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Summary
On episode 618 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Alana Van Der Sluys, a certified intuitive eating counselor, TEDx speaker, eating disorder survivor, and founder of Freedom with Food and Fitness, who works with women to heal their relationship with food and their bodies.
Alana argues most people were born intuitive eaters, stopping when full and eating when hungry, until diet culture replaced that internal signal with rules, calorie counters, and scales.
The conversation covers why fad diets work for the person who invented them and rarely for anyone else, the difference between healthy eating and orthorexia (an obsession with “clean” eating), and practical tools for rebuilding trust in your own hunger and fullness cues.
Links
- https://freedomwithfoodandfitness.com
- https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithfoodandfitness
Key Takeaways
- Diet culture undoes a skill everyone was born with. Children eat when hungry and stop when full without thinking about it. Years of external rules, calorie counters, and daily weigh ins train adults to ignore those same internal cues.
- Restricting a feared food backfires through habituation. The pull toward a “forbidden” food like cheesecake is strongest the first time and fades with repeated, permitted exposure, similar to how any once thrilling experience becomes routine over time. Total avoidance instead sets up an eventual binge.
- Fad diets like an all potato diet work for one person because monotony kills appetite, not because the food is magic. Without addressing the underlying emotional relationship to food, the same approach doesn’t transfer to someone else and the results don’t hold once normal eating resumes.
- Whatever eating style someone chooses has to be sustainable for life, or the results reverse. Going back to old habits after a diet “ends” just proves the diet was temporary, not that the person failed; keto, for example, only keeps working while someone keeps doing it.
- Orthorexia, an obsession with “clean” eating and fear of “unhealthy” food, is the flip side of undereating and can be just as damaging. Chasing an idealized body, like six pack abs against unfavorable genetics, can cost far more in mental and physical anguish than it delivers.
- Old stories about food formed in childhood calcify into unquestioned facts. One woman refused carrots for decades because she was once forced to sit at the table until she finished them; challenging whether an old story is still true, the way a lawyer would challenge testimony, is part of the work.
- Practical first steps: ditch the scale and calorie counting apps, and meal prep a couple of easy options each week. External numbers override the body’s own hunger and fullness signals, while having nutrient dense food ready to grab prevents defaulting to fast food out of desperation.
- Freezing leftovers or treats in portions removes the “last supper” urgency to eat it all now. Knowing a favorite food will still be there tomorrow, instead of feeling like a rare exception, takes away the scarcity mindset that drives overeating.
- Alana’s three strategies to get and stay well: approach nutrition from a place of abundance, focusing on what to add (protein, healthy fats, fiber, water) rather than what to cut; keep a gratitude journal to pull focus away from the body as something to perfect; and practice emotional and thought management, learning to challenge and choose whether to keep or release the voices in your head.
“Thinness equals health equals worthiness equals beauty. That is what society has served us up.”
Alana Van Der Sluys
Another Episode You May Enjoy
Episode 619 – How to get healthier as you get older with Dr. Michael Greger
Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 618
Published: 2023-11-28
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): Alana Van Der Sluys, certified intuitive eating counselor, TEDx speaker, eating disorder survivor, and the founder of Freedom with Food and Fitness
Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube (audio only)