The Keto Diet Podcast Ep. #019: Health Through Self-Love

February 4, 2017 By Leanne Vogel December 14, 2018

Interview with Meg Doll, a nutritional consultant who specializes in disordered eating recovery, self-love, and healing with a high-fat eating style.

For podcast transcript, scroll down.

Show Notes & Links

• Feel awesome on your keto diet with The Keto Bundle
• Get your free 7-day keto meal plan
• Subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app
• More from Meg Doll
• RSVP for my book tour
• Get the food journal template

Timestamps

• Doing away with macro tracking (21:46)
• How to ditch food rules (42:38)
• Determining if you’re hungry (53:16)

Partners of The Keto Diet Podcast

Transcript

Leanne Vogel: You’re listening to Episode #19 of The Keto Diet Podcast.

Hey, I’m Leanne from healthfulpursuit.com, and this is The Keto Diet Podcast where we’re busting through the restrictive mentality of a traditional ketogenic diet to uncover the life that you crave. What’s keto? Keto is a low carb high fat diet where we’re switching from a sugar burning state to becoming fat burning machines. If you’re in need of keto recipe food prep inspiration, I’ve prepped a free seven day keto meal plan exclusive for Podcast listeners.

The plan is complete with a shopping list and everything you need to chow down on keto for seven whole days. Download your free copy at healthfulpursuit.com/ketomeal. Let’s get this party started.

Hey guys, happy episode #19. I can’t believe we’re almost at 20, and I have so many exciting interviews coming up over the next couple of months including my sister is going to come on the show when we travel to Expo West and we’re going to be going through our favorite products at the show, up and coming cool keto things, and things to watch for. We both love eating so I’m sure we’ll be eating while we record in our hotel room.

I’m really excited about that episode. It’s a couple of months away. There are lots of really cool things going on. I actually really loved recording last week’s solo episode. I really loved just chatting, you and me, every once in awhile, not too much though because I’m sure my voice could get annoying over time.

The awesome thing this week is that I wanted to highlight one of our new partner’s products because I’ve been using their product now for about two months and I’m in love with it. It’s the soil based probiotic by Wolfe Clinic called Royal Flora. I wanted to chat a little bit in the awesome thing this week segment about soil-based probiotics and why I love Royal Flora probiotics.

Put simply, probiotics are micro organisms that play very important roles in regulating proper intestinal function and digestion by balancing intestinal micro flora. They can be found in various fermented foods with active live cultures such as yogurt as well as supplements, so that’s where you see the soil-based, dairy-free based, or dairy-based depending on what you’re going for.

You’re probably wondering, and I was wondering a couple, probably about six months ago, what the heck is the difference between a soil-based probiotic and the regular stuff that you see at the supermarket? Usually, that’s the base of dairy or non-dairy cultures. Soil-based organisms are key contributors to our health because they increase the diversity of beneficial bacteria in our guts helping to improve digestion, boost immunity, and much more.

This can help us avoid the unpleasantness from abdominal discomfort, bloating, etc. while the other sorts of probiotics in the dairy or the non-diary probiotics are more popular, they struggle to make it through the digestive system. Often times you will take a probiotic and it will get to your stomach and then it will die or a lot of it will die.

With the soil-based probiotics, they actually get all the way to the intestines. This ability for those soil based organisms to get to the intestines is called endospore-forming bacteria which are naturally hardier and better able to withstand the challenging environment of the stomach. They also colonize the gut more effectively. This means that we can reduce our dosage to maintenance levels much sooner without worrying about the health benefits of the probiotics disappearing.

I know like for myself I’m always switching probiotics and then increasing the amount, and then lowering it. So I love probiotics. I’ve been using them for a really long time and I decided to switch over to the soil-based probiotics from Wolfe Clinic. They were kind enough to send me a couple of bottles I’ve been trying out. My gut is so happy and just you know like when you eat stuff that you know isn’t good and Meg and I actually chat about the fact that squash hurts our belly later on in the podcast. Now with me taking the Royal Flora every day, I don’t have as many of those reactions to food that I used to.

To give you an idea, I’ve been taken probiotics every day for the last eight years and alternating it with different things, but I’ve never done a soil-based. I just find that I’m not reacting to food in my gut as much as I used to and my skin is a lot better. I still have some bumps and imperfections, but I find I don’t break out as much as I used to because of the foods I was eating. Previously if I ate too much chocolate, I would react to it on my face. Certain things like bell peppers and not potatoes, but all the other nightshades, but now I’m finding I can eat a little bit more of them. This is really exciting news.

I wanted to highlight that in the awesome thing this week and what we’re covering off in today’s episode are some of the following: going keto while recovering from an eating disorder, doing away with food tracking, macro tracking and food weighing, ditching the need to compare yourself to others, and how to overcome food rules to create a life of health and happiness and so much more. The show notes for today’s episode can be found at healthfulpursuit.com/podcast/e19 and let’s hear from one of our awesome partners.

This show is partnered up with Paleo Valley, the makers of the only 100% grass fed and finish fermented beef stick. Each stick contains one billion probiotic CFUs. We all know how important fermented foods are to the health of our gut and the strength of our immune system especially during cold and flu system as well as boosting our energy throughout the winter months. Chowing down on Paleo Valley’s fermented beef sticks provides your body with all the beneficial bacteria it loves in one convenient little beef stick.

Their gut-friendly sticks are gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, GMO-free, freaky chemical additive dye and preservative-free as well as being 100% free from carbs and sugar, and made with the highest quality ingredients. Exclusive to listeners of this show receive instant savings of 20% off Paleo Valley fermented beef stick snacks by going to paleovalley.com/keto. If your jaw is just tired thinking about beef jerky, it’s worth noting that these tasty treats are not tough at all but moist with a little snap. The summer sausage flavor even tastes like those hickory summery sausages but without the gunk; seriously delicious. Again, that’s paleovalley.com/keto for an instant 20% off savings.

Okay, so I have one announcement, and it’s a big one. It’s a big, big one. I’m going on tour! So excited I’m going to be going on tour with my new book called The Keto Diet which is my very first paperback. It’s a cookbook. There are tons of pages, and I’m going to tons of cities to meet up with you guys and chat all things keto, take a bunch of selfies on your books if you want me to.

You can go over to ketodietbook.com/tour in the show notes for today’s episode, and you can take a look, see if your city is on there. If it’s not, do not worry, do not fret. We are still adding more locations and dates as we go along.

We just have to coordinate with bookstores, and places, and make sure that people are good with having us, and how many people they can accommodate. If your city is not on there, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you. I would like to go to every single city in the US and Canada, but I know that that’s not possible. We’re trying to at least get the major cities. The Canada-based stuff looks a little bit thin right now. Don’t worry; we’re going to be adding stuff.

I know that so many of you have been asking about your different cities. I’m marking all of them down and trying my very hardest to get to your city. It will be starting on April 11th and going until about like about maybe May 1st or so. I’ll be traveling all around, and I would love to meet you in person. Again that’s ketodietbook.com/tour, and we can hang out, chat all things keto and just have a good time. I am so excited and definitely check back as we get closer to the book launch.

If you have an idea for a podcast episode, or want to submit praise over and above the review which you can leave by going to healthfulpursuit.com/review, you can email me at info@ketodietpodcast.com.

Our guest today is my very good friend Meg Doll. She is a registered nutritional consultant like me and works with women across the globe through her online holistic nutrition practice. As an eating disorder survivor, one of Meg’s greatest passions and areas of expertise is in eating disorder recovery. She’s extremely passionate about the topic of self-love and believes it to be the missing piece to our health journeys. Throughout her time recovering from her past eating disorder and other health issues such as hypoglycemia, anxiety, and depression, Meg has also discovered the incredible healing power of a high fat diet and is currently writing a book which focuses on how to heal with high fat eating style and self-love.

Meg is my girl. We speak the same language. It was just so great to catch up with her before we recorded. We chatted a bunch, and she’s just such a kind and warm soul. I just loved having her on the show. So without further ado, let’s cut over to the interview. Hey, Meg. How’s it going?

Meg Doll: Hey girl, I’m so great and so happy to be on. Thank you for having me.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, totally. I am totally in love with your work and we’ve been pals for quite some time. For listeners that may not be familiar with your work, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Meg Doll: Yeah, so you and I definitely have been friends for quite a few years and what really drew me to you actually was because you are also a Canadian of course.

Leanne Vogel: Whoop, whoop.

Meg Doll: I started following you and I was studying dietetics at the time. I was just really interested in helping people with their food choices because I battled two rounds of anorexia as I was growing up. I was 10 years old and then 15 years old when I was struggling with anorexia and then by the time I was ready to move on to university, I was recovered and one of the people on my health team that’s really made a difference in my life was my dietician.

She was the one that really opened the doors for me to just really love food again and just see it as food and something that I really needed to heal. It’s not like she was a natural ancestral type of dietician. She was just like your standard dietician, but her approach was really gentle. She played such a huge role in my recovery so she inspired me to go on and study dietetics.

I went to university in London, Ontario for dietetics. Once you are done with schooling for dietetics there is the option to go one and do an internship to actually become a registered dietician. When that time came, it just wasn’t sitting well with me. What we were learning in class wasn’t even how I was eating myself and I’m the type of person that if I tell someone something, I have to be doing it myself. I’m not going to tell someone to eat low fat when I’m eating whole eggs, right?

This was back in 2013. I was eating whole eggs. I was looking for fatty cuts of meat and ghee and all that sort of stuff. What I was learning in school wasn’t in line with what I was doing. I just sat there, and I was like I can’t go on and be a registered dietician and follow the guidelines that they have to follow. So I just was like, okay I’m not going to do my internship. I was just really lost and thinking, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do now?” Then you wrote a blog post about the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition.

I was like why have I never heard of this before? There just so happened to be a campus right in London where I was living so I went there. I started studying holistic nutrition and for the first time I was like wow, this is actually where I’m supposed to be, learning exactly what I wanted to learn, how to truly use food as medicine and eat fat and feel good.

I was super happy about that, graduated from CSNN and that month I opened up my online holistic nutrition practice and have been seeing clients all over the world. Since I have a background and firsthand experience with eating disorders, I definitely do specialize in eating disorder recovery and love being a health professional that can help those girls because that’s seriously lacking in our world. There’s not a lot of people that truly understand eating disorders and how food can play a role with that and the healing with that.

That’s one of my areas of expertise but I also super love digestion and hormones and that sort of thing so I definitely do help a wide range of women, but my heart really lies in eating disorder recovery. That’s kind of what I do and then where I am today I guess, I have a podcast myself for anyone who doesn’t know and we had you on.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, you did, quite a while ago, yeah.

Meg Doll: It was probably over a year ago actually when your “Fat Fueled” book came out.

Leanne Vogel: Yes, I remember, yeah.

Meg Doll: At that time in my life, I mean a year ago, I was working out at the gym really hard and I had the mindset that … you know, I ate a balanced plate. I had protein and carbohydrates and fat, but I definitely put the emphasis on carbohydrates. When I was working out I was just in that mindset that I needed all the carbs and four times a day I was eating a sweet potato as big as my head.

Leanne Vogel: Oh my gosh.

Meg Doll: Seriously, not even lying. We had you on the podcast and you were just talking about keto and high fat eating and all the ways in which it could help you. I was sitting there feeling pretty fatigued. I wasn’t feeling my best that was for sure. From there I started dabbling with lowering my carb intake, increasing my fat intake and I started feeling better. Not totally better, because later on I actually found out I had a parasite so that was definitely one of the reasons I wasn’t feeling good.

Even with a parasite protocol, you need to adopt a lower carbohydrate/high fat diet. Once I started doing that, I felt a world of a difference. It was incredible and not only digestion energy-wise, but I mean for all of my life I was convinced that I was hypoglycemic and I just had to live with it and I had to eat every two hours to maintain.

Leanne Vogel: Me too.

Meg Doll: Right, like same old story. I was under that impression and it’s annoying.

Leanne Vogel: It’s so annoying. You have to carry snacks in your purse and worry about where you’re going to have lunch, and then you get short with your husband or your significant other.

Meg Doll: That word hangry, like everyone.

Leanne Vogel: It’s a real thing.

Meg Doll: Yeah, real thing and my entire family used that to describe me. That’s not fun and especially someone and I’m sure you can agree with me on this, but with a history of an eating disorder and when you’re constantly thinking about your next meal because you don’t want your blood sugar to drop or you get shaky, you are constantly thinking about food. For someone that was constantly thinking about food in the past because of different reasons, that’s not something that sat with me very well.

It was very stressful, and I was like, oh my gosh, I just want to stop thinking about food and just be like my Mom, my Dad, my boyfriend Scott who literally wake up, they eat when they’re hungry, and then they eat again when they’re hungry later on.

Leanne Vogel: Such magic.

Meg Doll: I was like, oh my gosh I so badly want to be there and really it just comes down to healing your blood sugar. With that, that came with a very high fat diet and a low-carb approach and that’s where I am right now so feeling a lot better these days thanks to kind of your introduction to high fat eating for me and then me just being open to experimenting with it and committing to it really.

Leanne Vogel: That’s so awesome, and you’re not the first person that I’ve spoken with about eating disorders and keto or like low-carb eating where you’re bouncing your blood sugar, and you don’t have to care about food anymore. That was so big in my own recovery from just those last negative behaviors of the eating disorder that I had and really obsessing about food and thinking about food, and when I went keto it was sort of like, oh my gosh, I can go all day, and I don’t have to worry, think, eat. It’s just a natural thing, and when I eat, I can eat as much as I want. It’s quite an interesting feeling, and that was really the “nail in the coffin” for my experience with an eating disorder.

That’s cool that you kind of felt that same of way, of just when you went lower carb, it’s like you don’t have to care so much about food every two hours because that can be really hard even when you’re recovered to not make that a negative behavior.

Meg Doll: Totally and do you actually want to be eating four huge sweet potatoes every single day? No, I didn’t even want to be eating those but it was almost like I was oh-

Leanne Vogel: You have to.

Meg Doll: Yeah, I have to fuel my training. You just have this mindset that you need to have all those carbohydrates, and that’s not really free in any way, and now just thinking when you were saying when you sit down to a meal, you can eat whatever you want and just pile it on. I mean that’s exactly how it is for me now. Last night we had salmon and asparagus, and I just load up on all the ghee and put it on everything and like salad, and then you put nuts and oils on your salad. Whereas before, it was so carb focused and you were okay, I can’t have too much fat with this because I’m having all these carbs. I don’t know. That’s what just naturally happens when you eat a lot of carbs; it’s like you’re not really hungry for all of the fat.

Leanne Vogel: Totally, yeah you kind of switch.

Meg Doll: Yeah, it’s one of those natural balances I found when I was increasing all of the fat and also I craved the fat too whereas before, like a year ago, it was almost like reminding myself okay to refuel after your training, you need these carbs. It’s not like I really wanted them.

Leanne Vogel: Totally, and so let’s chat a little bit about the transition that you made from that more “eating disorder” state to where you are now. I’m sure that there was a moment where, like were you ever obsessed with tracking and that tension that comes from tracking and how did you go from tracking to intuitive eating? What was that like for you?

Meg Doll: Oh yes. It was scary.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah.

Meg Doll: It was really scary. I was tracking every single day, every single morsel including spinach. I have vivid memories of using a food scale to weigh a spinach salad.

Leanne Vogel: Me too. Mine are kale. Measuring my kale, that was a big thing for me.

Meg Doll: Leanne, our poor souls.

Leanne Vogel: I know.

Meg Doll: I know, poor us. I think for me it was the winter of 2013 and one night I was just weighing my food for dinner and I just had a complete meltdown. It was like I cannot do this anymore and because I was “recovered” from my eating disorder, anorexia we’ll say. I was recovered from anorexia. The last thing I wanted to be was skinny. That wasn’t something I was striving for or I would rather overeat than under eat, but I was so obsessed with tracking my food to make sure I was getting X amount of calories every single day if that makes sense.

Leanne Vogel: Yes.

Meg Doll: Okay, so recovered from anorexia, but very still obsessed with food. Then that one night in 2013, I was like, I realized that I so badly wanted to be healthy and as I was weighing my fish or whatever the heck I was eating, I just broke down. Threw out my scale, never to be seen again.

Leanne Vogel: Was it scary to do that?

Meg Doll: Oh, I wrote an entire blog post about how terrified I was. It was really, really scary, but before I did that I reflected because I was kind of already just weighing on the weekdays and then on the weekends, I had more busy days and I didn’t weigh. I realized that I was so much happier and free and just I felt healthier overall on the weekends. I was like, okay that’s clearly a sign that I should no longer do this altogether. I want to be healthy, but this action is not healthy.

I think once you really get clear on what you want, so what I wanted was to be healthy and happy. Those are my two words. I call them my kind of two focus, or my two anchor words, were happy and healthy.

Leanne Vogel: What does healthy mean to you because a lot of people would say, okay well Meg and Leanne, tracking is good because you can track your macros. You can make sure you’re eating enough or not eating enough. I totally disagree with that statement, but that’s healthy and intuitive eating, if I eat intuitively all I’ll be doing is eating candy.

Meg Doll:  Mm-hmm (affirmative) yeah, so healthy is definitely different for everyone. I really think that if anyone is listening right now, thinking like wow I think macro tracking is healthy, like really set on that and define healthy for yourself. For me personally, that was not healthy for me. It was disordered for me and that is why I was like, okay if I want to be healthy but I’m doing something that I view as very disordered, I need to let that go.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, totally and are there certain things, signs that you watch for that you’re healthy? For me it’s if my period is regular, if I’m ovulating every month, if I’m engaging in positive movement that’s making me happy, then I’m healthy and it really honestly doesn’t have anything to do with the food that I eat. I kind of separated that out from my health. The food will be the food and I will eat the food that makes me feel good, but I try not to have that as my focus for health. What about you?

Meg Doll: Totally, yes and one thing I will tack on too is that we used to think that healthy equals when I look this certain way and then when I actually sat down and defined health for myself, I didn’t even touch on body image because it has nothing to do with how you look. It’s about how you feel. It’s totally about how you feel, how your body functions, like you said ovulating. Are your hormones in balance? Clear skin, good digestion, are you going to the washroom every day?

That is healthy and it really, like you said, has nothing to do with macros or calories. I would go far as to say that it also for me didn’t have to do with how lean I was, how muscular I was. Once I realized that, that is what helped me move through that fear of throwing out my scale and also no longer logging onto that dreaded “My Fitness Pal”.

Leanne Vogel: Oh hearing those words, I’m like, “Don’t say it.”

Meg Doll: Don’t say it.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, it’s brutal, totally brutal. I know for me in order to become “healthy”, I have to gain weight and quite a lot of weight compared to where I was at. For me it was a constant struggle of okay, this doesn’t matter. This is not important. It doesn’t define you. What were some of the steps that you took throughout your body transformation while you were discovering your own happiness and healthfulness outside of tracking macros and caring about everything that you ate?

Meg Doll: Yeah, so this is a really good question and one I get a lot actually, and I have a very specific answer to what exactly I did. I had those two anchor words, happy, healthy. If I looked in the mirror one day and was like, oh Meg, you are gaining weight, and all the sirens start going off, I would ask myself those two words. Are you happy? I would think am I happy right now? I always was, and I was like, yes. Then it was okay, are you healthy? Are you feeling good? Are you experiencing anxiety, or how is your sleep? Are your hormones coming back because obviously, my hormones were very out of balance.

I mean I wasn’t 100% healthy, but I don’t believe any of us are. I could whole-heartedly say that yes, I am healthier than I was before I started this journey, right? When I was able to answer yes to both of those questions, I kind of gave myself a nod in front of the mirror. I was like, good, then you’re good to go. If you’re not able to say yes to both of those questions, then maybe you need to evaluate some stuff, but that’s kind of how I handled those weird body image things.

Also, a lot of tools from eating disorder recovery right, not spending so much time in the mirror and just going out and doing something that actually makes you feel good whether that’s tea with your Mom or just go out for a drive, or meet up with a friend for a little walk or go to the mall. I killed so many hours in the mall just roaming the mall. I basically lived at the mall when I lived in London, just to really make me feel good about myself when I was maybe struggling a little bit upstairs.

Then also reminding myself that I don’t always see myself the way others see me. I call them like ED eyes, eating disorder eyes. It’s almost like this eating disorder has the ability to put a lens on your eyes and you see yourself very distorted and I would just remind myself okay, if I don’t like how I look today I know that this is not my vision. It’s ED vision.

Leanne Vogel:   And that’s not even just vision, but it’s also your thoughts and everything. I know now that I’m fully recovered and completely confident, and my body looks a lot different, I get hit on so much. It’s crazy, like crazy. So I’m sure that stuff happened before, but I just wasn’t open to it because I didn’t think I deserved compliments or anything and now I just take it as, wow, thank you so much for the compliment, and I can take that compliment. I think it also limits your ability to take on your life in different ways.

Meg Doll: Mm-hmm (affirmative) I fully agree with that. Yeah, eating disorders linger forever but I think once you know the tools, the mental tools to really overcome it, even if it is still popping up here and there, you have that strength to really show it who’s boss and you know live through it, yeah.

Leanne Vogel: Some other tools like I know for myself was getting rid of clothes that no longer fit me. I had this closet of all these clothes that I wanted to fit in one day, and I would just keep them. It was sort of like motivation. A lot of “health coaches” will tell you to keep a pair of motivation pants that don’t fit you, so you know that they’re going to.

Meg Doll: Oh my God.

Leanne Vogel: That kind of stuff. My huge thing was taking away all of the clothes that didn’t fit me. My husband and I went into the closet and spent all day going through every single piece of clothing that I had and if it didn’t fit me right then, I threw it out, or donated. I didn’t throw it out because that would be crazy. Donated it, and also another good thing is social media. Social media can be great for body positivity and self-love, but it can also be damaging if you’re following the wrong people that aren’t aligning with your values would you say?

Meg Doll: Oh, Leanne I 100% agree with you on this one and I actually realized that this is something that I did this past year. I mean over the years I think that your self-love is always growing and perhaps your body image can always be improving. This time last year I had great body image, but in the spring I was on a cruise ship with my podcast partner Shawn, and I remember I was laying in bed just being like, let’s totally do an Instagram cleanse. Let’s just delete, unfollow…so she and I literally unfollowed about 300 people.

Leanne Vogel: Oh my gosh yes.

Meg Doll: It was so cleansing and from that moment I realized that my body image just skyrocketed. It wasn’t even like that’s what I was desiring, but it just goes to show you that if you have any listeners listening to us right now thinking oh no, I follow everyone I love on Instagram. No one’s negatively affecting me. They very well could be without you even realizing because I was definitely under that impression too.

I was like, oh no, I totally just follow inspiring people and stuff. Then I just went through my Instagram account and unfollowed people that I was like, okay seriously, why am I following them? Now almost a year later I’m like oh my gosh. That was one of the best things I could ever have done for myself.

Leanne Vogel: Do you think with social media, I know for myself, it was more of a comparison to others, maybe it doesn’t even have to do with their bodies, but somebody posts that they just got married and their wedding looked gorgeous. Somebody else posts that their kid is really cute and playing with crayons and they’re just adorable, and you’re thinking why don’t I have those things? Why don’t I have a happy family like that? Why, why, why. Why, why?

It really comes down to comparing our lives, and it could be our bodies too. You know that friend who no matter what they eat, they look amazing. They brag about how they can eat a pound of candy and not gain a pound. How do we feel with that comparison that we feel or jealousy that we feel of other peoples’ lives and bodies?

Meg Doll: That’s a really good question. I think like we said, distancing yourself from those triggers, so if you are being triggered by someone getting married or having babies, if you’re experiencing infertility, maybe body image isn’t your issue, but you’re really struggling with conceiving a child with your husband, and you’re following all these moms that all that they post are pictures of their babies and that is wearing on you every single day, you really need to distance yourself from that.

I think that’s like step one and then also being in tune with what you want and speaking to yourself. I’m a huge advocate for self-talk and speaking to yourself with compassion. That is honestly one of the main reasons I think people are still stuck in this body image or just like non self-love state. You know how there’s so many people sitting there right now as we speak wanting to love themselves. I truly believe that the number one step that these people have to take is changing the way they speak to themselves. That is the number one barrier to achieving self-love.

Leanne Vogel: Yes, yes, yes. Yes to all of the things. Something that I noticed while I was working with my body image coach Summer Innanen, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her but I worked with her.

Meg Doll: Oh yeah.

Leanne Vogel: She’s amazing.

Meg Doll: Isn’t she a Canadian too?

Leanne Vogel: Yes she is, yeah represent, is that one of our first sessions together we were talking about how I have a really hard time taking compliments. This is probably about a year and a bit ago. My task right at the beginning when I was really starting to get into self-love and body image stuff was just next time somebody compliments me, just say thank you. It was such a hard thing to do.

You think oh no big deal thank you, but when somebody compliments like, “Wow I really like your hair.” You’re sort of like, “Oh this? I just showered. I didn’t do anything to it.” You kind of come up with excuses and stuff and not actually take it in. That was one of the first steps that I did on this path and it really helped me get a glimpse of the self-talk that was going on inside. Clearly, if I am responding in that way to other people, what else am I saying inside?

Meg Doll: Totally yeah, accepting compliments is definitely huge because if you can’t accept something obviously that dialog within your head is totally something different than what you’re being told and yeah, that is another great way to begin changing that self-talk that’s happening within you.

Leanne Vogel: Totally, so let’s shift gears a little bit and kind of go back to the food because a lot of women listening, and primarily women, hey guys, there’s a couple of you too, but a lot of the women listening are on a keto diet and some of them are tracking. Some of them aren’t. Hurray, that’s awesome, but how do you go from being obsessed with macros and tracking and not replacing it with another obsession like avoiding grains or sugar because you get on that focus of better health and health improvement?

Meg Doll: Mm-hmm (affirmative) that’s a good question so I would really recommend to those people to really pay attention and kind of get clear on how they feel right?

Leanne Vogel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Meg Doll: For example I know a lot of people will think like oh, well now she’s just eating high fat and really low-carb. She’s restricting her carbs. If you are doing it just to do it because someone told you so or you think it’s just like another diet trend, well yeah then that’s probably not the healthiest action you can be doing for yourself. But if you reflect on when you did make that diet change it’s like, okay are you feeling better or are you forcing it on yourself?

I think if they can honestly tell themselves no I’m doing this for my health and I’m seeing improvements whether it be in their energy, their sleep, their hormones which is a huge one, I think that’s kind of a good thumbs up that they’re doing it for all of the right reasons.

Leanne Vogel: Totally and I think for me it was sort of like understanding that my life is a gray area and not black and white. Although I know that grains do not feel good in my body, I know this, I know it, but the other night I really felt like a carb-up. It had been a couple of days since I’d had carbs and Kevin wanted to order a gluten free pizza. I was like, “Yeah let’s do it.”

Before I would have been like, “Oh I don’t know. There’s grains in it and I’m going to feel bad.” I just made a choice. I know that it’s not going to feel the best but I’m going to sit and watch “Jurassic Park” with my husband. It’s going to be great. I’m going to have a couple pieces of pizza and then life goes on.

More on my interview with Meg Doll after this message from one of our podcast partners.

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Leanne Vogel: I’m sure that you have gray area too-

Meg Doll: Oh yeah.

Leanne Vogel: -with your eating. Would you say just ditch the food rules and do what feels good in the moment, and how do you balance that with sugar because if you start eating sugar, you’re going to eat more sugar, so how do you balance that personally?

Meg Doll: Oh yeah girl, love this question. I definitely do live in the gray. I’m not black and white. This change happened immediately after you know when I said that night in 2013 where I was just like I can’t do this anymore. I was like okay, I am living with so many rules right now and I just need to let them go. I just need to let them go.

I really like how you touched on food rules. That definitely struck a chord with me. I think if you are wanting to achieve health, achieve happiness, you cannot have rules. I ditched the rules and instead of just going willy-nilly and kind of being at a loss of what to do because we do feel that way when we ditch those rules, right?

Leanne Vogel: Yeah.

Meg Doll: I actually took an intuitive eating challenge. The very next month when I tossed out my scale, I took this intuitive eating challenge that was put on by Jamie Mendell. She’s another friend of mine. She’s an amazing girl and she actually still runs this intuitive eating challenge. If anyone is just like, “Oh my gosh, intuitive eating, that is something that I desire the most”, I would highly recommend the challenge.

It’s a 21-day challenge I believe and I went through that. The first lesson that we learned is that we are allowed to eat whatever we want whenever we want. Honestly, Leanne, that’s exactly how I approach my life to this day. I still … every day I wake up, I know I can eat whatever I want whenever I want. If I wanted to wake up tomorrow morning and eat some oatmeal, I know I can do that.

When you have that mindset of eating whatever you want whenever you want, there’s no guilt associated which is huge. Then the one thing that I know so many people are thinking like, well if I say that I’m just going to eat sugar all the time, or you know brownies for every single meal and it’s like you know what? You might for two days and then guess what? On the third day or the fourth day, or whatever, your body is going to be like okay, this is not good. This is not happening.

Leanne Vogel: You’re shaking from all the sugar and you have a headache.

Meg Doll: Exactly, you know you don’t actually want that and our bodies, I’m a huge believer that our bodies want to be healthy.

Leanne Vogel: Yes, I say that too. That’s like my line, totally.

Meg Doll: No, I didn’t even know that was your line.

Leanne Vogel: Oh my gosh, your body wants to be healthy, yes.

Meg Doll: It does, your body wants to be healthy and our bodies know that they can only be healthy through nutrients. Something that you know I just hate is those zero calorie syrups and stuff.

Leanne Vogel: Oh, me too.

Meg Doll: You know people will be eating those and then they’re like, oh I’m constantly hungry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s your body wants nutrients. It doesn’t want just food.

Leanne Vogel: Syrupy thing, yeah.

Meg Doll: Right, it doesn’t need just filler. You need nutrients so if all you’re eating are protein powders, egg whites and oatmeal like my diet used to very much consist of, you’re going to be constantly hungry because that’s not nutrients.

So anyway, when you approach life, like your entire life, with the mindset that you truly can eat whatever you want whenever you want, that very much so encourages intuitive eating and I will be completely honest. Yeah, you might have a few days where all you eat are bagels because you probably restricted bagels for years.

I know for me when I was going through that challenge; you’re going to think this is just crazy Leanne, but when I was going through that challenge and adopted that mindset, there were two nights within those 21 days where I ate those two and a half pound mixed nuts from Costco. You know those huge mixed nuts.

Leanne Vogel: Yes.

Meg Doll: Yeah, I remember two separate days and they were within the same week and I’m not even lying. There was this one night and all I wanted was nuts, all I wanted. I had very plentiful meals that day, very balanced meals, but I was just like oh my gosh, I still kind of feel hungry and all I want are nuts right now.

I started eating those nuts and I just constantly checked in with myself every handful. I was like okay am I still enjoying these? Yep, so I would still have some. That just continued and I ate the entire tub of two and a half pounds.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah you did.

Meg Doll: You know like I mean if I didn’t have that mindset oh my gosh, the guilt that would have set in, right?

Leanne Vogel: I know.

Meg Doll: I had that mindset and I was like wow, okay. I actually wanted those in that moment and I ate them and I felt good about it, but now I can have nuts around me and I don’t eat them all because I allowed myself to go through that phase of you know like really … I mean my psychologist from way back from my eating disorder days, he said to me because when that happened I actually did make a session with him.

I had a session with him. I explained to him what happened and I was like, “Is that like okay that I just did that?” He was like, “Meg, these are foods that you clearly haven’t been eating much of or any of over the past couple of years. You’re right now seeing it as this bright shiny object.” He said like, “Once you move through this stage, it’s all just going to be food to you.”

When he said that, I just put a lot of trust in that. I put a lot of trust into my intuitive eating journey and I moved through it and I really don’t like when people think oh, I can’t have chips in the house because I’ll just binge on them. It’s like, no you’re not binging in chips because you have them in your house. It’s because you’re telling yourself you can’t have them.

Leanne Vogel: Can’t have them.

Meg Doll: Right?

Leanne Vogel: Yes.

Meg Doll: I’m a huge believer in that and you know that’s something that I work on with my girls, my clients as well. We discover it to be true every single time. Binging ends when you stop telling yourself that you can’t have it. There’s that little rebel within all of us right?

Leanne Vogel: Yes, totally 100%. I have a huge rebel inside of me when somebody tells me to do anything, I do the opposite, like anything. It’s really bad. A couple of thoughts that I had is that I know for myself when I said no to the no more food rules, I’m going to focus on nourishing my body and nourishing my soul, and just being kind to myself, food rules would still pop up.

When they’d pop up and I’d be preparing something, it would be like oh Leanne you shouldn’t have that, I would just quickly say I choose love. I choose love.

Meg Doll: Love it.

Leanne Vogel: I would just repeat it. I choose love. I choose love. I choose love. Then after awhile, it just went away. That was something that I thought of and also you chatted a little bit about just feeling how you feel with the food that you’re eating. I put together a free resource probably about a couple of years ago now. It’s like a food journal so I’ll include that in the show notes. It’s at healthfulpursuit.com/journal.

It’s just like a free food journal template to kind of you know you write down what you ate. Not the measurements or anything, but just like sweet potato, bacon grease, how did you feel? You can just track how you felt with the food that you’re eating without tracking the calories and stuff like that.

More on my interview with Meg Doll after this message from one of our podcast partners.

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Leanne Vogel: My last question for you is… Okay, I have two, so I have to decide. Okay, let’s talk about distinguishing between shame-based eating, emotional eating, and physical hunger and if that’s even important because you were talking about your nuts, the nuts that you were eating. You were looking at the nuts like do I still want this? Am I still hungry? Let’s quickly go through what that looks like.

Meg Doll: Yeah, so I mean everyone knows what hunger is. I really do, I’ll say something that I shared with a client one time. It really worked for her because she was struggling. Am I just eating out of boredom or am I actually hungry? I said, “Well you know a good tool to use is let’s say you took a spoon of like nut butter out of the jar and you loved it. Then you were like okay, I really want another one and then you took another spoon and you loved that one. And you know by the third spoon you need to make sure that you’re still enjoying it just as much as that first spoon and if it’s just kind of like whatever, then yeah that’s maybe like mindless and you just keep going.”

It is important to just do little self check-ins I suppose and make sure that you are eating because you’re hungry or because you’re really enjoying it. This whole thing with emotional eating is I hate when people think emotional eating is bad. It’s not bad. That’s just another thing that we need to let go of. Just a mindset that we need to let go of is you’re not going to emotionally eat all the time, but you’re going to do it. If you think it’s a bad thing, then you’re going to feel guilt from doing it.

Leanne Vogel: Then you’re going to eat more and binge and yeah.

Meg Doll: Exactly, we all just need to realize and adopt the mindset that emotional eating is so good for our soul sometimes and it’s not always a pint of ice cream after a breakup. It’s like Christmas and you’re happy and you’re enjoying and maybe you’re not super hungry, but oh my gosh. It’s so good.

I mean every single time my Dad makes barbecued salmon, he legit makes the best salmon in the world. Every single time I just know I’m going to eat so much salmon because it’s something that just makes me freaking happy and I just eat a lot of it. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, totally. There’s nothing wrong with it and it’s part of being human and I think the moment you discover that emotional eating is okay, the less frequently it happens. Well, maybe not the less frequently it happens, but the less frequently you create shame around it. I know when I used to emotionally eat, it was like oh my God, I emotionally ate. I’m such a bad person. Okay, I’m just going to keep eating because why not? I screwed up my diet and then that would turn into like days of binging. You know, so it’s just oh, it’s the worst, totally.

Meg Doll: It’s the worst. It’s a terrible cycle to be in and I really do believe that you just need to let go of all of the rules. We don’t need to live with rules. That’s not what life is about and once you can learn to let go of those rules, good things happen. Only good things happen. You and I are two survivors of just letting go of all of the rules and look at us.

Leanne Vogel: Look at us.

Meg Doll: Look at us girl.

Leanne Vogel: Seriously writing books and doing awesome things.

Meg Doll: Seriously, it’s awesome. I’m so proud of you by the way and your book.

Leanne Vogel: I’m so proud of you.

Meg Doll: I cannot wait for your book to come out.

Leanne Vogel: When I found out that you were writing a book, I just imagine getting it and squealing and running in the house and looking through it and just being so excited.

Meg Doll: Oh, babe you’re so sweet. Thank you.

Leanne Vogel: Well I guess we could probably chat forever but we will not today. So where can people find you? I’ll also put these links in the show notes.

Meg Doll: Perfect, yeah. I’m known as Meg the RHN. So, nutritional consultant. My website is megtherhn.com and all of my social media handles are Meg the RHN. I’m super active on Instagram. I love Instagram. Then I have weekly blog posts too and you can always shoot me an email if you really want to chat with me. I will always get back to you. It’s megtherhn@gmail.com and then if you do want to listen to Leanne on my podcast, my podcast is called The Nourished Podcast.

Leanne Vogel: And it’s great guys you should go subscribe to it and then listen to all the things.

Meg Doll: Thanks Leanne.

Leanne Vogel: Thanks so much for being on the show today Meg.

Meg Doll: Thank you so much. This was a blast and I could talk to you forever.

Leanne Vogel: I know. Me too. Thanks again.

Meg Doll: Bye.

Leanne Vogel: And that does it for another episode of the Keto Diet Podcast. Thanks for listening in. You can follow me on Instagram by searching Healthful Pursuit where you’ll find daily Keto eats and other fun things and check out all of my Keto supportive programs, bundles, guides, and other cool things over at healthfulpursuit.com/shop and I’ll see you next Sunday. Bye.

This entry was tagged: eating high-fat, eating keto, eating low-carb, fat-adapted, how eat keto, keto basics, keto diet, keto for women, keto life, ketogenic diet, ketogenic for women, ketosis, low-carb paleo, self-care, self-love, what is keto