What we talk about in this episode

In Episode 3 of the Joyful Health Show, we interview intuitive eating dietitian, speaker, and creator of the Peace with Food App Amy Carlson about the very common question, “Can I practice intuitive eating and still want to lose weight?”

Amy shares her personal history with eating disorders and then how God met her with His Word and blessed her with solid eating rhythms to bring her back to the table. In this episode, we talk about Amy’s best tips for her clients who are struggling with this focus on body weight, along with practical tips for how to focus on finding your identity instead of trying to control the scale.  

Amy Carlson, RD (Registered Dietitian) has held a thriving private practice in the Houston, Texas area serving the eating disorder population for over two decades. She holds her Bachelor’s of Science in Nutrition from the University of Minnesota, where she grew up, and received her Master’s of Science in Nutrition from TWU in the Texas Medical Center. Passionate about God’s truth and the equipping of women to find freedom, Amy is also a highly sought after speaker, spending her time traveling both across the state of Texas, and the country speaking to groups of women for retreats and women’s conferences. Her longing to have a bigger reach with the truth and knowledge of food and the body and inviting women “back to the table” became a reality with the co-founding of the Peace With Food App: the opportunity to pour years of her experience into a personalized app for anyone to use. Amy and her husband have been happily married for over 27 years and together they live a busy and active life with their four beautiful children.

Connect with Amy on instagram at @peacewithfoodapp on her website at www.hellopeacewithfood.com. Download the Peace with Food app to help you find your intuitive eating rhythm by tracking hunger and fullness without weight loss language, along with notifications to be present and mindful. 

 

Episode Transcription

Introduction

Hey, friends. Welcome to the Joyful Health show. I'm Aubrey, registered dietitian, and I'm Kasey, personal trainer, and together we're here to help you discover joyful health by grace. In today's episode of the Joyful Health Show, we talk with registered dietitian and co-founder of the Peace with Food App Amy Carlson about trading the pursuit of weight loss for a broader relationship with the Lord. Amy distills her years of experience in her heart for helping Christian women come back to the table to equip you to take your first steps towards intuitive health by grace.

If you're ready to ditch diets for good but want someone to walk with you into the ways of intuitive health by grace, we recommend our signature joyful health course, which opens for enrollment next week. We've distilled six months of our dietitian and fitness services into just twelve weeks of coaching to teach you how to eat well and move free for life. No calorie counting or step tracking required. In this course, you'll get twelve weeks of video teaching from myself and Kasey, along with additional support from our team of dietitians and fitness professionals. We'll send you your own workbook in the mail to guide you through the course principles and into prayer as you go.

You’ll have a small class size to personalize your experience and give you access to us for answers and encouragement. With a private joyful health community, a monthly live group, coaching sessions over Zoom, and an optional accountability partner to keep you in step with the Spirit along the way, and lifetime access to the course, with continual improvements. So head to Joyful Health to sign up for the waiting list and learn more.

 

All right, let's get into this week's episode. Hi, guys, and welcome to this week's episode of the Joyful Health show. We are so excited to have Amy Carlson here with us.

She's a registered dietitian and the co-founder of the Peace with Food app, and today Amy is going to talk with us about a common question we get, which is, can I start intuitive eating if I still have this desire to lose weight?

So we're so excited. Thank you for being here, Amy. Thank you for having me. It's so fun to be with you guys. I'm excited for our shared time together. Yes, us too, Amy. OK, so for some of the listeners who might not know you.

So Amy is a registered dietitian. She has a practice in the Houston, Texas, area serving the eating disorder population. She's been serving them for over two decades. She has a Bachelor's of Science and Nutrition from the University of Minnesota, where she grew up.

And then she got her Master's of Science and Nutrition from T.W. and the Texas Medical Center. Amy is really passionate about God's truth and equipping women to find freedom. And she's also a very sought after speaker, so we're so thankful we get to have her on here.

And she spends a lot of time traveling across the state of Texas and across the country, speaking to groups of women for retreats and other women's conferences. So what her main longing is to have a bigger reach with the truth and knowledge of food and the body, and inviting women back to the table to become a reality with the co-founding of her Peace with Food App. This is an opportunity for her to four years of her experience and to this personalize app for anyone to use, and we recommend a lot of our listeners. We recommend all of our clients to this piece with food app. Amy and her husband have been happily married for over 27 years. Congrats. And together they have a they live a busy and active life with their four beautiful children.

Do Weight Loss and Intuitive Eating Fit Together?

00:04:11:17 - 00:04:26:09

OK, so Amy, you have a lot of experience in both life and in this area. Maybe you can share a little bit with us about your maybe personal struggle or your career struggle with this topic as far as wanting to lose weight, but also wanting to eat intuitively, how do those two fit together?

And then maybe how did God meet you in the middle of that struggle? And why do you teach what you do as a result?

Amy

Oh, these are such good questions. And I yes, I think I've hit that part of my life where I get a say of how of years of experience. When I say how long I've been practicing, it really echoes back in my ear like, Oh, oh, oh dear, OK. My own struggle, which I won't go into great detail, but I grew up in Minnesota on the farm, youngest of five kids, and I had a mom who dieted her whole life. We knew when she was dieting based on what was on the table and and then we knew when she was not dieting based on what was on the table.

And I grew up in a family of believers. We went to church. My dad was church choir director. And so this idea of weight loss was really tied in to sort of my mom's relationship with the Lord as well.

I watched that as a small kid, kind of seeing that intertwined sort of weight loss. Was always a goal, it was always sort of a topic, but my understanding, which I didn't really understand cognitively kind of at the forefront, but really growing up was that every woman would want to lose weight.

You know, of course, then meant loving the Lord. Self-discipline meant you were a good Christian. So when my coach, when I was in high school, asked me to lose five pounds because she thought my timing on my uneven bars would be better, which now sounds really hilarious to say we can all giggle and be like, sure, yes, please, let me lose five pounds so my timing can be better. That really began the journey for me with my own eating disorder struggle and anorexia eventually led to bulimia and out kind of coming out of bulimia and binge eating and really eventually to orthorexia, which really wasn't the language for that.


00:06:14:01 - 00:06:30:14

Then was this idea as my body cycled from a low weight and then to a higher weight when I was a higher weight, I really had no reference point for normal eating, although I had been sort of a normal eater, sort of “normal, intuitive eater.”

As a kid, I lost that pretty early, which a lot of us do, which we start to understand. Our own signals can't be trusted even if we're not dieting ourselves. That gets transferred pretty quickly. We see other people around us dieting.

We go, '“Oh, I struggle with my body. Well, I know what to do. I have a file for that. I'm watching everyone else around me do that. And especially as a believer now I've got that right internally.” I'm not a good Christian unless I, you know, as a young kid, I didn't really have a reference for recovery. So what I knew to do was to diet. I didn't really understand. Fast forward, the Lord is so gracious, so gracious right through my own work in recovery, which was messy back then. It was not really a lot of great tools and help for recovery.

Slowly, the Lord gave me lots of examples of intuitive eaters in my life, real normal eaters. He allowed me to see those things in some differences, and he really met me there. In fact, wildly, I was in college and was crying in the corner one day over my body and all that. I was in a play. I was in theater, could you guess? And I a boy came and the friend that was in the play sat next to me and he said what was wrong and I just lamented about this body.

I just couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't. I was trying to let go and try and work on recovery, but I couldn't find this body that I was longing for. And he came over to my townhome later and he dropped off this book and it was an old book. It was written by a nurse that was talking about Eat More, Weigh Less. It was really my first introduction to intuitive eating. And he said, “I know this is silly. My mom really like this book. I decided to give it to you,” which was, I don't even remember the kid's name. And I remember, instead of doing my paper that night, I read the whole thing and I just thought, “Is this possible?” This this is possible for me to to eat like this? And so that was the beginnings of that introduction.

00:08:25:22 - 00:08:39:23

And then the Lord continued to do that. And really, honestly, through every pregnancy through the Lord was just kept teaching me in all the years of my practice, the Lord unfolded my journey. That and how that has happened now that what different that's made in my work.

I was I was sharing with y'all earlier that the Lord burdened me when I was pregnant with my second son to, I really felt compelled to abandon all and go be a missionary after reading some books, which with my husband was so gracious to allow space for that, we did not do that because what the Lord did. He just absolutely burdened me and opened my eyes to see that the mission field he had called me to where Christian women that were missing out on the kingdom and were ineffective even in their own lives, in their own calling, because their obsession with body and weight.

And I mean, I wept and wept and wept over. I just sat with the Lord going, “You're right, you're right.” And so the Lord has continued to sort of unpack that for me over the years. He's allowed me to talk and invite women back to the table. I feel, as I've shared with you, so passionate about this, this message, this story, this invitation that nobody gets left behind as believers, we got to, we just got to keep grabbing everybody from the quicksand and go, '“Oh, we're not going to leave you behind.”

We're not going to leave you back there. We're just going to keep calling everybody back to the table. And so this even just this conversation together today is is an answer to prayer for that. I mean, I love that because, you know, I think even with this question, there's this common question we get, which is like, “can I start intuitive eating if I still want to lose weight?” It points to a bigger thing, which is that we are holding back on living our lives, living and even making healthy choices for ourselves because we think we need to lose weight first and or we need to change our outside first.

00:10:20:12 - 00:10:35:09

Aubrey

And so I love what you said about people are not coming to the table and talk a little bit more about the things and the ways that dieting or this just pursuit of weight loss at all costs. How does that keep us back from our life? Because I think sometimes we may not realize all that dieting is stealing from us. And so talk about that.

Amy

Oh, wow, I I, I get so many testimonies about that. I, in fact, I have a client who I just adore, and she just sent me sort of just really sweet messages along the way this year. She's doing great. She's been wonderful. She's a mom. She came and sat in my office, you know, a couple of years ago and was really trying to marry these things. Most people that are beginning intuitive eating have a really complex relationship with food. They have a complicated history of dieting. They have a really sort of angst, usually with their body. So to say, let's let go of this desire to lose weight is like asking somebody to let go of their crutches. You know, when their leg is still broken, it’s like, “how do I release that?” And for a lot of people to, there's this sort of this idea if I let go and I will fall. It's so cool to get there in our sessions and kind of let them sort of get there themselves.

It’s this understanding in their mind that if I let go of my desire to lose weight, I will always gain weight. The only thing keeping me here is my my goal to lose weight, which is a myth, right? And what that's doing is occupying main space. So the sweet, precious client sent me a text on Thanksgiving morning, and she she writes all the things. She's not missing out on all the things she's not missing and today she said, “I will do this today. I will be here with my daughter. I didn't prepare. I didn't save calories. I didn't make extra food for myself. Today, I will do this.” And she said, “Thank you for my freedom journey.”

So she said she'll do this, you know, going on vacation, she'll send a text. This is what I did because I'm not dieting. This is what I'm experiencing, because I'm not, you know, withholding sort of this part of our life from those around us.

So one of the things that is again, so we have kind of these tools, oh yeah, I really want to learn intuitive eating. But of course, I want to lose weight. And what's happening is they sort of want to manipulate intuitive eating into another diet.

It's like, really, what I want is a diet where and so and then they'll say, Well, you know, I just don't know if I could just eat whatever I want and if I eat whatever I want, you know that whole like, well, then I'll always be eating donuts.

You know, that's when people's first started. Counter intuitive eating. And so they're holding on to this goal to lose weight in order to control and manipulate intuitive eating. And so it becomes this really complex thing. And what happens when people are holding on to that one is that we are continuing to form our identity around the created rather than the Creator. We are forming our identity around creatureliness. We're glorifying the body rather than glorifying God in our body. And so we keep getting stuck on that one spot where we're sort of and we circle and the enemy is like, great, you know, the enemy came to even the garden and he said, “God's holding out on you. He's holding out and you've got to take it for yourself,” he assaulted God's character in the garden and he's been doing it ever since. And so when he says God's holding out on you, you've got to take it for yourself.

I just had this conversation with a client. She said, That's right, I do. I mean, that's how deeply ingrained. I mean, she just said, I do. Nobody's going to give it to me. God's not going to give it to me. That is what the enemy does. So he continues to steal from as the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy by keeping our mind and our goals, all of that occupied on the created rather than the Creator.

And so part of our answer for this is worship, where's our worship? Where is this source of worship?

And really, that was my understanding. My mom had books and devotionals and devoted, I mean, scripture and all of that devoted to helping her get to her goal weight. I mean, that's a complex relationship spiritually with the Lord that a lot of it that I think if we didn't grow up like that, our moms did.

And so there's a carryover for sure, and in our culture is carried over. It's so complex and we have to be talking about it. That's why, again, I just loved love to be here because we have to be able to say to each other, “Hey, there's something wrong with this, right?”

Like, there's something wrong. And and to think, if I'm going to let go of my desire to lose weight as I begin to embrace intuitive eating kind of get getting back in touch with my normal body cues, I always say to people, your body isn't on a fast track to gain weight. And the only thing keeping us back isn’t our desire to lose weight. Our body's natural place is really this like sweet landing place. It may not be a runway model body. Most of our bodies aren’t.

But people don’t understand while you're wasting all of this time, you're wasting all of this energy that if we rest and we find that natural rhythm, it's right there. It's right there in front of you in this space. And it's all this time and all that mind space and all that. Your place at the table that only you can fill is waiting.

What If You’re Not Ready to Let Go of Weight Loss?

00:16:17:19 - 00:16:31:13 Kasey

Hmm. OK, so you've touched on a few really beautiful analogies, and one word that sticks out to me is when you said pulling women from the quicksand. And so when I think of quicksand, as kids, it's like your number one fear. Bu I mean, when do we actually encounter quicksand in our and our everyday life? Not very often. But when you see it in movies, you're like, Oh, the worst! But also the key for quicksand as you know you, the more you struggle, the more you sink. Yes. And so we end up seeing women as professionals. We see the women who are tired of struggling. They know that the more they diet, the more they restrict, the more they try and control their food and their intake, the more they sink.

And we see them when they're at the point of exhaustion, and all they can do is reach up a hand. And thankfully, the Lord has blessed us with community and knowledge. Like you said, he brought you step by step people who had who were practicing a different way, a way of trust in the body. Like you said, it's, you know, you can't really let go of something right away when you haven't like your your broken leg analogy. If you can't let that go, the crutches, if your leg is still broken.

So as far as flawed, being able to bind us up slowly and also the verse that came to me when you said, like, our body's not just going to like our our bodies made to survive, we have like generations and generations of survival built in and dieting is a pretty recent phenomenon.

But Psalm 16 says,

I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.

So for you, when you were struggling in the quicksand you were breaking down, what are maybe some signs that for the woman, listening is like, “Well, it is a struggle for me, but I'm not sure if I if I want to let go of weight loss yet.”

What was the point for you that you had your like rock bottom? I guess so to speak in that boy gave you that book. What told you that there was another way that there was another way to eat and think about your body?

Was it that book specifically? Was it other people? And you talked a lot about prayer.

00:19:04:17 - 00:19:20:16 Amy

Yeah. You know what? So my my story's long, it's like what for podcast long? I teach a high school Bible study and my my juniors are always like, You need to have a podcast. You have a lot of stories. You just have a storytelling podcast. But I was much too used to college. It's complex.

I had to be in an eating disorder treatment group, which was really not awesome. Again, not great treatment back then. I went and backpacked through Europe with my brother. At age 19, my brother was in Europe. He's like, “Come back, pack” and no money like, lived on a dime. Backpacked for four months and I came back. I don't have enough money to go to college.

Of course, my goal was going to Europe was, yes, I'm so excited to go live with my brother. I've never been to Europe, excited to backpack, but I'm going to lose weight while I'm there. Like, literally, that was part of the complexity of my eating disorder and disordered thinking, which was, we're going to walk a lot, you know, we're going to walk a lot. I did not. Food is amazing and I had such a complex relationship with food there too. It occupied one of my biggest grieving places. I went and backpacking Europe, but my mind space was filled with weight loss and eating and dieting and all the things.

So I came back and I didn't have money to go back to school, and so I went and worked at a dude ranch in Colorado. It's a resort. It's an amazing resort. But the owners were believers and the staff were all believers, a lot of college students.

And within the first couple of weeks of being there, the head of the girls staff came and she went to meet one on one and she just said, “Is there anything you want the Lord to work with you on while you’re here?”

And I opened my mouth to say, “Yeah, I want to lose weight while I’m here,” as literally I was opening my mouth and the Lord had really met me that summer in Europe. Really, really opening my eyes to wow, just hit the reality of God.

But I was just that was just what was coming out of my mouth: “I just want to lose weight. I want to get in better shape.” You know, I was going to use that. And so I opened my mouth and I said, “I really want to know God's Word.”

And then I was like, Well, that's not what I meant to say. And so she said, “Great, how can we support you in that?” And I went to say again, “I kind of want to lose weight” to open my mouth, and I said, “I just really want to love God's Word,” and I thought, that is not at all what you mean to say. I cannot even. It was a weird as I went back to my bunkhouse and thought, What? I want to lose weight and I cannot even tell you how much I fell in love with God’s Word there.

And what was so amazing is that the staff all laid in the staff dining hall. I was cleaned cabins and square danced and did all these things, but it was built in intuitive eating. It was like the Lord gave me my own little IAP there.

We just went to breakfast, went to lunch, went to dinner and my cues came back. My hunger and fullness cues came back. I started to recognize when I was full, so literally I began practice intuitive eating and I began to go, “Wow, I get hungry right around lunchtime. This is amazing and I'm eating this food and I'm moving my body.” And so literally, the Lord gave me a practicum and intuitive eating, and I remember journaling. You know, this is long before I decided to become a dietitian.

I was somewhere in the middle of my recovery journey. And one of the things that we think about with recovery is when we think about not only full-blown eating disorders, but just people who are coming out of the diet culture.

We think recovering our relationship with food means recovering a perfect body or recovering sort of, you know, all the things. But really, it's recovering our identity in Christ. It's recovering our life in Christ. It's giving up this mirage of a perfect body and perfect marriage and perfect job and perfect kids which tell you there are none.

Twenty years into parenting, there are a number of children. And so what? The Lord gave me this very, very tangible example. And one day this this teenage boy staff, I was eating and I was really hungry. And he said, “Man, you can eat like a man,” and I excused myself from the table.

Of course, having been in a full-blown eating disorder, went in the bathroom and cried and cried and cried, cried and cried and cried until I started to laugh. And I just started to laugh because I thought, “You know what? He must think I'm a normal eater if he's not a mean person. He's a kind person. He must think I'm a normal eater. Otherwise he wouldn't have joked about it.” Nobody knew I had a history with an eating disorder.

And I sat in that and I laughed and cried. It was like, Lord, you're bringing me back. And so that was a huge, monumental step. And so that's something that I apply even for work with with patients and clients and is that we've just got to apply a template to our eating where we begin to sort of apply this rhythm. You know, we've lost rhythm. And so sometimes people feel like there's no handles and intuitive eating like, you know, I'm not hungry till three in afternoon. I'm like, no, no, no, we're going to get you going at breakfast, we're going to right, we're going to apply this template and we're going to give this rhythm.

And what we do, though, is if we let go of this idolatry of needing to lose weight and we actually can listen to our body because when we don't give that up, then we're constantly filtering through, “Am I eating too much? What can I choose differently? How can I manage my food to create this result that I want?” And then we're really still in a diet. You know, we're so operating in that same way. I know I could go on, but that's an example.

00:24:23:12 - 00:24:40:01

Yeah. I felt like that was great. I know in my own relationship with food when I when I, you know, I didn't see it at the time, but looking back, I remember thinking after I'd graduated college, I was like, You know, when I was in college and I was eating and they were feeding me in the dormitories and I just like went breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didn't worry about anything, and my body was fine. Like my my body found its place. I didn't have to micromanage anything, you know, and I was probably eating way more at the time.

You know, I just was that same mindset. And so I think that's a beautiful, practical tip for people is that, you know, we just need to start with what you called a template of feeding ourselves regularly and start with that step of faith.

What Can Christians Focus on Without a Weight Loss Goal?

00:25:09:04 - 00:25:19:15 Aubrey

And and I think I want to talk a little bit more about that step of faith. So for you, you know, we say, I know in the intuitive eating world, we say, well, put the weight loss on the back burner. For right now, we're just going to put it this way on the back burner. And for Christians, in addition to putting it on the back burner, we're going to be proactive and work to see what are like real values, what are our real goals and where is our identity at?

So that's a loaded question. Would you give some practical steps for people when they're putting weight loss on the back burner and they're trying to figure out, OK, where is where is my real identity and what are my real values?

Who am I outside of this consuming desire to lose weight and or to maintain my weight? Yeah. What would you say to them?

00:26:14:16 - 00:26:34:03 Amy

Oh, it's so good. Well, one is that as believers, I mean, it's just so fun when I get it to work with a believer about really opening up to the world.

My one of my recovery versus Psalm. 103 Right plus Lord, I my soul forgives all my sins, right? Heals all my diseases, redeems my life from the pit and crowns me with love and compassion that being able to be in the world and really let the word form us and inform us it just it changes everything.

  1. Lean Into God’s Word

So one is really we just want to lean into God's word. And I know that sir can sound really generic.

But to get to tangibly apply God's word in giving thanks in all circumstances, I just got to do a talk about peace. It was it was this whole talk on peace. And as I did research for that in scripture, it was so cool to see how humility and peace are tied in that place.

And humility really is not thinking less of ourselves, but it's thinking of ourselves less. We're just not thinking about ourselves all the time. And when we let go of some of that idolatry, I'm just going to keep using that word, which might be a little bit of a trigger word.

But really, we're letting go sort of this this, you know, worshiping the creature and kind of our our goal of weight loss. We're thinking about ourselves less. Right.

2. Journal

The other thing that's really practical, of course, I'm a big fan of journaling. My sisters make fun of me and my nieces because I always like, we know what item is getting us for our birthday. It's a journal like, Oh, it's a phrase. It's a really great one this time. But one of the things that the Lord had me do on that trip when I was backpacking through Europe, we were rained in. We were in Sweden and we were on a little island with my relatives.

We didn't, we didn't speak, you know, Swedish, they did speak English. We can go anywhere and I was really wrestling. My brother was like, You know, you're you're such a people pleaser and you don't even know who you are.

And I remember thinking, “he's right. I know who I am.” And so I started journaling at the top and I just wrote about what I like and I spent the summer filling out this journal of things I like:

  • I like blue jeans fresh out of the dryer and a white T-shirt.

  • And I like lemonade with clunky ice on a porch in the summer.

  • And I like big red, big red barns

  • and I like double stuffed Oreos dipped in milk.

    And I remember I stopped and I was like, I do like those like, I like that, but I don't really like, I'm not a super pie person. I don't really like pies. And I remember journaling all of this stuff and how God informs us of how he made us. When we journal like that, when we start to go, what drains me? What gives me life, right?

The Holy Spirit can speak to us about how he's created us, the things that he's calling us to, and when we start to get a vision that's much bigger than our weight loss goals. I mean, God, the Holy Spirit pours into that in such a way that, I mean, I'll have women just be like, I had no idea. I had no idea what I was missing out on all these things that God is doing. And sometimes. I had small kids, I mean, I had I just told this little boy that I was talking about elementary school and I’ve had kids in elementary school kids for 14 years. I was in one elementary school. That's how many years I was in that school. And the Lord letting us just be where we are, you know, we're in this constant. We live in this constant culture of pursuit, pursuit for better and more and knowledge and a bigger impact in a bigger reach.

And sometimes it was like, it's right here, it's right here. And so when we journal and when we start to do that, what drains me, what gives me life? The Holy Spirit informs us not only about how he's created us, but sometimes what he's calling us to.

And sometimes it might be surprise us what those things are.

00:30:14:10 - 00:30:31:00 Kasey

Mm-Hmm. Yes. The power of journaling. I don't know if you've read the book The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness by Tim Keller, but that what you were talking about reminds me of that. It’s so freeing to be able to be so fully yourself because you have lost yourself to gain Christ. Amen. And I think as Christians, it's funny how we can like separate the body and faith, but then but then connect them so closely together.

Like what you're saying, how when it feels like we've gained weight, it feels like we have sinned as a Christian. When Scripture, like you said, goes way beyond what, like dietary regulations, it's like those things have no power. Christ has the power.

And he has fulfilled all things. He is perfection. We don't have to have the perfect body because that's why He made it, like he made everybody. So that's why it's perfect, you know? We are perfect because of Christ in us.

And so when we are encouraging people just like a first step, let's look to our Creator. Let's praise him. And ask,
”What are your desires, or what are your fears?” And how can the Lord be there in the middle of those things?

So I know that we know that you have a really great resource, and I want to ask you a little bit more about that because we do have people who they want to figure out what their rhythms are like.

You were saying, like you can, you know, with intuitive eating you can apply some certain templates and so that you can, you know, be able to figure out what your rhythms are based off of being able to eat regularly and and have a routine.

So tell us if they don't, if they are scared by a blank template with a journal, what does your app have to offer as far as as far as that goes?

3. Capture Your Eating Rhythms

00:32:06:22 - 00:32:18:23 Amy

Absolutely. The Peace with Food app with Dr Megan Osborne and I both have been practice for a long time and we met speaking.

We spoke at a few conferences and we both felt really compelled after we said we were like, we're going to write a book. And so we had some people say, Can you guys write a book? which, as you guys know, it's not that easy.

Right? And and so she called me and just said, just pray about it. This is several years ago now. Just I know this is crazy because neither of you are. We're not on social media. We're not tech people.

But she said we had both really been using this hunger scale in our practices, which the Lord had given me years and years before I saw it anywhere, anything. I thought I was the genius that invented the hunger scale.

I didn't know. I thought, Well, thanks, Lord, I needed a tool. And this helps explain. And then I would find it other places and I would go, Wait, I think they still might, right? So anyway, we had both had really similar ones, and so we kind of merged those.

And she said, what if we created an app? So the app is a tool. It's simply a tool. And we really, really, really that piece of thought app is just bathed in prayer because we just were like, Lord, how can we use this in a way that can be helpful, really for the masses that are coming out of the dieting culture? And so you get a little notification, it says, be present. Where are you now? You can set your notifications for every 30 minutes, every two hours. And so this little notification that works with the Apple Watch, everything.

And it just asked that question and we really, really tried to even kind of fine tune what that question was because we really wanted people just to be present, right? So just where am I like? What am I busy mom, somebody who's working somebodies?

And so really checking in with that hunger fullness of that notification comes and then you can go to a check and there's two different buttons. There's a check in and then there's an eat button helping you recognize sort of when you're hungry, you get a check in.

It gets a cool little check mark and it being which we all love, you know, bright colors. And then you can journal, you can journal in there. There's a tab to journal. If you want to write notes, you can go back, look at your notes, you can share your rhythms.

At the end of the day, you can kind of see where your rhythm was. You know, a lot of people, their rhythm is they, you know, they're restricting early in the day. They're eating a lot later in the day.

And so it really just helps capture your rhythm. We're coming with a new update pretty soon that we'll have. We're automatically you can set where it turns on for you in the morning. Right now, you actually have to turn the app on.

It's more complicated than you think, but so that will be coming soon. But anyways, so it's just a great, great tool and you can do it together. We have a Facebook group trying to encourage everyone. It's a great place, like you said, just it gives people sort of this Oh yeah, where am I in intuitive eating? You know, our goal is people don't have to use it forever, right? It's just it's beginning place for people if they want to, if they need to come back to it after the holidays, like, Oh, I feel like I've lost my rhythm.

So just finding our rhythms really is what we're looking for, and it can be found in your app store. And there's great there's videos on there, teaching videos, et cetera.

How Can We Remember God in Our Eating and Drinking?

00:35:05:06 - 00:35:22:05 Aubrey

Yeah, I love that, and I think it's we've seen it be really useful, I've seen it be useful in my private practice and then with our course participants, it's been awesome. So if you are a tech person and you prefer that to pen and paper, I think it's amazing. I love the notification feature. And but yeah, you guys can download that on the App Store. Why don't you share a little bit of where else they can connect with? Our listeners can connect with you. And then if you would pray us out, that would be amazing.

00:35:40:19 - 00:35:58:20 Amy

Sure! Well, I'm kind of a low tech person, so you can find me on the Hello Peace With Food Website for sure

And then Peace with Food is our Instagram, I believe, and you can find us anywhere there and get a hold me through any of those emails in there. But I just I'm so encouraged by the work that you're doing and for any of your listeners, I just before I pray, I just want to just remind each other, you know, all of scripture is a reminder. You start in the Old Testament and the Israelites. So much of the rituals that were set up were to remind them who they were. They're God's people. They're set apart.

Who are we? We would forget. And then we go back, Oh yeah, remember who you are? And then we'd forget, and then we go, Oh yeah, remember who you are? And even to the final days of Jesus time in ministry here on Earth, when he sanctified the Lord's Supper, and he said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

And some scholars suggest that it wasn't really even the Passover that he was saying that for. He was actually blessing the common meal and saying, When you do this, do this in remembrance to me. And when we eat, when we recognize our hunger and fullness, when we find that rhythm again, it tethers us to God.

It's a reminder that we're created. It's a reminder that we have a creator and that we just like a shepherd calling his sheep several times a day. He calls us by that hunger, and when we lean into that and recognize what a joyful thing that is.

Then as believers, we're just in this really, really great walk until we see Jesus face to face of reminding each other who we are. And so this work, the work that you're doing is part of that, that reminding us who we are.

So we're in it together. And so, Lord, that's my prayer.

As we close out our time together, God, that we're reminded whose we are. Sometimes our image and our understanding of who you are can can just be subverted by the culture and by our own weariness and our own shame and our own misunderstanding.

And then we're reminded we're God's people, You're calling us to something bigger. You're calling us to your story, and our story is part of that bigger story. God, I pray for this podcast. I pray for the listeners that are listening.

I pray your blessing over it, and I pray Lord that our table, our the table, your banquet table that has our name on it. And we're the only one that can sit in that place. God, you've created a space for us that one by one, we would come back to the table.

And the name of Jesus, amen. Amen.

Aubrey

Thank you, Amy. OK. Friends, until next time. Rest in his grace and follow the joy. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. We hope this episode gives you another perspective on weight loss and intuitive eating.

So stay tuned for next week when we answer another one of your frequently asked questions. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review so more people can discover joyful health by grace.