Well, hello, and welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body. I’m Katy Harvey, and I’m really excited to be here today for this episode. I’m so beyond honored to be in your ear right now, because I know that there are a million other podcasts you could be listening to, and I don’t take it lightly that you chose this one. 

I want to start this episode by naming something that almost everyone who’s curious about intuitive eating is thinking deep inside, even if they haven’t said it out loud yet.

You’re interested in intuitive eating, and you’re worn out from dieting. You’re EXHAUSTED from thinking about food all the time.

And… you still want to lose weight.

If you’ve found yourself wondering, Does that mean intuitive eating isn’t for me? Or, Am I already doing this wrong before I even begin?

I want you to hear this clearly:

Wanting weight loss does not disqualify you from intuitive eating.

At the same time…sneakily trying to use intuitive eating as a way to pursue weight loss will undermine it.

This is where so many people get stuck.

Where you don’t want to diet anymore, and you like the idea of peace with food from IE, but that fear of weight gain still takes up so much space in your mind.

If part of you is thinking, I’ll trust my body as long as my weight doesn’t change too much, or, I’m ready to stop dieting, but I still need some reassurance – this episode is for you.

Because the REAL question isn’t whether intuitive eating will help you lose weight.

The real question is what becomes possible when you stop trying to control your weight and start getting curious about what your body is actually asking for.

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Creatine

You might have heard about creatine a lot lately in the wellness space – especially to help with cognitive functioning, and it’s also popular in the fitness world.

So what is it, and is there any truth to the hype? Let’s break it down…

Creatine is a compound made from amino acids (which are the building blocks of protein). So even though it is made from 3 amino acids, and amino acids are what make up protein, creatine itself is not a protein. 

It’s been studied since the 1800’s and it took off in popularity after the 1992 Olympics when the 100 meter dash gold medalist, Linford Christie, had been publicised for using it. So everyone thought that it must have given him a special competitive edge…but he was later convicted of doping, so whether the creatine was what helped him win the gold medal or something else is up for debate. (And this is one of those examples of how things aren’t always as they seem)

In 1993 creatine was sold as a supplement called Phosphagen. I’m guessing they were capitalizing on the popularity of it after the olympics.

So what does creatine do? It helps with ATP production in your cells. If you ever had to learn the krebs cycle in school, you might recall that ATP is how cells generate energy to perform their functions. 

Creatine is vital for energy metabolism, especially during high-demand conditions where cells need quick energy like intense exercise or metabolic stress. Supplementation can increase the amount of stored creatine and phosphocreatine, supporting rapid regeneration of ATP, which gives your cells energy.

95% of the body’s creatine stores are in muscles. Which is why it’s hyped up for athletes and people who exercise.

Creatine is NOT an essential nutrient – meaning that we don’t have to consume it. Our body can make it internally. But it does get depleted more quickly during exercise, which is why some people supplement with it to raise their levels. For the average person, it’s probably not going to do anything meaningful. And you should know that if you’re taking it, you would need to take it every day to build up your levels and keep them there. Unless you’re an elite athlete, this probably isn’t really worth it in my opinion. 

Creatine has also gotten some traction as a “brain booster” for cognition. The science behind this is preliminary, inconsistent, and not strong enough to support the claims that are being made about it. 

At one point, creatine looked like it might be promising for neurologic disorders, such as Parkinson and Huntingtons disease, BUT, 2 large and rigourous trials found no clinical benefit. 

Risks:

• Water retention/weight gain
• Muscle cramps and strains
• Upset stomach
• Diarrhea
• It’s generally considered safe – but whether it’s actually effective and worth it is debatable for most people.
  
  

This is also a good example of where the general public, and even scientists, are so quick to jump on the bandwagon of possibilities with supplements and let their enthusiasm outpace the actual science behind it – and at the same time people are soooo skeptical of actual pharmaceutical drugs, which are studied much more rigorously, and by they time they are FDA approved they have a LOT of data behind them for efficacy and safety (now of course there have been times that drugs had to get pulled after the fact, but by and large actual medications are much safer and more effective than supplements ever will be). 

When you’re hearing a lot of hype, especially on social media, about any supplement, I want you to be really skeptical. The hype is often followed by a coupon code and there are a lot of people making money off grifting supplements that aren’t really proven to do what they claim. Also keep in mind that the supplement industry isn’t regulated and has very little oversight. So if you’ve ever scoffed at taking a medication that your doctor recommended, but you willingly pop a fist full of supplements each day, it is worth being curious why you feel so much more comfortable with the supplements than the prescriptions? Because the reality is that the people recommending and selling the supplements are directly making money off of telling you how great they are. Doctors do not make money or get kickbacks off prescribing you drugs, contrary to popular belief. I think this is a really interesting discussion about how we perceive supplements vs prescriptions – and for sure there are problems with both industries – but the supplement industry is largely a scam, so again I encourage you to always be skeptical of supplements. 

Creatine I’m mostly calling woo, unless you are a high level athlete or super into fitness. If you’re an average everyday person like me, you don’t need it.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…Can You Still Do Intuitive Eating If You Want To Lose Weight?

Clarifying: Wanting Weight Loss ≠ Practicing Weight Loss

We need to separate desire from behavior.

• Wanting weight loss is not bad or wrong. But it is a conditioned desire, not a requirement for health or happiness – yet our culture teaches us that it is. That in order to be healthy we need to be in a certain weight range, and in order to be happy we need to look a certain way to feel comfortable in our bodies and confident about ourselves.
  • What if you “NEED” to lose weight?
  • What if you can’t fathom accepting the body you have currently? (Or if your body gains weight?)
• Intuitive eating does not require you to pretend you don’t care about weight.
  • And in the IE spaces online sometimes it feels this way. (Plug IEME group)
  • Flip it to curiosity about weight, and thinking of weight as one piece of neutral data from your body
• While IE doesn’t mean you have to stop caring about weight, or pretend you don’t care – it does require that you stop letting weight control your decisions.
  • Because here’s the thing…if you’re letting your fear of weight gain or your desperation to lose weight control your decisions with food and exercise, then: 1) You’re not actually doing IE, and 2) You’re sabotaging your efforts with IE and it’s never going to work for you. 
  • I GET HOW HARD THIS IS. 
• So again – let’s come back to the main point here: Wanting weight loss doesn’t mean you are practicing weight loss. You can yearn deeply for weight loss, AND still choose to give IE a fair shot to see how you feel when you’ve made peace with food, and your body too. And the truth is, we don’t know where your weight is going to land in this process. I wish I had that crystal ball, and I don’t. Part of “doing the work” of IE is tolerating the incredible discomfort of that uncertainty.

Let Me Be Clear: Intuitive Eating Is Not a Weight Loss Method

• Intuitive eating is not designed to make the scale go down.
  • It is like taking a thyroid medication and wondering why your BP didn’t go down – that’s not what it was designed for.
• We do not measure success by weight loss, or failure by weight gain.
• Anyone selling IE as a weight loss strategy is repackaging diet culture and co-opting the language of IE to sell you a diet. (Noom, I’m looking at you – and a whole bunch of IE influencers online)

• The goal is peace with food + body trust + health-supportive behaviors.
• Weight is a side effect, not a target.
• Sometimes bodies go down, sometimes up, sometimes stay the same—and all of that can be healthy.

The REAL Question = “Can You Tolerate Not Controlling Your Weight?”

Let’s take a moment to shift the focus from: “Will intuitive eating help me lose weight?” to: “What happens when I stop trying to control my weight?”

• Why weight control feels like safety.
  • Controlling your weight feels like controlling your life, like controlling your health, like controlling how others perceive you, like controlling your self-esteem. 
  • The problem is, it’s an illusion of control – and it’s rooted in fat phobia, and a lot of myths about fat bodies. 
  • “We have been taught that thinness is evidence of virtue and fatness is evidence of failure. That belief is not neutral—it causes harm.”
    • — Aubrey Gordon
    • If you read her book “You Should Just Lose Weight (an 19 Other Myths About Fat People), it’s a really good deep dive on how weight and health are far more complicated than we’ve been led to believe, and how the idea that fat people are inherently unhealthy is a myth, not a medical fact.
    • And I know there’s probably part of you that is having all sorts of, “Yeah, buts..” right now – I get it. But I want to push pause on that for just a second…We’re going to talk more about that in a minute, and you can go unpack more of it by reading Aubrey’s book – I want to bring us back to what feels so intolerable – the discomfort of not controlling your weight. That fear that if you’re not controlling it, that it’s going to spiral out of control and you’ll be unhappy, unhealthy and miserable for the rest of your life. THAT’S the part I want you to stay with for a minute, rather than dropping it like a hot potato to debate about what the science says about health and weight. Can you allow yourself to tolerate the discomfort of not controlling your weight for long enough to give yourself a fair shot at making peace with food? Because here’s the thing – this is what will also help you get healthier in the long run than dieting ever will. But you have to fully implement ALL of the principles of IE, and do them correctly. You can’t just pick and choose which ones you like, and skip the ones you don’t. And remember that body acceptance is one of the principles. I’m not suggesting you should just “let yourself go” or watch your weight skyrocket. I’m suggesting that if you loosen your grip on the scale, and really give yourself a fair shot to do IE the right way, and not just wing it, but actually study it and practice each part of it, that you will start to trust your body more, and you’ll find that your weight stabilizes in the place it’s genetically meant to be at this phase of your life. But again, I come back to – can you tolerate not controlling your weight in the meantime? Are you willing to sit with that discomfort? 

Set Point, Metabolism, and Why Dieting Backfires

High-level (no physiology lecture):

• Chronic dieting damages metabolism (not to mention your self-esteem and self-trust)
• Restriction → adaptation → rebound. Bodies defend against perceived famine.
• Intuitive eating focuses on fueling, consistency, and adequacy, not control.

• Set point is a range, not a number.
• Set point shifts across life phases (stress, aging, hormones, recovery).
• Your body already knows where it wants to be—if you stop fighting it. And the irony is that if you keep fighting it and trying to drive your weight down, you’re most likely going to keep ratcheting your set point UP over time.

The Hard Truth: You Can’t Use Intuitive Eating While Clinging Onto the Scale 

• “If the scale is still the judge, jury, and executioner—you’re not doing intuitive eating.”

Examples of how you might be clinging onto the scale::

• Checking weight to see “if it’s working” or “just to check” after you have a fun weekend with your girlfriends or a date night with your partner
• Eating differently depending on scale feedback
• You let yourself eat intuitively, as long as the scale doesn’t surprise you.
• You wake up hungry, but if the scale is up, you second-guess whether that hunger is “real.”
• You eat less at dinner after a higher weigh-in—not as a diet, just to “balance things out.”
  You feel proud of yourself for “listening to your body” on days the scale goes down.
• You mentally credit intuitive eating when weight drops—and question it when weight goes up.
• You worry that without the scale, you’d lose control or stop caring about your health.
• You believe the scale is the thing standing between you and “letting yourself go.”

How Holding the Scale Hostage Sabotages Your Intuitive Eating Journey

When the scale is still in charge:

• You stop listening to your body and start listening to a number. Hunger, fullness, and satisfaction all get filtered through, “What did the scale say?”
  
• You second-guess your internal cues. Hunger feels suspicious. Fullness feels risky. Satisfaction feels indulgent…and underneath it all you still don’t trust yourself.
  
• You unconsciously eat for scale management instead of nourishment—pulling back after higher weigh-ins or loosening rules only when the number feels “safe.”
  
• You are eating more restrictively, calling it gentle nutrition
  
• You never fully rebuild trust with food, because the scale is still holding you hostage
  
• You stay stuck in performative intuitive eating—going through the motions without actually letting go of control.
  
• You teach your nervous system that your body is only trustworthy when it behaves, which keeps fear running the show.
  
• You turn intuitive eating into a test you’re constantly grading instead of a relationship you’re deepening with food and with your body.
  • You get an A+ if your weight goes down, and an F if it goes up

What Actually Changes When IE Is Working

We want to replace weight-based metrics with lived outcomes.

Let me paint you a picture…I want you to imagine if:

• Food decisions feel easy. It doesn’t feel like a moral dilemma whether to get the fish or the pasta at a restaurant. You don’t debate whether you’ve been good enough to eat some Oreos. And you can add in some fiber or protein for gentle nutrition when you’re building your plate at lunch, or when you’re digging through the pantry for a snack – and applying gentle nutrition doesn’t feel like a diet, it just feels like self-care.
• Hunger is trusted, not feared. You don’t second guess your hunger, and you don’t tell yourself “I shouldn’t be hungry yet” or try to trick yourself into not being hungry by filling up on rice cakes, bell pepper strips, coffee or diet soda.
• As your next vacation is getting closer, you no longer have thoughts like, “I need to start reining it in before the trip.” 
• You can take a bite of a dessert, realize you don’t like it that much, and just stop. 
• You are able to throw away bites of what’s left on your plate. 
• You don’t obsess ahead of time, or afterwards, about how many calories were in your meal at the Mexican restaurant with your friends.
• You’re not holding onto smaller clothes that fit you 10 years ago in hopes that you’ll wear them again. You are able to let go, and fill your closet with clothes that fit your here-and-now body regardless of the number on the tag
• You don’t avoid the mirror when you’re getting out of the shower because you’re horrified of your body. You can look in the mirror with kindness and appreciation towards your body, or body neutrality. 
• Going to the doctor doesn’t feel like going to the principal’s office anymore. You are able to confidently walk in and talk with your doctor about what’s going on with your health, knowing that you are in a steady place with food and movement, and you feel empowered that you’re doing the things you need to be doing to support your health – and that if there are concerns they can be addressed in a way that’s not diet-y or weight-centric.
• You no longer compare yourself to other people when you walk in a room at a work meeting or a social gathering. Instead of sizing yourself up to see how your weight compares to everyone else in the room, you walk in and smile and connect with the people there. 
• You don’t stress about taking time off from exercise when you’re traveling, sick or exhausted. You trust yourself to get back to a movement routine that works for your body, in your life, when you are able. Exercise is no longer an on and off thing based on your eating or whether you’re on a diet. It’s just a normal part of your routine. 
• Your weight is stable, and the number on the scale doesn’t matter that much to you anymore. Maybe you get on the scale periodically, or maybe not. Maybe you fluctuate a little throughout the year depending on the season, but you overall trust that your body is going to hang out in a range now that you’re no longer dieting and trying to control it.
• Your life is no longer diminished by your concerns about your weight. YOU ARE NO LONGER TETHERED TO THE SCALE. YOU ARE FREE. 

This is exactly what we’re going to do together inside my upcoming free challenge called Braver Than the Scale: A free 5-day challenge to stop letting your fear of weight gain sabotage your IE journey. 

The challenge starts Feb 23, and during those 5 days Mon-Fri we are going to hang out together and work on how you can loosen the grip of the scale, so that you can give IE a fair shot to work for you. I’m going to walk you through how to let go of worrying about and trying to control your weight, and how to sit with that discomfort, so that you don’t have to do it alone. This isn’t about throwing caution to the wind and just saying “screw it” with your weight – it’s about intentionally working through your fears, building up your courage and confidence to do this, and getting braver than the scale. 

You can check out all the details and grab your spot for free at nondietacademy.com/brave

It all kicks of Feb 23, and if you’re listening to this in the future feel free to DM me to see what programs I’ve got going on and if I’m running another round of this challenge soon. 

Why IE is worth it—even without weight promises.

I’m not going to sit here and make you any promises about what will happen with your weight. I can’t do that, and I won’t lie to you. 

What I will tell you with absolute confidence is that IE is worth it, and that you can feel better about your body than you can even imagine is possible without focusing on weight loss and controlling the number on the scale. 

When your thoughts, your actions and your life are no longer consumed by thoughts about your size and your weight, it frees up your energy and mental space for you to be able to live your life more fully, to honor your health in ways that are actually sustainable and effective, and for you finally have that inner peace with yourself that dieting has promised you forever and couldn’t deliver on. 

I’ve never met someone who became an intuitive eater and made peace with food and their body who regretted it. In fact, more often I hear people express that they wish they would have found me and they wish they would have done this work sooner. 

So I’ll leave you with this: If you made it this far in this episode, why wait longer? Why continue to straddle this line between IE and dieting? Why not get braver than the scale and let yourself give IE a fair shot without focusing on weight loss for a while, and see what happens? There’s a really good chance your future self will thank you for it. 

I really hope that you’ll join me inside the Braver Than the Scale challenge. Go to nondietacademy.com/brave or click the link in the show notes (you can also DM me for the link), and I’ll see you inside. Even if you’re still feeling a little skeptical, give me a chance to show you what it’s like to lean into this part of the work, so let’s be brave together. I’ve got you. 

As we wrap up, I want to bring you back to the question I posed to you at the beginning of this episode:

The REAL question isn’t whether intuitive eating will help you lose weight.

The real question is what becomes possible when you stop trying to control your weight and start getting curious about what your body is actually asking for.

In case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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