DIET CULTURE IS BS!: A Kandid Chat on Healthy Food Relationships w/ Dr. Trina Dorrah

Food Freedom_ A Kandid Chat on Healthy Food Relationships w_Dr Trina Dorrah

Kandidly Kristin: Hey, hey, hey, podcast Nation. It is your girl, Kandidly Kristin, and this is The Kandid Shop, your number one destination for Kandid conversations. So today I am sitting down for a kandid chat about food freedom and our relationship with food, with physician Binge eating coach and host of the Diet Culture is BS podcast, Dr. Trina Dorrah.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, Dr. Trina to the Kandid Shop.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Kandidly Kristin: Thank you for coming on. So, guys, anybody that listens to this show know that I am a stats person. I love data, so I went in search of some fast facts about food relationships, overeating and obesity and here's what I found: according to the World Health Organization, or WHO Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.

In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults 18 years and older were overweight. And of these over 650 million were "obese". 39 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese in 2020. And here's my favorite fast fact, obesity is preventable. So Dr. Trina, let's get into it.

Talk to me about the why of overeating and our relationship with food and your personal why for doing what you do.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: So my personal why has to do with the fact that I was diagnosed with a binge eating disorder. And so whenever I went to treatment for that, I learned so many amazing skills. And just so much I didn't know, even as a physician about binge eating.

Whenever you're a physician, you learn the terms, but that's about it. You don't learn very much at all, and so I learned so much information whenever I was in treatment and I thought to myself, This is information that so many people need to know. I have so many friends and family members who have been obsessed with dieting and on that diet, yo-yo, just one diet after the next. And they fail. And yo-yo dieting has been shown over time that people's weight trajectory is upward with Yoyo diet. And then some studies say that Yoyo dieting increases the risks of disease and mortality. And so I thought that people really knew this information and so that's why I decided to become a binge eating coach because I wanted to help people stop binge eating. And then also just even people who have disordered eating or just need to improve their relationship with food. I still felt that the techniques and things that I learned when I was in treatment were relevant and that they would help those people too.

Kandidly Kristin: Nice. And the general, why, why is it that we as a society tend to lean more into overeating, not as a disorder, but just as a stress mechanism, a coping mechanism, a reaction to trauma or events in our life?

Why is it, what's the psychology of it?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: So I would say that there are a couple of things that I usually like to talk about. One is the emotions that you just mentioned. So I definitely think that eating is a way that we deal with emotions. I think a lot of us have never really learned how to process emotions. Depending on the environment you grew up in. You might have even been encouraged to suppress your emotions and a lot of people turned to food to help deal with their emotions it feels good. whenever people are eating for their emotions, they're not eating things like broccoli and spinach. When people are eating because they're angry or sad or anxious, they're eating something like cookies or they're eating candy, cake, chips, those types of things. Maybe eating entire pizzas. That's what people are turning to for stress eating or to deal with those other emotions.

So I do think that that is one huge category people trying to deal with life is usually how I put it by eating, because when we eat, especially eat those foods, it feels good and it gives us a high, and at that moment it helps us cope.

But I think there's another aspect too, and this aspect doesn't get talked about as much.

Kandidly Kristin: Okay.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: And I think part of the reason people overeat is actually because of all of the dieting and the, I would use the term restriction that we engage in. And what I mean by that is so many times throughout the day, people are thinking in their mind, I'm not allowed to have that. That's bad. That has too many calories and too much fat. I want it, but I can't have it. And they have this battle going on in their mind. And then they have these rules around food. Telling themselves that foods are bad, they're not allowed to have them. But whenever we do that, that kind of becomes the thing that we want.

Kandidly Kristin: Right?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Yeah. And at some point people can't resist anymore and they end up giving in, but they don't just give in, they overdo it, right? Like they overeat. And that's where that overeating comes in, or that binge eating comes in,

Kandidly Kristin: right?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: And they feel guilty about how much they ate, and the only way they know to kind of atone for it is to go on another diet or go on some other kind of restrictive plan, and it works for a while until it doesn't work, and then they're binging again.

Kandidly Kristin: Right?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: So I think that, yes, the emotions are a huge part of it, but I also think there's this mentality that we all have of food being good and bad and trying to restrict our access to certain foods that we love and want to eat. And at some point that doesn't work, that willpower runs out and then we find ourselves binge eating.

Kandidly Kristin: Got it, got it! So is there a distinction between just a general kind of overeating and a binge eating disorder? Because when I hear disorder behind something, I think, oh, it's, in the D S M and it's an actual like disorder versus, oh, I just overeat sometimes.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Yes. And I would say that a lot of it has to do with the severity and frequency. Okay. So you're correct. The D S M is a manual used to diagnose mental illness or a certain kind of psychiatric disease, and there are specific criteria for binge eating disorder. So you are correct about that. So most people are not going to have binge eating disorder, but they're somewhere still on that spectrum of having what we call disordered eating.

 So they have a lot of rules around food. They have a lot of negative thoughts about food. Maybe they do things that aren't healthy. So as an example, Say that they truly are hungry. Like there were so many times in the past when I truly was hungry, like starving, right? But then I had this rule that I wasn't allowed to eat yet because it wasn't 10:00 AM and so then I'm, you know, trying to drink a bunch of water or do all these other things. That would classify, for example, maybe as more disordered eating, like try ignoring what my body is, is telling me. And then the frequency also has to do with it. So you're right, as part of normal eating, now and then people are going to overheat. So I don't want anyone to think that just because you overeat now and then something is wrong with you.

Kandidly Kristin: Right.

Dr Trina Dorrah: Even normal eating involves some emotional eating, involves some overeating. It is how often you're doing it, like quantities of food, you're doing it, why you're doing it, all of those things. I always say if somebody has a concern and thinks, hey, maybe I am more on that disordered end of the spectrum then I do encourage them to go get help and look into it because help is available.

Kandidly Kristin: Okay. So, Is there, in your opinion, an intersection between socioeconomic and or cultural norms and the tendency to overeat?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Yeah, I would say one thing that I have been learning a lot, like as I have been hanging out kind of in the eating disorder community is a lot of what you'll hear kind of as typical solutions don't necessarily work if you don't have access to food, for example. And so it's very easy to say, you know, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Listen to your body whenever food is plentiful, right? But if you or someone who doesn't even know when your next meal is coming, You're not paying attention to that.

Kandidly Kristin: Right? Right.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: You're not thinking, am I hungry now or am I full? Right? Like you're just thinking, let me get as much food in as I can. I don't know when I'm going to eat again. And so it's true that there is a certain amount of, I think, a privilege that comes with being able to pay attention to your body, eat mindfully, you know, those types of things.

And then even whenever we talk about trying to incorporate vegetables and figuring out how that feels in your body. Some people live in places where they're no vegetables around them, right? And they would have to take two or three buses to get to a grocery store and get all these fresh vegetables.

So certainly you're correct. I think that a lot of the typical treatments that you will hear for overeating, and disordered eating, do assume a certain amount of privilege.

Kandidly Kristin: I agree. I would tend to agree from a non-professional opinion, but intermittent fasting, whenever I'm on Facebook or looking at something, I see all these ads for intermittent fasting. Talk to me about that. What do you think about it? Is it an appropriate way to kind of control your weight, I guess for lack of a better word.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Yeah, so I would say that one thing as I've been on this journey now for a couple of years, that I have come to realize is I cannot make decisions for everyone.

So whenever I first left treatment, I was like, I have all this great information. Oh gosh, everybody needs to know about this. It's bad, it's wrong. Lemme tell everyone. And so I started telling everyone I knew and then I quickly realized most people were not interested in what I was saying. Like they were happy doing things the way that they had been doing them.

Kandidly Kristin: Right.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: And so what I would say is intermittent fasting is not a technique that I use or that I teach for my clients. Because I fall more into the intuitive eating spectrum, and so intuitive eating says whenever you are biologically hungry and you're feeling, you know, actual hungry cues, you should feed your body.

So that means even if it's during your fasting window, okay, so I would say that I don't advocate for intermittent fasting because it goes against sort of the principles of intuitive eating. But I would also say that I realize it's not my job to tell everybody how to live their life either

Kandidly Kristin: right?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: If they come to me as a client, we're going to focus more on healing their relationship with food, intermittent fasting, permitting them to eat and not telling them that there's a certain window that they cannot eat.

Kandidly Kristin: Got it.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: If that is working though for someone, I also feel like number one, they probably wouldn't be coming to me. But then it's not my place either to try to tell them what they can and can't do with their body.

Kandidly Kristin: Right. Okay. So I wanted to circle back to something you were talking about earlier. I know part of the work you do is with other physicians who struggle with their relationship with food. Now, an ordinary person like me is thinking, huh, why would a physician have these issues with food? And you mentioned a little bit about learning all the terms and you know, kind of intellectually knowing about food relationships.

Why is it that physicians struggle? And I don't know if they struggle more or less than the ordinary person or somebody who's not a physician, but why is it that they do?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Right. And part of why I focus on physicians is because I am one. So it's very easy for me to relate to the world. I do think that this could be seen in a lot of people who have very high-stress, high-pressure jobs. But there is a lot of stress and pressure in medicine. Yeah. You're dealing with people's lives, so there's always that constant fear of making a mistake.

Kandidly Kristin: Right.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: But there's also a lot of burnout in medicine as well. And so, There are surveys that are done, like national surveys done to physicians, and there's an annual burnout survey, and one of the questions asks physicians, how do they deal with burnout and binge eating and eating; there's another category saying eating junk food. Those had high responses. People use those to try to help them deal with burnout. And so I think given that it's a high-stress profession, and then there's also a lot of burnout and dissatisfaction in medicine, not just among physicians. You've probably heard in the news about a lot of nurses as well as other people working in healthcare, especially since Covid.

Kandidly Kristin: Yeah.

Dr Trina Dorrah: There was just so much exhaustion and burnout. People turn to food. That's one of the things people turn to. Some people turn to alcohol or gambling or other things like that. But food is a common thing because we all have to eat. We all have food around. And so turning to food is a common coping mechanism.

Kandidly Kristin: Yeah. And you know what, I was just thinking, I know that before you become a physician, the training, the residency hours are pretty brutal. So that in my head I'm thinking, Hmm, it could start there where I'm on this 12-hour shift and I'm barely having time to eat or sleep.

So when I do get the chance, I'm just stuffing, stuffing, stuffing.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: I think that's a good point because there's a lot of trauma that goes on in residency training. Certainly, over the years there have been rules put in place to make that a little bit better. But I remember whenever I first went through training, They had just implemented what they called the 80-hour workweek restriction.

Kandidly Kristin: Okay.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: So before that, there were physicians who had been working a hundred hours a week, and even with the 80-hour work week, I was still working every fourth night. We were doing 30 hours in a row. Wow. And so I would start at 7:00 AM on one day, and then I would be in the hospital until 1:00 PM the following day, and I did that every fourth day of my entire first year of residency. And that's traumatic.

Kandidly Kristin: Yeah. Oh wow.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: I think when you don't know how else to deal with those emotions, You eat and there is a lot of eating, going on, eating to try to stay awake. Eating because maybe you made a mistake and you don't know how to deal with it. And in the culture of medicine, there's not a lot of talking about feelings. It's a lot of suck it up, suppress it, and move on to your next patient. And so I think you bring up a good point that some of this behaviour we start learning even through training.

Kandidly Kristin: Yeah. So your podcast Diet culture is BS. I love the name by the way.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Thank you.

Kandidly Kristin: Because I am not an advocate of dieting.

Tell me why Diet culture is BS.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Right. And I like to say diet culture includes dieting, but it's even more than just being on a diet. So diet culture is kind of the entire mindset where we are, moralizing food. And by moralizing food, I mean saying that certain foods are good or bad or we're saying that there are certain rules that we have around food, what we're allowed to eat, what we're not allowed to eat. If you eat this, you fail. Now you need to go make up for it. And also, it's the idea that thin is better. And so therefore that thin people are better. Yeah. And that we should all be in pursuit of the thin ideal. And as you know, in our society, there is a very narrow definition of what is a good body.

 And so the culture is Sort of getting to that ideal no matter what the cost. That's what diet culture tells us. No matter what you have to do, you should be striving to look like this and do whatever you have to do to look like this, and we are going to praise people who look like this.

And then on the flip side, we are going to make everything, everybody else's fault. If they don't look like this, we're gonna completely forget the component of genetics that goes into what people's bodies look like. You know, not everybody is gonna look the same. And a large part of that is genetics and that's kind of what diet culture is, where we just say like, oh, this person is thin. Let's give them a better job. Let's give them more promotions. You know, we call that having thin privilege.

Kandidly Kristin: I love it. Okay, so now we've talked about the problem. How can we, me, my listeners, begin to have a better relationship with food?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: So I feel that one of the main ways to have a better relationship with food is we have to get rid of these categories that we put food in because I believe like these ideas that food is good and bad and there are certain foods that we should and should not be eating. I do think that that causes a lot of problems because.

Whenever you tell yourself you can't have something that ends up becoming the thing that you want. Yep. And so you want it, and then you try to keep yourself from having it. And then you start having all of these kinds of food obsessions in your mind. And you give in, but you don't just eat the normal amount, you overeat.

So I feel like if we removed these rules and the judgments around, and food was just food and we could eat it if we wanted it and eat it without feeling guilty and without telling ourselves that we're a bad person, then we would have a much better relationship with food and there would be no need for diets.

 When you think about it, dieting usually starts often when kids are in the single digits, right?

Kandidly Kristin: Yeah.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Kids are not liking how they look, and then somebody is putting them on a diet, and that can often start a lifetime of dieting. And those diets usually become less and less successful. I feel as time goes on, I feel like, I remember when I first went on a diet, it was very successful, but as the years went on, it became harder and harder and harder to stick to a diet.

So I was in this constant cycle of yo-yo dieting which just destroys your relationship with food. And so I kind of feel like it even goes back to childhood and what we're telling our kids about food. Like we say, don't tell your kids that certain foods are good and bad. Don't weigh yourself and talk about your weight around your kids. Don't talk about other people's body sizes or your child's body size. If you have one child with a larger body than another child, don't put them on some special diet or give them a special exercise plan.

Kandidly Kristin: Right?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: You know, it starts there. Cause by the time kids are adults in our society, they usually, already we're entering adulthood with a disordered relationship with food.

Kandidly Kristin: Yeah, yeah. And you know, growing up food was kind of the love language of the house. You know, whenever I would see my grandma or my mom, they'd be like, oh, you're too thin, and here comes a big ass plate of food. And it's like, wow. And I enjoy, and I still enjoy that kind of food. I think I have a pretty good relationship with food, but you know, I kind of eat what I want when I want it.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Right, exactly. Again, in normal eating, sometimes somebody may decide to try a little something that their grandmother made even though they're not really that hungry. But yes, we would indeed teach a family, Hey, don't routinely ask your child to eat a bunch of food that they're not hungry for. Right? We're forcing them to kind of override their natural body cues. But I realize, just like you said, a lot of this is cultural as well, and so it's not as easy. It's easier to say than do.

Kandidly Kristin: So if somebody connected with you and they said, oh, Dr. Trina, Dr. Dora, I. Want to begin to have a better relationship with food and just be healthier generally what would a client expect from you in what you do with them?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Right? And so it's exactly what you said. My focus is on improving that relationship with food and helping them to stop over excessively overeating or feeling compulsive overeating or all of their thoughts being dominated by food in their body and trying to diet.

And so that's what I would focus on. Like I want them to have what I call food freedom, where they eat and they enjoy the food when they're eating, but then they're not spending the rest of the day thinking about the food and also just thinking about their body. Like I spent so much time and it's still a struggle sometimes.

To not allow my thoughts to just be dominated by what my body looks like. There's so much more to life than that. And so that's what I want my clients to see. I want the focus on food and their bodies to decrease so that they have the mental energy and joy and excitement to put that focus elsewhere on other things in their life that they want to accomplish and achieve.

Kandidly Kristin: Nice. I love it. Oh, I appreciate you so much for coming on, and if you could just give one last thought or tip or tool to someone who might hear this and recognize or begin to recognize that they have, you know, an issue with overeating or with their relationship with food. Just one thing that they could do right today.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: I would wanna let people know help is available and help isn't found in another diet. That's what I truly believe, and whenever I was at this stage myself, I knew something wasn't quite right, but I was still trying to figure it out through dieting, not realizing that dieting was the problem.

Because it was causing me to go into the same patterns over and over and over again. So I wanna let people know that there is help available and that we can break this cycle and they can be happier on the other side, have a better relationship with food. Learn different ways to manage their weight other than being on diets all the time. And then free up so much of that energy that they're spending right now, thinking about their body and spending it on other important things. We only get one life and so we don't wanna spend our life just always thinking about our food and body and our weight.

Kandidly Kristin: Nice. Thank you so much. So Dr. Trina, that is the end of our formal chat, and now we get to the fun part. We get to play 10 Kandid questions.

So 10 kandid questions are just 10 random questions that I pulled from this big list I found. And the only rule is you have to answer them kandidly. So are you ready?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Yes.

Kandidly Kristin: Okay. First question. What is your biggest pet peeve?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Ugh, I hate it whenever people leave hair in the shower.

Kandidly Kristin: Oh my God! Don't you hate pulling a shower curtain back and there's like a curly cue or something? It's like, oh,

Dr. Trina Dorrah: yes, I hate that.

Kandidly Kristin: Yes, same. Same. All right. Question number two. If you could be remembered for just one thing, what would it be?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: I guess it depends on who's doing the remembering, but for my family, I wanna be remembered as a loving mom who cared and was always there. Uh, for just my general audience, I just wanna be remembered as somebody who used something that happened to me to make things better for other people.

Kandidly Kristin: Good.

Okay. Question number three. What is your favourite curse word?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: I don't curse, especially since I have little kids around. Right, right. I guess, oh, I can't even say it, but the ‘S’word.

Kandidly Kristin: Ok. Got it. Got it, got it. All right. Question number four. If you could go back and give your 18-year-old self a single piece of advice, what would that be?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: No, at 18 I was going to college and one thing I have said is I wish I had not majored in pre-med, so I did not know that you could go to medical school off of any major as long as you took the required prerequisite. So I had the scholarship to go to college. It would've been amazing to just study something else. Something random, right? Like marketing or something like that. And learned another skill, personal finance, so that is one of my biggest regrets that I didn't know that, and I took the traditional route and majored in pre-med.

Kandidly Kristin: Okay. All right. I didn't know that either, so thank you for that. Fifth question: morning person or night owl?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Morning person.

Kandidly Kristin: Okay. Sixth question: what is the one thing that you believe the world is lacking?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Compassion.

Kandidly Kristin: Mm-hmm. I almost knew you were gonna say that. I swear I did. Seventh question: cats or dogs?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: A dog.

Kandidly Kristin: Mm-hmm. . Eighth question: what's one question you wish that I'd asked you during our chat and what would your answer have been?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: I can't think of any. I thought you did a good job.

Kandidly Kristin: I throw that question in there just to see if I need to add anything.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Yeah, I know. I thought you did a good job.

Kandidly Kristin: Thank you. Ninth question: what are three things you'd recommend to any listener who struggles with overeating?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Hire me, listen to my podcast, and join my email list.

Kandidly Kristin: Nice. And the 10th and final question, how can my listeners connect with you?

Dr. Trina Dorrah: You can go to my website https://www.foodfreedommd.com/

Kandidly Kristin: Gotcha. All right, Dr. Trina Dorrah, it has been my absolute pleasure to have had you on this show, for this chat. I thank you for what you do with your clients and for helping people have a better relationship with food. Because food is a good thing. I love food. I'm a foodie, I like to eat.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Right. And yeah, that's what makes it hard it's not like we are going to eliminate food. Right? We all right are going to have food and be surrounded by food for the rest of our life.

Kandidly Kristin: That's right. So having a healthy relationship with it is super duper important.

I thank you for having this important chat with me today.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Thank you so much for having me.

Kandidly Kristin: You are so welcome. It was my pleasure. And guys, Dr. Trina's contact information and links to her website are gonna be in the show note. So hit her up and if you think you have an issue with food, check out the podcast.

I'd listened to a couple of episodes and I thought it was dope.

Dr. Trina Dorrah: Thank you.

Kandidly Kristin: You're welcome, and don't forget to go to my website at www.thekandidshop.com and listen to an episode or three or four. Drop me a review, sign up for the mailing list, like follow, share, and please tell your friends about the show.

But until next time, I want you all to keep it safe, keep it healthy, and keep it kandid.