#396 Deprogram Diet Culture with Dr. Supatra Tovar

This week on The Less Stressed Life, we’re talking about breaking free from diet culture and rebuilding trust with your body. Clinical psychologist, registered dietitian and fitness expert Dr. Supatra Tovar shares how stress, restriction and shame disrupt hunger cues and what it really takes to feel safe, nourished and whole again. If you’ve ever struggled with emotional eating, body image or the pressure to do it all, this empowering episode offers practical tools and a fresh perspective on food, health and healing. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Why dieting fails and how your body fights back
• How restriction leads to stress, brain fog and binge cycles
• What hunger hormones are really telling you
• How to reconnect with true hunger and fullness cues
• The surprising reason moms and high achievers ignore their needs
• A simple daily “vitals” check-in to support your energy and mindset

ABOUT GUEST:
Dr. Supatra Tovar is one of the only clinical psychologists who is also a registered dietitian and certified fitness expert, uniquely combining behavioral psychology, nutritional science, and exercise to help clients reduce stress, heal from disordered eating, and improve overall wellness. She is the founder of ANEW (Advanced Nutrition and Emotional Wellness) and creator of the “Deprogram Diet Culture” method, available as both a course and book. A sought-after speaker and media expert, Dr. Tovar draws from over 20 years of experience to help others make simple daily changes that transform mindset, relationships, and health. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://drsupatratovar.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsupatratovar
Book - Deprogram Diet Culture: https://www.anew-insight.com/book
Course - Deprogram Diet Culture: https://www.anew-insight.com/course
✨Dr. Tovar's FREEBIES: https://www.anew-insight.com/freebies

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife

SPONSOR:
Thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode! Struggling with dry, cracked hands? Try their Alaska Cod Liver Oil for omega-3s + vitamins A & D to support skin and immune health. Use code LESSSTRESSED10 at JigsawHealth.com for 10% off—unlimited use!

WORK WITH CHRISTA:
I've streamlined my proven method to help you get to the REAL root of eczema and food sensitivities—without the overwhelm. Join the program at christabiegler.com before doors close!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Supatra Tovar: hunger is your body's way of telling you that you need. Nutrients. You need nutrition in order for the body to function properly. And when you don't provide that, you create stress within the body.

[00:00:15] And when we create stress within the body, it's very difficult to do anything, especially lose weight. 

[00:00:21] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:50] One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:08] Today on the Less Stressed Life I have Dr. Supatra Tovar, who is a clinical psychologist, registered dietician, and certified fitness expert who teaches clients how to use research-based techniques in behavioral psychology, nutritional science, and exercise kinesiology to reduce stress, stay focused and overcome complex challenges.

[00:01:26] Not limited to, but including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, grief, and trauma. She earned her doctorate in psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and her two Master's degrees. She has two master's degrees, including a master of Science and Nutrition. She's also a 

[00:01:42] certified Pilates instructor with over 20 years of dedication, integrating both physical fitness with mental and nutritional health. In September, she came out with a new book, deprogram Diet Culture, and we're gonna talk a little bit about those concepts today. So welcome to the show, Dr. Tovar. 

[00:02:01] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:03] Christa Biegler, RD: So I would love to hear, the thing that we always start with here is story, because people may resonate with part of the story, and I think part of your story is that you are at, maybe I'm making this up, but when I read your bio, when I. Read about what you've been up to. I feel like you're at a little bit of an alchemy point in the career where you're pulling all of these things together and sharing this really unique thing that's, that should always be combined, but is not always part of a well-rounded conversation.

[00:02:33] So I'd love to hear how that happened as part of your story, however you wanna share your story. But I wanna understand a little bit about how you ended up combining psychology, nutrition, fitness, what came first, how these layered in, et cetera. 

[00:02:47] Dr. Supatra Tovar: I would say probably, if I could say which came first, like chicken and egg, it was definitely fitness.

[00:02:53] I grew up in Colorado in Boulder, and that was just the mecca of doing everything outside. And I have my dad to thank for that. He really taught me about being outside and being in nature and just really introducing me to fitness. And health in that way. And I never really had to worry about my weight or shape growing up because I was so active.

[00:03:15] And it was just the time before I'll date myself, the time before social media and phones and things like that. So all we had was to go outside and play and just be active. But it wasn't until high school that someone very close to me presented with an eating disorder and that was mind blowing.

[00:03:35] Me, I didn't know you could actually have a problem with food up until that point. And that left me feeling so completely helpless because I just couldn't do anything to help her recover. And thankfully she did on her own. But it really left this impression with me. So when I went to college, I knew I wanted to do something health wise, but I wasn't really sure what it was.

[00:03:57] So I studied pre-med biology in college and got my degree there. I. Then of course did the most logical thing right after that, which was go into the performing arts right after that. That was the other passion of mine performing and singing and dancing and things like that. So I worked in that industry for a really long time, came out to LA to pursue that and worked in the industry.

[00:04:22] And that's when I really started to actually struggle myself with weight and shape. I had just always eaten what I'd wanted. Never had to really worry about it. And it started to catch up with me in my later twenties. And so I did what everyone in Los Angeles does, which is go on a diet and started this basically hamster wheel of dieting, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, and gaining weight.

[00:04:46] So during that time, that's when I also became really fascinated with Pilates. And Pilates was life changing for me, not because of what it did for my body, but because I went. To become an instructor. That's when I was transitioning out of the entertainment industry and really started to want to do something else with my life.

[00:05:09] And in that process, I started to help people, and that's what was the life-changing aspect for me, was the feeling I got from helping people. There was no other feeling. Performing arts was amazing. It really was fulfilling. But this was on a whole other level. So I had all these clients who were coming to me for dietary advice, which I just felt like I.

[00:05:33] I keep losing and gaining weight. I have no idea what I'm talking about here. And that's when I really pivoted and went into nutritional science and got my master's and then became a registered dietician. I. Even then, I didn't feel like I had enough education. I didn't feel like I could really get into people's minds because that's where so many of our problems with eating weight and shape come from.

[00:05:59] It comes from our history, it comes from our background, and I didn't have the scope of practice that I needed as a dietician. So that's when I went and got my clinical doctorate, and that's when. Like you said, the alchemy really came together. Once I had those three pieces addressing the physical body through fitness and through nutrition and being able to really address somebody's mental health, that's when everything changed for me for the better.

[00:06:27] And I am really grateful for the very, very long process of schooling that I went through to be here today. 

[00:06:36] Christa Biegler, RD: I feel like I bring up this nutritional or this triad, this health triad a lot here, which I don't know if I made up, but I've used different variations. But your career path, your degree path, your expertise path literally fills in every triad because every I.

[00:06:52] Situation, every health situation could be looked at through those lenses. The structural, or I'm gonna call it the fitness angle I would call it like structural and environmental, right? So changing the body structure, the emotional or psychological or spiritual, however you wanna say that is your doctorate in psychology and then the nutritional or chemical is your background in nutrition.

[00:07:12] So I'm sure there's a lot of like random stops along the way, and I'm sure that even though it was. Impactful for you to have someone very close to you have a eating disorder in high school, I'm sure you saw a lot more of disordered. Nutrition and body image in the performing arts industry also. Oh 

[00:07:37] Dr. Supatra Tovar: my goodness.

[00:07:37] Yes. 

[00:07:38] Christa Biegler, RD: You had a significant personal experience and also your own personal experience to draw from before you went in to start seeing clients. I'm sure like there's many stops along the way and you are helping and seeing people a little bit along the way. So maybe we'll position this from a couple different angles of the triad.

[00:07:54] And so let's start with the, even though I wanna jump right to the psychology piece of it, I wanna start with a little bit of some nutrition, because right now one of your, the things that you're working on is this concept of deprogramming diet culture, but Oh, and you mentioned in LA I don't know what decade this was, and I don't know.

[00:08:13] I still feel like this is still the thing, right? It's like there is always a new diet disguised by whatever language we wanna use, and there's still a lot of things. I remember when I was involved in. The onset of fasting in 20 17, 20 18. And you can do that in a proper way, but it can easily kind of fall apart and not really work.

[00:08:35] And so I wanna talk a little bit about some of the science around restrictive dieting, just to set the stage and why, and. Even maybe in your own story there's like a loop of gaining, losing, gaining, losing, and why maybe even you felt like your degree in nutrition didn't make you feel qualified around that.

[00:08:53] So just feel free to speak to Yeah. Restriction and what that does to our brain. And even though I think it's nutritional as I'm talking about it, it feels emotional. 

[00:09:01] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Oh, it's both. 

[00:09:02] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:09:02] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Absolutely. The main point I wanna get across to everybody that I talk to is that dieting, absolutely 100% doesn't work.

[00:09:10] Restrictive dieting in particular but the body itself is not designed to handle the stress that comes from dieting. I'll talk about that and yes, Los Angeles. It's the mecca of dieting, restricting now weight loss medications, the whole deal, trying to achieve this thin ideal. And that's really the kind of emotional and the psychological basis for trying to achieve this weight and shape.

[00:09:41] We're really influenced by localism, which is the unhealthy pursuit of the thin ideal. And we're very afraid of wait is or fat shaming and fat. Phobia. So this drives diet culture in Los Angeles is like, as I said the mecca of this, I have made it my mission to educate people on why dieting doesn't work.

[00:10:04] So from the physiological level, if you look at most diets, they center around 1200 or even fewer calories and. When your body goes on a diet and goes from say, 2,400 to 3000 calories to 1200 calories, you're essentially cutting your calories in half, if not more. The body starts to set off some alarm bells and your first alarm bell, and everybody knows this, is you get hungry obviously because you're eating half of the calories that you would normally were eating before.

[00:10:38] So your ghrelin levels go up and then. You're really desperately trying to get more nutrition into your body. What do you do? You are told to have willpower to, ignore your hunger signals to drink more water. Do whatever it takes to maintain that caloric restriction.

[00:10:57] When you stop listening to ghrelin's okay, I guess she's really not getting the message, then ghrelin actually ts down a little bit. That's why a lot of people get, I think a little bit hypnotized on the diet. They're like, oh I've managed to just, surpass my hunger. I don't need to listen to my hunger.

[00:11:15] What's happening in the body is the body's saying, okay, you guys we're in starvation mode. This is the danger zone. So we got it to. Really figure out how we can conserve so the body then will suppress its thermogenesis. The one thing that you really want to be burning off, which is your fat, your body's so I'm not gonna do this anymore. So it suppresses your thermogenesis. You may be losing certain. Like pounds, but that's often water weight first and then muscle. And then the body is conserving and holding onto fat as much as humanly possible. And you may lose some fat in that diet as well. But the body is remembering all along the way because it knows that it's not safe.

[00:12:01] It thinks like way back in evolutionary times that you're in a famine and it's got to conserve. The moment that reach this, weight, and I'm gonna put that in air quotes because it's really a lot of water and muscle that you've lost. As soon as you go off the diet, the body then ramps up ghrelin again, and you go into what's called compensatory hyperphasia, which just means compensatory means.

[00:12:27] To make up for hyper is lots, fascia is eat to make up for what you lost before. You're just going to eat a ton and that's why you weight cycle. That's why you go through these periods of losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gain weight, and what ends up happening is you usually will gain back more.

[00:12:47] Then you lost. And so each time you're actually just gaining more weight. So dieting in and of itself is completely and totally pointless and not a sustainable way to lose weight. So that's the first thing that I like to teach my clients who come in for disordered eating or eating disorders. 

[00:13:06] Christa Biegler, RD: The restrict binge cycle, right?

[00:13:09] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Absolutely. 

[00:13:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So at first, ghrelin should increase, but many people would say, and you mentioned this here, that then we're ignoring hunger for so long that these hunger cues may be shut down. You also bring up that the body remembers along the way. So there's a couple pieces I wanna address, which is recalibrating safety in the body.

[00:13:31] But I think maybe we'll start with. We can start with anything, but there's three pieces here. I wanna talk about hunger shutting down and people, and I think you see that a lot, especially. In the morning, like that's a sign of a healthy metabolism is being hungry in the morning typically, and it can take time for that to come back.

[00:13:48] And so I wanna talk about that recalibrating safety. But I also wanna talk about distinguishing between emotional and physical hunger as well. And that's where it gets like a little bit. Odd because essentially you weren't listening to your body, so you shut down these signals, right? And so now we're trying to wake up these signals while putting on the back burner the thing that we want the most, which is the weight loss, right?

[00:14:13] It's like you actually have to communicate safety to the body first. So let's unpack this a little bit. 

[00:14:18] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes. 

[00:14:19] Talk. Absolutely. 

[00:14:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Talk about hunger. Shutting down. 

[00:14:21] Dr. Supatra Tovar: The hunger shutting down is really during the diet. As soon as you start to introduce food back into the diet, like the body it felt before, your growin automatically goes up.

[00:14:36] To a level where it's like disturbing and you can see this actually happening with the GLP medications right now. The the agonist, the semaglutide is that soon as the suppression ends the hormone will just ramp up like crazy. So it's not necessarily like you have to do. Too much.

[00:14:56] All you have to do is reintroduce food back into the system. But the thing is that we have become conditioned to think that hunger is bad and this leads into your recalibrating the body to safety aspect. We have thought or we've been conditioned by diet culture to think that we have to ignore suppress hunger.

[00:15:18] Hunger is bad, and I really like to educate people that hunger is so important and I think it's how we view it that matters. And hunger is your body's way of telling you that you need. Nutrients. You need nutrition in order for the body to function properly. And when you don't provide that, you create stress within the body.

[00:15:43] And when we create stress within the body, it's very difficult to do anything, especially lose weight. But then you see a lot of other health complications coming from, additional stress, cortisol. Flowing through the body such as, foggy brain difficulty thinking, anxiety, depression, joint issues and then eventual like greater health issues along with that, especially if the diet is less healthful.

[00:16:09] I. So listening to our hunger and allowing ourselves nutrition, when our body is telling us it needs it, that lowers stress in the body. You've heard of the parasympathetic nervous system versus the sympathetic nervous system they call the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest. Nervous system.

[00:16:33] So obviously when you pay attention to your hunger, you eat slowly and mindfully enough so that you're actually listening to your body signals. And then this will transition into our talk about actual hunger and emotional hunger. When you allow this and you allow your body the nutrition it needs, and especially you start to listen to your body.

[00:16:56] 'cause it will often tell you exactly what kind of food it needs and you listen for that point in your body when your body's telling you, I think I've had enough. Not, I'm overstuffed and I'm like bursting at the scenes, but I think I've had enough. When you actually honor those. The hunger and the fullness hormones in your body goes into parasympathetic nervous system state, and it allows for proper digestion of what you've just eaten.

[00:17:30] And when the body feels safe, that's actually when thermogenesis will. Ramp up again as opposed to your restrictive diet when thermogenesis suppresses. Now the whole concept of how do you tell between emotional and physical hunger, what we've been so deconditioned to listening to our hunger signals.

[00:17:53] That's another thing I like to just remind people of, and it's not. You remember hunger. It's when your stomach is grumbling, you get foggy headed. You are weak. You can only think about food. You get a little hangry. There's all sorts of signs, and that's very different from emotional hunger. Emotional hunger usually comes either when you're bored, you're stressed out, something bad just happened, something that is triggering to your, nervous system.

[00:18:24] I. Oftentimes, usually from, coping mechanisms from our childhood, we cope with that with food. And usually those signals are very different than the physical signals of hunger. They're more emotionally based, they're more charged. You're not thinking straight. You're, stressed about something and then you immediately go and.

[00:18:50] Compensate with some kind of food, usually something that's comforting and that you use that to calm yourself down. 

[00:18:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I wanna acknowledge something. I'm just gonna go back to some things you were talking about that when you get off of the diet, then Ghrelin goes back up and hunger resumes. But I do find that.

[00:19:14] People are disconnected to those signals. And I was pondering this as you were talking about it and you said these key words when you go off of the diet. And I think that what can happen is people don't really identify with the word diet, even though it's like generally it's actually a word that means lots of things.

[00:19:30] So who cares what it is. But we may think about it as one thing, like I'm being very intentional about restricting my diet, whereas I find that people end up in a chronic state of skipping a meal. Right? Which is gonna be perceived by the body as dieting. So for example, I'm gonna go back to this, people not being hungry in the morning at breakfast, and this can be debated depending on what camp someone's in, so I'll just acknowledge that.

[00:19:55] But if someone has been skipping breakfast, then it would be very natural for them to not have hunger at that time, because that's really a chronic dieting, even if you don't think of it as chronic dieting, right? Ahead, if you wanna jump in there. But otherwise I was gonna talk about overriding hunger and fullness.

[00:20:13] 'cause I've been thinking about this a lot over the years about how we have these emotional things I call it unconscious eating because I used to do this, like food would be in front of me and I don't know when it started. I haven't really psychoanalyzed the past to think about when that started actually.

[00:20:28] But it was like. I would say things like, I don't wanna sit in front of the buffet at Thanksgiving 'cause I will start to snack on this and maybe this comes from X, Y, Z, whatever. But I actually think it really well aligned with times that were more stressed in my life and so I was overriding signals from the body out of, I was disconnected to those signals in the body.

[00:20:52] So I'm just like, hindsight's always 2020 in the middle of it, you're like. I don't know why I can't stop eating this food in front of me. I'm gonna walk away now. But I think that this happens a lot and I just share that because if that's happening to me and I know of quite a bit about food, then it is probably something that anyone can have happen to them.

[00:21:09] Or that's how I'm perceiving it. And so I like to share stories because sometimes it's I don't really resonate with the word dieting, Dr. Tovar, but it's if you've been skipping breakfast, you know what? I don't care what name you put on it. That might be perceived as dieting or not getting enough nutrients by the body.

[00:21:25] Just thinking about overriding these hunger, fullness cues, and so the real question is how do you reconnect what we've disconnected? 

[00:21:35] Dr. Supatra Tovar: I just think it all comes down to really. Increasing our self-awareness. I think that's what we've overridden. We have ignored our signals in the morning, especially, and most people will skip breakfast.

[00:21:50] And just a little fun fact on our own production of GLP one, it is actually produced most often in the morning when you eat breakfast in particular, when you eat starches. So most diets will tell you, especially when you're, doing the intermittent fasting thing, especially on the more extreme level.

[00:22:13] Hold off. Wait until you have your first meal. That's actually really detrimental to your GLP production as well as it takes you out of your circadian rhythm. And when you look at how the body digests and processes throughout the day, it is the most active in the morning. You have the most insulin sensitivity in the morning, and that's because the body is prepping for everything it has to do during.

[00:22:44] The daylight hours. And especially, that developed for us when we were working outside or gathering food or, doing all of the bulk of our work during daylight hours. So a big part of. Recalibrating the body is tuning into the body the first thing in the morning, and most people are actually hungry in the morning.

[00:23:08] They've just learned to just suppress it, drink a lot of coffee, drink a lot of water, and just bear through until lunch. It doesn't do your body any good to do that, and certainly you're suppressing your GLP-1 rather than enhancing it in the morning. So the first thing that I like to tell people to do is hydrate in the morning.

[00:23:29] Open up the windows so that they can get some sunlight, because this is also going to help so many of your bodily processes is to get sunlight first thing in the morning and then to start to move your body. If you move your body in the morning, you will. Get hungry. And so I think, it doesn't have to be like a crazy amount of exercise.

[00:23:51] I actually really am fond of exercise snacks or making your exercise small and sustainable so that you can do it every day. And once you start to move your body, that's when your body's going to naturally signal to you when you're hungry. Don't ignore that. Pay attention to that and also really tune in.

[00:24:13] Take a moment, close your eyes and ask your body, what do you want? And most people don't do this. Most people just go on autopilot. They don't think they just, they're so habituated. But your body will tell you and it'll give you signals. It'll flash food in front of your eyes, behind closed eyes, telling you what.

[00:24:34] It wants, and usually that's because it's deficient in certain nutrients and it's asking for these nutrients. If you were to just allow that and listen to that's the quickest and best way that you can recalibrate back into your body's natural state of hunger, which is usually highest actually in the morning.

[00:24:57] Christa Biegler, RD: I was gonna ask you about recalibrating, but you answered it. It's all kind of reiterate, right? That your recommendation is to hydrate, open up the windows. And I wanna acknowledge, I also love the term exercise snacks. I think that's fun because I'm always thinking about how can you make things more fun and not like a drudge, right?

[00:25:15] And so it's I think I need to go have an exercise snack now. I'll be right back. So it's just playful and funny and playful is one of my words for this year. So I wanna acknowledge. A special population that I find, I think that many people wake up reacting. But as I work with clients and I just observe patterns, my heart goes out to women that have newborn, small children and really the first two years of child rearing, and maybe they have another one in that time because we start to develop long-term habits of reacting.

[00:25:46] 'cause you're waking up working around a child and and so life can just happen. Sometimes, right? Because there's like a level of exhaustion that's unparalleled almost during that time. And and it can be very easy for very intelligent people to not feed themselves. And I'll use that example of moms, but I find that's actually is pervasive in a lot of high achieving people is they're like, I'm doing really well, so I'm gonna like power through and not stop and eat. I see that stuff a lot and so I just wanna acknowledge that a bit is that it can happen innocently to any of us. Accidentally because for in this example of a new mom, like this goes on for months and then it becomes your normal and you almost have to like step way back to realize it sometimes.

[00:26:33] Otherwise you're just living in it and waking up, reacting because everything you just mentioned sounds nice to a person who's not waking up, reacting to a child like blah, blah, blah, blah. And not that those things are. Unattainable, but I just wanna acknowledge it because it's still possible to hydrate, to look at the sun, et cetera.

[00:26:52] But that is just a population where it's like sometimes things, people very commonly walk into the virtual office and I had a baby and then this happened. And not, that's of course not the only reason, but it's like adding to the whole bucket of things to sift through. In how your life is progressing.

[00:27:07] So I wanna ask you, you bring up these opportunities to recalibrate hunger and fullness cues and just recalibrate things in the morning to send safety back into the body. I. And being proactive around that. And so I wanna acknowledge, even though this is coming out as the days are getting longer, I did sit here and watch a blizzard out my window yesterday.

[00:27:31] It's sunny and beautiful today, but not always in the morning. And so we wanna acknowledge northern hemispheres and short days in any lip service you wanna give to that When we say open the windows. 

[00:27:41] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Oh, absolutely. Let's talk about moms first. Yes, their health and their welfare is the first thing to go out the window when you have a newborn especially, but it can also be pervasive throughout the child's life.

[00:27:56] And I think that, and I'd like to address it more from the psychological side. That comes from conditioning. We, especially women, are conditioned to believe that we have to put everyone else first. 

[00:28:08] That , our needs are nothing compared to the needs of our children. And also when you look at those high powered individuals, especially women, we've been conditioned to since about the seventies, that we have to do everything and do it perfectly and be a size zero while we're doing it. And it is such an incredible amount of pressure that women, especially young mothers are under. But I think that is something that it needs to be challenged. I really advocate for all moms, all of my clients, to put the oxygen mask on themselves first, and it is very hard when you have a newborn.

[00:28:52] It's very hard when childcare is questionable. It's also very hard if you are in a home where the partner thinks that you as the mom have to do the majority of the childcare. I. That doesn't mean though, that you are imprisoned in that and that you can't advocate for yourself or you can't carve out little bits of time for yourself, even if you're a single mom and you have zero help.

[00:29:21] It is so vital to take those little moments of time. That's why I'm such a fan of exercise snacks. You do not have to, spend four hours of self-care. That's actually something I do. I don't have kids around right now. So it's easy for me to do. And the way that I've designed my life is that I put my self care first and then I take care of my clients.

[00:29:44] You don't have to do that. It doesn't have to be this huge thing that you embark on If say you're, doing those crazy late nights or early mornings with your child, you can be drinking water at that time. I. You can be opening up the windows to try to get yourself some sunlight. You can listen to your body and provide it nutrition when it's asking for it, even if you might be holding the baby and then grabbing something from the fridge, whatever that may be.

[00:30:16] And I think, reconditioning our minds to the fact that if we don't take care of ourselves first. We're gonna fall apart later, whether it's, during these early childhood years or down the line. And that's what I see with so many clients that come into my office is they've put themselves last and once they start to put themselves first and allow.

[00:30:39] For them to have whatever it is that they need before they're taking care of their children. They are so much better able to do that. And the same goes for a high powered individual. You are not gonna stay powered if you are ignoring your hunger and your fullness signals. You are not going to manage stress.

[00:31:00] If you ignore everything that your body's trying to tell you. So there's lots of little tiny ways, and I call them, little tiny habits that you can implement into your day that allow you that little moment that you might need to care for yourself. So I think it's really important for.

[00:31:19] Women especially to recondition themselves to that. We don't have to do it all. We don't have to be perfect. We can strive for progress. It doesn't have to be perfection. We are not expected to do everything and we can allow ourselves some grace and time during the day. 

[00:31:43] Christa Biegler, RD: And I am over here smiling 'cause I'm just thinking about, self-care snacks and sunlight snacks and the sunlight snack I had before I jumped on this call. Because I have these thoughts sometimes after being on the computer all day, I used to think to myself like, oh, I would love to be able to work outside sometimes. And then I say to myself. I can do that sometimes.

[00:32:05] And so I like to remind myself of those things, but everything you just said, I would love to acknowledge. All of that is wonderful. And I also wanna acknowledge that it may take months. At least of coaching or therapy to unravel some of that, because there's a lot built up in some of that stuff. So I wouldn't wanna say, it's like I learned it on this podcast, or I learned it for the first time and then everything changed 'cause I heard it in my earbuds.

[00:32:33] That would not be true. It's just a, if we think about it like that, I want to provide little action pieces along the way or opportunities of like quick wins. And so if someone was gonna ask themself, and it might just be some of those things that we just went over, but if someone was gonna make themself like a three point checklist to know, like it's a vitals checklist for themselves for the day what might you put on that?

[00:32:59] And I think probably everything you just said already. Might go on that, but I'm just thinking about how do we help ourselves check ourselves? Did I eat today? Did I feed myself? Especially when you're in that a little bit of a hamster wheel. But anyway, anything that you would, I'm sure the checklist could be long, but let me just cut.

[00:33:15] Let's just do three things. A checklist for everyone every day to go off to ask themselves. 

[00:33:20] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Okay, 

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[00:34:35] Dr. Supatra Tovar: so I would start in the morning. The moment you wake up, the moment you open your eyes, that is the time when you're nestled into bed, when you're safe, when you're comfortable to ask yourself, what do I need today?

[00:34:51] And I don't think most people are used to doing that. I don't think that, they hit the alarm and then they're up and they're running. If you were to take two minutes. In the morning just to check in with yourself and ask yourself, what do I need today? You'd probably hear first I need some water.

[00:35:10] I think that's what you're gonna probably listen to the most, because most often you wake up and you're thirsty and you need to replenish and rehydrate. So I would say wake up, listen and hydrate. And then give yourself at least two or three other times in the day that you're going to do this. You're going to ask yourself, what do I need in this moment?

[00:35:35] And then usually it's going to be either, I need some nutrition or I need to take a break. I need to go outside for five minutes, or I need to take a walk, or I need to move my body. But if we are just checking in with our body throughout the day, it's going to tell us. And when we honor that, I think that's like.

[00:35:55] When we create this synergy within our body, and then our body understands that it's safe and it's allowed to do what it needs to do in order to keep us moving and keep us alive. So I know that those three things are the same, but they're so important to scatter throughout your day, and you can make it a regular time to check in, especially if you have three things that you normally do at three different times a day.

[00:36:25] First is hopefully we're all waking up in the morning. That's really important that, that can be the cue. To then check in with yourself. We all usually will consume some kind of meal at some certain point of the day. That's the next time that you can check in with yourself, and then you can pick another time, something that you're doing the same time every day.

[00:36:50] Attach that behavior to that, and that way you can really start a practice of checking in with your body and increasing your self-awareness. 

[00:37:01] Christa Biegler, RD: I feel like this overall, some of these topics are so big because as we were talking before and we were talking about this safety in the body and the hormone changes that happen with dieting, whether we call it that or not, and getting off of dieting, I had wanted to ask you about.

[00:37:18] Changes in the male female body, which may take us too far off kilter. I'll let you decide that. And then I also, there's so many places I could go from here. And one thing I want to just acknowledge is that and we can take this any which way you have. A whole thing around deprogramming diet culture.

[00:37:39] And so when we talk about what's not working, I think people will wanna hear about some things that do work, which you've already been discussing. And so I'm trying to figure out where to go from here or where do you feel are some of the biggest areas of opportunity? Because, you start with this conversation and there's just a lot of.

[00:37:58] Angles from which it can go. So we can go into the things that you feel like are the biggest barriers for people trying to change body image. But those, I just wanted to acknowledge all of these pieces of all the places my brain was going because time is limited and I wanna make sure that we cover these important points of what would be really supportive to someone when they're thinking about body image and.

[00:38:24] Just some of these things that come up when working on weight, and that's what I think the conversation really has become today, is what are the things that can get in the way when you wanna change body composition? So dieting, essentially. Emotional, like regulating emotional versus physical hunger.

[00:38:42] And so what else gets in the way? 

[00:38:44] Dr. Supatra Tovar: I think really to, the biggest part of deprogramming diet culture is understanding that dieting itself doesn't work. And so if you can really truly understand that, then you can look at all the influence in your life. That's what's keeping you within diet culture, and most especially social media is, I think, a big area where we are often influenced, triggered pushed towards dieting.

[00:39:13] Also advertising and people in our lives that promote that more unhealthy disordered eating, right? So we look at that and you look at your social media feed. My suggestion for people is to. Take a look. Take a look at that feed and really ask yourself as you're scrolling, how does this content make me feel?

[00:39:37] And if it makes you feel any negative emotion, that's when I think it's really important to hide, block and unfollow, be, hard about it because the algorithm will pick up what you are interested in. And so if you are looking at really negative content that's influencing you and to, to making you think you need to diet or alter or change yourself in any way, the more you look at it, the more it comes to you.

[00:40:05] So when you can deprogram your social media feed, then you can reprogram it. To things that make you feel good, that inspire you and that make you happy. Whether that's for me, it's like puppies, kittens and Kevin Bacon singing to his goats on his farm. Things like that are really inspiring people out there doing incredible work.

[00:40:27] That's one area where you can really start to curate what you're seeing. The other thing that I recommend to people is stop looking at advertising and. Try not to look at fashion magazines if you can, because advertising is inherently programmed to make you feel like you're not good enough. And if can.

[00:40:49] Eliminate, or at least cut down significantly on that influence, you are going to then start to tune into yourself more than you are going to be listening to whatever you know, gurus out there telling you to buy. The other way to deprogram at AI culture is to really be mindful of the people that you have in your life.

[00:41:11] And I'm not saying to cut off any relationships. I am not saying to not talk to, certain friends or family members, but certainly you can look at, there are people in your life that. Either are trying to influence you to diet or are commenting on your body who you know may be dieting themselves.

[00:41:29] Limit the amount of time you spend with them, create some boundaries and gravitate towards people who love you and accept you exactly as you are. Now you mentioned something about bodies changing as we age. And that is true. That, a lot of people experience changes in their body weight gain in areas that they don't like as they age.

[00:41:55] And if you could pinpoint one cause of that, what would you say it is? Why are people's body's bodies changing as they age? 

[00:42:09] Christa Biegler, RD: I would like to pick five causes, but I'm gonna pick stress. 

[00:42:12] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Stress, okay. That's good. That is one. What do you think is the most important reason why people's bodies change as they age?

[00:42:26] Christa Biegler, RD: I would like to think it's a little bit of nature. I like to think about, I. If you're not reproducing, this is just how my, what my brain's thinking about today. If you're not reproducing, your body's going to turn down certain hormone production, which could impact where your body is gonna store fat to use to potentially create or use hormone for later.

[00:42:50] So that's how I think it's like a. It's not a very nice way to think about it, but nature's like either reproducing or it's not reproducing, essentially. I like to think about that as well. Okay. Those are some of the ones I think of aside from like blood sugar, insulin resistance sleep.

[00:43:06] Okay. I see an increase of stress and a decline of adrenals, which I feel like everything, everything is stacked on from there. What do you think? Okay, 

[00:43:15] Dr. Supatra Tovar: What would you say? Like about certain cultures that don't experience that? 

[00:43:24] Christa Biegler, RD: I was thinking about this a lot when I was in Europe for a few weeks.

[00:43:27] What was I thinking about body composition? I was thinking that there was a lot of, differences in how we experience food happily with people. Like we enjoy this process. I actually thought about this a couple of times in Europe because people would say Europeans are healthier.

[00:43:42] And I was like, there was like a lot of lack of sleep and drinking and whatnot. They were just so happy. They were just so happy. I think the other thing, and I would say, the other thing I think about with. Aging is muscle mass. And I guess you asked about other cultures that don't have those things and I think about there's a lot of walking that happens as well.

[00:44:00] So I don't know. I'm having a hard time summarizing it to one thing. 'cause I feel like a lot of roads lead back to stress technically, but. 

[00:44:07] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes, absolutely. I think stress is one major component, but I also think the quality of nutrition is the primary reason for most age related diseases and changes in body composition.

[00:44:23] If you were to look at, say, Okinawa, which is one of the flu zones, they don't even have a word for menopause. I don't have a word. 'cause they don't experience it. That's fascinating to me. 

[00:44:35] So I think along with all of the influences that we are getting from diet culture, which many of them are mixed messages or even incorrect science, we can look at examples around the world.

[00:44:52] To glean information. We can also look at science to glean information. And the biggest reason why people develop insulin resistance develop cancer, develop all sorts of age related diseases is because of the composition of the standard American diet. And so if we can really look into that and.

[00:45:17] Educate ourselves on the nutrition that fuels our body best as we age. We can avoid so many of those issues along with the changes in our body composition. So my whole approach is how can you. Become your own best expert as opposed to listening to everybody else around you telling you what you should and you shouldn't eat.

[00:45:48] Your body will tell you, especially when your food is closer to the ground than it is to like a factory. Your body will tell you exactly what it wants, when it wants, how much it wants, especially if it is more on the natural side. So when we look at longevity and we look at our health and we look at our weight going.

[00:46:18] Into the future. I think that some of our biggest lessons can come from the Blue Zones and for them, yes, they work a lot on reducing stress. And that's through social interaction? Yes. Some of them do drink and stay out late, but the majority of their food comes from close to the ground. And they're moving.

[00:46:39] The majority of the day, whether it's walking a lot dancing, gardening, like in Okinawa, farming, like in the Nacoya Peninsula. So it's really about going back to a lot of basics that we have tended to issue and say, oh, it's, it's not as important in this, age of everything comes to me quickly and fast.

[00:47:03] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I think you may have just said this, but I'm gonna ask it like this 'cause I could, we could talk about this topic for a long time and so if you wanted to give. I'm gonna say a woman specifically some thing to chew on, something she can do today that can make a difference. And there's cer certainly been little things that you've said here and there for sure.

[00:47:29] Throughout the episode. What would be the message if a woman's hearing this and saying, I want to change my body composition and I want to do it in a sustainable way. What kind of supportive advice, tidbit or thing might you leave her with? 

[00:47:48] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Like I said before, listen. To your body. That is, I think, first and foremost, if you can listen and honor what your body is telling you that gets you on the road.

[00:48:04] I also think you should examine your history. I think, like you said earlier in this podcast, I don't know why. I had this issue at Thanksgiving. I never really examined it. I think it is so important for us to examine our past, our influences and the, messages that we got from our caregivers and from society and really look at them for validity.

[00:48:32] So say that is I always eat at this certain time of day. Say it's something as simple as that. Why? Are you actually hungry? Is this something that was ingrained in you that you need to eat this particular thing at this time of day? What was the messaging behind that? What kinds of things did your parents tell you at the dinner table?

[00:48:57] Did they tell you need to finish everything on your plate, or, starving children across the world are gonna be harmed? Did they tell you that you have to eat all of this so that you can earn dessert? Did you watch them dieting? Where did you get a lot of your own ideas? About weight and shape and eating and challenge those, write them down.

[00:49:21] And then ask yourself intuitively what is true and what is not true, and that helps you to navigate the path forward. If you know you were told to eat everything on your plate and then you examine that and you say that means that I would eat past my hunger. That's when you can say, okay, that's not true.

[00:49:47] I don't need to eat everything on my plate. I can listen to my body like when I was a little kid and stop when I'm full. 

[00:49:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. Dr. Tovar, where can people find you online? I think you wanted to share a little bit about the new book that you had that came out at the, toward the end of last year. So tell us about that book and where people can find you.

[00:50:12] Dr. Supatra Tovar: Yes, so my book is called Deprogram Diet Culture. Rethink Your Relationship With Food, heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet Pre-Life. It can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere that they sell books. You can also find out more about my book and the accompanying course. The course is a deeper dive past the book.

[00:50:31] Those are both on a new insight.com. It's a NEW insight.com. There you can find out about those. Book me for speaking engagements. I also have my own podcast called the a New Insight podcast. And then if you wanna come and work with me, you can work with me through coaching through a new dash insight.com.

[00:50:52] Or if it's therapy, which is a deeper dive into what you're trying to work on, especially if you have say a diagnosable eating disorder. I am licensed in California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York. And you can find me at dr su patra tovar.com, which is D-R-S-U-P-A-T-R-A-T-O-V-A r.com. 

[00:51:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Thank you so much for coming on today.

[00:51:17] Dr. Supatra Tovar: You're so welcome.