Finding Calm In The Nutritional Storm  – In Session with Marc David

Finding Calm In The Nutritional Storm – In Session with Marc David

Marc David
Welcome. I’m Marc David, founder of The Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We’re back in the Psychology of Eating Podcast. I’m with Kesia today. Welcome, Kesia.

Kesia
Thank you very much!

Marc David
All right, so if anybody is tuning in for the first time to the podcast, how it works is, we’re meeting for the first time Kesia and myself, and we’re going to have a session together and see if we could do some good work. So Kesia, if you can wave your magic wand, and you can have whatever you wanted with food and body, tell me what that would be for you.

Kesia
That will be 4 to 5 kilos less and to eat in a healthier way.

Marc David
And a more healthier way means for you, what does that look like?

Kesia
So we are pretty healthy at home but I would like to give up on gluten and dairy, and maybe a little bit less of sugar.

Marc David
Okay, and what would make you stop from giving up on gluten and dairy, like what gets in the way of that?

Kesia
Mainly two things. One is I crave it. And two is, I have five kids, and four of them are young, very young, you know, my oldest one is 13. And I am just so overwhelmed. Sometimes by taking care of everybody in the house and my clinic and I just get so overwhelmed. It’s just so much more practical to keep it simple. And to prepare sandwiches when they need sandwiches, you know?

Marc David
So, would that mean you wouldn’t even have any gluten and dairy in the house?

Kesia
Yes, that would be ideal for me!

Marc David
And how would your kids feel about that? Sounds like they wouldn’t know the difference?

Kesia
Yeah, they would know the difference and of course at the beginning would be hard for them. But that’s when I say it is not so practical because to make it happen, I have to find good substitutions that will make them feel okay with a change, right? Like right now I have to send food for school. And like a sandwich for the morning so what can I send there that makes them happy and make sure that they’re eating. It’s just such a big change in kitchen. Just to take these two things out of the kitchen is such a big change. I see all these people happy doing the changes. And I think oh, they only have one kid, you know? It can’t be. It’s just just not real, right?

Marc David
Yes. When you’re making those changes for yourself as an adult, that’s easy. Or, it’s easier, it’s simpler. Having a whole company of children that you have to make food for and you’ve got to make it happen, you can’t take your time. So things have to happen fast. So I understand the difficulty there. Anything else for you? Is that the few things we should focus on weight and shifting your diet?

Kesia
There is something else. I think it’s this feeling that goes with me that I know what’s right and I know that this is what I should be doing and then when I get on the right track I feel so happy that I’m on the right track that I kind of relax and I go back to my old ways and then I think to myself “I’m just sabotaging myself. Why do I keep doing this all the time? You know, why do I keep coming back to it if I know what’s right?”

Marc David
So the thing you keep going back to that you wish you wouldn’t – is that gluten and dairy?

Kesia
Yeah. Let’s say for example, like right now I’m doing intermittent fasting and I feel great. It’s so good for me and I feel healthier with that. And then I see that I’m losing weight and I’m so happy I’m losing weight, I want to give myself a prize – and the prize is gonna be an amazing dessert, right? But that’s sabotaging what I’m on my way to do! I’m not saying I don’t want to have desserts because there’s two days in the week that I don’t fast and I’m more like Shabbat that Saturdays is a very special day for us and I don’t make any account there we just want to eat and be happy and enjoy the meal. But during the week like why am I doing this? I see results and I say oh great I’m seeing results. Okay, now I can finally have that ice cream and then I go back to the spot where I was right before!

Marc David
Okay, I think I have a few things to say about this. You know, I think the first thing to look at is the expectations we could put on diet, and food relative to what we can actually do and accomplish. Meaning. I make up my own food rules, I’m an adult, I can say, these are my food rules, I can eat this, I can eat that I don’t want to eat this, I don’t want to eat that. So we make up our own food rules or our own food guidelines. What I notice is oftentimes, not always, but for many of us, when we make a very hard and fast rule, as an example, gluten and dairy, I can’t eat those. Now, that’s fine. That’s that’s a fine rule to have. But if it’s challenging to follow, then here’s the dilemma. Because I’m going to tell myself no gluten and dairy. Why? Because those are kind of bad foods. But then what happens if you eat a bad food? It makes you a bad person. What’s my problem? And all of a sudden, we’re in this battle, because we make the food bad.

Now, what I want to say is, I think certain foods, enhance your health. I think certain foods can detract from one’s health. And especially as you pay attention to your body, you might notice, wow, these foods are better for me, these foods are not so good for me. So that’s all fair. I think it’s great to then create guidelines based on our experience. However, there’s a little subtle shift that happens if I make the food bad. Because if I make the food bad, isn’t it interesting that the bad foods, in this case gluten and dairy, they’re sort of the foods you crave? And one of the reasons we crave them is because they taste good. So most of the times the foods that are on people’s bad list, tend to be the ones that taste good! They’re the fried foods, they’re the sugars, there’s the candies, there’s the sodas. They tend to be foods that that attract us to their taste. So all I want to say is it might be helpful for you to have more of what you want. By loosening the good food, bad food part of it, and maybe instead of making it all or nothing? Is it possible to say okay, we just do gluten and dairy in the house two days a week. And five days a week we don’t. And two days a week, you know it’s gonna be there. So it’s still a difficulty when it comes to preparing food for kids. I get it. You want your kids to have a good diet, you want to start them off well. And yeah, there’s a significant amount of human beings who are sensitive to gluten. There’s a lot of human beings who are sensitive to dairy, both those foods tend to be produced in poor quality. That’s another piece of the puzzle. You know, so much of the wheat products are very low quality, so many of the dairy products are low quality. So there might be ways that you can adjust. If there are higher quality dairy products that are more digestible, whether they’re organic, whether they’re from a goat instead of a cow or sheep’s milk or sheep’s milk yogurt or whatever it is, you know, I don’t know what’s available in your country. I know in the United States, there’s so many choices when it comes to gluten free. All I’m trying to say is to not make it a crime. If you can’t do this perfectly. sort of make it frame it as I’m doing my best. As opposed to if I don’t do this perfectly. I’m not going to be healthy. My kids are not going to be healthy. And everything’s going to be screwed. See where I’m trying to go here?

Kesia
Yes, I totally see where you’re going. I have to tell you, I think that really one of my main concerns is the health. I have to be healthy, and my kids have to be healthy and they are sick and I see that this is not good for them, and then they have it, and then it’s not good for them and then I feel awful about it. Substitutes for milk? I don’t see them eating sheep’s milk, no, they won’t drink that. I’ve tried these things, and they don’t work for me right now. And I just get in the spiral of like I know this is not good for them, I know this is making them sick. It’s like I’m trying to control, I want them not to be sick, ever. And I was trying to control that. And I think that these two things would really help me to control that. And also for myself…

And the problem is that the more I read about it, and also because this is what I do – I deal with health. I am an acupuncturist with Chinese medicine. And I probably see this is not good from my perspective, which is differentfrom other people that don’t have knowledge, or they are not knowledgeable in this kind of medicine, right? So yes, it makes me a bit upset. And that’s why I want them out. Right. Okay, if you go to your grandmother, you can have it there. Yes, I guess I have to get to this point where I don’t have to be black or white in this aspect. But I’m like far from where I would like to be and the fact that I cannot be where I want to be makes me feel bad.

Marc David
Yes. So that’s why the work happens in your mind, first. The work has to happen in your mind. And in order for you to be productive in terms of what you want to accomplish. I think you need to give yourself more space, and you have to let go of perfect and see if you can get to 80% good. 70%. good. And let that be your starting point. Let that be a goal. With the understanding also, you know, in my experience raising, I just had one child and raising that one on a healthy die when a lot of his friends were eating all the foods that we didn’t have in the house. What I looked to do was to do my best with my son was to not make those foods wrong. So, you know, how come we don’t have soda in the house? How come we don’t have ice cream in the house? How come we don’t eat dairy in the house. So okay, these are things we only have on occasion. We have them at birthday parties, we have them when we visit a relative’s house. And we have it on special occasions here and there. But we just don’t include it in the house. Because these foods if you eat them too much, you’re not going to be so healthy. Now, because I created the context of “and, you can still have these foods.” It didn’t make them forbidden. Because as soon as you make something forbidden, your kids are gonna want it. And they’re gonna why can I have this one has it? That one has it? Yeah, I mean, you can work hard and say just no! We can’t have it. But if you don’t make it forbidden and you let them know that there’s a little loose-er restrictions. We have at a parties and when we go out. We just don’t have it in the house. Then they’re not always clamoring for it. Oh my god, I have to have that. And they’re not going to rebound once they’re out of the house. Because you didn’t make it bad or wrong. Because kids want to rebel against rules. You have a hard enough time following your own rule. They’re gonna have a hard time following that rule, especially if those foods are everywhere. Right. So when you don’t make it illegal there’s not going to be a black market for it, they’re not going to be trying to sneak it. They’re not going to think, Okay, Mommy won’t let me have this. But you know, I’m gonna go get it.

Kesia
Yeah, it makes me think also about the way when they leave home to make their own homes. You don’t want them to go with this feeling of these foods are sinful, you know, and then they will when they want it to, and then they will feel exactly how I feel.

Marc David
Yes. So if you look at it, once again, that, okay, these foods can potentially detract from one’s health. But, you know, here’s the reality. Unless you have celiac disease when it comes to gluten, or you’re extremely gluten intolerant. For any food, the dose makes the poison. So if something is going to be poisonous to us, it’s all about the dose. Right now you and I have heavy metals in our body. Just just breathing the air in the parking lot, you’re gonna you’re gonna breathe in heavy metals, but there’s not enough to kill you. There’s not necessarily enough to harm you.

So, this is planet Earth, it’s not perfect. And I would love to encourage you to do the best you can, but don’t shoot for perfect. Because if you shoot for perfect, you’re gonna disappoint yourself, and then you’re gonna be frustrated. Because I think that’s where you’re at. Because you can’t get it perfectly, you’re feeling frustrated.

Kesia
Yeah…

Marc David
So it’s about loosening your own restrictions. And saying, Okay, I’m a mom. I’m in charge largely of feeding my kids. I’m going to do the best that I can do. What does that look like? What’s the best that I can do? Knowing it’s not going to be perfect. And then you can relax a little bit more…

And another piece here is, I know people who eat the healthiest diet in the world, and they’re always getting sick. I know people who eat the worst diet in the world, and they’re the healthiest people I know. I’ve often joked here one of my grandfather’s he smoked cigars every day. He drank vodka every day. He ate bread with butter, chicken soup and he ate candy and a few other things that was largely his diet and he lived to be his early 90s. Never in a hospital not one day. If I would have eaten his diet I would have died! So what I’m saying is there’s a mystery factor in here.

Yes, I’m like you! I want to eat in the way that I think is best. I want to feed my loved ones in the way that I think is best for them. But there’s a place where we do our best and then we let it go. We do our best and then we surrender it to God. We do our best and we let life do its thing because there’s no guarantee that if you’re gluten and dairy free you’re not gonna get sick or your kids are not gonna get sick. No guarantee. Zero. It doesn’t guarantee that. I think you putting too much power you’re you’re you’re giving that nutritional guideline too much power is it a smart guideline? Sure. Does it make sense sure for all the reasons that you know and chances are you do so many other healthy things for your family and yourself that in the big picture some of the foods that might not be perfect you’re offsetting with other good things that you do. And other good healthy practices. How is this landing for you? What’s going through your mind, Kesia?

Kesia
Yeah, I definitely have to let go. It’s just right. I’m 100% hearing what you’re saying. Definitely it’s not something that I can control, and I can do my best, as you say. I’d definitely like would be more relaxed, and I would be happier, then I guess it’d be happier too. Yeah, I feel like the weight that I give to my personal responsibility. And raising them is very heavy. I know, that is a power to God. And he’s the one who decides, right? And he’s the one who takes care of us and looks at that, and yeah I have to work more on that for sure.

Marc David
It’s a letting go. Because we can get very attached to our food rules.

Kesia
Right…

Marc David
It’s understandable. And we can get very attached to them. And the challenge is, when we get too attached to them, oftentimes those rules become harmful to us. They’re not actually helping us anymore. Now, there are certain times we have to have rules. Like I said, if somebody is truly allergic to something, and every time they eat it, they have an allergic reaction. Okay, you got to learn how to stay away from that. If you have celiac disease, and every time you have gluten, you have a severe reaction. Yeah, you got to learn how to stay away from that. And that becomes its own spiritual practice. I think for being a mother, with five kids. And if it’s not easy, if you don’t have the kind of support that would you know, somebody’s just making gluten and sugar free meals for them and they like it. So if you don’t have the kind of support, then you can only do the best you can do. And ultimately, your kids don’t want you worried. You’re a responsible mother. You are responsible. You’re a responsible person, and you’re not going to harm them, you’re looking to help them as best you can. So having more space around the dietary rules, will teach them, it’ll teach them “Oh, I can follow certain guidelines and I can relax a little bit.”. Because they’re going to they’re going to grow up in a world where everybody around them is going to be in gluten and dairy and all kinds of junk food….

I find that the best strategy is to model for the young people in my world, I want to model for them. I want to model for the children. Here’s what a healthy relationship with food looks like. Here’s what a healthy relationship with body looks like. I take care of myself and you know why I take care of myself? Because it feels good. Not because “if you don’t do this, you’re bad.” No, I eat good because it makes me healthy. I love health. I eat good because it gives me energy. I love energy. I take care of my body, I do good things because it feels good. And I do my best to avoid things that I know are absolutely going to harm me. And there are certain things that fall into this interesting category of nobody ever died from drinking a Pepsi or a coke. Its not going to kill you. But if you can empower your children to then see oh yeah, there’s certain places I can make a choice in. Am I going to eat this? Am I not going to eat this? It’s more empowering for them.

Kesia
Definitely. You talking and what it reflects to me is like, am I being more stringent than what I think I am? Even though I know I am a bit stringent. And you know, one of the things that I mentioned in the beginning is this feeling of I am getting there, I’m working. I’m getting better when I want right and then suddenly they say I’m getting there I can relax. Ok where is that ice cream? And I think I’d really like to hear what you have to say on that but I Listen to you, what comes to my mind is like, like, I really need that relaxation, because it seems to me that I’m being a bit more restricted where I’m actually aware of and it’s like, okay, you’re gonna never give me a break. Give me a break. Let me at least you know… I really like to hear your thoughts on that.

Marc David
Yes. So when we adopt strategies, that they sound good. They look good on paper. So intermittent fasting. Yeah. Sounds great. It’s a great strategy. It’s a great nutritional tool. Now, is it good for everybody? Not necessarily. No. Is it good for certain people? Yeah. Is it good for certain people, sometimes, but not other times? I think so. Just observing human beings. So I’m using that as an example. Because you do intermittent fasting, and you notice that it feels good. And you notice that it gives you all these benefits. And then you also notice at some point that you want to say, oh, good girl, that was great. And then you want to celebrate and eat something that’s on the bad list. And you really want to eat that. And then you do eat that and then you feel guilty?

Kesia
Yeah, I feel like self sabotage…

Marc David
You think it’s sabotage. So let’s take away the word self sabotage for a moment. I don’t think anybody sabotages themselves ever. No, I don’t think anybody ever sabotages themselves. I think a more useful way to language that is that we have parts of us that need attention. We have parts of us that need certain things. So you’re just not one person, you’re not just Kesia, there’s a part of you, that’s a mother. And when you’re with your children, you’re a mother, when you’re with your husband, your wife, your partner, when you’re with your friends, you’re a friend. When you’re with your clients, and you’re being an acupuncturist, or a health professional, you’re being a health professional. So we put on these different hats. Now, what’s happening is, I think that when you adopt certain nutritional strategies for yourself, one of the hats that you put on is your health professional, that’s great, you’re using your knowledge. But another hat, you’re also putting on at the same time a little bit, the perfectionist, I got to do this, right! I do this right, everything’s gonna be great. If I do this a little bit wrong, everything’s gonna be terrible. So that’s the voice of the perfectionist, I have to do the things that I say I’m going to do, I have to do them perfectly. And if I don’t do it perfectly, punishment. And punishment means guilt, shame, self talk, or punishment means I’m going to do the very thing I’m not supposed to do. It’s a strange form of punishment. It’s a reward.

So there’s a part of you that wants a reward. And that part of you is the kid, that part of you is probably the child who’s just raising her hand saying, wait a second, I want to have some fun. I’m a kid, I want to enjoy my life. Kids want fun. Kids want pleasure. Kids, if you tell your kids, we’re not gonna eat sugar, because if you ate sugar every day, some day, it could give you diabetes, it could give you blood sugar dysregulation. They don’t want to hear that. They’re not gonna listen to you. All they know is sugar tastes good. So it must be good for me. So the kid in you wants to have a treat. Now, why is that going to happen? Because when you are using a strategy or a tool, that you’re driving yourself to do it through stress and anxiety and being perfect, and if I don’t do this, I’m not going to be healthy. I’m not going to be okay. Things are gonna go bad. That’s a lot of stress and pressure, even though you feel good when you’re intermittently fast. What’s driving it is I better do this and I better do it right. So that creates so much stress, that by the time you’re finished, you need stress relief. You need stress relief, because you’re doing something that’s creating anxiety for you.

Kesia
Right.

Marc David
Now, you can do the same intermittent fasting and say, Okay, I’m going to do this the best I can. Maybe it’s two days a week, you find a happy medium that doesn’t put you over the edge.

Kesia
I want to tell you something I actually enjoy being with fasting like this. It’s not hard for me, it’s not. It’s the part of, okay together with this, I’m going to avoid this and listen this, right? And it comes not because I am unhappy with the first thing or not, is because I see like, I’m finally losing the weight that I wanted to lose, I understand what you’re saying, Marc.

Marc David
There’s a place where it’s a little hard for you. And that’s the place I am asking you to look at. Because it’s the part of you that doesn’t quite feel good about yourself. If I don’t do these things I can’t feel good about myself. If I don’t lose four or five kilos, I can’t feel good about myself. So what’s going to happen is, there’s a little bit of the weight loss hanging out in the background. There’s a part of your brain that’s choosing intermittent fasting to help you lose weight, which is fine. There’s a part of you that’s choosing to let go of sugar and dairy so I can lose weight, that’s fine, or gluten and dairy, whatever it is, But if I’m believing that I can’t really be happy with myself, until that weight comes off, then I’m putting pressure on the intermittent fasting, I’m putting pressure on my food rules. Because those things need to make me lose weight, so I can be happy.

Kesia
Yeah.

Marc David
So it’s putting a lot of pressure on the food and the diet to ultimately make you happy. So for me, I hear you say, I want to lose four or five kilos, like great. I consider that a preference. You prefer to have less weight. That’s wonderful. Everybody has preferences. Preferences are good. They make us unique. They make us human. However, we often turn our preference into life and death. If I don’t get my preference, I’m not going to like myself, I’m going to be terrible, life won’t be good. I’m going to look in the mirror, I just won’t be happy, I won’t be satisfied. And that’s lingering in the background. So yeah, I’m happy for you to go about finding and reaching your preference. Lose four or five kilos. But how do we do that so that you can be happy if you lose it and happy if you don’t?

See for me, and I bet your husband would tell you the same thing. I bet your husband will say to you, honey, you’re great as you are. Right, he doesn’t want you to lose four or five kilos.

Kesia
Wow….
No…

Marc David
No, he doesn’t care. But imagine for a moment that every morning you wake up and your husband turns to you and he says honey, you need to lose four or five kilos. Otherwise I’m not gonna be satisfied with you. You’d smack him! You would’nt like. It would be terrible, right? But that’s what we say to ourselves. We wake up in the morning each day, we say to ourselves “honey, if I don’t lose four or five kilos, I’m not satisfied with you.”

You wouldn’t say that to your child. You wouldn’t say to your child, you know, you have a little bit too much baby fat on you. Until you lose that baby fat and not gonna love you so much. But once that baby fat comes off, I’m gonna give you a big hug.

Kesia
I want to tell you that it is also of course there’s aesthetic here and of course there is an aesthetic preference, of course. But there is also something that really worries me like I know I’m not overweight I know, but it’s just feels not healthy. Okay, it just feels like if I read a study that says that you know women did have more than 72 centimeters I don’t know inches How much is that? Nevermind. On their waist they are more prepends to their they have more they’re more prone to this and this and this Nice. Oh my gosh, I have it. Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I have. This is 72 this is what I have since then. And then I get, okay, now this has to go. This has to go because I want to be healthy. I want to live forever. So this has to go email. So of course I’d feel happier. I think that I will look better with these five kilo off. You know, but it’s also this again, this healthy thing lingering in the back of my head. I know where it comes from. I know it comes from from my mother being sick and passing away when I was nine years old. And all the terrible things that happened to me afterwards. Not only mourning her and missing her forever, but also life became very miserable after she left. So I just don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave, I want to be around forever for my kids. And I want to be healthy. And even as a child. Well, I remember from my mom, she was the most amazing person loved by everyone. Like the most amazing person. But I always remember her tired on her bed, trying to rest because she was sick all the time. She was fighting a disease for years. And that was my childhood. Always tired in bed. But if she will come come out and be with us shouldn’t be laughing and happy. But then the reality is that this is very exhausting for her. So she will go back to her bed. And this is all like, all my childhood went around. I mean, up to nine before she passed away. Oh, mom needs to go to this doctor. And now they found out this and maybe this doctor will help her. And now we’re going to Brazil to make the surgery and we’re going to this and it didn’t work out. So we’re gonna try this one with the surgery. But it didn’t work. We’re gonna do another surgery. I feel it was just too much for her. And she left. Right. So it goes back and back to the same place. Yes, I will definitely look better with this five kilos off. But if it would be just that. It would be easy for me to take it as you say as a preference. Right?

Marc David
But you’re equating it with health.

Kesia
Yeah!

Marc David
Okay. So here’s what I want to say about that. This is unfortunate but I’m convinced that the scientific world and the medical world is in the dark ages when it comes to the topic of weight. And when it comes to understanding weight absolutely in the dark ages. And one of the things we’re in the dark ages about is that we tend to look at weight as a very black and white thing. If you weigh this amount this is bad. If you weigh this amount, this is good. People who weigh too much, which whatever somebody determines is too much. Well that’s bad, you’re going to be unhealthy. Okay, wait a second. There is some truth to that. Yes. When you go to the extremes, extreme obesity, extreme anorexia, you’re going to put yourself in a bad part of the probability curve for health. However, when you start to go into the research, I’m going to recommend a book for you. It’s called Health at Every Size. And it’s written by Linda Bacon, a PhD. She collects all the research, and she points out what was previously coined the obesity paradox. And in the obesity paradox, it’s essentially that when you sum total up all the scientific research on weight and health, as it turns out, people who are slightly overweight, have better health markers and live longer, which flies in the face of all the research that’s supposedly saying no. Now here’s the point. I’m gonna use your own observation. People of every weight you can have the hottest body and you could have cancer. I literally everybody in my family who’s died of cancer, or some other disease they had a slender body. My parents were not overweight.

Kesia
It’s not only about being skinny. It’s about being active and being healthy in the way you eat. I mean, you are taking one or two cases and you’re saying “This is the case.” But there are some statistics here….

Marc David
But what I’m saying is, the statistics don’t account for that. They don’t account for what you just said. Because you can be according to science, overweight, but you can be fit and you can have perfect biomarkers, and therefore you are healthy. Because you are doing things for your health and this is where your body lands with weight. This is what it does. We have a nagging belief that if I consider something fat, that’s unhealthy. And it may or it may not be, it depends on everything else. So yeah, are there plenty of people who are overweight who are unhealthy? Sure, because they have an unhealthy lifestyle, they’re out of their body, they don’t practice good health habits. They don’t practice good diet. They don’t care about health. But I know slender people too, who also don’t practice health habits. So what I’m saying is that this assessment that four or five kilos puts you in a problematic medical zone, I’m saying it’s completely false. I’m saying it’s completely false. And you have to believe that whatever helps you come to believe that I recommended a book for you, you can start to see the research, the scientific community is very biased, because the world is biased about weight. If you ask me, What’s the most prejudiced against class of human beings across planet Earth? It’s not black people, it’s not brown people it’s fat people. Almost universal, fat people are the most prejudiced against humans, I believe. They are the most universally, we don’t like them. Or we don’t like that they’re fat, or we judge them. So all I’m saying is that judgment has slipped into our science. It slipped into our research, and our conclusions.

So I know people who weigh far more than you do, and they’ve lived a healthy, long life. I meet people all the time, who they are considered overweight and they’re fit and they’re healthy and they have great biomarkers. So I’m saying that you’re not in a medical emergency because of your weight. That’s what I’m saying. And however you can get there is going to be a good day. Because I think your job is to realize that, of course, because of your upbringing, and because of your mother dying when you were young, of course, you’re going to be sensitive to these things. And you’ve gone into being a health professional. So you care about health, and you want to be healthy. And just be careful that you also live your life. And you don’t do healthy things out of fear of getting sick. Do healthy things because they give you the best chance to be healthy. But once again, we don’t know what’s going to happen. God decides what’s going to happen.

One of my uncle’s just celebrated his 88th birthday. He’s sharp. He’s alert. He’s got a brilliant mind. He’s relatively healthy. And terrible diet since forever, his is an absolutely terrible diet. My parents a much healthier than him and they died before they hit 60.

Kesia
Wow.

Marc David
So all I’m saying is when you start to look around and you gather evidence of what’s actually happening out there, don’t look at the research. Look at what you see. Sure, look at the research, but use your eyes, use your experience.

Kesia
I see women coming to my clinic, I only treat women and more like in the gynecology area. And every one of them is sad about being fat. Yes, they are not healthy. I’m telling you. They’re not. They’re not. I know what I have to treat them for. And when I go to the synagogue and we have this chance to see them together and just chat. Yes, it’s true. I have friends that are slender and I look at them and they don’t look so healthy either. But chances are, I do see that it happens more with people that are overweight.

Marc David
What happens more?

Kesia
They are less healthy…

Marc David
Okay. Now, if that’s true, being fat isn’t their problem. That’s not a problem. That’s not the problem. Somebody being overweight is not the problem.

Kesia
No, it’s a symptom.

Marc David
So, I’m not interested in treating the symptom. Particularly when it comes to being overweight. Sure people are going to be sad, because they’re overweight. Nobody wants it. Most people don’t want to be overweight. But if you’re not taking care of yourself, if somebody’s not taking care of themselves, there’s usually good reasons for it.

Kesia
Right, I’m with you.

Marc David
So there are usually good reasons why I don’t take good care of myself. And that’s where the action is. Okay. So how do I better care for myself? How do I better nourish myself? Not “I need to lose weight, then I’m going to be healthy.” No.

So that’s why there’s something else going on here. And everybody’s trying to treat fat, like, oh, you need to lose weight, and then you’re gonna be like, No, something else for most people needs to shift. Their worldview oftentimes needs to shift how they care for themselves, how they be in their body, how they’re in relationship with their body, that’s what needs to change. Once that starts to change, then we can find more of our natural self, we can find more of our natural health and more of our natural weight. You can make anybody lose weight, just fast them just just tie them up.

Kesia
Then they are going to go back to the same place….

Marc David
Yeah so you can force any body to lose weight. But to get there in a sustainable way, is the more difficult path because we have to look at our own weight loss journey. And what that journey is trying to teach us, everybody has a different weight loss journey. Everybody has a different journey with weight, that might be a better way to put it. So over here, I literally, I don’t believe you need to lose four to five kilos, I believe you’d like to, I don’t believe you would need to lose that for your health. In fact, you could just as easily convinced me that this weight that you’re at, is probably the healthiest way for you. You can easily convince me that you know something, the body is brilliant, the body is wise. And oftentimes, not always. But oftentimes, the body retains a little bit more weight than usual. If it needs to be more grounded, if it needs to be more solid if you need to feel more grounded and solid.

Kesia
Wow.

Marc David
So it wouldn’t surprise me ever that someone who’s a mother of five it’s going to be harder to have a slender body. Because you’re a mama and you have a lot of little people to take care of. You have to be grounded. You have to be present, you have to be here. Sometimes weight gives us a little bit more presence. I’m not saying that’s the case for you, but I’m saying it’s the case oftentimes for a lot of people that weight helps ground us which makes us healthier, which makes us healthier humans and translates into the body. So all I’m trying to say is there’s different ways to look at your weight and that in my belief if you convince yourself that my health depends on losing four or five kilos I think you’re creating an artificial battle that’s going to make you unhappy. Too much stress is going to be far worse than four or five kilos that you don’t want. Too much stress because of the four or five kilos. Stress is not so good for health that we know!

Kesia
Right…

Marc David
I think you need to be more gentle with yourself and understand that you’re on a different journey than your mom. And your children are on a different journey with you than you are with your mom. It’s not the same.

Kesia
Right…Right.

Marc David
So teach your family and teach yourself to embrace health, to love doing healthy things. Because then we’re doing healthy things out of love and joy and appreciation and taking care of ourselves. As opposed to I’m doing healthy things so I don’t get sick and I don’t die. Of course, I don’t want to get sick. Yeah. But if we’re doing healthy things, because it’s driven from fear of getting sick. That’s not so much a healthy attitude.

Well, Kesia, I think this is a good place to just say it’s been a good conversation. I think there’s been a lot of healthy possibilities here for you to consider.

Kesia
Yes, it’s been amazing. And thank you so much for your time. Your wisdom is so amazing.

Marc David
Well, I appreciate you being so open and honest. And I appreciate you looking to be the best possible mother that you can be for your children and the best, health care provider for your patients. That’s a beautiful thing!

Kesia
Beautiful, thank you. This was an amazing gift. Really, thank you. Thank you!

Marc David
Thanks so much Kesia! And thanks, everybody for tuning in. Take care everybody.