Body Kindness Diet and Exercise with Rebecca Scritchfield

Zaakirah Muhammad 0:24
On today's episode of the Living Legacy Podcast, we have, Rebecca Scritchfield. Welcome Rebecca. Thank you so much for being here. How are you?

Rebecca Scritchfield 1:49
oh thank you for having me. I'm doing well. I just enjoyed a lovely walk in the woods. So I'm feeling very relaxed, and very grounded right now. And yeah, I'm just very interested in having some time to chat with you. I really appreciate the invitation.

Zaakirah Muhammad 2:12
Absolutely. And thank you for being here. Perfect timing also because at the time of this recording it is holiday season and holiday season is known for, especially for people who may have used the word diet all year long, or reconsider their diet. Now for the new year. So I kind of want to get a little bit of a background view of where the desire for removing the word diet, out of people's vocabulary come from.

Rebecca Scritchfield 2:40
That's a very interesting question and it's funny because recently I was scrolling through Instagram and I was like I wonder what my first post even was and and it turns out that when I first started playing around with Instagram I was a new mom. And so, baby pictures feeding the baby. And it was interesting because as I continue to scroll through I started to witness my own evolution over the last couple of years in more so noticing how I was becoming braver and braver about figuring out what I stood for, and saying it out in the open, because it was a challenge but as a highlight I can tell you that, like most people, I started my first diet when I was nine years old. And it sounds very young. But, that is kind of an average age 9, 10 80% of 15 year olds have admitted to not liking their bodies or of trying one or more diets. And so this is really indoctrinated in us, it's a cultural ideal around fitness and beauty, and even health. So it's one of these things that we think is normal and I was going through the process what was interesting in my mind is, I really cared about health and well being, that what I was given was this message of dieting and it wasn't all bad like I would get positive messages about exercise but then I would get negative ones too and I'd get positive messages about food and negative ones too. And so really the way that this plays out is that I dealt with some pretty significant body shame and insecurities that were part of growing up and part of what culture, said to care about. And, luckily, I didn't develop an eating disorder or, significant mental health issues. And based on the work that I do now a lot of people can actually struggle significantly with dieting and body shame, and can struggle with mental health and it's, we can't say one thing definitely leads to the next, but I feel like what we can say is that, in this day and age, what we offer to people as signs of their worthiness as signs of their value. It is about being young, being thin being white or as light skinned as you can be. It's about being able bodied. And it is very harmful because it's not inclusive it's not diverse. It doesn't support collective well being. So it doesn't support us looking out for each other's data downtime, our community, what does movement look like in community. I would say I'm I'm always a student. So I am still evolving and learning and growing. Even on this journey of collective well being. It's something I did write about in Body Kindness, which I'll be excited to talk more about but, I would say that there was this phase where I hit my rock bottom. Because I became pretty unwell. And the narrow view, I had for health and wellness. And I wasn't helpful to my clients who weren't didn't have an eating disorder but they were dieting right I was trying to help them diet. And they were struggling. And so ultimately, in my book I think my mistakes and I really think our mistakes and our failures are our best teachers if we're open to learning from them, and ultimately that's what it led to, I had to examine illness that happened in my family that I actually learned to blame dieting as a root cause my own struggles with physical and mental health,

Rebecca Scritchfield 7:46
that were really upholding diet culture, and then watching it play out my call in my clients and holding two young kids, and just saying, I want to be part of a different narrative, and clearly I have to learn more because I was taught diet culture is the good thing. And that's what it really led to was this full commitment to practicing with myself first. Doing my own work, and then bringing that out there in the world. While I fully commit to continue to do my own work. You know nothing scares me more like an expert who says they have it all and they know it all. And then here Give me your money and I'm just going to give it all to you I think we're much better people. If we can own up to our privileges and our advantages but also present ourselves as I want to learn and be vulnerable with you.

Zaakirah Muhammad 8:47
It is really interesting that you brought that up because I'm interesting because I too am author and podcast. And so, my book is called Seeing Life through a different lens of surviving memoir, and overcoming resilience, and so it's a book that my mom and I wrote together about surviving cancer, right. So, there is a chapter in our book where we talked about how my mom intentionally chose the holistic nutrition route for me, because after you know the radiation and the surgery I just was not eating when I was a child. And so she brought that up and it kind of reminded me of of the phrase of you are what you eat right and at a young age, my mom will almost didn't even try it. She said, um, one day I went to the grocery store and I was just, I picked up a tomato and ate it like an apple so I didn't necessarily struggle with eating vegetables, but some people do. And so I think that's a great way to talk about like, what do you think about that phrase, you are what you eat?

Rebecca Scritchfield 10:02
I think it's important to, to look at the individuals, and the system, Right, so I grew up in Northeast Ohio. I grew up with some food insecurity, and I will always clarify it with, it can always be worse, right. So, my parents had jobs, they just were hourly workers they had a lot of mouths to feed, they worked odd hours. So, the things that you do and shopping and meal prep like early on in life. You know I was making my own food by the time I was 12 years old and, and I could notice things like being hungry and like not having enough to eat, and a lack of access to vegetables and fruits and fresh foods, and we had government food assistance, and I remember, you know, being grateful for that. To avoid hunger and then, also, deciding to become a dietitian and learning about nutrition and learning about the value and importance of getting a variety of foods and a variety of fruits and vegetables and learning like from a nutrition standpoint, fresh, frozen and all have helpful nutrients that are important to basic life function. And then of course you could look at something like fruit and, and see how like canned fruit would be canned in syrup. Right, so there's heavy syrup and there's light syrup and there's the idea that it helps to preserve the fruit, quality, and also the sweetness of the fruit because if you were to can fruit, water, the sugars from inside. Most fruits would seep out and go into the water, which then would make the fruit really bland and somebody's not use it right. And so it's this intersection of, you know, growing up our nutrition needs were met by a baseline of frozen or canned produce. And so, I would have not been a good audience member for this message of fresh is best, it would have alienated me even more. And so it's interesting because I I carry this memory in this mindset and I often like to write about food shame and how because diet culture, would say oh well if you can't eat like a holistic nutrition, goop style quality. Then, if you get cancer. It's your fault. Right. And so, it's like there's this we can get this food shame and blame aspect. What I find very interesting is like, well, let's look at the systemic reasons why we have food deserts, or why do we have an access issue. Like, what can we do in our governments and as, as a common humanity. be a global citizen and want to fight world hunger and also look at, in our neighborhoods and in our communities right now, miles away from us people are going hungry. What could we do in our neighborhoods in our communities to collect foods and donate them to food banks and let that be good enough and feel good. Right. And also, say, you know what, we want to help bring more urban gardens more fresh foods to the communities who need them. Because we shouldn't let financial differences be a reason why there's an access barrier. And then it's like, oh, that's a long winded answer but then to layer on. I'm imagining your mom's experience like I lost my grandma, to cancer. I lost years of getting to live with her, and I can feel this sense of gratitude of thank goodness your mom had whatever she needed to nourish herself and to fight cancer. And thank goodness for the way food showed up for her. And thank goodness for what she learned to teach you to feed you and provide for you. That is amazing. And how could we look and learn from her experience and grow that to allowing that to be other people's experiences, especially with cancer, so that they have the lessons and the access that your mom had. And how do we break down some of those other barriers cancer or not because it's the right thing to do for like common humanity. Right. And so, I say all those that nuance of the intersecting detail because I could say oh that's diet culture to say, fresh is best. We have to look at the nuance of it right and talk more deeply. I would want to advocate for personal choice. If you enjoy the taste of canned peaches, know that those canned peaches, have a nourishing quality and you can get peaches year round in the dead of winter in your oatmeal. Right. And so it's not a food shame to recommend plain oatmeal with canned peaches, as an economic choice because that's a nutritious and an economic choice. And it's not ashamed choice. Right. But also, let's not say that, you know, it's automatically diet culture if you talk about access to fresh wholesome foods. And that's the conversation we're not having right?

Zaakirah Muhammad 16:28
And I think it's a conversation that needs to be had because where we are right now in the US specifically is there is a food shortage, there is We're kind of almost still struggling in a way of a lot of people are depending on food stamps government assistance, and even having the lack of access to farmers market if they did that. So what are those strategies for those who, decide to eat healthy just to survive. Right. So what strategies, would you have for those that, want to just eat more healthy?

Rebecca Scritchfield 17:15
I would say for anyone wanting to eat healthier, I always start with self compassion. That's the basic fundamental, aspect of body kindness it's all about inner caregiving, and the, the simplest form of self compassion is to be able to say, it's okay. So what I would say to anyone is say it's okay to want to eat healthier, and it's okay to work within what ever food budget you have right so I talked a little bit in body kindness about that sort of hierarchy we have over organic versus conventional like even among the produce, and that there could be reasons why we might advocate for organic as a food system sustainability piece, but then when you get into the weeds it's not as simple as saying all organic and, there are companies that own both conventional and organic products and like you don't even know they're the same thing so the same company that owns soy milk owns and organic milk also owns just a conventional creamer, and so, because as a company, it might be something for everybody. The point that I would want to make is, it's okay to be, maybe, say, curious about how you want to improve healthy eating patterns, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to spend more money on food, especially if it's money that you really don't have, because you also have to make your bills. And so what I would say is to know that I would want to support the policies. Then in the long term, reduce the food access the food insecurity issues like you mentioned about access to farmers markets to be able to use your money and scale your money so that you can have more of a variety of access to foods that you enjoy. And then to be able to learn simple ways of preparing them, you know, because there's lots of barriers, but beyond access. So, but to truly start it off with this, it's okay standpoint, because we can feel this wave of shame, like, Oh my gosh, the way I eat is so bad and so wrong and I am personally to blame for my health concern or my body concern, you know, where we might say, I look this way or I have this health problem. I do a lot of work with people with diabetes and so the belief is this diagnosis shame I caused my diabetes. When that is actually not necessarily scientifically true it's mostly genetic, there could be other social determining factors that have just led to that gene expression, and it turned that gene on. But now that you have diabetes or maybe you had a high blood sugar lab and you're trying to reduce that. And if someone's listening it's called a one C and there may be trying to reduce that. And there's this wave of overwhelm or shame. And what I would say to that is it's okay to have a health concern. It's okay to want to make changes, and it's okay to work within your resources right now within your budget within your time, because you are going to learn and grow and heal yourself and create a better life with kindness, with compassion, with baby steps. Right. And I'm happy to get into some more details or specifics about some of those baby steps, but I really think you can't move forward until you start with kindness and permission to be where you are. And to experiment and explore and to work with what you have right because if I jump in and say we'll do this and do that you know we want to, we look for the rules we want those, but it might not fit, you need to figure out what fits your preferences your time and your money budget and you'd be really surprised about how small and meaningful efforts done consistently can make a really big impact.

Zaakirah Muhammad 21:51
Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned diabetes because that's huge in my family have high blood pressure is huge in my family, and not just my family but also to the minority community, and yes so that actually thinking also about, exercise like I love dance and I love music. It's a great way for mental health, you know it's up here, especially in this time what can you do to get put on a playlist of, you know your favorite song and just dance. Right. Well one other exercise tips, do you have that kind of correlate to being healthy?

Rebecca Scritchfield 22:25
So it's interesting, my gut instinct was to talk about walking because I had just come back from a walk. But I wanted to just notice that for a second and think about, like, the inherent ableism in that right and so if I may right just start from I'm sitting. Chair. Right. So whether you are in a wheelchair, right, or it would be better for your body to do something seated right. Believe it or not, if you're breathing, you're exercising. So, starting with breath work. It's called belly breathing. It actually strengthens your diaphragm. Right. And so you would take a big deep inhale and fill, try to fill your belly. And then you take this slow, exhale, and as you exhale, you can squeeze out like you imagine deflating a balloon, and you're squeezing your diaphragm, you're squeezing your abdominal muscles.

Rebecca Scritchfield 23:41
We say fill your lungs, but actually in belly breathing right you're actually using the diaphragm which is a muscle, when you're using your core that helps support the expansion in the lungs, but you are actually doing a form of strength training from a chair or lying down. And so you're getting multiple benefits in there because you are doing exercise, some body kindness. I talk about small smart and swift. So what's something very small that you could do that smart because it gives you a benefit and it's swift because you can take immediate action. And I would say that this example of a belly breath. It's that. And don't let that inner critic come in and say oh that's not hardcore enough for me. Listen, strengthening our core can prevent falls later in life, it supports all the other stability muscles. It's free. You can do it from anywhere. And you can do it right now because you have to breathe. It's just a shift, and how you do this breath work, and it's meaningful and here's that side bonus of it. When you can engage in practicing belly breathing, and let that be enough before you're ready to take that walk or maybe do some seated strength training which I, I definitely want to recommend next. It also provides a side benefit of mental health emotion regulation. So it helps you feel that wave of anxiety or that wave of stress, and it feels like a tidal wave it's gonna kill me right. And look, we're all kind of feeling moments of that right now. And it comes and comes we think I can't handle it. And it gets us from a 10 out of 10 anxiety, more to like a nine or an eight or if the feeling was red energy, I might not make it. We get a little calmer or peaceful with even five minutes of belly breathing. Right. And when we do that, we are better off, mental health, and also physical health, we'll be more likely to make positive self care choices. If you identify as a stress eater or an emotional eater, your practice belly breathing will help you do it when you feel stressed or anxiety. And so it's not about the shame of food and just don't eat, just don't eat those donuts just don't eat that ice cream like sure in the long run we want to change our relationship to food and our relationship to soothing with food. That really helps if we jump in like a police of do's and don'ts. We all have a rebel we're all going to break our own rules and we're going to end up where we were before and blame ourselves. And really it was that the thought that short sighted thought that if we just eliminated all of it that we would never eat a doughnut again. And that just doesn't work. But if instead we practice this belly breathing, we learn some emotion regulation, we learn to strengthen our core. That's going to support posture, that's going to support chair exercises which you could do for free on YouTube, that's going to support, walking, and it's baby step and this is what I would call spiraling up one thing, leading to enough, another. Now we're more calm or more connected we're more open. We're happier. And we are healthier, in a meaningful way. And when you got all that down and that all sounds great. I say do what I do and challenge yourself. So I'll go on a walk and I'll say you know what, I'm gonna try to sprint to that tree, and I just do this scary thing to sprint, but it's like, maybe 10 feet, and then my heart and lungs are like this and I'm like, ooh gotta walk again and then walk it out, and then give yourself another challenge, so you can build from there. So if what I said sounded too easy or not, take it. I'm all in for challenges, but I want to be inclusive right start from. I want to pick that most extreme sense of, but I'm, but I know where Rebecca, it feels hopeless Rebecca What do I do, I would say breathe.

Zaakirah Muhammad 28:07
I love that and actually when you mentioned a breathing exercise the first thing thing I think about is yoga like for me that was my challenge. And that was my way really of helping to control my breathing and also stay in the moment because I think it's also very important to keep in mind that, yes, we do have those stressful and anxiety filled moments that sometimes it's just a matter of taking a step back, taking a breath, a breather. 5 10 15 30 seconds at least, and then of course, it can stretch stretching the body I think a lot of people would tend to forget about that. I think do it in the morning when they get out of bed and do it when they sit for a long time but stretching too I feel like also has been very helpful for me.

Rebecca Scritchfield 28:52
That is amazing. I did a podcast interview with an expert in yoga. And we talked about. Interestingly, we're talking about racism in yoga. And, yeah, I'll give you that link in case you want to share it with your listeners. I had two important yoga conversations one was with Dr. Sabrina Strings, who wrote Fearing the Black body the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and it's a very important read for anyone who cares about health and well being and who's open to this intersectionality view of maybe judging people by their size isn't helpful. And also you can see how, how it's rooted in white supremacy, which is a very relevant and important conversation that we need to keep having and. But when she was talking about some of her yoga experiences. You know, and I was talking about how different my experiences were. I was sharing that yoga really saved me twice and the first time was coming around was in my own diet rock bottom and body image healing, where the teacher would talk about holding yourself with compassion and I firmly believe that hearing that over and again in the yoga space and feeling more open and connected. That's part of what really led to what I was writing about and spiraling up in Body Kindness, and also rooting body kindness in inner caregiving and in this practice of kindness and compassion toward yourself was deeply influenced by that experience and the second time was years later, and having two young kids and I broke out into all these body rashes and I thought it was this that the other thing, turned out to be anxiety in my body saying you are, engaging and workaholism you're avoiding, adjusting to motherhood by throwing yourself in work and doing it all and, we can really get that juice of hustling it's hard to resist. Both of us being authors and podcasters I'm sure you can really relate and, and just learning the boundaries of slowing down again and saying no and it's, it's what I needed to help my rashes go away. I immersed myself again in yoga and meditation and again, I had the financial privilege to be able to do this retreat and I'm so grateful for realizing how that brought me back. And I and honestly I'm in this wave where I haven't done yoga consistently. But I have my mat and I have one of my favorite DVDs of the person who I was on a retreat with. And I feel this commitment of, it's going to come back again Rebecca and so I encourage so many people my clients will always tell me Yoga is not good enough it's not hard enough it's not this or that enough. I think you're listening to a part of yourself. That's no pain no gain it has to be punishing to be worth it or also that doesn't feel that you're worthy of this heart opening space opening compassion and gratitude. Let easy be easy. When it comes to movement. And trust me, there's a lot of challenging places yoga can go. I think that avoidance of it is more about that you feel like you're so limited in time that you got to make all your movement worth it and worth it, and movement is very harsh. Very Jillian Michaels I'm going to beat you up and make you puke and that's that's not who I am, I don't think that's body kindness it's, I tell people body kindness is what you think it is but I don't think anyone is saying body kindness is making exercise painful so open it up to yoga and breath, you'd be surprised what you can get out of it.

Zaakirah Muhammad 33:07
Yeah, no, I definitely agree. And even though it's been years since I've stepped inside of a studio or found one yoga instructor that I feel good to me. I've remembered the movement I remember the exercises and it stayed with me for years. Yeah. Now, you did briefly mention your podcast. And so, um, we are kind of coming to the end so got the sharing part so people to know put of course I will put it in the show notes but for those who are audio learners. What is your podcast I know under the same name as your book, Body Kindness but what is it and where can people listen to it?

Rebecca Scritchfield 33:42
Sure. So, wherever you get your favorite podcasts it's there so it's on Apple and iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, wherever you get your podcasts or just search body kindness and you'll find it. But yeah, there's over 160 episodes and it really depends on what you're interested in, I would tell you that if you're wanting to immerse yourself in body kindness and you're wanting to follow along with episodes and you feel that you would benefit from hearing somebody else's experience. There's a series called learn and grow in this is with Bernie Salazar who's a good friend of mine, and he's a higher weight Latinx, father of two kids. And he is like an open book. He has really transformed his mental health and his physical health and his relationship to his self in body kindness and it's taken four years. What's interesting is he's not his lowest weight because he was actually a contestant and a winner, a runner up winner of The Biggest Loser. And so, you hear us have conversations, as he was kind of running from this world that made him do punishing things with exercise in his body, and how he reframed that and reshape that. So I would definitely recommend those and honestly if you go to my website bodykindnessbook.com under my podcast tab I have categories. So one of those categories might resonate with you and you could dip in that way, but I certainly appreciate you giving it a try and it is, a lot of conversations with people trying to make sense of the world we're in, and I talked to a lot of authors, so we do we'll talk about their book, but I really find authors to be interesting people. In what they've come to know and what they've come to share. So thank you for asking.

Zaakirah Muhammad 35:57
Yes and speaking of sharing, Can you also tell us a little bit more about the Body Kindness book?

Rebecca Scritchfield 36:05
Sure, so that is available in print, ebook, and audiobook and it's in four languages and so wherever books are sold encourage you to also check out your local library. It is a book that I'm very, very proud of, people will say that they found it very helpful to read it was written in a way that felt conversational, and also kind of beautiful to hold right because this underlying message is, Hey, none of these diets are going to work, and you might not be able to get the weight, shape, or appearance that you've been told that you wanted. It's kind of like bad news but then this word is body kindness and, it's like that spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, because we buy into this belief that oh if we just work hard enough that we can get that beautiful shape that we want and then we'll finally be loved and all these magical rewards will come true. But it's beautiful to hold.

Rebecca Scritchfield 37:18
And it helps you with reflections, and it helps provide a framework for what would it feel like to treat your body with kindness, and there's three simple principles: Love, Connect Care, make choices from a place of love, connect to your body and connect to others, back to that collective well being, I mentioned in the beginning, and then care that you're fully going to commit to care for your well being, no matter what, even when it's hard because you deserve it, you're worthy and you really are the expert in your values and your goals and what you want out of life and what really matters, and the book takes you there step by step. It's really meaningful for people who feel like they want to heal their relationship with their body and likely with food they would like to be a little more flexible they would like to be have a better relationship to movement. And I'm really, really proud of the book and what it is and, and I'll say that if there's anything in there that you're like, I don't know if I agree with Rebecca I don't know if this helpful I'll be the first one to say, take a marker and X it out, rip out the page, burn it, whatever you want to do. I really did my best when I was writing it in 2015 and 2016 to speak to chronic dieters doing whole 30 doing keto doing paleo and really thinking that those things were helpful. And the other question I really tried to answer is when a person says, But wait a minute, I really care about my health. So what am I supposed to do, if you're saying never diet again, right on the cover. Never diet, what am I supposed to do if I care about my health. So I wanted to answer that you don't give up movement but you reframe it. And that you don't say oh well body kindness give me all the doughnuts or all the ice cream or all the pasta. That's what you want to do after doing whole 30 are doing paleo, but that's not necessarily self care if you really ask your caregiver. And so it really is about developing flexible and healthy eating patterns that might be like hey I got mom's mac and cheese I want to enjoy a nice big helping and I don't want to put myself in food jail before, during, or after. And so there's a lot of nuance. But if you are at a point in your life where we're hearing talking about vegetables feels hard or triggering like maybe an eating disorder recovery, because that's what you're eating disorder part pushed the vegetables. And I would say, do what you need to do to care for yourself and just ignore that part, go past it and come back later and so and I say that with a level of depth because I do. I have a part that's very burdened by the help everyone. Don't harm anyone. And so I get so scared at this thought that Oh, did I say it the wrong way or Did I say something wrong and, and I'll just add a color of a specific experience, there's a part where I'm talking about where you've assessed emotional eating you know you're not hungry, and to work on different things, different distractions and so what I do is like pour a cup of hot tea and sip on it and like a soothing pleasurable way and I remember I was writing it in the winter, I was making camomile tea, like I was doing this very thing and I thought this is pleasant and nice and something hand to mouth and it really was about enjoying more pleasure because you've assessed that you were full, and you really didn't want to go in the cupboard and grab more food but you felt this urge to do so. What could you do instead so it really felt like this gentle soothing recommendation to me and I'm sure many, listeners are like Yeah, sounds great Rebecca what's the problem. Well, some people just felt that I was trying to say, don't eat candy no matter what you're bad if you eat candy, they just kind of read it differently than my intention. That's sort of why I you know I say that if there's anything, I really, was struggling with like gum health and so there's one point where I encourage. Hey, after dinner Go brush your teeth and like, hooray for hygiene, but somebody else might be like well that was my diet trick well I didn't, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings or just did something gave the wrong advice for you.