Gym culture can be incredibly toxic for people struggling with body image and eating concerns. Monique Jephcote, APD, PT and Intuitive Eating Counsellor, is infusing weight-neutral principles into the fitness world with compassion, respect and gusto.

In this episode:

• How and why Monique opened her non-diet private practice soon after graduating
• HAES just makes sense: “Every single body deserves dignity and respect” (and weight loss dietetics is SO boring!)
• Monique’s lived experience of disordered eating recovery from her days as a competitive bodybuilder (including the fun, sassy “Beyonce” side of things)
• “We get obsessed with food when we’re under-eating”
• How Monique never disliked her body as much as she did when she was closest to society’s ideal body shape
• The contrast in body diversity and body acceptance between the bodybuilding VS powerlifting scenes
• The myriad ways diet culture manifests in the gym setting
• On being a non-diet dietitian in a gym, and dealing respectfully with weight-centric fitness professionals: “We don’t know what we don’t know”
• The way Monique is challenging perspectives on weight and health in the gym world
• The importance of informed consent, body autonomy and compassion regardless of whether clients take a weight-centric or weight-neutral approach
• Low energy availability or RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), Hypothalamic Amenorrhoea in female athletes, and the problem with dismissing menstrual disturbances as “just what happens to active women”
• Monique’s experiences with Vipassana meditation, and where this fits in with her work as a dietitian and fitness professional

Links:

• Monique's Instagram
• The Intuitive Dietitian on Facebook
• Monique's website

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With great uncertainty comes fear and uprooted trauma. COVID-19 has seen an amplification of weight stigma, wellness wankery, and conspiracy theories that have the potential to magnify our stress and trauma. Here's what to look out for, as well as ways to ground, protect and nurture yourself and your loved ones at this uncertain time.

Show notes:

• The 3 categories of BS “health advice” circulating in the age of COVID-19: The Seemingly Innocuous, The Social Media Misinformation Storm, and The Blatantly Fat Phobic
• Privileged health advice 
• Is cutting out sugar the most important thing to consider right now? (Clue: No, it's not.)
• Essential oils, colloidal silver, celery juice: should we be using these to "boost" immunity?
• What I really think about MLM (Multi-Level Marketing), and the ethics of downline recruitment and questionable advertising during a pandemic
• Weight control during COVID VS. just surviving COVID
• Higher BMI is NOT a risk factor for contracting COVID-19, and may even be a protective factor
• Conspiracy theories, and the appeal of these to healers and lightworkers
• What we really need to be focussing on right now
• The ways we deal with stress and trauma, and how this manifests in our relationships with food, eating, our bodies and movement
• How coronavirus is impacting me personally
• Gentle ways we can support ourselves and others
• Supplements and herbs can help support your immune health, but not having access to these is not the end of the world
• Accessible nutrition counselling and yoga services I am currently offering during COVID-19

Links:
All Fired Up Podcast with Louise Adams
Bringing The Body Into the Room: Somatics, Food and Eating Experiences with Tracy Brown and Fiona Sutherland
Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani – author of the book Sick Enough
Dr. Kristin Neff on Self-Compassion
Stephen Harrod Buhner on herbal support for COVID-19 infection
Casey's LIVE yoga classes by-donation
Casey's accessible COVID-19 Nutrition Counselling Services
Mugwort Herbal Body Oil GIVEAWAY!

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In this episode:

• The book that pivoted both Fiona’s and my own trajectory (If not dieting)
• Fiona’s yoga teaching as embodied movement VS a fitness class
• The 3 C’s: Care, consent and choice as essential factors in being inclusive dietitians, inclusive yoga teachers and inclusive humans
• Doing the work doesn’t always feel good
• What determines whether the yoga we practice will help or hinder healing from disordered eating and body image issues
• Healthsplaining, healthism and the actual determinants of health
• “We don’t sit separately from harm” – the way we show up in the world really matters
• Thin privilege, weight bias and systematic oppression
• Working with clients who want to lose weight, and what people might be actually looking for when they pursue weight loss
• Some of the 100's of evidence based things a non-diet dietitian can do that isn’t giving out a meal plan
• The power of the question “I wonder if you’re eating enough?”
• The pervasive expectation on women and femmes to be “nice” and never angry: how mindfulness is not the same as niceness, and how recognising compassion and kindness in all its forms (including a box of rage!) can help us move away from “nice girl” syndrome

Links:

Fiona's Instagram
The Mindful Dietitian Facebook page
The Mindful Dietitian Private Facebook group for practitioners
Support the podcast at the Non-Diet Yogi Patreon!

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In this solo episode I riff about the ups and downs of motherhood, and my personal experience as a (mostly) work at home mum.

In this episode:

• Being a mum is amazing, and it's also hard
• The impact of parenthood on my friendships and relationships
• How the Mother and the Warrior archetypes are one and the same
• My experiences with extended breastfeeding, tandem breastfeeding and co-sleeping
• The insane expectations and judgements placed on mums, whether you’re a stay at home, a working mum or somewhere in between
• Earth mamas VS Creative Rainbow mamas
• How it takes a village. And even then it's not easy.

Links to Casey's articles:
The Mother and the Warrior
I'm no Earth mama, and it's OK
Why most mums need to eat more calories and carbs
The magic and medicine of mugwort
How the "Sexy, Successful, Spiritual Woman" ideal hurts us
My article discussing Aliens and intuitive eating

Support the podcast at the Non-Diet Yogi Patreon!

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A Health at Every Size (HAES®)-informed, weight neutral practice is old school naturopathy in its best sense. In this interview with Chandrika Gibson, ND we cover these topics surrounding HAES® naturopathy, yoga and yoga therapy:

• The co-opting of wellness to sell stuff and the accessibility issues this creates
• Differences between health, wellness and wellbeing
• The problematic belief that living a “clean” lifestyle guarantees you won’t get sick
• Healthism
• “Wellness is about the direction you’re facing” - you can live with chronic illness and still have high level wellness
• The trouble with naturopaths (!)
• How qualified naturopaths can set themselves apart from under-qualified people with questionable training (hint: client-centred practice!)
• Homeopathy, reiki, and “meeting the client where they are at”
• Navigating a client’s desire to follow extreme diets for cancer
• Why a HAES-informed, weight neutral practice is "old school naturopathy in its best sense"
• Yoga therapy and the koshas
• Finding truly body inclusive and accessible yoga 
• Chandrika’s research in head and neck cancer and her lived experience with skin cancer

LINKS:
Chandrika's personal Facebook page, Surya Health and Wisdom Yoga Institute
Chandrika's articles on Medium:
The Trouble With Naturopaths
Body Positive Yoga

Non-Diet Yogi Patreon

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Research and experience tells us that in yoga teachers and practitioners, orthorexia may be the norm, rather than the exception.

SHOW NOTES:

• Food rules in yoga and wellness circles
• That moment when Amy was holding a can of beans thinking, “I can’t eat this!” - and she realised something was up
• How becoming a mum tipped the scales towards Amy’s recovery from orthorexia
• The study that showed 86% (yes, you read that right) of yoga teachers have orthorexic tendencies
• People come to yoga classes and teacher trainings with wounds
• Yoga teachers can be well-meaning and still disseminate dangerous nutrition advice to susceptible people
• When “everyone thinks they’re a nutrition expert” and the industry is not regulated
• Crazy shit yoga gurus tell their students about food: The Rajasic Girls in my first yoga teacher training, and coming back as a cockroach in your next life if you eat the wrong foods (WTF!)
• Intuitive eating for yogis to prevent disordered eating
• Self-compassion in orthorexia recovery
• “Your tissues hold your issues” - partaking in psychological therapy as part of a yoga teacher training
• Weird stuff that becomes normalised in yoga bubbles
• Accessibility and social justice issues – how can we make our yoga and nutrition services accessible and sustainable?
• Amy’s professional education journey, from health coach to masters degree in nutrition
• “Sugar free” mania in parents, and raising kids who are competent, intuitive eaters

LINKS:

Where to find Amy:
www.curatednutrition.com and www.SOSStressRelief.com
Amy’s personal website, including art and music: www.amyreich.com
Facebook: Amy Reich - Curated Nutrition and Health Promotion

Resources mentioned:
Valera et al. (2014) Prevalence of orthorexia nervosa among ashtanga yoga practitioners: a pilot study. Eat Weight Disord. 2014 Dec;19(4):469-72.
“Everyone’s a Nutrition Expert” by Tara Leong
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Learning opportunities:
Social justice and accessibility in yoga www.yogaalliance.org/New_RYS_Standards/The_Ethical_Commitment
Dianne Bondy https://diannebondyyoga.com
Lucy Aphramor https://lucyaphramor.com
Body Positive Australia www.bodypositiveaustralia.com.au
Trauma-informed yoga http://collectiveresilienceyoga.com

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Yoga teachers, please stop giving terrible dietary advice to your students.

SHOW NOTES:

• That time I gave terrible nutritional advice
• Why people ask yoga teachers for nutritional advice
• Some of the crappy nutritional advice yoga teachers pass on to their students
• The perils of getting nutrition advice from a yoga teacher, personal trainer, or health coach
• The likely prevalence of disordered eating in yoga circles
• MLM health products in yoga studios
• Even when yoga teachers are also nutritionists, be careful!
• Where to go for safe, individualised dietary guidance

LINKS:
Support the pod! Bonus episodes and exclusive goodies for subscribers:
https://www.patreon.com/nondietyogi

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes
https://www.funkyforest.com.au

Grab your copy of my free e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing!
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/a-modern-yogis-bs-free-guide-to-wellbeing.html

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/funkyforesthealth

Instagram:
@nondietyogi
@funky.forest.health

Original blog post:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/yoga-teachers-please-stop-giving-terrible-dietary-advice-to-your-students

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• How Ayurveda didn’t accompany yoga to the west, and the effects of this on contemporary yoga practice
• Different spiritual practices (e.g. Vipassana, Tantra) are not suited to everyone
• Everything can be medicine or harmful, depending on context
• Your constitution informs the medicine you need
• Diet culture vs. the introspective curiosity inherent to Ayurveda
• Ojas, or vitality: is your “cleanse” giving you that?
• Cleanses are effective at short-term weight loss, but not effective at long-term weight loss
• Keeping digestion healthy is key in Ayurveda
• Cleanses and fasting can disrupt agni and metabolism, and aggravate vata
• The Magic Bullet Syndrome: cleanses won’t fix the lifestyle problems causing your health issues in the first place
• Nara’s experience with chronic fatigue, discovering how stressful dieting was on his body, and how he recovered

• Navigating the touchy issue of Ayurvedic “cleansing” amidst the sea of diet culture and accusations of pseudo-science
• The differences between a juice cleanse, and pancha karma or “cleansing” in the traditional Ayurvedic sense
• Where I feel a few days of kitchari might be appropriate, and where it definitely would not be appropriate
• Hardcore cleanses in Ayurveda

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Why juice cleansing is so popular in yoga culture, how detoxification actually works, and what you can do to support your body's detoxification processes without starving yourself.

·      What is juice cleansing? How it’s marketed vs. what’s actually going on

·      Why it’s so popular in yoga culture

·      How tapas and saucha may underlie and amplify the tendency towards spiritually-endorsed disordered eating and body dysmorphia

·      Ayurveda and juice cleansing

·      Disordered eating and eating disorders in Yogaland

·      My personal experiences with harsh yoga practices, fasting and orthorexia

·      The physiology of detoxification and how juice cleanses impede this

·      Why those initial “detox symptoms” and later, that feeling of “energised bliss” occur on a juice cleanse (it’s not what you think)

·      What you can do to safely support detoxification (if you wish to do so)
·      The next level of cray: water fasting in yoga circles
 

LINKS: 

Support the pod! Bonus episodes and exclusive goodies for subscribers:
https://www.patreon.com/nondietyogi

My articles on Ayurveda, TCM and Intuitive Eating:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/ayurveda-tcm-intuitive-eating-or-dietary-dogma
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/beyond-pitta-kapha-vata-ayurveda-tcm-intuitive-eating

The physiology of detoxification, how juice cleanses impede this, and what you can do to support detoxification:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/detoxification-so-not-about-juice-fasts-colonics
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/your-bodys-lifelong-detoxification-kit

The stress response of restrictive eating:
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/the-honeymoon-period

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes

Grab your copy of my e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing Facebook page

Instagram:
@nondietyogi
@funky.forest.health

Support the show

Why this podcast needs to exist, creating a podcast as a mum, and a bit about me.


LINKS:

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes

Grab your copy of my e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing Facebook page

Casey's Instagram

Non-Diet Yogi Patreon

Support the show