make your health, and midlife, limitless and full.
On this podcast episode we discuss:
We answer the following questions:
Connect with her on Social Media:
.
.
.
SHOW NOTES AT
Interested in joining the Hansen Method?! From 16 weeks to a year- long coaching program, there's an option for you. Learn more about the Hansen Method, click here.
Create a thriving thyroid following our PROVEN system for improving thyroid and hormone function! Join hundreds of women who have improved their symptoms by 80% and lose on average 30lbs in the 4 months. Learn more here.
If you have questions about the Hansen Method and want to discuss your specific situation and make sure this is the right program for you you can schedule a complimentary thyroid breakthrough call with one of our team members. schedule here. Hurry, my schedule fills up quickly and we only work with limited amount of women at any given time.
Thinking about using nutrition and holistic health for restoring thyroid function? Learn EVERYTHING you need to know by joining our Free Facebook Group. Adrenal and Thyroid Balance Community.
Confused at what steps you steps you need to do first, download our Freedom From Fatigue Guide without top 5 recommendations to improving your thyroid function.
Confused about what thyroid test to have done? Download our Thyroid Panel Guide.
Facebook Community
Xo,
Shannon Hansen
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
(00:00):
This is episode 54 with Tanya and you guys. I am so excited for this conversation because Tanya is a midlife mom, a dental hygienist turned non diet nutritionist on a mission to normalize aging. By helping women make peace with food and their body will help you go above and beyond measuring and manipulating food and your body to make your health and midlife a limitless and full experience. You guys . This is one of my favorite favorite conversations thus far on the podcast, because she is so insightful and gives tons of tips and tricks about dealing with your relationship with food. And I think this is becoming more and more of a passion of mine, having family members who are currently struggling with their relationship with food. And I think we have many of us have grown up in this diet culture, especially women in their forties, fifties, sixties, where it was low fat and low carb and all of these different things that we have gone through.
(01:14):
And she just brings it all together and helps set up your mindset. So please, please, please tune into this because I promise it will not disappoint follow her on social media because you are gonna learn so much welcome back to the thriving thyroid podcast, where we choose to become empowered patients and take our health into our own hands. Hi, I'm Shannon Hansen, a Christian entrepreneur, a mom of three. And after dealing with my own health mysteries, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about the thyroid. I soon became certified as a holistic wellness practitioner, a functional nutrition practitioner and a functional diagnostic practitioner. And so much more after that. I, the revolutionary thyroid program, the handsome method as a health professional and a mom, I fully understand the importance of having a fun, simple, and sustainable plan for achieving a responsive thyroid. So I share actionable and practical strategies for developing a responsive thyroid. So the ambitious moms and women can gain freedom from fatigue and lose the thyroid weight once. And for all each week, I will be here for you along with my guest experts, we will be sharing simple and tangible tips that work for not only your thyroid, your hormones, your family, and your mindset, so that you can get back to living the life that you envision for yourself. Welcome to the thriving gyro podcast.
(02:49):
All right, welcome to the show. Tanya stre, super excited to have you here. We've known each other for quite some time, so I'm super excited to finally get you on the podcast.
(03:01):
I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much, Shannon for connecting with me. And yes, we have known each other through a business group and through the online world, I guess for years, really, when you think about it, I think 2018.
(03:17):
I'm glad you remember that. Cuz I don't. weird.
(03:23):
Weird trivia
(03:24):
yes, yes, absolutely. Well, okay. So one of the big things, actually, I wanna like just dive into the meat of all of this, but let's start really simple. Give us a little bit of background about who you are, what you do.
(03:39):
absolutely. So I lo I almost wanna say what don't I do. So I am a registered dental hygienist who actually turned into a holistic nutritionist. And while I was studying holistic nutrition, I also did behavior health coaching at a university level here in Toronto. I, as a dental hygienist, people were always asking me questions about omega three and nutrition in their mouth. And when I would go and ask questions like, Hey, how's your health history? Have there been any changes? Both men and women will always comment, oh my gosh, I've gained so much weight. And I started to think like, there's such a theme here. So I decided to enroll in holistic nutrition as I started saying. And along the way, during that time, I also decided to, into mindful eating. I had always struggled with my perceptions of my body and I thought these things were gonna be like it. This is gonna help me get the rain on my food struggles. And it was quite a learning experience. So as a holistic nutritionist, I do use a non diet approach, encompassing, mindful eating, and a intuitive eating to help women in the menopause space. Come to terms with body changes and bring in all kinds of health behaviors outside of calorie, counting, separating your almonds, peeling out your quarters of avocado, et cetera.
(04:57):
Oh, I love that so much. And I think so this is why I'm so excited to have you on is because this is something that we're battling inside the handsome method and with women with thyroid in general, they are saying the same thing. They're like weight is the issue. Weight is the, I wanna lose 30 pounds, wanna lose 30 pounds and they're doing the diets. They're counting the almonds. They're how many do I need? And what can I drink? And how much of this can I have? And it's like, let's just get away from that and just feed and fuel and nourish our body on that cellular level because our body's gonna get back to doing what it means needs to do. So give, so give our listeners a little bit of I guess maybe understanding or perspective of what mindful eating really is, because I think that that kind of gets thrown around. But when you start talking to people they're still very consumed with, well, I'm mindfully eating my ice cream or I'm mindfully eating my four almonds, you know, or whatever it ends up being. So give us a little bit of background about what mindful eating really is.
(06:18):
Okay. And you're right. This concept does get thrown around, especially in weight loss circles, mindful eating is really a way of being with your food. It's from mindfulness, which is another way of being in the moment with yourself and not letting the mind run away to far ahead or too far in the past. And so if we apply this to food, if you are able to enjoy your meal, using all your senses, that's bringing in mindfulness around your meal. You may let go. Of some of these thoughts of is this good for me? Is this bad for me? The last time I ate this, I, I fell off my diet, all of these thought processes that actually feed into your food relationship. So when you take on mindful eating as a practice and it is a practice, it's not meant to be perfect. And I thought mindfulness was actually a little bit crazy when I first was introduced to it, cuz I'm a very type, a stressful person.
(07:19):
When you start to practice this, you can see that you may be more satisfied with foods that you choose. You allow yourself to have foods that you may have put on the no, no list because you're tuning into how they taste. You're tuning into whether or not you actually really like them. You may think that Oreos are your kryptonite food, but once you actually sit down and eat them mindfully, they may taste disgusting to you or they may taste just as good as you thought. But you start to learn that you have body signals of hunger and fullness that we override with dieting. We ignore those signals. So by using some of the facets of mindful eating , you can really enhance the food relationship. We all have one.
(08:04):
I love that so much. So give us a little bit of background on how this relates to weight loss.
(08:14):
All right. So as I mentioned, I don't practice intentional weight loss as a holistic stick nutritionist. For me, that was a personal decision. It backfired as far as my own food relationship and distorted eating and thoughts. So when we use and position mindful eating as a tool to weight loss, it really is doing a disservice because anyone who has chose in a food plan, the measuring the cups, et cetera, knows that there comes a point where there is a, a dis struggle. There there's discord really there's a struggle so that we are yo-yoing. And when you start to apply that concept of restriction to mindfulness, you're kind of missing the point, what concepts like mindful eating or intuitive eating or non diet approaches actually do that diets don't is help you understand how you relate to food, how you're triggered by food, what gets you craving that might be emotional or environmental or even biological so that you, you actually addressing the deeper parts of yourself rather than taking a blanket, sort of cookie cutter menu plan and applying it to you. It may not even fit. And when you start to apply these tools, your body we'll start to go where it needs to go and you will and can reduce some of your cravings. You can use concepts like urge surfing. You can reduce some of your cravings, but actually even bring the cravings to a conscious level so that you can make conscious choices about what you're eating. I hope I explained that. Okay.
(09:54):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I think so, but I'm also familiar with the idea and the concept of mindful eating. So you said something interesting in there that I don't know if all of the listeners are aware of, but you said urge surfed. So explain that a little bit.
(10:14):
So urge surfing is a tech to bring you into the present moment. If you are on the way home at three o'clock in the afternoon, four o'clock in the afternoon, maybe you skipped lunch. Maybe you thought you would be good at lunch and you had a salad, no protein, which if you are experiencing thyroid issues, I'm sure Shannon has talked about protein and combination of food and blood sugar, but the cravings hit you. And we can almost mindlessly. It's kind of like you go into a little bit of a coma where you might purchase the bag of chips. Maybe you feel a little guilty. You're going to eat it in your car. But urge surfing is where you actually pause. And now obviously, if you're Dr, just like, if you're driving and listening to this podcast, we don't want, want you to stop and start doing any kind of meditation or thought process, pay attention to the road.
(11:02):
sure. But urge surfing can be a tool that you use say you are at work or at home. And you feel that that craving or that thought comes to mind. I want chocolate when you sit and let that feeling, stay with you without acting upon it. When you get yourself, when you have the ability to notice these thoughts and feelings and cravings, you sit in it and you realize I have an urge and I'm gonna give you just a simple overview. So I have an urge. What is this urge? I want chocolate. Okay. We can start doing some deep breathing. Where is this coming from? Am I hungry? Have I eaten enough today? Urge surfing. That's asking the questions, but urge surfing can also be imagining that you are on the ocean, in the water and you're breathing with the waves and you're going.
(11:55):
And if you, you can't see me, but I'm actually doing my hand up and down like, like waves and you're on the water and you're breathing with the waves going up and down. And you're letting that urge kind of come in and out because an urge is a thought. It can be a thought mm-hmm I want chocolate. So how much do we want this chocolate? And sometimes when you ride the wave of your craving, you can bring the level of urge down and then have a more realistic barometer. Really of how much you want the chocolate. Are you hungry? Do you, do you, do you need the chocolate right now? What are you really feeding? And it's a way to sort to be with your craving without having to act on it. Because when we talk about healthy eating and nutrition, there's so much advice out there. It, it, it's kind of like one spectrum to the other, you know, no, we don't wanna just eat cake and brownies 24 7 all day long. We won't feel so good. Our body will tell us that it doesn't, but there are times when we, these cravings and being able to sit with your cravings and let them be conscious and there, and present without acting on them can help you make choices around the foods you want.
(13:05):
Okay. So this is like a little bit of, I guess, getting into psychology. So let's say you're, you're, you're right. Eating this wave. And you're like, I want the chocolate and I've heard many, many women say, screw it. Like, I just don't even care. Like I'm gonna just eat the chocolate. So how do you transition from the screw? It, I don't care like is hard and it sucks. And my boss just yelled at me and my husband, you know, this, that the other thing, whatever, right? Going from that to saying, I'm gonna ride this wave and just see what happens, right? How are you kind of flipping that switch from the screw? It, I don't care to, I'm gonna sit in this pain and this emotional discomfort. Does that make sense?
(13:59):
It totally does. Because you know, I brought up urge surfing, but it's not one of the first steps you would do to adopt mindful, eating that space where you're like, screw it. Gimme the chocolate. My day sucks. That is your all enough, a thought process. It is. Some women will call it the, give it up. I fell off the wagon. I gotta start all over again. That thought process comes with the binge eat binge restrict cycle. It just it's part and parcel. So if we back the bus up a little bit, when these things happen, I ask women that I work with to notice, okay, what happened before you ate the chocolate? What was going on in your life? How were you feeling? And some of this also is learning. Self-Compassion you're not a bad person cuz you ate the chocolate, even though you're supposed to be eating X, Y, Z, according to you or whoever else, I don't mean you Shannon, but us, ourselves, you know who we tell ourselves what we should, the rules be?
(14:57):
The rules, the rules rules. Exactly. So when you back the bus up and you look at what was happening before, and you also look at the guilty thoughts that come with it, you wanna start noticing. And that is the big component in the beginning. Noticing how much do you actually feel like you are gonna say screw it? How many, how many of these screw at chocolate moments are you having? What is happening around them? Is it the same thing? Can you put a feeling to that moment? And can you actually sit and look at it without judging your self? That's bringing self compassion in because you're just a human being and let's face it. Ladies. Whoever's listening the last year and a half has challenged all of us as far as what we eat, who we see our stress levels being at home food choices.
(15:50):
So we need some compassion and for ourselves, because there's a lot on our shoulders. So backing up the bus and becoming aware of when these moments happen and why they happen. And you can just writing them down and not judging yourself can help you get to a point of urge surfing. But until you become sort of aware of how many times you feel like throwing in the towel, which you're not really doing, you're just trying to be a human being in a tough world. When you become aware of this, then you can start to pull in these tools.
(16:21):
Yeah. Okay. That is so good. And thank you for kinda backing that up. At least for me too. As a practitioner, cuz sometimes we wanted to say, well just ride away. That's fine because we forget that there's steps that have to happen ahead of time, right?
(16:42):
Yes. Yes. And you know, if you don't mind me just sort of adding to as practitioners, I don't know about you Shannon, but when I did my nutrition education, there was really no talk of about the emotions behind food. There's really no talk about how we're all culturally different. And we have emotional anchors in food. And then as a registered health professional, I learn things like the social determinants of health. And we know that there are things that are not in our control that happen to us, which determine health. So when you can pull these things together and really it's more of a holistic approach about that whole person too. So that Y yes, so that you can understand the emotions behind food because you know, we don't learn that in nutrition school. I'd love to hear if anybody's listening, if they message Shannon and say, oh heck yeah, I was taught the, at a nutrition school. I bet you, you weren't
(17:36):
no, I, I mean, we, we talked about mindful eating. I think there was a book that we were recommended trying to myselves. It was like an intuitive eating book. And I did learn quite a bit from that, but practicing it and teaching it to other people is very, very different than reading a book. Right. And yeah, I feel like that's kind of a whole other topic. Yes. And so the other that I wanna say, and to touch on culturally, we've had some women who are from India or they, their, their heritage is from India and they have a very specific way of eating. They eat a lot of rice, you know, things like that. And from the beginning I told them, I'm not gonna make you give up part of who you are, right. Part of your heritage, part of your culture. And they have, they eat this certain rice dish after they eat their meal. You guys forgive me for not remembering the name, but that's not something that I ever told them you have to give up, you know? So anyways, so it's very important that we, as practitioners are being mindful of you as that individual. So I wanna kinda switch gears here a little bit and talk about why our relationship with food makes a difference in our health, including thyroid hormones, you know, blood sugar, all of that
(19:16):
Excellent question. You know, when we talk about the food relationship, some of us think, well, I don't really need to talk about the food relationship. It doesn't apply to me, but yes it does for all of us, especially someone like me. In my fifties, I grew up with a diet mentality mother. Many of us have, and many of us still have these mothers in our lives, but there's also cultural influence as far as media way before social media was around. And so when you think about the relationship with food, you can equate it to say relationships that you have with people. They might be war and connected and loving, and there's no struggle within them. But then there are others that might be punishing and judgemental. And so if your relationship with food is punishing and judgemental, what it can do is keep you in this cycle of labeling food, good or bad, not eating certain things because someone said, it's not good to eat after seven yet you're starving or you're gonna fast until four o'clock in the afternoon.
(20:19):
Yet your thyroids out of whack, everybody is so different. But when you start to look at that, or when you start to bring that food relationship into nutrition, you're actually serving your health in a better way. Because if you understand that you are a binge restrict type person, you will better be able to manage your blood sugar what's happening. When you deny, deny, deny all the time. And you have what women will say, like I was bad this weekend and you eat all the things, right? All the, the, the wine comes out, maybe some nachos, but then you haven't had sugar in four weeks and you can't wait to dive into that chocolate cake. Your blood sugar is going to spike, especially if you are a binge when it comes to sugar. So you're spiking your, your blood sugar, which affects your adrenals, which affects your thyroid. And then when you go into that restriction phase, you're telling your thyroid, well, we're back to starving, so right. I'm sure you teach all of that.
(21:19):
Well, and this is, it's a huge issue. It's a huge issue between, and I'm just like plane in my head. These women that are like, this is bad. This is terrible. I fell off the wagon, screw it. I, the whole week has gone to heck I'll start again Monday, you know? And they're, they're writing. I, I don't have the words right now this, like you said, the punishing, the restricting I, and then the, the Bing, what am I trying to say? The binging and then restricting, that's the one that I'm trying to, they're, they're writing this wave. And this is why I really believe that we struggle to see sustainable results with Throid because we still have this diet culture about us. And we think, especially with thyroid, we think that the issue is our weight and yes. Okay. We're puffy. We're inflamed. In, in my experience, it's not really weight it's inflammation in the body, right? It's of seen as weight. Cause we're stepping on the scale and we're seeing that number climb, but what's really happening is inflammation in our body is just taking over. So if we can calm the body down and this includes that mental, emotional, physical, psychological component, then it's the wait just goes away. It just melts off. Right?
(22:55):
I do love how you brought that mind, body connection in. And I also like how you're pulling this out from like this one minutia of a number. Because when we start to look at our food relationship, it forces you to look at your relationship with your body and let's face it. When we're fighting with food, we're fighting with who we are. We're fighting with our body. What if you were brave enough ladies, to look at how you eat, why you eat when you eat and what you say about yourself, you may actually bring in more healthy behaviors because you care about yourself. And you've learned to love who you are now, regardless of what you look like. And your, there are no promises because there's genetics, but your body may actually flourish. But can you imagine your mind and how this is gonna flourish as well?
(23:54):
When you free yourself from all of this self-judgment and really you can even think of it as self harm when you're dealing with a chronic condition and manipulating your fats to next to nothing and not having food, because you're so worried about what you look like. And I get it. We do worry about what we look like. We don't wanna feel unattractive, but when you think about why we pursue diets to begin with a lot of it is we're look thinking about the outside. We're not really thinking about all the mechanisms of what's happening to our systems on the inside there's research that says we're bottoming out our gut health with restriction. So then women start to introduce foods and they're like, oh, can't eat that now. So sensitive. Are we really, is it inflammation like Shannon is talking about within that gut lining? Or have you just restricted your, your food intake so much because you've deemed a little bit of sweet potato is too carby and you not feeding those gut bugs. And it really goes so much deeper, right? When we talk about like this diet mentality we're through life and hold ourselves back.
(25:01):
Yes, no, I love that. You talked about that because that is a, another big issue we see with thyroid is people restricting and then they're like, I can't eat this. I can't eat that. I can't eat this. You know, I can't have the sweet potatoes. I can't have the bananas. I can't have this. And it's not because they can't have it. It's their body has kind of developed these sensitivities. It doesn't have the microbiome. And again, that's a totally other issue that we could, we could dive into. So before we kinda start to wrap up here why is the non diet approach, the best form of self care?
(25:46):
I great question. And I think, you know, we all think we have the best methods, right? To help our clients. And this is why I love combining minds on a podcast like this, because there's something great in everything that we do. And when we amplify each other, we can bring so many other good things to women, to clients, whether it's through free things, podcasts, or in programs. I believe that the non diet approach is one of the best things you can do for yourself as self care, because it's not self-limiting, you are able to, it's like coming to a buffet and looking at all of these tools that can help you, your sleep, your mindset, how you, you eat your food. Do you gulp it down? Are you eating in shame at night at 12:00 AM and eating your ice cream? What's that gonna do to your blood sugar and your poor thyroid. You're coming to this table and you're able to pick and choose behavior because at the end of the day, it's things that we do, the environments that we live in, the people we hang out with and our choices that we, all the things that we can control, cuz there's many, we can't that come together to make personal health. And it is so personal. So the that's why having an array of things and not intentional weight loss, because then you're focusing on one thing mm-hmm it helps you flourish.
(27:12):
Oh, I love that so much. I wrote down on my piece of paper, not self-limiting. Oh, that is so good. And I hope you guys, if, if it means nothing to you yet, think on that ponder on that, you know, start to figure out what that means to you is not, oh my gosh, that just totally hit me and all of the feelings. So thank you for sharing that. Where can people find you at and learn more about you and learn more about mindful eating and mindfulness and how that pertains to food and nutrition and, and health in general?
(27:54):
I generally hang out on Instagram for the main reason that I think it mortifies my almost adult children. So it's kind of fun, you know, for them to see their mom do real and act like a crazy woman on Instagram. I love Instagram, but I am on Facebook. Both handles are at a mindful nutritionist. I have a website@wwwtanyastreek.com. I've often thought of changing it, cuz my name is hard to spell , but that's generally where I am and I have the fullness plot as well, where I hope Shannon you'll come on and talk about thyroid and blood sugar and adrenals. I think that would be awesome, especially in per menopause because this is the time I think we need to optimize how we feel about ourselves. You know, we can work on changing our bodies for the rest of our life. But when you think about it, it's exhausting. When you are trying to change your body through dieting, it's exhausting.
(28:49):
Yes. Well, and it's limiting, right? Yes. Where we're going to parties and you're, let's say grandkids birthday party. And you're like, oh, I can't have any of that cake. Can't have any of that either. So then we, we limit ourself in this connection and this is something we didn't even get into, but food is a form of connection for a lot of people. I know for me, I always joke that one of my love languages is food, right? Like if somebody's sick or they had a baby or something exciting happens, I wanna take 'em out to lunch. You know, I wanna take him out and do something fun or exciting. And usually food is involved in that. And of course we make good choices and try to choose restaurants that have, you know, good sourced food and high quality food. The food is a really important piece to this. And so by opening up these possibilities and having not limiting ourselves, the not self limiting part that you said is gonna be a huge part, I think in the healing process for a lot of people. So I totally appreciate that. Spell your last name for people who want to find, and, and all of this will be in the show notes of course as well. But you know, just for people who are maybe driving down the road and have a good memory.
(30:23):
Yeah, yeah. well then you have a very good memory. So it's T a N Y a S T R I C E k.com. And I love how you just ended this podcast. Shannon, because I think as women, we need to bring more joy in life and I can have just as much joy in a kale salad, but I can also have joy in a scoop of really good vanilla ice cream, you know? Yes,
(30:48):
Yes, absolutely. Oh my goodness. We could probably talk forever on this topic. Cause there's, there's so many layers to it. So I really hope you guys go over and follow Tanya and just get to know her a little bit better and start to kind of use this as some self discovery, especially when you're working with your thyroid, because we, we have a very similar approach in the Hampton method where we're not teaching you to count calories and restrict things and weigh and measure and portion out and you know, limit things in your life. We're, we're helping you to learn how to saturate your body and how to tune into those hunger and fullness cues and, and people when they dive into this and they fully immerse themselves in this, they find that they're not, it's not hard. It's not restrictive. It's not a bad thing. It's not difficult. It is enjoyable. And to be her full of new possibilities. So anyways, thank you guys so much for being here. Is there any last words of wisdom that you have for anybody?
(32:05):
I always come to this word permiss, you know, through life, we as women, don't give ourselves permission to express ourselves, to delegate, to ask for what we need. And I think if you give yourself permission to explore food, if you're in Shannon's program, if you're thinking of joining Shannon's program, give yourself permission to have the thing and see how you react physically, emotionally. That is my last little parting gift, I guess.
(32:35):
I love that. Thank you so much for being on and hopefully we can continue this conversation another time as well. Absolutely. Thank you, Shannon. We'll see you guys.
(33:27):
Wait before you go, please subscribe. If you found value in today's episode, listen, you and share on Instagram and please tag. We love.
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free