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Evelyn Tribole is a dietitian who hates diets! For the last 30 years, she has been championing the idea of “intuitive eating,” a practice where you trust your gut to choose the foods that make you feel your best. In this episode, Evelyn explains why nothing is off limits and how exactly this practice works. You’ll also hear Ricki get her mind blown. Ditch guilt this Thanksgiving and try out some of the basic principles that Evelyn outlines in this enlightening and empowering conversation.

Check out Evelyn’s book, ‘Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works,’ co-authored by Elyse Resch and now in its 4th edition: https://www.intuitiveeating.org/

Follow Evelyn on Instagram @evelyntribole.

Follow Ricki Lake @rickilake on Instagram. And stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Riviera, Evelyn Tribole, Ricki Lake, Sarah Silverman

Ricki Lake  01:17

This is The High Life with me, Ricki Lake, where we find out how my guests crack the code to living a full and vibrant life, so you can too. Now Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I’ve definitely been thinking a lot about food, more than usual, thinking about what I do and don’t want to eat, meal planning. It’s going to be interesting this year, because it’s been just a little over a year since I started my own protocol, my wellness protocol, and I’m definitely going to indulge, but I’m going to do it mindfully. Now, if you’ve followed me and this show, you know my relationship to my body and my weight has changed so much throughout my life, it’s something that has caused me a lot of distress in the past, and now I really think it’s something I have a handle on, but I have a feeling that today’s guest Evelyn Tribole is going to shake all of this up with her philosophy of intuitive eating. Yes, she coined that term nearly 30 years ago alongside her partner Elise Resch. The idea is that listening to your body and its cues is the best way to regulate your eating, and by doing this, you will have a healthier relationship to food. Now Evelyn is an award winning registered dietitian and practicing nutritionist. She has written more than 10 books, including intuitive eating, a revolutionary anti diet approach, which has sold over a half a million copies. Wow. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I really listen to my body at the Thanksgiving dinner table, I think I would just be eating mashed potatoes and stuffing ad nauseam. But let’s see what she has to say. Evelyn, welcome.

 

Evelyn Tribole  03:33

Thank you. I’m so thrilled to be here.

 

Ricki Lake  03:35

Before we get started, I have to ask this one question that I ask all of my guests, where are you getting your highs right now? Like, what is bringing you joy lately?

 

Evelyn Tribole  03:44

Oh, I can tell you right now, it’s surfing.

 

Ricki Lake  03:46

Surfing.

 

Evelyn Tribole  03:47

Oh, I’m a passionate surfer. I’m not good at it, but I love it. I love it to death, yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  03:52

What do you love about it? Because I am not a surfer,

 

Evelyn Tribole  03:54

It is so exhilarating and freeing, even when you’re just sitting out in the ocean and looking at the vast horizon, the perspective of just feeling so small and sometimes really at ease, and sometimes the waves are just so Oh. It reminds me of life. Reminds me of my mind. You know how we have stormy, stormy waves, stormy thoughts, big thoughts. And this, I’m just a little Placid. You know? It’s just, I try and surf as much as I can. In fact, I surf this morning because, because of the joy it gets me, I want to make sure I was in a joyful spot when we were speaking.

 

Ricki Lake  04:22

That’s amazing. What a great answer. All right, well, let’s get started with intuitive eating. How did you get started in this world? What was your relationship with food when you were young?

 

Evelyn Tribole  04:31

Oh my gosh. You know, I was somebody who just always enjoyed eating. I grew up with a dieting mom, and she always knew what her goal weight was. She was always on Weight Watchers, and yet she never put that onto us kids. And so in my entire life, I only went on one diet right before I went to university, and I was miserable and that that was it. But I was really lucky, because I competed on the boys track team in high school because they didn’t, you know. So long ago, they didn’t even make girls.

 

Ricki Lake  05:01

Where did you grow up?

 

Evelyn Tribole  05:02

Cerritos, Los Angeles area. But at the time, because of my age and what was going on in women’s sports, Title Nine was just coming into being, so they didn’t even make girls clothing or girls shoes. So I ran in boys shoes and boys clothing and on boys track team. And this is so bizarre, but I’m gonna share this with you at the end of every week, we would after we worked out, we would sit in a circle all our legs pointing inward, and we’d all compare the vascularization in our muscles to see who’s getting in shape. It wasn’t about size, it wasn’t about fat, it was about vascularization. So I had an early thing that’s so different than most people, and that is really being in love with the function of my body. That’s what really mattered to me.

 

Ricki Lake  05:46

Wow, because I had the opposite. I had a mother that was completely obsessed with her diet. She didn’t cook. So I didn’t grow up in a household where we were having fresh food. I would heat up a hungry man dinner by myself at night, and I was also, you know, an obese child or teenager, you know, I was, I was sexually molested at a young age, and I, of course, turned to food. I mean, all of this, I figured out in therapy, you know, years and years later. And I, I’d say my mom did the best that she could, but how lucky you were to be to have been an athlete. So what got you into nutrition and get into this intuitive eating.

 

Evelyn Tribole  06:21

Well, actually it was my athletic background. I wanted to know what I can eat to beat the boys, because I love beating the boys and I love winning. So I would read everything I could. And back then, you couldn’t get your hands on very much information on nutrition. And by the time I went to college, I ended up majoring in nutrition, and so that just fueled my, my passion for nutrition, mind, body connection, and all those kinds of things. And then later on, when I became a dietitian, I had, I thought I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to work for Columbia Pictures, which is now Sony Studios, which is.

 

Ricki Lake  06:55

Was my, you know, that was my studio. So you worked with the studio in what capacity?

 

Evelyn Tribole  07:01

I was the nutritionist, basically the nutritionist too, the celebrities and the VIPs and whatnot. And what I saw firsthand is you can have, in theory, everything, finances, friends, fame, all that stuff, but the relationship with food was really, really messed up. And so that’s what really got me into the psychology of eating and looking at the suffering. And that’s what how Elise and I got together, is looking at experiencing all the suffering of our clients who had all this amazing privilege, and yet they were just utterly, utterly miserable. And so looking at there’s got to be another way in terms of relating to how we nourish our body and so on. And the way that Elise and I were trained as dietitians that wasn’t helping any and so we went to we did analysis of the research. We looked at what’s going on in mass media combined with our experiences, and that’s how we came up with the actually, that’s how we came up the concept of intuitive getting but it was our publisher, serendipity. They loved the manuscript. They said, You know, we want you to make this more how to can you turn your concepts into like steps? And we turned it into principles, 10 Principles of intuitive eating. And the reason that was so fortuitous is that made it measurable. And so, you know, we can say that our work originally was research inspired, suffering inspired. And now today, fast forward, there’s over 200 studies on our work validating the process of intuitive eating, which is just so exciting.

 

Ricki Lake  08:23

Okay, before we get to the principles, what exactly is intuitive eating?

 

Evelyn Tribole  08:28

Intuitive Eating is about cultivating a healthy relationship with food, mind and body. It’s not about changing the bodies and the dynamic interplay of emotion, rational thought and instinct. Whew, that’s a big definition.

 

Ricki Lake  08:42

Wow, and so you consider yourself to be sort of an anti diet expert, right? You’re against the word diet.

 

Evelyn Tribole  08:50

You know what it is. I’m against suffering, and I’m against recommendations that cause people to suffer. I mean, you can make a lot of nuance arguments and discussions that you know, diet is a pattern of eating. But what I’m really against is putting forward these ideas that if you restrict your eating, that you’re going to lose weight and keep it off without any harm coming to you. And there’s a body of research that shows there’s a very small amount of people, that the majority of people who go on weight loss kinds of diets, no matter what their intentions are. It is predictive of getting back more weight than what they’ve lost. It’s predictive of weight cycling. And weight cycling, in of itself, is related to all kinds of health issues, and then it increases the risk for eating disorders, weight stigma, and what I see over and over again, it disrupts self trust. I get women who, you know, they’re brilliant in their careers. And they’ll say, I don’t know how to fucking eat anymore. And I’ll say, well, you know, when you’ve outsourced your eating to gurus, experts and diet plans, you do so at the expense of not knowing yourself, your hungers and what satisfies you, and those kinds of things so.

 

Ricki Lake  09:56

You’re talking to me, and I feel like you’re talking to me, because I’ve literally. And on every single diet, I have been 260 pounds. And I have been 120 pounds, you know. And I, you know, have not been the healthiest in the past. Of losing weight. I was starving myself in my early 20s, you know, I was over exercising, I was compulsive eating. I was I’ve, you know, I’ve done it all, I and I’ve never done surgery and I’ve never done ozempic And the new drugs, but I was on Fen Phen back in the day. Oh, my goodness, I did. I mean, I’m trying to think of did Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and, you know, I’m a believer that all of them work if you stick to it 100% and don’t stray. It worked for me. Oh, you disagree?

 

Evelyn Tribole  10:38

That’s the seduction, yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  10:40

Tell me.

 

Evelyn Tribole  10:40

Yeah, so that’s what you’re describing, is the seduction, and that is no one’s questioning that you can lose weight temporarily, and that’s what people get really hooked on, especially the first time they ever diet. It’s like, it’s easy. What is everyone complaining about? And then what happens is, it’s not sustainable, and people tend to blame themselves, or the industry gaslights the individual. You didn’t do it hard enough, you didn’t do it consistently enough, it’s like, you know what? Our body is wired to survive famine. Famine has existed ever since we’ve been on this earth, and so when we’re not getting enough to eat, there’s biological mechanisms that get set off, and also psychological ones. We get more focused on food, more cravings, walking around with the fear that you’re one bite away from a binge, and then having a food that you’re not supposed to have, and doing air quotes, yes. And then thinking, Okay, I blew it. So I might as well fuck it. I might as well eat the whole thing. And it begins this cycle, yeah, and it creates a lot of distrust. And so this idea that, you know what really worked, what I like to do with my patients, they say, I hear this all the time, it really worked. And I’ll say, but you know, really, let’s look at what happened afterwards, after the initial, you know, amazing how you were feeling.

 

Ricki Lake  11:45

So, wait, can I just wait? So are you talking when you say the after? So for me, I’m thinking, like, when you get to the point of maintenance, okay, like, what you’re saying is, like, because I get, okay, I’m gonna be keep it real. Yeah, in the past, when I’ve done these, these diets, you know, whatever the fad may be, I would get this high because I’d see I’d see the change. I’d see it physically. I’d see the number on the scale go down, and it was just like, thrilling. And I know you talk about control, I definitely look at it as like it was something I could control. And I kind of got off on that. And I have, you know, of late, done this major lifestyle change at the age of 55 where I did just lose 40 pounds without the use of pharmaceuticals. So I mean, Evelyn, is there something wrong with wanting to look good and that being a motivating factor in how we eat and take care of ourselves?

 

Evelyn Tribole  12:34

You know, such a great question, and it’s so complex because of the culture that we’re living in. And so there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel good and look good, but the issue is is, can we put focusing on intuitivating as the primary task here, like on your computer, we only have one active screen. Can we make intuitive eating the active screen? Because when you start focusing on weight loss, that becomes a very external thing. How much do I weigh that’s external? How about the quantity of the foods? That’s external and intuitive. Eating is an internal job. It’s connecting.

 

Ricki Lake  13:05

Right, so letting go of, like, portion control.

 

Evelyn Tribole  13:08

Yep.

 

Ricki Lake  13:09

Okay, that’s no bueno.

 

Evelyn Tribole  13:11

Is that mind blowing?

 

Ricki Lake  13:12

Well, I mean, yeah, because it’s I that I’m very, like, focused on how much I’m eating, focusing on when I’m full, that’s great when I’ve had enough. Like, I definitely am very conscious of what I eat, what I put in my body, what my body needs. Yeah, I do that, but I also do monitor what is enough like, looking at it.

 

Evelyn Tribole  13:36

Well and, you know, and there’s also normalcy, like, sometimes we get into what I would call like a uniform of eating, like for breakfast, I’ll say for me for breakfast, there’s certain foods I eat that I know pretty much the quantity that’s going to satisfy me and sustain me, and that’s just built on experience, experience, experience of having a certain amount of food. And if I don’t have enough food, maybe got I got preoccupied on something, then my body’s going to be Hello. You know, an hour later, it’s like, I need more food, something along those kinds of lines.

 

Ricki Lake  14:05

Right, I’m not sure I would be a good patient or a client of yours, because I just, I don’t know, like I do care about, externally, what I look like.

 

Evelyn Tribole  14:15

It’s our culture, and then in the industry that you’re in, and especially being a woman, you know, it’s understandable that you’ve got that desire. I wish you could see the cases of tissues I’ve gone through in my office, the amount of tears, but I had people say, but I’m not even trying to be like thin, like a model. I just want to be a little smaller than what I am right now. And for the vast majority of people going on some kind of weight loss journey, or whatever name you want to call it. It’s not sustainable. And we usually see that more around the five year mark. You know, it starts to happen around the two year mark. And so, you know, when studies come out, it’s like, Oh my God. You know, they lost weight on this kind of diet. My first question, how long was the study? Six months? It’s like, come back to me when it’s been five years, yeah. And then we have a, there hasn’t been a study. That has shown the sustainability of that for the vast majority of people.

 

Ricki Lake  15:04

All right, let’s take a quick break, and then we’ll be back to talk about some of the main principles of intuitive eating. We’ll be right back.

 

Ricki Lake  15:13

So okay, I want to talk about these principles. You have the 10 principles of intuitive eating. Can you break them down for us and explain how they work? I would love for you to tell this.

 

Evelyn Tribole  19:19

I can, and I want to emphasize something, you know, even though there’s 10 principles, it doesn’t matter what order you go in. And sometimes I forget the order myself, so I don’t go.

 

Ricki Lake  19:27

Oh, okay, so it’s not a specific order. All of them can be interchangeable.

 

Evelyn Tribole  19:31

But yeah, when you when you write a book, you need to have an order. And we try to be thoughtful about it. So one of the first principle is rejecting diet culture, and that is to recognize the impact of diet culture, and it’s, and it’s, it’s everywhere, you know, it’s even in places you wouldn’t expect it. You might expect it in a, I don’t know, when you’re in a fitness class, you might expect it when you go see the doctor, but you don’t expect it when you’re going to places of worship in terms of what you should be eating, how you should be eating, and what you should look. Like those are all forms of diet culture that creates harm. And with that, then we internalize that, and we create this diet mentality, this idea that I would be a better person if I ate better, looked better, all those kinds of things, however you want to describe it. So sometimes I’ll say to people who are kind of on the fence about intuitive and they’re curious, they don’t know, I’ll say no in this upcoming week, let’s just take a look at how often the conversation comes up that you’d initiate. You know about why someone is eating, or have you ever been like at a meal and your friends are ordering and they’re explaining why they can’t have something, or why they’re going to go ahead and and indulge and do all these things it’s like, but we don’t even need to know that. Can’t we just have a conversation and enjoy our food, whatever that happens to be, without judgment.

 

Ricki Lake  20:45

I’m curious, because you came up with this concept 30 years ago. How has it changed, like.

 

Evelyn Tribole  20:50

Oh, it’s gotten worse.

 

Ricki Lake  20:52

It’s way worse now than it was back then. Wouldn’t you say it?

 

Evelyn Tribole  20:55

Is because it’s in health care, it’s in health policy, it’s a mess. It perpetuates weight stigma we get, you know, medical gatekeeping, in terms of people not being able to have procedures unless they’re at some magical number and some kind of cut off, even though the data don’t support that.

 

Ricki Lake  21:12

Like that, that. BMI, that fucked up. BMI, right?

 

Evelyn Tribole  21:15

Ah, I hate that, yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  21:17

Where the hell did that come from? Those numbers are ridiculous.

 

Evelyn Tribole  21:21

Oh my god, it’s such a history. It basically came from a scientist who was just interested in statistics, basically, and looking at what patterns were. And BMI was never intended to be like a single number for an individual. It’s more to look at populations, and it got somehow very popularized to be using in research, even though it is so problematic, is based on white men. Doesn’t consider gender, doesn’t consider ethnicity.

 

Ricki Lake  21:50

And bone size, bone structure, body, bone size.

 

Evelyn Tribole  21:52

How about if you’re an athlete, if you could be, you know, a football player, and be considered high on the BMI when you’re full of muscle. So it is really faulty, and a lot of scientists acknowledge that, and yet it’s still used as a cut off for so many, so many things. It’s really a problem.

 

Ricki Lake  22:09

Wow. All right, so let’s go to the next principle. The first one was, reject the diet culture, give us another one.

 

Evelyn Tribole  22:14

Honor your hunger. And honor your hunger sounds really basic, you know, if you’re feeling hungry, you know, have something to eat. But what I find is, because of diet culture, people will question the hunger like, well, I can’t be hungry right now. I just ate. And so they end up denying the hunger, avoiding the hunger, trying to trick out the hunger. And then it gets to be this big, intense hunger, which we call primal hunger, which cannot be denied. And the way I like to describe it is like, you know, we need to nourish our bodies. We need to eat in order to survive, just like we need air to breathe. And you know, if you jump into the water, into the big waves, and you hold your breath for a long time, because a big set comes when you finally come up for air, it’s not this polite inhale. It is a gasp for life. And no one says, Oh, my God, you’re out of control with your breathing. No one says that. We know it’s a natural compensatory thing. And the same thing, when you’re not getting enough to eat or you’ve gone too long without eating, it is a normal compensatory response to inhale your food. It’s not It’s doesn’t mean that there’s something aberrant about you. And it’s really interesting. When you look at the research, sadly, for people who don’t have access to food, or don’t have access to enough food, food insecurity, we see a strong correlation with binge eating behavior, and I look at that as compensatory behavior, because our body is wired to survive and we have access to food, we’re going to inhale it so honoring your hunger, you know, in a timely manner, and that means getting to know your body and being okay with with feeding it, regardless of what other people around you were saying, Do you believe in cravings? Yeah, I do. In fact, we can talk about that too, yeah. So third principle of intuitive eating is making peace with food. And what that means is basically all foods fit. And this is really about psychological health. We know, for example, that there’s a nutritional difference between eating a piece of pie versus a fresh, you know, Apple. But what this has to do is what ends up happening when you have rigid rules about what you can’t eat, you tend to develop cravings on the very foods that you can’t have. And there’s this whole area of research called restraint theory. And the nickname of restraint theory, it’s called the What the hell effect. And what that explains is that when people have rules around eating to control their body weight. When they break that rule, some something comes along to break that restraint. It can be an emotion, it could be an event, it could be hunger. And when that restraint is broken, what tends to happen is it becomes an all or none food feast. And so it becomes very dysregulating and very disconnecting with the body. And so making peace with food is about allowing all foods, which is a very scary proposition for a lot of people. And so we look at what ends up happening when you do that, when you really know you can have a food you know, you get to ask yourself, well, do I really want this cookie now, if I eat it, now, am I going to enjoy it? And then, actually, when you get in. Involved in the act of eating the cookie, you get to ask yourself, does it taste good? Do I want to continue eating this cookie? But when you think you’re never going to have that cookie cake, because you got to follow those rules, then it’s like, I got to get this done while I can. I’m going to eat this before I feel too guilty. And you know what? I’m never going to have it again, so I might as well have five cookies and it builds up a life of its own totally.

 

Ricki Lake  25:17

So I hear what you’re saying.

 

Evelyn Tribole  25:19

Yeah. I see your eyes brightening up on that. Yeah, so I suppose I make peace with food. So it means you can eat whatever you want to, and it also means you don’t have to apologize to feel like eating a salad for lunch or dinner, you know. So it’s this, this total freedom that ends up happening. And the interesting thing, I’ve had patients who will be, oh my god, I let myself eat the cake, and it was like, no big deal, and I can’t believe it. So I had another piece because I couldn’t believe it. Believe it. And so sometimes what happens is the excitement is so high on eating the forbidden food when you think you can’t have it, that you’re actually not tasting you’re caught up in the emotion and the excitement of it. You haven’t there’s a whole area of research called habituation, which has to do with novelty. And so what happens is, when someone’s chronically on some kind of diet by whatever name, by whatever name you give it, you know, lifestyle, cutting out this, cutting out that, that when you are not allowed to have certain foods, it keeps the foods really exciting. And then when you have the food, it’s like, Oh, my God, this is so good. And then, and then there’s a tendency to eat more of it, and then that can terrify you. And it’s like, oh, I need more rules. And you go back to another form of, you know, controlling your eating and those kinds of things. So making peace with food is about removing the morality with it from eating. It’s about having ease with eating. And it can also include, yeah, if you’re feeling better eating a certain way, you don’t have to explain that to anybody. You know that’s that’s your business.

 

Ricki Lake  26:33

Right. Okay, give us another principle.

 

Evelyn Tribole  26:37

Okay, so we talked about make peace with food, honoring your fullness. And it sounds straightforward, it kind of is, except a lot of people have pathologized the feeling of fullness, that if they have a belief, a misbelief, that if I eat till I’m full, I’ve done something wrong. If I eat till I’m full, it means I’ve eaten too much. It’s like, no, that’s the body’s natural way of telling you, then, oh, this is, this is good. And, you know, here’s, the cool thing is, like, let’s say someone’s really scared to eat until they feel that full feeling is, well, they can stop whenever they choose to, but let’s look at how often you get hungry. I’ll never forget working with somebody and they thought they were compulsive either, because they were eating in their words all the time. And so I had him do a couple of things. Do we did some journaling, and he came back in. He goes, You know what? I realized, I go, what was that? He goes, I was I was compulsively hungry. I was taught that eating to fullness was a sin, so I never ate to fullness. And it got so annoying. I was hungry all the time, and it was interfering with my work. And he started expanding the the quantity of his meals, and it sustained him. And you know, because who would have thought so, hunger is that powerful of a drive. It is so powerful. So hunger and fullness kind of go hand in hand. If you start off too hungry, it usually is going to take a more profound level of fullness to feel satisfied and so.

 

Ricki Lake  27:55

It’s kind of like keeping yourself even.

 

Evelyn Tribole  27:57

Yeah, but you don’t have to be perfect. So the thing with intuitive eating, it’s not pass or fail, it’s a journey of learning and and discovery. So I don’t want people to think that, oh my god, if you don’t do it exactly right, you’re doing it wrong. It’s like, No, you know, it’s if you miss the mark on fullness. Okay, let’s see what happens. So what happens a lot of people is they panic and they micromanage. Oh my god, I ate too much at lunch, so it means I’m gonna have a smaller dinner. I’m gonna skip dinner altogether.

 

Ricki Lake  28:21

I’m guilty of that.

 

Evelyn Tribole  28:23

Okay, so here’s the experiment would be, would be like, okay, I understand you’re uncomfortable what just happened, but let’s see what your body does to naturally self regulate. Every time you micromanage and decide it’s not acceptable, you rob yourself of the experience to see your body working, which gives you then more more trust. And the self trust becomes, you know, reinforced.

 

Ricki Lake  28:43

Wow, okay.

 

Evelyn Tribole  28:44

Yeah, right?

 

Ricki Lake  28:45

Well, I gotta bring up ozempic.

 

Evelyn Tribole  28:47

Then let’s talk about it.

 

Ricki Lake  28:48

Yeah, what do you think about this being like the they’re calling it the miracle pill, right? Or a shot, or whatever.

 

Evelyn Tribole  28:56

I am so worried about it. And by the way, no shame on anyone who is going down that path, and especially for those who are using it for blood sugar management.

 

Ricki Lake  29:05

I agree. I’ve said that as well.

 

Evelyn Tribole  29:07

But here, here are my concerns that a lot of people are not really giving informed choices when they’re when they’re doing this, and that is looking at the side effects that are really profound, like gastroparesis or paralysis of the stomach, which can affect.

 

Ricki Lake  29:21

What is that? Wait to explain that to me.

 

Evelyn Tribole  29:22

It’s when your stomach is not emptying of its contents, and as a result, then your nutrients aren’t going to get absorbed, your medications aren’t going to get absorbed. In fact, I just talked to a surgeon who told me he goes, Oh yeah, we used to have people, you know, not eat for 12 hours before surgery, but if they’re on one of these GLP ones, they have to have to wait a whole 24 hours. And so when you look at what the impact of this is, what is the impact on the pancreas? What about the thyroid, black box warning and so on? The fact that there hasn’t been any long term data on the safety is my biggest concern on this. What is going to be the impact? And for a lot of people. You know, to spend 1000 to $1,500 a month on this medication. That’s not sustainable for a lot of people. And that’s an issue. The other issue I have, when you start looking at the quantity of food that people eating, they’ll say, Yeah, I’m really not hungry. I’m fine with what I have. In a way, to me, it’s like celebrating malnutrition. You know, it’s sometimes when you look at what someone is eating and what they’re aspiring to do, it can meet the criteria for an eating disorder, right? So I have a lot of concerns in terms of what the long term implications of this, in terms of weight cycling, in terms of weight stigma, all these, these kinds of things.

 

Ricki Lake  30:34

And in fact, you have to be on this drug for the rest of your life.

 

Evelyn Tribole  30:37

For the rest of your life, and the data are pretty clear on that when you stop the weight comes right back on. And so weight cycling, the gaining and losing of weight, has been implicated in so many things, with diabetes, with heart disease, blood pressure, sleep apnea, fatty liver, all kinds of things. So it’s not like this, innocuous, like that. Oh well, it has a significant health impact. And this is an example of diet culture also being monetized by big pharma.

 

Ricki Lake  31:02

Yeah, I was going to add, it’s like, the money that  those companies are making it is obscene. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, because, because when my doctor, my  primary care physician, said to my husband and myself, we had our physicals together with this new doctor, and he said, I don’t think you two will be successful at your age. You know, we’re in our 50s, I don’t think you’re going to be successful on your own. I highly recommend you try ozempic. And I looked, I looked into it, because I want to know I’m the daughter of a pharmacist. I’m not so I’m, like, open minded and I and I, of course, am someone who has been on a diet much of my life. And I want to know, what is this drug that could possibly make it easier for me? What I didn’t like the side effect that it takes away your joy of eating. I love food more than almost anything. It’s one of life’s pleasures. So that was what I was completely against. And again, I am so for everyone having all options available to them, I’d want them to make an informed choice when it comes to anything they do to their bodies, but it was not for me.

 

Evelyn Tribole  32:03

It’s so complicated. And you know, one of the things I’m fascinated by, because I do follow the media on this, you know, is how they created the term food noise. I never heard the term food noise until Big Pharma got involved. And I’m like, and you know what? It’s normal to obsess about food. If you’re hungry, it’s normal to obsess about food, you know, if, if you’re excited about a food you haven’t had in a long time, and that there are solutions that don’t involve drugs to deal with these natural byproducts of our body and mind.

 

Ricki Lake  32:30

Tell me, what do you say you do for people who say they have that?

 

Evelyn Tribole  32:34

Well, at the risk of sounding self serving, that that’s part of what Intuitive Eating is. And looking at, you know, when you can have what you want, when you want, the cravings subside markedly. There’s an ease with eating the brains. I can we get unsolicited emails and DMS and letters from people like, Oh, my God, the brain space that I now have that I didn’t have before because I was preoccupied with all this chatter about what to eat, what not to eat. You know, going out with friends, you’re on some kind of plan, and now you’re thinking about, okay, if I eat this, then I’m going to do this. If I eat this, then I’m going to do this. So you’re not even connecting with the individuals, but the preoccupied with what’s going on in terms of the pattern of eating. So there’s a lot of other ways to work through this, other than your medication.

 

Ricki Lake  33:19

Okay, let’s take one more quick break, and then I want to ask you, Evelyn for some tips on how to get started eating more intuitively.

 

Ricki Lake  33:30

Okay for all of us, like, listening that want to get started. Obviously, they want to go get the book right.

 

Evelyn Tribole  37:11

Sure.

 

Ricki Lake  37:11

What can they do? Like, what can, we all do today or tomorrow to get started?

 

Evelyn Tribole  37:17

Well, you know what? I’m going to get into another principle to talk about. What that is, okay? And this is okay? And this is where I start with a lot of people, even though it’s like, I think it’s principle five, and that is aiming for satisfaction when you eat. And that is the question, like, Huh? Thinking about like, when you’re hungry, what sounds good? How do I want to feel when I finish? What would be a satisfying meal or snack? Now, when I ask people that question, sometimes they break into tears because they have no idea. And I’ll even ask, what are some of your favorite some of your favorite foods? What are some of your favorite meals they don’t know.

 

Ricki Lake  37:44

Because I’ve been on so many diets, I’ll tell you, pizza is my favorite meal.

 

Evelyn Tribole  37:48

Okay, yay, yummy. We have to have pizza. Sometimes I love pizza too.

 

Ricki Lake  37:52

But you know what I’m doing now? Okay, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but like for me, because I’m on this real, you know, I’ve this commitment I’ve made to myself, I will have really good pizza. I’m not gonna put it in the microwave. I love it. I’m gonna go and have, like, indulge in, you know, Mozza, that, that restaurant here in Los Angeles, you know, Nancy Silverton’s pizza, like, I’m gonna go and do it, right?

 

Evelyn Tribole  38:14

That’s awesome. And so let me ask you this, because you’re raising an excellent example. So when you have a pizza like that, that’s really satisfying. How does that feel?

 

Ricki Lake  38:25

It feels almost better than sex, doesn’t it? I mean, it can, yeah, I love it, and maybe depending. I mean, because the thing is, I’m a basket case, because it depends on where I’m at in my life, sometimes I would feel guilty that I had too much.

 

Evelyn Tribole  38:45

So imagine this. You’ve made peace with food, so the guilt is not really there. Might flitter up, that can still happen, but this idea that you can eat this favorite pizza without the guilt, and it’s satisfying, and it feels so good, and you might also notice that you’re good. As far as eating, you’re not thinking about how to make up for what you really didn’t get, or that you didn’t really get. Let’s say you had fat free cheese on a cracker and you called that pizza. That’s an extreme example, but people used to do stuff like that. They can eat and then maybe feel full, but not feel satisfied. They’re still wanting something is is is missing. And this is something that we haven’t really been taught in our culture, that if we aim for satisfaction, there’s actually a value to that. It’s it’s mentally healthy and physically healthy, because ultimately it’s not satisfying to under eat. Ultimately it’s not satisfying to eat past a point of uncomfortable fullness. And so it’s a very personal question. I can’t tell you what is satisfying for you. And let me also say something, because I work with a lot of perfectionists, and then they’ll say, oh my god, I have a meal and I wasn’t satisfied. Like they did something wrong. It’s like, you know what? Sometimes meals are going to be like sensible shoes. They get the job done, and you go on your day. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if we can aim for satisfaction, when we’re able to do that for the most. Most part that can be life changing.

 

Ricki Lake  40:02

Yeah. I mean, okay, I think I’m, in many ways, a walk in contradiction, because I love pizza and I want it. I used to eat it all the time, and now I have restricted that a lot because I haven’t been having bread, you know, because I was mostly on a keto diet for a very long time, and I don’t crave it in the way that I used to. So now it’s just I had it last weekend for it was my it was my son, my stepson’s birthday, and we had a gathering, and I had pizza pretty much for the first time in months, and I stopped myself. I had like I listened to my body to when I was full, and I had enough, and I realized it wasn’t like the best pizza I could have. It was good. It was it was definitely nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just a constant dialog that I have with myself of whether I truly want it, and I wonder, like, Am I doing this wrong, Evelyn?

 

Evelyn Tribole  40:54

Well, what I’m hearing is, is that you’re giving yourself permission, and you’re having flexibility. And my sense is there might even be more room for a little more flexibility, but I like the direction that you’re going in.

 

Ricki Lake  41:03

Okay? You like that? All right. I like that. All right. Do you talk about anything having to do with like, eating at different times? Like to eat late at night? Is it bad for you?

 

Evelyn Tribole  41:13

You know what’s interesting. So when you take, when we take a look at cultures, like, especially the cultures in Europe, who often have dinner, like around 10 o’clock at night, right?

 

Ricki Lake  41:22

Oh, yeah. I go to Spain a lot, and they siesta in the afternoon, and we go to dinner at like midnight, literally, midnight.

 

Evelyn Tribole  41:28

Yeah, so what’s the biological need of the body? You know, it’s why are we trying to say? This is a good example. We’re constantly trying to outsmart our body, outsmart fullness, trick out full hunger, all these kinds of things, and it ends up leaving us confused. So my question would be, are you hungry? Does it sound good? And if you’re not hungry, does it sound good to go out and have some meals with your friends? You know, I’d say, go have a good time.

 

Ricki Lake  41:48

What about wine? What about what about alcohol?

 

Evelyn Tribole  41:52

It’s a good question. It’s a good question. So you know, alcohol, as you know, is not required for life, and so.

 

Ricki Lake  41:58

It is in my book. I mean, you know, in moderation, and I, you know, yeah, I appreciate a glass of wine every now and then.

 

Evelyn Tribole  42:07

Yeah so what I do when someone ask me a question about that directly, I’ll say, well, what’s the impact on you? You know, in terms of connecting with your body, in terms of having joy with your meal, and with some people, it’s fascinating, something that seems so basic when we start opening up the questions and unpacking it like I have worked with people who it turned out that their cheat day would be on a Friday night. They go out with friends, eat the big meal, and all the alcohol and alcohol became paired with who cares and a form of disconnected eating. And so in that case, we’d look at, well, what would be like to go about this in a different way, again, aiming for satisfaction with your meal, with the alcohol as well, but not having it connected to this idea of cheating and being disconnected from the experience of eating and your body.

 

Ricki Lake  42:51

So having one day a week to indulge you don’t recommend.

 

Evelyn Tribole  42:56

You know that to me, is diet culture, because what that ends up doing, it’s like, okay, whatever day it is, and then it’s all hold barred. You know, when I talk to people that engage in that, they’re disconnected, they’re fantasizing about all the foods they can’t have during the week, and then it becomes more like a bench, and then they can feel really scary. It’s like, oh my god, it’s so good. I have rules because society every day, it’s like, no, it isn’t. This is what happens when your mind is on restriction. This is what happens when your body is on restriction. It’s kind of predictable.

 

Ricki Lake  42:59

So returning to the idea of moralizing food, what do you think of these ultra processed foods?

 

Evelyn Tribole  43:06

It might surprise you.

 

Ricki Lake  43:08

Really?

 

Evelyn Tribole  43:09

Yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  43:09

You’ve been surprising me all hours, so go ahead and surprise me again.

 

Evelyn Tribole  43:13

Well, here we go. There’s, first of all, there’s no agree upon definition, scientifically, of what Ultra processed foods are. And yet, when you start looking at the trend of ultra processed foods, the biggest category are vegetarian and vegan products. And so when we start then moralizing, oh, ultra processed foods, what a problem. They’re not usually talking about vegetarian foods. They’re not looking at the populations that are more inclined to eat those and those people living in poverty and on the margins where they don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and so processed food might be a marker of poverty, as opposed to that being something that that’s dastardly, and I’m not here, by the way, to be a shell for the food industry. And there’s always stuff that can be worked on and cleaned up, but the moralizing of it, I think, is problematic, and there’s a lot of nuance to the conversation that’s often missing. Thank you for asking that question. It’s important one.

 

Ricki Lake  44:03

And just to continue on that, what do you say when people say Ultra processed foods are not foods?

 

Evelyn Tribole  44:09

Well again, we get into the nuances, because just about every food is processed to us at some level. And so where do we have that delineation? Are we going to say this now applies to food supplements, energy bars, some of the things you mentioned that you were eating that are low carbs. So it’s, it’s, we need to have continuity in the in the critique. And it’s often not that way, because it’s more of a coming from a moral aspect.

 

Ricki Lake  44:34

You’re blowing my mind. You really you are. And I also like feel like I’ve got, like I’ve got a handle on this with me, I feel and, you know, maybe you would disagree, but I feel like I’m gonna do what I’m doing now I plan to do for the rest of my life. We’ll see how, you know if that comes to pass. But I get up every morning and I go on a hike with my husband and my dog and I have that ritual. I have my coffee in the morning. I don’t eat until noon every day. Is that a big faux pas?

 

Evelyn Tribole  45:08

Well, so let me ask you this, you hike in the morning.

 

Ricki Lake  45:10

I do every morning, rain or shine.

 

Evelyn Tribole  45:12

How long is that?

 

Ricki Lake  45:12

I do a two to three mile hike?

 

Evelyn Tribole  45:14

So how long does that take? It in the hills, or is it flat?

 

Ricki Lake  45:17

Yeah, I live in the hills of Malibu, so it’s, you know, I have my loop and I can add to it, so it’s at a minimum, it’s about two miles every morning.

 

Evelyn Tribole  45:25

You know, the thing I’ve been looking at is, again, I’m connected to the hunger. So I’m thinking, okay, so you’re doing all this exercise, we know that the body needs carbs. When it’s moving like that, and it doesn’t have the carbs, well, then what the body says, Well, damn, we don’t have the carbs. So we’re going to take it from the muscle, we’re going to create, we’re gonna take the muscle, we’re gonna burn it up and create it into carbohydrates. And so that’s how you start getting muscle loss. So here’s what I’d have you look at is I hear right now, you’re feeling really good, almost euphoric. If I can say that.

 

Ricki Lake  45:52

Like I feel the best I can remember feeling in my body, okay, and.

 

Evelyn Tribole  45:56

I don’t want to take away feeling best. However, what I would have you consider is, are there times that you’re hungry and you don’t know it, because you’re not looking for it, because you’re busy doing other things? Because when we’re preoccupied, when we’re stressed out, even when it’s positive stress, it can blunt our hunger temporarily.

 

Ricki Lake  46:13

I would say, I ignore it.

 

Evelyn Tribole  46:15

Okay, that’s an honest answer. I love that answer. So my question would be, well, what would happen if you honor the hunger, could that be a possibility? What would be the harm in that?

 

Ricki Lake  46:25

Well, the harm in my head would be that I would gain weight.

 

Evelyn Tribole  46:30

Ah, so listen to that thought, and notice how that disconnects you from the need of your body. The thought is, if I eat this, okay, I’m hungry, but if I eat I’m afraid I gain weight, therefore I’m not going to honor my body.

 

Ricki Lake  46:41

Totally. I can see it. But I also see, like, how effective, like, how good I feel, right? I’ve just had all my blood work up, all my like, my numbers are, like, optimal. So I’m seeing proof that medically, like, I’m in the best shape. I see also on my Apple Watch and my heart monitor, my fitness thing. I’m like, my numbers are incredible. I’ve never been like, as conditioned, like, I’m, you know.

 

Evelyn Tribole  47:08

Feeling good.

 

Ricki Lake  47:09

Yep, I mean, it’s remarkable, you know.

 

Evelyn Tribole  47:12

And then my question is, what is you could feel you a little bit better?

 

Ricki Lake  47:15

So you’re saying to just pay attention to when I’m hungry and honor that hunger by putting in a food that is speaking to me or right?

 

Evelyn Tribole  47:25

Yeah, or just feel comfortable eating in the morning. And it could be any food. It could be anything, yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  47:30

No food is off limits.

 

Evelyn Tribole  47:32

No food is off limits.

 

Ricki Lake  47:33

If I want chocolate for breakfast, it’s okay.

 

Evelyn Tribole  47:36

Yeah, you could.

 

Ricki Lake  47:37

Okay.

 

Evelyn Tribole  47:37

And then the question is, is it sad? So I’ll take something that happens on my patients. I want donuts. And I’m like, we can do what you want and we’ll see what happens. And I don’t think with a thread or anything, I want them to have their own experience. And they’ll go through a donut phase, and then, like, you know, can I start eating healthy for breakfast? And my answer is, like, you can do whatever you want to, but why are you asking a question? They’ll say, Well, the donuts really aren’t satisfying at first. It was really exciting because I could have them. And now it’s like, I want a real meal. I want a breakfast, you know, so people who’ve had, like, a lifelong restriction off and on, like, I can’t have chocolate, I can’t have this. I can’t imagine that you would actually turn it down.

 

Ricki Lake  48:13

Right, well, I just, you know, doing the Keto, focusing on keto and very little carbs, you know, I just, I switched to chalk zero, which is like that, you know, keto chocolate. It’s like that would give me, you know, the satisfaction of something sweet, quote, unquote, sweet. But wasn’t, you know, taking me out of ketosis, you know?

 

Evelyn Tribole  48:32

So here’s another thing, just to add a little bit of research. So a new position paper just came out from the International Society for sports nutrition, on, on following a low keto diet for athletes. And what they found is it’s going to compromise muscle mass. It’s going to compromise muscle mass. In other words, you lose some muscle in doing that. So these are just some things for you to think about.

 

Ricki Lake  48:51

But muscle is super important at my age, right?

 

Evelyn Tribole  48:54

It is, really is. I mean, it affects all kinds of things, our balance, our schedule, strength all these things. So that’s just something. If we were working together, I’d have you take a look at, you know, could we is there something that you could eat in the morning, if you discover your hunger, that you’d feel okay about eating? It doesn’t have to even be a tent to something you feel comfortable eating.

 

Ricki Lake  49:11

Would you give a suggestion of what I would eat?

 

Evelyn Tribole  49:14

I might, if I knew more about you, you know, I would give some suggestions as to what that, you know, to something to try.

 

Ricki Lake  49:20

Right, okay.

 

Evelyn Tribole  49:22

Can I ask you a personal question?

 

Ricki Lake  49:24

Yeah.

 

Evelyn Tribole  49:25

What percentage of time do you spend thinking about your body and eating, including the devices and the measurements and all the things that you’ve mentioned?

 

Ricki Lake  49:36

A significant amount of time, I can’t quantify it.

 

Evelyn Tribole  49:39

Like more than half of your day?

 

Ricki Lake  49:41

No, I wouldn’t say more than half my day, but, I mean, I’ll be honest, I get off on this success that I’ve had by myself. Like this was like a with my husband. But like, you know, I have made these choices, I have done the research. You know, I’m just doing everything to feel and to be my best self. You know, and it’s working like I do feel like a sense of pride and euphoria, and yes, it’s been a focus, definitely. I have been very focused, so it’s really, in the beginning, it felt like a full time job, and now it feels like, joy and pleasure and and it’s been thrilling to know that my body works. You know, my body responds to what I’ve been doing. But you I sense that you’re you don’t approve of my focusing on this as much as I have.

 

Evelyn Tribole  50:33

Well, you know, so here’s the way I look at it. Is like, what is the impact of all the focus? And you’re saying, Well, my my kids are gone, my husband’s working, and because I’d be looking at what is the impact on relationships if you’re preoccupied on these kinds of things, and I will never, ever want to take away your joy or happiness. But the thing it’s not an issue of me disapproving, you know, what you’re seeing or picking up for me is, I’m worried about you. Ricki, I’m worried about.

 

Ricki Lake  50:55

Worried about me.

 

Evelyn Tribole  50:56

Yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  50:57

Why?

 

Evelyn Tribole  50:58

Well, when you when you look at the data, you know, in terms of how sustainable this is. It’s for most people, it’s not. And you, who knows, you might be the exception. But I would love for you to find something that’s sustainable. It doesn’t require constant vigilance like this, except maybe to your, you know, just to honor the text messages of your body, hunger, fullness, sleepy, thirsty.

 

Ricki Lake  51:23

Right, yeah, I hear what you’re saying. I completely appreciate and hear what you’re saying. And yeah, I It’s, it’s, it’s such a complex, interesting, fascinating, you know, way of thinking, This intuitive eating.

 

Evelyn Tribole  51:37

It is well, and you know what the other thing is, too. So I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and so the euphoria you’re describing, I see and hear it a lot, until it’s not there, until the shit hits the fan. And so I’m not saying that’s gonna be your story. I just see that happening with with a lot of people, right? But this can also be an opportunity like, well, maybe I’ll find some more ways to connect with my body, without using any gadgets you know, in terms of hunger, fullness, because the thing that you have also been saying to me is, I feel really good, and that’s awesome, and I’m asking you to consider maybe tapping more into that, but that’s validating enough.

 

Ricki Lake  52:12

Yeah, I don’t know, it’s blowing my mind, because it’s just, it’s definitely making me think, guys go get this book intuitive eating. It’s really a mind blowing experience. You and your partner, Elise, have done just, just incredible research. This book is just fascinating. And Evelyn, it’s been fascinating talking to you. Thank you so much for being here today.

 

Evelyn Tribole  52:35

Thank you.

 

Ricki Lake  52:36

Well, that was a really interesting conversation. Now, I know Evelyn is so experienced in this, and she really has my best interests at heart, but it’s hard for me to imagine just listening to my body, all the cravings, all the sugar, all the fat. I mean, I’ve been in this new regimen for over a year now, and I’ve never felt better. And I do really think her point about moralizing food, like I’m so bad I shouldn’t have this pizza is totally something that I do, and I’m gonna try to catch myself when I say this, especially over the holidays. And I have to be honest, I appreciate her challenging me. You can check out Evelyn Tribole on her website. Evelyntribole.com and her latest book is called Intuitive Eating, a revolutionary anti diet approach.

 

CREDITS  53:22

Thank you so much for listening. There is much more of The High Life with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like rapid fire questions with our guest, Evelyn Tribole. Subscribe now in Apple podcasts. The High Life is a production of Lemonada Media. Isabella Kulkarni and Kathryn Barnes, produced our show. Our mixes by James Sparber. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Additional Lemonada support from Rachel Neel and Steve Nelson. You can find me  @Rickilake on Instagram. Follow The High Life with Ricki Lake, wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.