Navigating Food Beliefs and Diet Myths: Heather Carey’s Journey Towards Mindful Eating and Body Positivity

What if the food on your plate could tell the story of who you are? Join host Heather Carey in the inaugural episode of Real Food Stories, where she delves into her personal journey with food, diet myths, revealing the intricate connections between food, family, and self-identity. As a clinical nutritionist and health-supportive chef, Heather shares her heartfelt experiences in the kitchen, diet myths, reflecting on how she learned to cook and navigate her relationship with food, ultimately cultivating a mindful approach to eating.

Throughout this episode, Heather invites you to explore her childhood memories, influenced by her diverse family backgrounds. These rich experiences not only shaped her as a culinary nutritionist but also laid the foundation for her passion for real food stories. She addresses the societal pressures surrounding body image and diet culture, emphasizing the importance of storytelling in understanding our food relationships. Through her narrative, Heather aims to create a safe space for women to share their own food stories, tackle misconceptions about healthy eating, and foster a more compassionate relationship with food.

As she navigates the complexities of midlife nutrition and the challenges of menopause health, Heather provides valuable insights into the seven pillars of abundance, offering nutrition advice that resonates with women at this stage of life. Discover how to embrace mindful eating practices and make healthy lifestyle choices that honor your personal food journey. Heather also dives into the world of food beliefs and diet myths, shedding light on the truths behind weight loss stories and food fads.

With a focus on cooking for health and the importance of family food influences, this episode serves as a springboard for future discussions on body image, emotional eating, and the journey toward self-acceptance. Heather’s empathetic approach as a nutritionist and chef ensures that every listener feels supported and understood, making this an essential episode for anyone seeking to redefine their relationship with food.

Join us on this transformative journey and let Real Food Stories inspire you to embrace your own narrative around food, culture, and health. Tune in now to unlock the secrets of culinary wellness and discover how your food story can lead to a more fulfilling life.

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Hang out with Heather on IG @greenpalettekitchen or on FB HERE.

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Hi everybody, I am so grateful that you are here with me today choosing to tune in and take some of your very precious time to listen while you are taking a walk or driving in the car or making dinner as I often do when listening to a podcast. Just so so thankful. This is the very first episode of Real Food Stories and I am your host and storyteller Heather Carey. Right now I’m sitting in my teaching kitchen in South Cork, Connecticut. which doubles as a podcast studio and an office. I’ve got a warm cup of chai tea in my hands and a really delicious spring vegetable soup simmering on the stove to have for lunch. The kitchen, my kitchen, plays an essential role in my food story. My kitchen has followed me for decades, starting when I watched my grandmother making warm brothy matzo ball soup. all the way to teaching my own children how to get creative with food or learn to be okay with mistakes and become fearless with their own cooking. I’ve cried more times than I could remember in my kitchen. I’ve learned the art of mindful and intuitive eating in my kitchen, and I really learned to cook in my own kitchen and lovingly created food for people who were sick or going through trauma. I’ve deeply listen to clients talk about fears around food and how to make peace with their bodies. And I’m wondering if you can relate. And my guess is that you probably can. Kitchen matters. It is the heart of our homes, our lives, and our stories around food. No matter how you were raised or the cultures you were brought up in, food plays a vital role in who we are as women. as mothers, as daughters, sisters, friends, and who we are to ourselves. So I can’t wait to talk all about it through this podcast. I named this podcast Real Food Stories because after a couple of days of soul-searching for the very best title and wanting it to reflect exactly what I wanted to talk about, as I often have the tendency to do, I had one of those lapel moments that I sometimes have at 2 a.m. when I pop awake and my brain starts going. I not only use the term real food so often when having conversations with women after they ask me, what should I even be eating anymore? But I also have such a strong connection to the power of story. I deeply believe that our stories and our pasts tell us all we need to know about how we see ourselves now. Stories mean everything. So my plan for this podcast is to dive into our misunderstandings around food and get very clear on what healthy eating, real healthy eating even is, and that what am I supposed to even eat anymore question, or what and who has influenced your feelings, my feelings, and perceptions of food, and also shaped our beliefs around body image. I’m looking to continue a dialogue around food and story to set the record straight. It feels like a tall order sometimes because food, fads, diets are constantly changing, but I am on a mission to help women finally make some peace with food. So I thought I would start by letting you in on who I am, why me, and how I’m even qualified to talk to you about food, health, and eating in the first place. My personal story can be summed up in a few sentences. I am first and foremost a mom of three kids who I can’t even really call kids anymore. They’re more like young adults now, but they’re forging their own life’s journeys, figuring out their own food stories, learning how to cook, and just be independent on their own. I’m a wife. I’m a dog and cat mom, a chicken and beekeeper. And if you asked… any of my friends, they might call me an obsessive organic gardener. My garden is visible to the road, so people stop by a lot to get tours of what I’m growing or grab some veggies and honey or eggs. And while many women my age are thinking of downsizing, I’m actually dreaming of more land, ideally in a temperate climate where I can grow things all year round. Gardening and cooking are actually meditative for me. And I find that harvesting what I’m cooking is one of my true joys in life. And I know it’s weird for some, but for me, it is really my happy place. This time of year then is always extremely busy, but so satisfying. I have hundreds of personal stories about diets, body image, and food that have everything to do with deeply ingrained family influences and my own soul searching. Those stories I will weave into everything I talk about on this podcast. On the professional front, I am a clinical nutritionist as well as a health supportive chef. And as you might be guessing by now, I’ve been in the world of food professionally for a very long time. When I graduated from college, I had a bachelor’s degree in political science, which wasn’t even close to the career I’m in now. I realized pretty soon after that while I love history and I love the law, my husband became a lawyer. The relationship between cooking, food, and healing from medical conditions through what we eat was really my much stronger interest. I’d always been very interested in food from a really young age. It was… daring in the kitchen. I even asked for my very own cookbooks as a young girl, and I just love to tinker around in the kitchen and experiment with food. I got totally inspired by the relationship between food and health when one of my very progressive aunts, who I used to call Auntie Barb, came for a visit one summer when I was still in high school. Aunt Barb was on her way to go train with Mishi Okushi, the godfather of macrobiotics. Now, you may have zero idea who I’m even talking about, much less the term macrobiotics, but back in the 80s, macrobiotics was sort of the rage in the health food world. Macrobiotics originated from a Buddhism frame of mind that just stressed balance in cooking and a strong plant-based philosophy. Now, don’t get me wrong. I was in high school, and I was still eating at McDonald’s with my friends in between the diets I was dabbling with. and had no clue, really, that food could act as medicine. But the universe clearly intervened with that visit. Aunt Barb introduced me to tofu and brown rice and seaweed and dandelion greens and just foods I had literally never even heard of or had any experience with. And by the time she left my house, I was totally hooked. I love knowing that what we can eat can directly influence how we feel. She was definitely onto something because if you look today at the science, over 80% of what we call the lifestyle diseases, heart conditions, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, certain cancers are definitely linked to the food that we eat. The most important thing my Aunt Barb did that she had no idea that she was doing at the time was to leave me with a cookbook, the book of whole meals by Anne-Marie Colbin. who had started the Natural Gourmet Cooking School in New York City. That cookbook followed me everywhere, through college and to San Francisco, where I lived and worked for a few years. And I experimented with every single recipe in that book. I stained the pages with food splatters, and I wore it to the bone. I knew I would be back on the East Coast eventually. And as I was trying to find my next move in my life, I happened to turn that cookbook over and saw that you Ann Marie Colbin had a cooking school in Manhattan, and that was it. My fate was sealed. The Natural Gourmet is now under the wing of the Institute of Culinary Education, but back then it was a small but really powerful institution. That cooking school changed my life in so many profound ways and really drove home the fact that our food matters to our health and our well-being. And after cooking school, I worked in restaurants and health food stores. I worked as a caterer and most importantly, as a private chef. I cooked for a lot of interesting clients in New York City who came to me with their own desires to try to heal their health issues through food. And while it was very satisfying to help others heal their health concerns with the food I was cooking for them, I realized that you when it came to taking that any further, I was really missing the science behind food and health, and I needed a little more education. So I got my master’s degree in clinical nutrition from New York University, which gave me a well-rounded understanding of the science of food and health. I like to now think that I am pretty unique in my field, because not only was I trained in the science, but I could also… give my clients the hands-on knowledge of how to make this happen in their own kitchens. And I’ve been doing this ever since. Between one-on-one clients or groups, between my corporate clients, I coach and teach cooking lessons in my studio kitchen in Connecticut, and now on Zoom anywhere in the world. I’ve been dreaming up this podcast for a very long time. I’ve been a nutrition coach, a blogger, a recipe developer, and a soon-to-be aspiring author, but I wanted a place where women could feel totally comfortable sharing their stories out loud about their personal accounts around food, eating, body image, and how we as women became to be so conflicted around something that nourishes us so deeply. Food is something we have to be with every single day. We cannot live without it. Yet often we scorn it or we criticize it. We’re so conflicted and confused with it. But we also use food to celebrate, to bond over. We gather around tables with it and we also grieve with it. We have stories about how we were raised, the food beliefs our parents passed down to us, and why we are so… endlessly confused with food. We can thank the internet and social media for so much of our confusion, but really, our first stories were nurtured as little girls and as teenagers and well into adulthood. I want to set the record straight on food so you can find peace with what you eat, and I believe that the shared power of story and debunking myths around food, diets, and cooking. can just make us feel like we’re a little less alone in the world. So I can’t wait to connect with others on this podcast about their relationship with food, diets, body image, and health. But for today, I thought I would share a part of my personal story to hopefully show you that just because I’m educated in nutrition and cooking, I struggled, and I still do struggle at times, with making peace with what I eat. Growing up, And growing into a teenager, I saw my fair share of conflicted eating and food issues in my family, in my cultures, and throughout my life. And I will cover all of those stories as we dive deeper. I have so much to share. Between stories from the many clients I have had to my family, and with a lot of introspection with myself, I think I have a pretty good picture of where we women are at. and how we feel about ourselves when it comes to food, health, and nourishment. For my first topic, I wanted to pose a question to you. Thinking back on your life, go all the way back to your youngest memories of food and eating. I wanted to ask you if you felt like food was ever fun for you. Were there any happy moments? How about a favorite food memory? You know, these are not questions that we get asked very often about food being fun, because I think for a lot of women, myself included, sometimes food was not allowed to be fun. But for many of us, food started out fun. Food started out as neutral. And that happened with me as well. For me, and I think so many other women, food started out as a happy experience. and then quickly took a turn in our teens. So today I’ll share the first part of my story about when the time food felt fun for me. I’m going to rewind to the 1970s when I was just a young girl wearing bell bottoms and a Dorothy Hamill haircut. I love that haircut. Back then, there were no thoughts of counting calories, no fears of looking fat in a bathing suit, and zero limits to enjoying food. I really have no memories of conflicts when it came to food back then. Don’t get me wrong. There was plenty of conflict with the food around me. My mother, my aunts, and other relatives had all their own opinions already formed. The criticisms not being enough because of how our body looks, that was already all in place. Putting that aside for a moment, I grew up on Long Island, close to my grandparents, a lot of family, and a gaggle of neighborhood kids. I had a lot of freedom compared to what kids have now. As long as I had a bike, a couple of quarters, I was free to ride miles away to the candy store that sold 25 cent candy bars and root beer floats. Just as long as I was home by dinner time, we were all good. My neighborhood was busy. There was always someone to play with. We organized outdoor games all the time and we were always at each other’s houses. With all that activity, food was just really not the focus. on a day-to-day basis. My dad’s side of the family is Jewish. And for the first 10 years of my life living on Long Island, I was with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. frequently eating sundae bagels with lox and cream cheese and other briny smoked fish. I was very close with this side of my family and adored my grandparents, who I knew also adored me. On holidays, I remember my grandmother would cook the most delicious, brothy, warm matzo ball soup, the most comforting brisket, and a whole host of Jewish holiday fare. And with the inspiration of my grandparents, I became an extremely adventurous eater, and I was encouraged to always try new things. especially out at the restaurants that my grandparents loved to frequent. I was eating lobster and escargot at a pretty young age and just not being afraid to at least try things. My mom’s side of the family was entirely different. My mother is from deep in the Midwest and was raised in a pretty strict Catholic home. Before she was married, my mom was an airline stewardess circa the 1960s. And if you’ve ever seen the movie Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo DiCaprio, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Stewardesses were ultra glamorous back then, under strict rules to stay a certain size. I remember her showing me the guidelines for the airlines. Hips, waist, bust had to be a certain measurement or you would literally get fired from your job. My parents met in New York City, where my mom was stationed for her stewardess job, and my dad also lived. And how this unlikely match ended up together is a story for another day, but nonetheless, there was a monumental difference in culture, religion, and background. For me, though, I love the diversity in my upbringing. My Midwestern grandmother had been born in France, and my grandfather was Norwegian. In contrast to the dark-haired relatives on my dad’s side, blonde and blue-eyed cousins and aunts dominated on this side. We’d visit my grandmother in the summers in Minnesota and eat homemade caramel rolls and pick wild blueberries in the fields behind her cabin. My cousins and I spent hours on the lake swimming and boating. There was a ton of baking on this side of the family and big Christmas and Easter feasts. My grandmother used to bake Julek cake. a homemade Norwegian Christmas bread. I hope I’m even pronouncing Julekake correctly. That’s the one that’s made with candied fruit in it and is on the sweet side. Every Christmas, we’d get our package in the mail and I’m not sure if anyone ever ate it, but it just helps to identify who we were on this side of the family. I know that all these positive experiences with food and being open to trying new things And having family that was also open to new food experiences truly influenced me as a chef and a nutritionist. But I definitely need to be real here. From a food and eating standpoint, things shifted a great deal when I went from young carefree girl to young teenager and equally influenced my body image and the journey I have been on to make peace with food. As I said before, There were plenty of women, and I wanted to add in men as well in my family that had issues and strict standards as to what a woman should look like in this world. And the pressure felt great. So I’ll pause here for a second and say again that my goal is to be my most authentic self, not the shadow behind my nutritionist and chef persona. Don’t get me wrong. I love to coach women and I love nothing more than getting into the kitchen with a reluctant client who feels overwhelmed with food or feels like a failure at cooking. Sometimes I’m comfortable cooking and I am comfortable planning and I know how to eat real food for my health, but it’s been a journey to get there and one that I really had to figure out on my own. Because there is not a single diet out there that will show you how to succeed at weight loss or loving your body. There’s no magic bullet except for the journey you take with yourself. In fact, I wanted to just bring up a statistic because it’s no surprise that there are 7 million women in the United States who have eating disorders or go on to develop eating disorders. And over a staggering 90% of people who start diets and lose weight fail at them and gain the weight right back. We are not born with this mindset. It’s brought upon us by outside influences of not being good enough, the right wrong thinking about food, and the ridiculously high standards for women and men too. For now, my intention was to start the podcast by getting very vulnerable and sharing my own early story about my own. food history, and how I came into peace with what I eat. So even though I’m going to wait to tell you the middle of my story, the one that includes the critical weight loss messages from my father, from my mom who started me on my first diet, and the dozens of diets after that, my realization of my emotional eating and reaction to stress, and the essential tools I learned that were never taught to me in graduate school. and had nothing to do with dieting and everything to loving myself. I’m going to jump to the end of my story first to say that there is a happy ending, and it’s not about me being a nutritionist and chef who has it totally together with what she eats or being a size two with boundless energy. Right now, here’s the truth. In present day, I am a 54-year-old woman who is empty nesting. And in the throes of menopause, it took a lot of soul searching and perseverance to love my body in a world that reveres ultra thin, especially as we get older. During my early 40s, I did have weight to lose and I did lose it. And I have kept it off with the help of a lot of mindfulness and intuitive eating and a lot of self-compassion. Most importantly, it had nothing to do with willpower. or toughing it out, or starving myself. Now I’m a bit older and a lot more wiser, and my body is ever-changing, and I’ve definitely had to make peace with that too. This is a non-stop journey. And I also wanted to add that I still love food. I’m still a very adventurous eater. I love experimenting in the kitchen and feel totally comfortable with making mistakes. It’s really all good and just part of the experience. Now, my stories matter to me because they help me to understand where I came from so I can heal where I am. Our first impressions of food matter. How our mothers or grandmothers feel or felt about their bodies matters. We pass down what we know, hopefully with great awareness. And so, I want to be totally transparent so you feel comfortable being transparent too. So this is not the end of my story. It’s just actually the first part or the beginning. But for today, thank you so much for listening. I hope that you can see how powerful coming out from behind our stories can be. I will continue showing up and sharing my stories, my weight loss story. And in coming episodes, I want to go even more in depth on body image and other topics that matter so much to women. If you loved this episode and wanted to leave a very nice review, please do so below. I would love it. And please be sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. I hope you have a fantastic week and I can’t wait to see you back here again. Bye for now.