Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey your host.

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: Chia seed internal shower – 

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/chia-seed-cleanse-where-medicine-and-marketing-part-ways-2026a1000j5a?ecd=mkm_ret_260712_mscpmrk_gastro_perspectives_MAI_etid8495829&uac=293943CR&impID=8495829

claiming it:

• “Detoxes” your body
• Flushes out your intestines
• Reduces bloating
• Helps you lose weight
• “Cleanses” your gut

provide:

• Lots of fiber (about 10 g in 2 tablespoons)
• Healthy fats
• Some protein
• Minerals
• They can help with bowel regularity if you’re not eating enough fiber already.

There is no evidence that chia water:

• Detoxes your body
• Flushes toxins
• Cleans your colon
• Melts fat
• Causes meaningful weight loss

Could it actually backfire?

Yes.

If someone suddenly goes from eating very little fiber to drinking a huge slug of chia every morning, they may end up with:

• Gas
• Bloating
• Cramping
• Constipation if they aren’t drinking enough fluids

There have even been case reports of people swallowing dry chia seeds, which expanded and became lodged in the esophagus

I’m not anti-chia seeds. I’m anti-magic thinking

The real “internal shower” is eating enough fiber consistently from a variety of foods, drinking enough water, and letting your digestive system do the job it has evolved to do.

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…3 KEY Reasons Why You Keep Getting Stuck With Intuitive Eating (And How to Decide It’s the Right Time to Ask for Help)

REASON 1: You’re Trying to Change Your Behaviors Without Changing Your Beliefs

• You’re letting yourself eat the chocolate and the pasta – but you still believe that it’s bad/junk/crap and therefore you feel somewhat guilty about eating it…
• You want to have peace with food and not have to restrict anymore – but you can’t stand the thought that this might mean that your weight needs to be higher than it was when you were dieting and you still believe that the only way for you to be happy or healthy is if you are thinner (or if at the very least you don’t gain weight)
• You’re eating things like chips and bagels, but you’re telling yourself that’s fine for now but eventually you’re still going to have to rein it in and stop eating them if you want to be healthy
• You’re trying to honor your hunger – but you still feel like eating less is better, or if you accidentally miss lunch because you got really busy at work that was a good thing. You still believe that eating less is good – because it will make you lose weight and thinness is better than fatness. You have yet to fully challenge and reprogram your deeply held belief systems around all of this. You’re basically trying to act like an intuitive eater, while still thinking like a dieter and it’s not going to work long-term for you if you don’t do the mental reprogramming that’s required for IE to work.

You make decisions based on what you believe, not what you know….And you already KNOW dieting doesn’t work long-term, but part of you still BELIEVES it’s your only option and THAT’S why IE isn’t fully working for you because you haven’t addressed these belief systems yet.

When you think about eating dessert, what story immediately pops into your head?

When your doctor mentions cholesterol, where does your mind go?

When your jeans fit differently, what do you immediately assume?

You’ve GOT TO STOP thinking like a dieter, otherwise you’re always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream w/ IE.

REASON 2: You’re Measuring Progress the Wrong Way

• Even if you logically get that this isn’t how it works, deep down you still believe that it means IE is working if you lose weight, and it’s failing if you gain weight. (It’s not that simple…)
• You’re not assessing or noticing your progress with things that aren’t numbers-driven. You aren’t paying attention to the fact that you now can eat a PBJ for lunch without feeling like you just committed a crime, or that you don’t feel compelled to step on the scale every single morning and let it determine how you feel about yourself for the day. You’re overlooking the fact that you can now go to a restaurant and get what actually sounds good instead of just the salad or the fish; and that you can push your cart through the grocery store and go down ALL the aisles – even the ones with chips, cookies and ice cream. You’re discounting the fact that you now get in the pool with your kids and grandkids instead of hiding on the side because of body shame – and you’re making the most beautiful memories that will last a lifetime. You’re too busy thinking about weight and the size of your belly to appreciate what IE IS DOING FOR YOU that is so freaking incredible, and freeing and meaningful…..and because of this YOU’RE MISSING THE ENTIRE POINT!!!

REASON 3: You Can’t See Your Own Blind Spots

• Have you ever searched everywhere for your phone…while holding it? Or looked for your sunglasses when they were on your head? We all have blind spots and we can’t see them.
• None of us can. That’s why they’re called blind spots. I was just in therapy the other day and my therapist pointed out that I was looking for all sorts of external validation in this situation with my son instead of trusting myself, my feelings, and my instincts. I couldn’t see that on my own. I thought I was being wise by considering multiple perspectives and asking myself all these “what if’s” – but what was really going on was 1) catastrophic thinking about what would happen if I made the “wrong” choice (this is literally for his baseball team – it’s not even that serious but it was PLAGUING me); and 2) I wasn’t trusting myself. 
• With your relationship with food and your body you can’t see your own blind spots. You can’t see where you’re still thinking like a dieter because it feels so true and normal to you. You can’t objectively evaluate your own thinking all the time. Your brain treats your long-held beliefs as facts. It doesn’t wave a little flag saying, “Warning! This is diet culture talking.” Your brain just says: “This is common sense.”

Why it’s so hard to catch yourself

• You can’t hear your own tone of voice.
• You don’t notice the assumptions you’ve repeated for 30 years.
• You’ve normalized thoughts that are actually keeping you stuck. The longer you’ve believed something, the more invisible it becomes.

Why coaching helps

A coach isn’t there to tell you what to eat. I won’t do that. (I’ll give you ideas – NDC menus).  But as a coach, I’m there to notice what you can’t see and point it out to you.

Things like:

• recurring thought patterns
• all-or-nothing thinking
• subtle restriction
• fear disguised as health
• perfectionism that you’re telling yourself is discipline

I can usually identify the thing that’s keeping you stuck within minutes because I’m not living in your head. I have the external perspective, AND spidey senses because i’ve been doing this for so long.

Here’s an example of our own blind spots: It’s almost impossible to proofread your own writing because your brain fills in what you meant to say.

Your thinking works the same way.

Normalize getting help

• Athletes have coaches.
• CEOs have mentors.
• Therapists have therapists.
• Physicians have physicians.
• Dietitians ask other dietitians for help.
• Just because you know quite a bit about something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for help or that it’s shameful. And that’s where I see so many of you holding yourselves back and getting in your own way.I  

How do Decide It’s the Right Time to Ask for Help

Most people think asking for help is the last resort. I’m sorry, and I love you – but that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. 

• Elite athletes have coaches.
• Therapists have therapists.
• Dietitians have dietitians.
• Yet people think they should undo decades of dieting entirely by themselves because they bought a $15 book.

People think asking for help = “I’m failing.”

When actually it means: “I’ve reached the point where I know I can’t see my own blind spots.”

7 Rapid Fire Signs it’s time:

1. You’re consuming more information than you’re implementing.

• You’ve read the books.
• You listen to podcasts every week.
• You follow all the intuitive eating accounts.
• Yet your day-to-day relationship with food hasn’t changed much.
• Knowledge isn’t your bottleneck anymore….At some point, another podcast episode isn’t what you need. You need someone to help you apply what you already know.

2. You keep starting over…over and over.

• You have moments where it finally clicks.
• You feel motivated.
• You promise yourself this time will be different.
• Then two weeks later you’re right back where you started.

3. You’re spending way too much mental energy trying to figure this out.

• Constantly wondering, “Am I doing this right?”
• Listening to ALL the podcasts, you’re in all the FB groups, following all the coaches, you’ve read all the books
• Googling “how to do IE without gaining weight”

4. Your health concerns keep pulling you back toward dieting.

• High cholesterol
• Prediabetes
• Perimenopause
• High blood pressure
• Fatty liver 
• Digestive issues

Instead of knowing how to integrate nutrition into intuitive eating without it feeling like a diet, you feel like you’re standing at that fork in the road of: “Do I keep trusting my body…or do I go back on a diet?”

5. You know what to do…but you can’t get yourself to do it

This is the difference between information and coaching.

• You already know restriction backfires.
• You already know food isn’t good or bad.
• You already know you should eat consistently.

But you keep falling back into old habits.

6. You’re tired.

Tired of:

• Starting over.
• Questioning yourself.
• Trying to piece together confusing and conflicting advice.
• Feeling like you’re one doctor’s appointment or blood test away from another diet.
• Wondering if you’re doing it wrong.

7. You don’t know what blind spots are…because they’re blind spots.

I heard this recently from some therapist on social media. She said: “You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.”

We all have blind spots. You don’t know what you don’t know. None of us do. An outside perspective can often identify the thing that’s been keeping you stuck for months in about five minutes.

I had a client recently who told me she couldn’t figure out why she was still snacking so much at night. She had quit dieting, she was listening to her body, she was eating breakfast, she was incorporating all types of food and wasn’t restricting them anymore…She said, “Katy I know that it’s not about hunger. I’m eating plenty at dinner and I should be good for the rest of the night.” 

And that was true – her dinner was great. But all it took was me asking her to describe the rest of her day of eating and I could tell her exactly why she was still snacking so much at night. And as soon as we fixed those issues and broke her out of this pattern she was fine. She was already doing so many things right – and she go to the point where she couldn’t see what she couldn’t see. 

Wrapping Up

I’ll leave you with this: You don’t get extra credit for struggling longer than necessary. You just don’t. You think it’s noble. You think it’s a badge of honor to do this on your own. But if you’re stuck it’s silly and unnecessary to keep struggling when there is help standing right in front of you. I get that this is vulnerable, and I get that you feel like you already know what you need to be doing, and I get that you feel like you should be able to figure this out on your own….AND I’m here to tell you that if that were going to happen it probably would have already. This stuff with our relationship with food and our bodies is complex, it’s nuanced, and it’s messy given the world that we live in. It’s not a personal or character flaw that you’re struggling with this. It’s because diet culture is so pervasive and has gotten us so disconnected from our bodies, and twisted in our heads that we lose site of how to trust ourselves with food, and what’s actually true and helpful when it comes to our health. 

If you’re realizing that it’s time for you to get help, you need to get inside of my coaching. Specifically NDC for most of you, but for those of you who aren’t ready for that or you want something more private, reach out to me for 1:1 options. Send me a DM on FB or IG, or email me at katy@katyharvey.net. It’s time to stop messing around and making progress inconsistently, or staying stuck where you’re at. Things could be drastically different for you before Halloween, and I’m not joking. Let’s get this figured out so that you can have your health, AND eat your favorite pasta dish, enjoy dessert, and feel comfortable in your body….without ever dieting again.

In case nobody has told you today – you are ENOUGH ALREADY. We’ll talk again soon.

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