Balanced Bites Podcast #403: Michelle Shapiro, RD lost 100lbs (but doesn’t recommend it): when weight loss is unsafe – and what to do instead

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Episode 403 Topics: Is weight loss always “good?” What that feeling of “urgency” really means when it comes to losing weight; “all foods fit:” but do they really?; where nutritionists get it wrong (online and offline); the magic of functional nutrition; Harry Potter is the universal solvent.

Transcripts are automatically generated, so may not always accurately reflect the words/phrases used or the individuals speaking.

Welcome to the new Balanced Bites Podcast! I’m your host, Liz, a nutritional therapy practitioner and best selling author bringing you candid, up-front, myth-busting and thought-provoking conversations about food, fitness, and life. Remember:  The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice.

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Hi, friends! Today’s episode is the first of what I hope will be many chats with Michelle Shapiro. Michelle is an Integrative and Functional Registered Dietitian from New York City with more than 8 years of experience serving over 1000 clients in reversing their anxiety, healing longstanding gut issues and approaching weight loss lovingly – and in a body neutral way. What does that mean? We’ll dig in to that today and in upcoming episodes with Michelle. 

Michelle aims to bridge the gap for clients between functional nutrition and body positivity and she is the proud impassioned host of the “Quiet the Diet” podcast which you can find wherever you get your podcasts.

What strikes me about michelle is not just her affinity for the nuance, and the many layers around both conversations about nutrition AND the giving and applying of nutritional counsel to individuals, but also her ability to communicate all that nuance and all those layers in a way that tracks. In a way that is so well-navigated that you can’t help but have that light-bulb moment. And it’s NEVER boring with Michelle. It’s the opposite – it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s that process of discovery that is just so juicy and captivating.

Part of why I love Michelle so much, and have been such an avid consumer of her content, is because she is willing to really address the tough questions around ways of thinking about food and wellnes that feel, in our culture, unquestionable. That feel too sacred to unpack. She’s willing to question – is this true balance? Or is this the pendulum at its other extreme? How do we grapple with the very necessary movements of, say, body positivity and anti-diet culture while still asking important questions that might, at times, feel dangerous? What really made me feel that connection to Michelle’s work is that – I’m asking a lot of the same questions that she is, but the difference is that she has the scientific knowledge and the clinical experience to really speak to these questions in an informed, nuanced way. And this leads to some really fun, really interesting conversations that, hopefully, will empower you to move forward confidently. Because what’s better than simple CONFIDENCE? Isn’t, at our core, what so many of us want? Just to KNOW that we are on the right path? 

With that. Let’s chat with Michelle Shapiro, RD, and let’s start in the only way I know how – with a little bit of banter.

[00:00:00] Michelle: I never wear the headphones cuz I’m bad. 

[00:00:01] Liz: So I don’t wear the headphones.

No, I don’t either. I hate ’em. I 

[00:00:04] Michelle: I have honestly, you also have like, your hair is obviously a thing. Like you have amazing hair. I don’t want it to screw up my 

[00:00:09] Liz: hair. Like you, you have amazing hair. I noticed 

[00:00:12] Michelle: that about you. I also noticed it about you. Besides your gorgeousness your hair is a thing.

How could we ever put headphones on these things? Like 

[00:00:18] Liz: please, it’s a terrible idea. Don’t do it. Well, I have, I actually, it has to be from this. So this is the angle I do everything from. I don’t know why, it’s just not the 

[00:00:27] Michelle: same. You know what’s so funny? I can’t do anything on this side. So your hair side is not actually your side.

That’s very interesting. It leaves this side. Wow. Because you also have an amazing facial structure that you need the world to see as 

[00:00:41] Liz: well. I see what’s going on. No, I’m just tilted the correct direction. That’s, 

[00:00:44] Michelle: and on the other way, I’m like, how are we doing, Liz? That’s, how are 

[00:00:47] Liz: things going? Exactly. Well, if we were in person, then it would be perfect for like a little, you know, a photo.

Right? Because we would 

[00:00:52] Michelle: have. It would be exactly right. It would work right. I could either be in the center or on that side and you, we gotta get together for a photo now. , you 

[00:00:59] Liz: look amazing. [00:01:00] It’s settled. It’s settled, it’s done. Done. Yes. We’re technically recording right now, which as long as that’s okay with you, we can just 

[00:01:06] Michelle: like talk.

I am very, as you know by now, I’m very open talking about literally anything at any time. It could be on the podcast even. I’d be very happy. I’m so happy. Liz has amazing hair and facial structure. There you go. 

[00:01:17] Liz: Put that right on. Michelle has amazing hair and facial structure and wing a eyeliner. She’s gonna have to do a tutorial.

Have you done a tutorial? A lot of people have been asking you how you do your eyeliner, . 

[00:01:26] Michelle: That’s what we’re here to talk about today. How to do the wing eyeliner. It’s don’t do it in any sort of accurate or even way and just do it. That’s that’s the way I would recommend. Yeah. Don’t, don’t make it look nice in any way.

Just throw it 

[00:01:38] Liz: on your head and see what happens. I’ve like put tape right there. I’ve put business cards right there and tried to wing it out. It just 

[00:01:44] Michelle: doesn’t work. Yeah. It’s a, you know, I’ve also, this has been my signature since I was like, 16. So I, I do have like a thing where even if I get my makeup done, I’m like, I’m gonna have to do it.

You don’t, it’s like a feel, you know? Yes. 

[00:01:57] Liz: Yes, I did my own wedding makeup. No, you [00:02:00] didn’t. That’s amazing. I did, I did. I had, well, that’s a whole story and I can’t tell it because I don’t know if my old wedding hairdresser listens to the podcast. She probably doesn’t, but that would be one for Off the Air, that whole story.

[00:02:12] Michelle: That was, that was okay. Well, we’re gonna have to hang on after. 

[00:02:14] Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Out the hair . Um, okay, so one thing about this, I don’t know when this is gonna air because I have, technically now I have two, I don’t have two podcasts, but I’m about to have two podcasts 

Um, I would like for you to be on all the episodes. 

[00:02:27] Michelle: So every 

episode 

[00:02:28] Liz: from now on, that’s it. Every episode going forward, you’ll be the co-host. Wait, so you, you’re starting a podcast I wanna hear. Yes. 

[00:02:36] Michelle: Tell me about it. It’s called Quiet the Diet, and it’s basically to help people like access their inner voice, that they cannot listen to anything anyone else tells them, and it’s just about bodily autonomy and helping people to learn about their own authenticity around their health.

So I’m, I’m doing some solo episodes. Then I’m also bringing on some just guests in functional medicine or nutrition who are really focused on distinctly how to access your own voice and just other like, [00:03:00] cool functional medicine and nutrition topics. 

[00:03:02] Liz: I love that. Okay. Well, maybe you should tell me really quickly how all of this, I know what you’re doing now.

Well, I don’t know everything you’re doing, but I’ve been following you on Instagram and just obsessed with everything you’re doing, the way you articulate all your thoughts around that kind of, that spectrum, that continuum of dietary approaches, especially around issues like body neutrality and what do you call it?

Do you call it loving, loving or thoughtful weight? 

[00:03:26] Michelle: Yeah. Approaching 

[00:03:27] Liz: your weight lovingly. Approaching your weight lovingly. Yeah. I also wanna hear what, what got you to that point, because right now I feel like, at least in, in my my frame of reference, like, I, I joke with my husband about, about this all the time, cuz he’ll send me stuff on Instagram and I’m like, wow, your Instagram looks very different from my Instagram.

Like, he’s seeing catme, the algorithm, you know, stupid, I don’t know, just stupid stuff. And everything that I’m seeing sort of over the last year or so has become centered around body positivity or body [00:04:00] neutrality, or there are no bad foods, that type of thing. So 

[00:04:02] Michelle: all foods fit kind of Yes. Wording. Yes.

Let’s call 

[00:04:05] Liz: it, yes. All foods. So tell me, just tell me whatever you wanna tell. 

[00:04:09] Michelle: Absolutely. Do you want me to also give you a personal kind of health journey to tell you where Yeah. So I’ll take you through that and we’ll parlay it into the professional and, and kind of where Perfect. We’ve all ended up what I would call you and I in the middle ground.

Yes. And how we live in that middle ground. So I grew up in Queens, New York, like super diverse neighborhood, and I always occupied a larger body from the age of like five to 18 around for me growing up in Queens, which. Diverse place of thought, body, gender, race. Um, I never really was that concerned about my body size.

Of course, I do feel it was prohibitive for me in some ways, which we’ll explore absolutely on this podcast, but it wasn’t a huge deterrent for me to be, you know, successful in school, have amazing friends, and all the things that I wanted to do in life. I was like class clown in my high school. Like crowning achievement of my life.

Honestly, there [00:05:00] was 5,000 students in my high school. It’s kind of a thing. 

[00:05:01] Liz: Okay. Oh, that is, that’s a big achievement. There were, I had a big high school, but it was like 500 and I was nowhere near the funding class. High school. 

[00:05:09] Michelle: 500. 500 

[00:05:10] Liz: might, my middle school was a hundred. Wow. And I was class clown of the middle, not class clown, but I definitely was on the top of some, some piles 

[00:05:19] Michelle: in the middle.

I mean, if we, ranking wise, it’s the number one spot. It doesn’t matter how many people are there, it’s, I’m giving you exactly the same credit. It does. There’s no exponential damage here because it was one, you know, times 10. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I grew up in Queens again. So just your exposure to amounts of humans is so high that I feel like your judgment is lower, which is like the beauty, obviously of New York City.

I also grew up in a neighborhood which is determined as the most diverse place in the entire world. And you know, near flushing in Queens. Really fantastic. So again, when I was going away to school, I was going to the University of Delaware and I was like, Hmm, this is not going to be like my experience growing up.

I’m going to like a much more [00:06:00] homogenous place. It was like a reverse culture shock almost. And I don’t think people there are gonna know, I’m Michelle Shapiro, I’m cool, I, you know, I, I’m great. All these things about me, whatever. Like, I’m sure like people from high school would not say those things. I’m sure, you know, uh, whatever, you know, joking.

But not to basically when I’m going to school, I’m thinking though, like I kind of have to look away because people are gonna judge me on first impressions. And I’m aware that society is not New York City society looks different in other places, in suburban places, and this is gonna be a much more homogenous environment.

So I went on, and I’m issuing a trigger warning here because I do not recommend this at all. A very drastic weight loss journey before going to school. I, I mean, I was eating very, very little on a vegan diet. Super restrictive, absolutely disordered, and lost about a hundred pounds in a three to four month period before I went to school.

And when I went to school, I was very validated for my weight loss and very validated and could tell even, you know, the minutiae of people’s weight. There was a lot more judgment around it. And, and you [00:07:00] know, also growing up, obviously we’re talking about 10, 15 years ago, the whole idea of weight and body positivity was already so much different then.

Um, and Delaware’s known for like a huge Greek life sorority stuff. I, of course, like am from New York and would never have like joined a sorority, sorry, other people from New York City, like kind 

[00:07:16] Liz: of get that. I was a Cayo Omega, 

[00:07:18] Michelle: but it’s fine. Exactly. Oh, all my roommates were too. And yeah, it’s, it was a thing at Delaware and my, my sophomore year roommates and I loved them, but I definitely saw in that world, There was a lot of weight judgment.

And I know one of, one of my roommates, oh my God, don’t listen to this. I love her. I love her, I love her. But one of my roommates at the time had experienced weight judgment, and I would classify her as having a normal quote unquote, normal. She was normal sized in societal standards for sure. Um, and so I was like, oh, wow.

I still was probably bigger than her then. And, and thank goodness people were not even cruel to me because it was, it was just a very rough social picture, which by the way, like, I can’t tell you how much [00:08:00] I disagree with this, but I, I was aware and had the foresight to know that I was gonna run into some issues if I didn’t.

So from that weight loss, I actually. , I mean the health issues that came up from that weight loss were drastic. And I had a hypothyroidism, I had really bad reflux. I had all these symptoms and doctors were basically like, you know what? You should lose a little more weight. If anything, that’d be great. And, and of course it was the fact that my body had been thrown out of this homeostasis.

When you starve your body, there’s gonna be a reaction cause your body’s trying to save your life. So I really didn’t put these pieces together, that weight loss was an issue until I was going through my dietetics degree. And I started looking around and seeing what other dieticians or you know, soon to be dieticians were eating.

And I was like, these people are eating a lot more than me. I’m like noticing that. And it was really helpful for that reason. But you know, the dietetics degree then also was centered more around clinical nutrition and there was definitely a calorie and macro aspect to it. May or may not have been helpful for people at the time.

And you know, we can talk about that too. [00:09:00] Yeah. So after I graduated college, my panic attacks had gotten so bad towards the end of my college experience that I was like, I at some point said, I need to like handle this because I cannot live like this. And I never really had anxiety before I lost weight.

And now doctors are telling me, you have an anxiety disorder, you have a thyroid disorder, take these medications. And I was like, but I didn’t have them a year ago, so now I just have them forever. I don’t, my brain doesn’t work like that. So I basically made myself a, what I call like a battle plan, which is I, I said, what lifestyle supplement, nutrition, hydration recommendations can I give myself to reverse my anxiety and my health issues?

And then enacted it? And it helped a lot. And then I ended up seeking the help of a naturopathic position who really took me back from the physical and mental issues and the damage that came from the weight loss. Since then, I’ve been very committed to having my clients not lose weight the wrong way so that they don’t have to do the cellular cleanup after basically mm-hmm.

Cause I know weight loss is touted in our society, is something that’s so positive, but you release toxins from your cells, your fat [00:10:00] cells, when you lose weight, you can throw your body out of homeostasis and it can have really strong potential damages and there are ways to mitigate those risks. And I just don’t want my clients to go through the pain that I went through for no reason.

Yeah. There’s, there’s good ways that we can approach these things now and, and a lot of that is the mindset work around losing weight 

[00:10:18] Liz: too. . Mm-hmm. What one of the things that I’m learning about right now in a course that I’m taking is actually the actual physical. You’ve got all of these things that happen when you lose weight.

We also have your actual tissues, your fat cells. When they release fat, their actual structure kind of goes into stress mode and can become more, I don’t know what the words are right now. I need to go back through all of this, this course material that I’m taking, but can become, more rigid and it becomes actually kind of like this desperate attempt to like refill that structure.

I don’t know if any of that sounds, plausible to 

[00:10:50] Michelle: you, . Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, again, and it’s the same I, if something’s happening on a macro level in our body, it’s also happening on a micro level in our body. [00:11:00] Mm-hmm. , our body’s always trying to maintain. Homeostasis on some level or another.

Right. As in balance, if like, let’s take, take the word homeostasis and replace it with balance our body. Even if our state of balance is sickness, our body will try to defend sickness in some ways. Mm-hmm. , if our state of balance is a weight that’s a hundred pounds higher than what we feel is right for our bodies.

Cause I don’t really like love the B standards as a, you know. Right. Uh, as a standard, I guess I would say it will still defend that, that higher weight because it feels that where you’re. Is the survival level, essentially. Yeah. So that would make sense on a cellular level that it’s also defending, which is really interesting and powerful.

[00:11:38] Liz: I mean, everything is an adaptation, right? Like you, you get to a certain place and your body makes a a million little adjustments to keep you as safe as possible in the place that you are. And so, like you said, any, it’s all a stressor. Any, any kind of change that you wanna make, mental, emotional, physiological, biological, you have to deal.

You have to deal with what actually happens. And you know, to that point, which I think we’ll [00:12:00] talk about today, you know, why you’re undertaking a dramatic change like that, or maybe not dramatic, why you’re undertaking a lifestyle change and what mental, emotional, psychological aspects need to be put in place as a safeguard against obsessive behavior, orthorexia, all of that stuff.

So I think I definitely wanna tackle that. I’m curious though, did you choose to become a dietician because of this journey that you 

[00:12:25] Michelle: were on? It’s such a good question. So this is a fact that you’re gonna know, but. I went to become a dietician cuz I wanted to learn the secrets of weight loss. Mm-hmm. , I wanted to know what can I do to op to optimize this thing and go further into my disordered eating.

Dieticians do, on average have a, a disproportionate level of eating disorders compared to other careers. So it is, it can, we can be pursuing something for the, for me it was pursuing it for the wrong reason, but ended up in the right place, which is really good. And for me it definitely was. I knew I would always be in some sort of service career, but [00:13:00] I actually went into my undergrad the first semester and was a marketing major and then I was like, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna do this thing and then went into nutrition.

Cause you, you really, dietician school is very like, uh, structured. So you really can’t just like transfer in the second year. You’re gonna have to add on two more years basically. So I was, I, I switched in and that was my goal initially and within the first semester I was like, oh. Look at what everyone else is eating.

Look at the, you know, I really, I really learned about my undereating during that time, which I found to be very helpful versus other parts of the curriculum that I don’t now reflect on as being as helpful. I did notice that, and again, even knowing this statistic about dieticians, it doesn’t, I don’t wanna dissuade anyone from going to a dietician, but it is, it is a true and interesting thing that we pursue things sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons.

[00:13:48] Liz: Oh, I think so many of us can resonate with that. I mean, I ended up where I am now, after years upon years of completely whack, whacked out, disordered ridiculous [00:14:00] eating of every kind. And I’ve never, I’m not a oof, I don’t know what the word would be. I don’t. Uh, I am not attracted to consistency . It’s not, you know, my strong suit.

I sort of do things in spurts. I wrote a book in a spurt. Um, so I never, you know, maybe to, maybe this is fortunate, but I never actually stayed anywhere long enough, I think, to really destroy myself. I would try one thing and then I’d kind of go back. So it was kind of this yo-yo thing, but it was never like super drastic.

It was like two weeks here, you know, a year there. And I feel like I never really, really, Lost a ton of weight or put on a ton of muscle and maybe, maybe I’m lucky in that way cuz I feel like I’m actually in a fairly good state of health now approaching 40. Woohoo. Yeah, that’s just 

[00:14:49] Michelle: awesome. I actually so excited.

Truly wouldn’t have known that. And I don’t really think there’s any, like, people should look their age and it’s completely fine. But like you legitimately look a lot younger than your [00:15:00] age. That’s very amazing. Even though you’re a young age, 40 is very young still, obviously, 

[00:15:03] Liz: I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a filter on Instagram called the Paris Face.

You swipe once, you know once and zoom, you can kind of blur yourself out a little bit too. So I’m not saying you don’t 

need 

[00:15:12] Michelle: to be blurred . I was gonna say we’re not on Instagram and I’m looking at you and you look good. 

[00:15:16] Liz: Okay. That’s all good. Well, you can do it on Zoom too. I just, you might, I don’t know if you want that for future information, but I think I have it mirrored 

[00:15:23] Michelle: at least.

But you know what I, yes. What you said is really interesting to me because this is actually something that I’ve never really explored on a podcast before. I think my worst disadvantage was the fact that I am a very hardcore person. Mm-hmm. . So I was like, Hey, I’m gonna be vegan. It was almost like a gag for me to be vegan.

In the beginning it was like my sister was vegan. I was like, I can do that more than you like for fun. like, I don’t know. And then it turned into like so much of my identity and I was vegan for over 10 years. But I can’t even tell you the scientific basis for it at the time because it was more just like if I say I’m gonna do something, I am gonna do something [00:16:00] regardless of, you know, the potential negative outcomes.

I’m much less like that now. I think I was much more fervent when I was younger. But I do think it was an advantage to your body, and maybe it was because you were listening to your body without even realizing and picking up on subconscious cues, maybe where I was overriding my body’s needs with.

Willpower or quote unquote, or whatever that is where, right. I never want my clients to do that. I never want people to use willpower over intuition. You know? That’s definitely something I wanna avoid. And I would say that, yes, I think your personality type favored you, or maybe your body just spoke to you and you 

[00:16:32] Liz: listened, pat.

I think that’s probably a very generous assessment. Mostly I think I just like pasta and Chinese food and whatnot. And you know, it becomes this thing where, yeah, I realized eventually where it was like if I’m saying, no, no, no, I’m not supposed to do that, and this goes to the mental part of everything.

Yeah, I’m not supposed to do that. No, no, no. Then all of a sudden it’s like, blah, I did it and now you know, everything’s shot and now I’m going to eat. You know, anything that I feel like I’m not supposed to eat, whether I want it or not. And it’s a very interesting psychological thing because I would be eating something and [00:17:00] I’d be like, I don’t even want this.

Mm-hmm. And yet I would be eating it because some kind of back and forth psychological emotional thing and you know, I would do that. And then, And then kind of pull back. But what’s, what’s interesting, and maybe we can talk about this, is eventually I was like, I kind of dipped my toe in that idea of not that there’s no bad foods, because I actually do believe that some things make me feel terrible and those things are things I don’t wanna eat anymore or I wanna limit as much as possible.

But shifting my mindset to say, eat what you want. Like this is your life. You do what you wanna do, and stop listening to all this outside input. For some reason, for me personally, that took some of the strife out. Some of that just obsessive trying to, trying to hold onto a bar of soap in the shower where you’re just like, and it just keeps popping out of your hands.

So that was really helpful to me. But interest something. That kind of sang to me when you were talking a little bit earlier about your personality and about how you learned all of these [00:18:00] lessons in such a short period of time. I mean, you’re talking about you went to college, you lost a hundred pounds, you know, you were doing all of this, became a dietician, and now professionally you’re doing something entirely different than what you set out to do.

I mean, that’s, you were on like warp speed there because it takes people a lot longer to learn those things. I think. Well, it takes a lot of people a lot longer to learn those things. So maybe that kind of, you know, warp speed personality that you have is, or you know, that really go hard. Go Baker home in New York, and this I love.

I love New Yorkers. My cousin lives in New York. My dad used to live in New York. I just, I feel like I’m maybe polar opposite. I’m not sure, but I definitely have a little part of me that wants to be, I don’t think you’re polar 

[00:18:41] Michelle: opposite. . You fit. Great. Come on down. You’d fit in. Come on 

[00:18:44] Liz: down. Okay. I’d be, the buildings are so tall, I would just feel like they 

[00:18:48] Michelle: are, I’m tall.

It helps. I think that’s, how tall are you? I’m five nine. Five 10. Oh, I was gonna say, you look super tall. That’s an amazing thing. I love tall people, 

[00:18:57] Liz: so amazing. You know what, it’s, I, [00:19:00] I don’t know. You’re, you’re married, right? Yeah. Okay. Is your husband taller than you? 

[00:19:04] Michelle: Yes. And you know what’s, I mean, this is like a, this is like a totally crazy thing to say on a public forum.

Doesn’t matter that my, so I’m Jewish and my. Jewish and he’s six foot five and he’s for like Jewish guys who like skew a little bit shorter sometimes. Mm-hmm. , I, my like opinion of Jewish men was always that they were like super tall and cuz my uncle’s like six two, like they, like I have very tall Jewish men in my family, like randomly, so my husband’s like six one, but that’s like, I mean he’s like pretty tall.

I mean that’s like, you know, especially again, For like a lot of Jewish guys who are like, you know, no love them, love everyone at every height. But yeah, it’s like, it’s, it’s, I’ve generally seen ’em skew a little bit shorter, so yes, my husband’s taller than me six one. Okay. 

[00:19:42] Liz: That’s, that was a dumb and very personal question.

My husband and I, when I’m in kitten heels, which I don’t know if we wear kitten heels, I don’t wear, I live for kitten heels. Okay. You live, they’re so in. Okay. Yeah, they’re in right now. I know nothing. This, I’ve had this, I’ve had this black cardigan for 10 years. Got it. In San Francisco with Diane. Okay. So my husband is, [00:20:00] I think six feet tall.

He’s military, so he wears these real chunky boots and I’m always like, you keep the boots on just for the rest of the day. You don’t have to take your shoes off when you come in. We’ll all take our shoes off and you leave your shoes on. Cause it’s kind of fun to be shorter than somebody sometimes. Cuz then it’s rare.

I’m just, it’s rare that I’m, you know, not tall. 

[00:20:16] Michelle: The’re 12 people we’re, 12 people we’re striking we’re, yeah, exactly. But I like. Tall woman and short woman and everyone obviously we’re, there’s no bias. Again, if, if also, oh, please, please, Jews. I’m one of you. I’m, I’m cool with like anyone at Eddie Height, obviously, 

[00:20:31] Liz: you know, I’m not, I am a, but I’m a Jewish hanger on 

[00:20:35] Michelle: again, hang on.

Okay. That’s amazing. The, um, what I was gonna say about the, the like hardcores and the doing something so straight up before that’s, that’s also really important for us to talk about is that if I was occupying a body that was a hundred pounds over what doctors or whoever would tell me was my ideal body weight.

It creates an extreme sense of [00:21:00] urgency inside of you to lose weight. I mean, again, from societal pressures, maybe internal pressures because of how you’re feeling, similarly to when people are experiencing chronic illness. So my biggest concern for people when they’re seeing different practitioners is if you.

Like chronic pain or something, you’re gonna be willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of that chronic pain. So if you end up in the wrong or unsafe hands, you might be willing to do something and go far in something that’s not safe. Mm-hmm. . So I think that addressing the urgency in people, which is real and tangible, and they sh they are entitled to feel that urgency is really, really important.

So it could also have been why I, again, realizing the radical pressure from society was going to be on me. I was willing to do whatever it took, quote unquote, even if it was at my own expense to lose a hundred pounds. I was gonna do whatever it took. And again, it wasn’t my own expense. I do not recommend it.

But I think when people are in more discomfort or have more urgency, the likelihood that [00:22:00] they’re gonna do something more drastic is higher too. Yeah. And we have to acknowledge that. again, people are in different levels of privilege and understanding and everything with their bodies, and we have to understand that people who are at whatever societal disadvantage it might be or whatever physiological disadvantage might have that increased urgency too, so, mm-hmm.

you know, I know people who have really severe chronic illness definitely identify with this, but it’s like, you know, if for instance, I have a client who has lupus or something and they’re going out to dinner every single night and they know the food’s gonna be super inflammatory for them, they’re gonna have to be the person who sets hard boundaries around their friendships and what time they can go to dinner and where they go.

It’s not necessarily due to their personality. It’s just due to the fact that there is a legitimate need and urgency. So I think acknowledging where people are at also lets us know how far they’re willing to go and to be really careful if they’re willing to go very far too. Yeah. 

[00:22:53] Liz: Oh my gosh. So much, so much nuance.

So much context is involved. So much respect for the individual and [00:23:00] the, the internet just in general. Mm. Is not set up for that unfortunately. And the whole concept of, well, I mean maybe not though nicheing down like your niche is, is catered to these ideas of nuance and context around this type of thing.

I wanna acknowledge something you just said about privilege and this is where my limitations and this conversation pop up, I think, or I would probably assess myself to have for all of my life existed within a spectrum of weight and body composition, which is. Considered, quote unquote, acceptable by society, 

normal, 

[00:23:40] Michelle: acceptable, whatever the term is, normal, acceptable.

[00:23:42] Liz: It doesn’t mean I wasn’t really hard on myself, it doesn’t mean I hated myself. Course not parts of life. But I think there is a fundamental difference between existing in that quote unquote spectrum and saying, you know, I’ve been there. I’ve hated myself. I’ve done all these crazy things. And then being [00:24:00] in this other space where you have those same feelings but are potentially existing outside of what is considered acceptable.

And if anybody watches the office, I say this in my head all the time, Michael Scott, society sucks. I don’t even consider myself a part of society. Katie, that’s always playing in my head. Head when I think about that. He, he wasn’t a 

[00:24:20] Michelle: part of society, by the way, and he wasn’t. He actually wasn’t. 

[00:24:23] Liz: Yeah. So I feel like I need to acknowledge that, and that is a limitation to my.

Entry into this conversation. I’m very curious about the concepts of body positivity and body neutrality, but I also think, I can’t speak to them from the same perspective as many other people who are having this conversation publicly can. 

[00:24:44] Michelle: I think it’s important also that we don’t stratify everyone so much that only certain people can have conversations about their experience.

Yeah. I want everyone to be able to have exper conversations about their experience, but I think it’s totally fair for you to acknowledge [00:25:00] that and then also to say that you still wanna be able to support people. So you’re wanting to understand and curious to understand. Yeah, I have to, versus saying questions.

Mm-hmm. , it’s it’s questions and it’s learning and it’s understanding and you’ve also like seen clients and everyone’s experience like you’ve empathized with so many people’s exper experiences too, that you do have a voice in the game, I would say and And everyone wants to hear it too. So I just have to say that also because we can’t.

We have to listen to everyone’s perspective. But I will say what I’m seeing, and this is again, we’re already so much, so many levels deeper than the conversation we even wanted to have that we’re gonna have to eventually come back up by the way, and do like the high level conversation. But what I’m seeing in this All Foods fit group is a lot of like really thin women who have never occupied larger bodies.

And I’m like, that’s. . I’m not gonna judge a practitioner based on what they look like ever, but it does give me a moment of reflection where it’s, it’s like, it’s nice to hear you say that all foods fit, but if [00:26:00] my clients eat like the Oreos that you’re eating right now, they are gonna be like sick for a little a really long time.

So it’s like a lovely psychological idea that all foods fit, but in application it’s like, have you never like eaten gluten and then like literally been vomiting for 72 hours because like, yeah, then you don’t know my people , but like my people are people who are like, you know, their immune system has been, they’re overridden again, maybe it’s from stress, maybe it’s from gut issues, maybe it’s from trauma or whatever it is.

These are people who, you know, much like myself, have tried things, are willing to try things and are not seeing results. So just getting information. All foods can be eaten in moderation, to me is so flippant, dismissive and gas lighty. Especially coming from someone who’s never had the same experience they’ve had either with occupying a larger body or experience in chronic illness because both of those, you know again, is it someone is occupying a larger body and which may or may not be correlated, they’re having blood sugar [00:27:00] dysregulation issues like eating those Oreos in that one instance, sure it’s not gonna cause any sort of in long stream effects that cannot be repaired.

But if it makes them feel like crap for 24 hours, like that’s pretty substantial to me. Or if it’s leading them down a path of further insulin resistance, cuz that can be influenced by just one food we eat. Obviously I feel the ethical responsibility to give people very gentle but still. Informative nutrition education.

So again, we’re gonna talk about the real nuance of that. But I, I will say that it is startling how many people in the All foods fit crew. Cause I’m not really talking about health at every size or intuitive eating. I’m really talking about a th a, a kind of more militant division that is this All foods fit, which is just basically nutritionist eating garbage food and being like, you can have this too.

You also can have this, don’t restrict foods. And I’m like, that’s reductive and pretty stupid. I think [00:28:00] they’re not stupid, but the information’s unusable is what I 

[00:28:02] Liz: mean by that. The information is unusable. That is a, that is an excellent. Wow. That’s, that’s really good. One thing that I wanted to throw out there, and this is not a fully formed thought, but this idea that the Oreos, 

they’re not the solution. So it’s like, even if all foods did fit, would these Oreos be the solution to whatever it is that is holding you back? And I’m not saying weight is holding you back, but I’m saying inflammatory conditions, feeling really bad, having horrible sleep, and just in general knowing that you can live a life where you feel better in your body.

[00:28:38] Michelle: Mm-hmm. So that’s the important part. Yeah. The important part for me is that what I’m noticing in, in kind of every area of life right now is that there’s so much more acceptance of discomfort, but not tolerance of discomfort. So it’s like, and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. So acceptance in this [00:29:00] case means, oh, how about, I think I’m flipping it.

I think there’s more tolerance of dis discomfort and not, I mean, you could really use the words interchangeably. What I’m trying to say is yeah, explore it. People when they know they have chronic illness and they’re told there’s nothing you can do about it, you’re stuck like this. See you later. Lose hope and it’s not productive.

People feel that by coddling people and being like, this is just how it is. You have i b s, uh, which is like a cluster of symptoms. Like IBS isn’t a mm-hmm. a condition. IBS is a cluster of symptoms, right. That they classify as a condition. So I think when we tell people it’s normal to feel like this, and I see, we see all those pictures of people super bloated and being like, it’s normal.

It desensitizes people to extreme discomfort and pain that is not normal. Mm-hmm. , it’s not how our bodies are actually optimally functioning and it is possible to reverse and change these things. So I think that ex sometimes, you know, again, if someone has, I’m gonna just use the example of lupus. If someone has lupus, they [00:30:00] might ha very well have to live their lifestyle differently than other people, depending on what.

Health status is you need to do different things than other people might need to do. And that’s the reality. It’s not that everyone who has any health condition can do whatever they want because there’s consequences on a physical, mental level obviously. So I think that we need to accept where we’re at and then also accept where we’re going.

Mm-hmm. , I think tolerating discomfort is really important for healing of all kinds because that’s like the reparative process of our bodies is super uncomfortable. It’s not, it’s not like an awesome thing, but there’s a difference between tolerating it and, and then just stopping and saying, mm-hmm , hey, this is it and it sucks and I have to learn how to accept it or tolerating it.

Finding out how much you have to tolerate and then fighting like hell for your future. So there’s like a step one and a step two. I think that the internet is stuck on step, step one in ways of like, you know what? This is it. We’re all super sick and that’s how we’re it’s gonna be. I’m [00:31:00] like, but we weren’t like 50 years ago.

Mm-hmm. . So why is it now? It’s the same way when I got super sick in college and doctors are like, This is it. Now I’m like, lifestyle driven. Chronic illness is not a lifelong thing. If it’s lifestyle driven, you can un lifestyle it in most cases, right? Mm-hmm. . So I, I think that we need to know how much we have to accept and how much we can fight for.

[00:31:23] Liz: Okay. So the higher level conversation that you alluded to earlier, where, where does that start? Where does the higher level conversation start on this ? 

[00:31:32] Michelle: Yes, exactly. We jumped like to level four underneath, and we need to go all the way at the top. So right now, what I’m seeing in the nutrition world is a divide between people who are more, what we would consider a quote unquote diet culture.

Mm-hmm. , let’s say there’s three camps, functional dieticians who believe food and supplements and things can be healing. And then this all foods fit group, which is a, a kind of more. Aggressive version of health at [00:32:00] every size practitioners or the model of intuitive E the 10 steps of intuitive eating, would that 

[00:32:04] Liz: be where, like the expression, um, oh geez, everything is diet culture, would that kind of fit in that bracket?

[00:32:11] Michelle: Yes, I would say so. I, I mean, like, again, being anti-d diet culture, you know, it’s a larger group, but I really am supportive of body positivity and health. Every size practitioners for the most part. Mm-hmm. , it’s really like, there’s been a sectioning off, which is people of, that goes into the more all foods fit group mm-hmm.

which is kind of against intuitive eating anyway, because you wanna be eating things that also honor your body. So it’s, it’s not really what I think that intuitive eating gets a lot of. Like slack from diet culture people, cuz they’re like, if I intuitively ate, I would be eating Oreos all the time. Like that’s definitely not what intuitive eating is.

Like we need to be much more nuanced than that. So I’m taking the larger group of body positivity and I’m dividing it into maybe there’s intuitive eating and he and haze. And then there’s another group that’s kind of forming on its [00:33:00] own, which is the All Foods fit group, which is really about super reductive Instagram.

Things that are like, You know, dieticians shouldn’t be telling you what to eat. You have to eat things that’ll make you feel better. And what that group is, is really providing this psychological solution of heal your relationship with food and then your physical self will be better. Or they just believe you can’t make your physical self better at all.

Okay. Which is where I think functional nutrition should come in. 

[00:33:27] Liz: Mm-hmm. . Okay. And that’s obviously, that’s where, that’s where you sit. That is what you do with your clients and that’s what you’re doing with your online presence. And so I guess tell me, okay, maybe we can do like a little bit of a fictional client.

And I know there’s only so much that you can probably say because as soon as somebody falls into the bracket of the fictional client, they’re gonna be like, Michelle said , that I should 

[00:33:49] Michelle: do this. Exactly, yes. Nuance and context. That’s our game. Yeah. Our game is middle ground nuance and context for everyone.

[00:33:56] Liz: So I imagine that in, in your mind, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but there [00:34:00] would be a difference between someone who came to you in general good health, like the, the health at every size. Like, I’m feeling really good, but I feel like I might want to lose weight just based on whatever.

And you know, maybe there, I’m sure there are questions you ask that person, so maybe I’d like to talk about that person. And I’d also like to talk about that person that comes to you with i b s or some kind of disease that we have. A very good idea can be managed through dietary changes. So let’s start with the person that comes to you generally healthy, but feels like they might wanna lose weight.

What does that look 

[00:34:32] Michelle: like? I’m gonna, I’m gonna add a layer to that person. Okay. And I can definitely answer this without giving specific recommendations that’ll throw people off because Yes, like if you looked at my clients, I make battle plans now for my clients too. Yeah. If you looked at a battle plan between one client or another, it would be so vastly different.

I have never given the same recommendations twice, and I’ve seen over a thousand clients. It’s like everyone gets super customized recommendations. Mm-hmm. . So what I am seeing from a [00:35:00] trends standpoint is a lot of people are seeing like super ultra diet culturey, you know, practitioners. Hating that noticing they’re having an impaired relationship with food.

Heading over to a hazed practitioner, a health at every size practitioner, they’re saying, you can’t lose weight, you can’t make diet changes. And then they end up coming to me. Okay. So it’s usually people who have actually done both things, but when they. Did the diet culture stuff. Their relationship with food was all jacked up.

They did the health at every size practitioner, their physical body was jacked up, and then they come and we bring all the pieces of the puzzle together because I wanna help my clients maintain an excellent relationship with food. So if someone was coming to me and they wanted to lose weight, first. I would address again that urgency of wanting to lose weight.

Is that coming from a place of health? Is that coming from a place of fear? And if it’s coming from a place of fear, we’re not gonna respond to urgency with urgency. And what I mean by that is if a client comes to me and says, I have to lose weight, I’m not gonna be like, oh God, let’s get the weight off of you.

You know, that’s not how I’m gonna respond. We’re gonna be [00:36:00] really curious and explore and see what the reigning, what I would call like the reigning powerful voice in your head is, and I wanna know the different voices that are talking in someone’s head. Did you see the Pixar movie Inside Out where it’s like The Alone?

Yes. We’re definitely gonna talk about that. So cute. It’s so freaking cute. I’m a huge believer in Internal Family Systems, which is like loosely the psychological model that that’s based on. Mm-hmm. , which is that we have all these different protective and amazing voices in our head, and they’re trying to send us these messages.

Protection, even though sometimes they can come off really harsh in doing that. So I’m wanting to know, is that like your authentic self that wants to lose weight? Or is that coming from a place of fear? If it’s coming from a place of fear, that’s the work that needs to be done. If it’s coming from a place where they’re like, my relationship with food is excellent, I just wanna lose weight and I know that someone’s ready to lose weight when it feels like more of a data driven or health driven goal.

If it fe, you know, you can feel the heat when people are talking about things. And again. Mm-hmm. , if a client comes to me and says they wanna lose weight, I’m not telling them that they [00:37:00] don’t wanna lose weight and that they shouldn’t lose weight, because that would be me taking away their autonomy again.

And my whole goal is don’t listen to the diet culture. People don’t listen to health. Every size people listen to you, don’t listen to me, listen to you. And so a lot of the work we’re doing is finding out, are they ready to make those health change? And I use this example, which is that if we think of a knife, nutrition information, you know, we’ll, we’ll use a um, metaphor for a knife.

You can use a knife to like cut food or you can use a knife to harm another person or yourself, right? Nutrition information can be really profoundly helpful for people. It can also be a tool for self-harm, so you have to hear and know whether the person sitting in front of you is ready to receive that information.

Again, if I was talking to someone and said, Hey, you know, eating refined sugars, Influence your blood sugar negatively and like not in all cases. Sometimes people can tolerate it. By the way, for people listening, no alarms going off yet. Hold on. People can have different carb tolerances. , 

[00:37:59] Liz: we’re [00:38:00] gonna cut that part out.

That whole preface. We’re gonna cut it 

[00:38:01] Michelle: out. Exactly. It’s out. It’s done. Exactly. But point being, every person’s gonna hear what I just said differently. Yeah. So I wanna be really sure that the person I’m giving nutrition information to is ready to receive it. So that’s a lot of my initial consultation is I’m reading body language, I’m listening to the words that they’re saying, and I’m getting a really comprehensive health history.

I have clients who come to me and they wanna lose weight, and maybe the urgency from a health standpoint is not as high, but it’s more from a fear standpoint. We’re not talking about. For like six months. Mm. Oh wow. With their consent, obviously. Mm-hmm. , I’m not, I’m not withholding anything from my clients, but I, I ask, I mean, the word consent comes up in my sessions, like every five minutes.

I’m like, do, how would you feel? Are you comfortable? Would you consent to this? I wanna, I’m pl it’s like we’re playing back and forth with each other. Mm-hmm. , I’m noticing resistance. I’m stepping back when I feel it, and really just assessing where someone. The entire time. You know, it’s not uncommon for my sessions to include like laying on the floor and doing [00:39:00] meditation in the middle of a session.

Like sometimes we hit something, you know, this is, food is so personal, it’s never about food. It’s about who we are. Mm-hmm. . And again, we’re accessing these really important emotional and mindset features of ourselves. So it can be sticky. The answer is it’s gonna look different. One person, I might be able to give nutrition information in the first follow.

Another person, it might take a a much longer time, but what is going to happen in every session is addressing whatever the heck my client is feeling. And so why someone wants to lose weight, I wanna know, I wanna understand and would be curious and compassionate the whole way through. So that’s client one.

[00:39:33] Liz: Okay. Okay. So client two would be someone that came in was actually the sense of urgency is around, around health, around how they mm-hmm. Feel. Mm-hmm. And maybe their willingness is different. Maybe their whole calculus is probably a little bit different. So where do you start with that and how do you avoid when someone doesn’t come in with kind of the maybe diet culture or diet history?

Baggage. Somebody that comes in is like, I just need to feel better and I need to feel better now. How do you keep [00:40:00] that from sliding into orex? Does that make sense? 

[00:40:05] Michelle: It’s a, it makes total sense because what I do see now too is like, I am like obviously a fervent lover of functional nutrition and functional medicine.

I like, I’m like, oh, this is it. Like, I’ve always felt that way about naturopathic medicine too. I was like, oh, this is the thing. Like, I, I still feel that way, but what I’m seeing now, everything is so, there’s so many layers with everything with me, it’s annoying. So in the functional nutrition and medicine world, what I’m seeing now is patients coming in with chronic illness and they’re getting handed a piece of paper, here’s a SIBO protocol.

Mm-hmm. , here’s a, uh, an i b S protocol, whatever, you know, here’s low FOD map. Whatever the, the thing is, they’re getting a piece of paper with supplements and food on it. So if a person does not have a bad relationship with food, they absolutely can develop a bad relationship with food from getting a piece of paper that says what’s good and bad.

Mm-hmm. and these protocols. For me, that’s against the magic of functional nutrition and medicine, which is treating the person, not the symptoms and treating every single [00:41:00] person as a whole. Being as opposed to just trying to fix something in the body. Mm-hmm. . So when it comes to chronic illness, what I like to do with clients is like hit heavy hitters.

Again, if I have clients who are really have extreme gastric distress, I would say like, all right, if lifestyle-wise it’s very challenging for you to change the foods or it feels like there’s resistance or fear coming up around the foods. Can we explore a meditation we could do once a day? Can we explore a supplement?

We can include whatever. Like some clients, again, we’re doing supplements first. Some clients we’re doing food first. Some clients, it really depends on the person’s tolerance of change, what they want to see happen. And I wanna, you know, as much as I want to immediately eliminate symptoms in some cases, You know, there is symptom management that is needed with chronic illness, but my goal is to hit the root cause.

So clients come wanting symptom relief, but I know that they need to address their actual health and their actual lifestyle. So that’s why it takes so many [00:42:00] sessions to get there, cuz you need to really explore who you are as a person, not just what you’re eating or anything like that. So I would say my answer.

I would address symptoms with clients, and I’m not against like clients incorporating anything in western medicine. I’m integrative use whatever you have to do to get through life. And at the same time, I’m working on the long-term stuff too. So address the symptoms. Absolutely. But while you’re addressing the symptoms, you have to be addressing the root cause at the same time.

[00:42:25] Liz: Mm-hmm. , this is a little bit of a departure, but I’ll, I’ll bring it back around. Yeah. One of the things that I see after doing the internet practitioner thing for 10 plus years , is that it gets to a point where everybody doing good work, one-on-one with people, gets burnt out, ends up having to ski and, and I get this, I get this because I’ve done it.

I, I having to feel like you have to A, stop doing client work and b, encapsulate what you’re trying to do in a course or a, you know, whatever. Something that you can sell for a lot cheaper, but that also doesn’t have that [00:43:00] really personal. Touch that, that evaluative process when you find out where whether somebody is actually right for your program or course, , and that burnout with practitioners who are doing this amazing work one-on-one.

It kind of turns into what you were just saying, almost handing somebody a piece of paper, charging them 300 bucks for your course and basically handing them a piece of paper. There’s no way you can go through all of those layers. So I guess my question for you is, how do we keep people like you doing the client work, doing the one-on-one stuff so people can actually come through and hear their needs taken care of?

What’s, 

[00:43:36] Michelle: have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, I, I also mentor dieticians and I’m, I’m hosting a conference with my two functional RD besties, Jillian and Amanda, who are amazing, um, about really helping. Create a really safe client space that’s also safe for you, because , I know this is corny to say, but obviously a lot of dieticians are empaths and a lot of them, you know, have a lot of feeling and, [00:44:00] and these sessions, I mean, can be extremely, extremely draining Yeah.

In a positive way. Like you’re exchanging energy in these sessions and , you know, you’re in a session with someone. The fact that a practitioner sitting across from you is in and of itself a healing experience. Yes. You have mirror neurons fighting, firing off during that. I mean, quite literally what people don’t understand about you’re, when someone’s investing one-on-one time with you, you’re investing in the experience of knowing someone.

Mm-hmm. . So I, I actually have at this point about 20 clients who have been with me for over a hundred sessions. So they’ve been with me for like four years, some of them. And we start off working on one thing. But at this point, it’s just this really powerful relationship where you just know someone and that is more helpful than anything else.

I think. Yes. It, it, you know, it’s, it’s more important than what. Protocols. I know and I know ’em all, but it’s more important than that. So I would say that creating long-term relationships where you’re building on itself is really relaxing. I think for practitioners and what [00:45:00] can lead them to burnout and feel really exhausted is if you’re seeing someone for those initials which are heavy, like the puzzles that are going off in my head of putting all the pieces together of a person.

Mm-hmm. during initial consultation. I love initial consultations for this reason, cuz I’m like, all right, we’re going on a timeline back to like, were you breastfed? I have to learn 50 years in this hour and a half, or, you know, hour depending on the person. It’s so condensed and so important. But then what I think becomes really soothing and easy for practitioners is just showing up the same way to the rest of the sessions because you’re learning someone’s resistances and everything like that.

So my advice would. Trying to find a way to structure programs that people can work longer with clients, because I think that that becomes, I, I feel no burnout whatsoever in my work with clients because I feel like you, you create like a very parasympathetic relationship. Mm-hmm. , your nervous system is so in flow in those sessions, once you get to know someone that you [00:46:00] feel like you can deliver on a, on a very soothing, neurological level.

And I would also say that, , it’s really hard for dieticians to market functional dieticians specifically to market their services again, based on longer term commitments with people. Yeah. But I, I will not hand someone a plan and then they walk away, my minimum commitment’s three months and , I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with a client just for the, , very, very few clients I’ve worked with for just the three months.

So my, my answer would also be, if you’re in those online programs, don’t teach. The actual or protocol as much teach people how to advocate for themselves, how to access information for themselves and how to incorporate information. Mm-hmm. be much more focused on the utilization of the information than the information itself.

 So I would say my answer is give people the tools to heal themselves Let’s walk it back and if those programs are really walked back, people can use all the information in them forever.

[00:46:56] Liz: Oh, that’s really, really good. One of the things that you said [00:47:00] a moment ago about just this, this act of being known is so, so powerful and it’s why Well, one of the reasons I like to pay for massages is because, you know, at home when my husband gives me a massage massager, I feel like I owe him something after

I’m cutting that part out, by the way, it’s so freaking funny. Oh my God. But, but part of the reason I like to pay for. Body work. I like to pay a therapist. I like to pay a professional, which I know that’s not within reach for everyone, but I do like to do that because I feel like I don’t have, I, I’m very prone to feeling guilt around taking up people’s time.

So if it was, you know, I have a great network of friends that I can talk to about things. But it also gets back to that like, old Sex in the City episode where Carrie’s friends get really sick of her talking about big all the time and they’re like, you need to go see a therapist. Especially cuz 

[00:47:46] Michelle: it was big.

[00:47:47] Liz: Ugh. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I didn’t see the second movie, but I was glad that he died. 

[00:47:52] Michelle: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, there’s, it was really good timing for him to die. Also, by the way, publicly. 

[00:47:57] Liz: Yes, it was public. [00:48:00] Oh my God. Horrible. So I do like, I like that relationship. I like the idea of building a relationship with somebody in that way, and I, and I feel more comfortable when I’m actually paying for it, but to be able to sit there and feel like this time is mine and it’s time for me to be known and understood, it’s of such high value to me.

And at times, I don’t always like the word compliance, but I imagine that that is a very, very powerful and genuine way to affect compliance that may be under different circumstances would just kind of manifest as willpower as you were saying before. Like, well, I guess I gotta just power through this because I’m supposed to do it and because this is what I was told to do, versus like, I’m known, I’m understood, I’m empowered, and we’re doing this together.

[00:48:43] Michelle: It’s, yeah, there’s such a big difference between forcing yourself to do something and allowing yourself to inform you that you can do something, right? Mm-hmm. , there’s such a big difference. For me, this is like, you know, again, I. I like the, the higher level body positivity and functional [00:49:00] nutrition. I’m like, yes.

And then it’s when we get broken down into these different subgroups that I start getting concerned. Mm-hmm. , my, my concerns from functional nutritionist is, again, if someone is, you’re coming in and someone’s prescribing a protocol, it is really against the heart of functional nutrition, cuz the heart of functional nutrition is getting to the root of something, which means that you’re also allowing the body to do the work of healing itself.

Right? That’s the core of it. You’re facilitating the body’s ability to do that. If we try to take in information or take in supplements to fix a problem, it goes against that. So just being known by someone allows your neurological system to feel safe enough to take in that information or to be able to generate the information yourself.

I don’t believe that we have an education issue around nutrition as much as people think that’s the, I don’t think that’s the main driver. It’s not the deficit that we’re a dealer, it’s not a, it’s not the de the deficit is that people have outsourced their [00:50:00] power to diet companies and to food companies, and they believe that they are the ones protecting them.

And there’s only one person who can protect you and it’s yourself. Right. I mean, I guess like, you know, physic, I guess like, you know, that’s a at, at the core of health though, if you are not doing things for your health, no one else can do it for you. So we have really. For some reason, you know, and I know the reason it’s money.

Diet companies or food companies know our bodies better than we do. And there is not one person, not one doctor dietician, no one who knows your body better than you know your body. So if you let someone else into that beautiful insight of this puzzle of who you are in the terrain of your health and everything, that’s where the magic of healing starts to happen.

So again, handing someone a protocol that says, here, eat a low FODMAP diet for i B s has pretty much nothing to do with functional medicine in my book. That’s not functional nutrition or functional medicine, like learning about the history of someone’s health and life and then making tiny little [00:51:00] recommendations to support them based on exactly what their experience has been and move them an inch every session.

That’s what functional nutrition is, them moving themselves an inch every session hot damn. 

[00:51:15] Liz: That’s just so good. That’s so good. You are so, you are so good at encapsulating this. It’s absolutely amazing. And I actually feel like we’ve been on for like an hour. We could probably wrap it up right about there, but I have a really, um, important question Yes.

For you before we do that. Yeah. I see that you’re a Harry 

[00:51:30] Michelle: Potter fan. Crazy, insane. Harry Potter fan. Crazy. 

[00:51:33] Liz: Okay. So I’m reading the Harry Potter books to my seven year old right now. Oh, I love that so much. It’s been the most wonderful, I mean, I will remember it for the rest of my life. This experience of going through these books with her, they’re getting a little more, a little scarier, like a little more.

Um, you know, constant, I 

[00:51:51] Michelle: mean, there’s like, there’s like basically a, there’s like a genocide in like the seventh, basically. Oh, 

[00:51:55] Liz: awesome. Okay, cool. So I’m gonna reading a little bit slower, . [00:52:00] 

[00:52:00] Michelle: Exactly. I mean, it’s, it’s like pure blood crazy. It’s crazy stuff that’s gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah. She gotta, she gotta wait till she’s like 20.

Okay. So you’re gonna have to read very slow. It’s a page a year. I think that you’re gonna have to do, 

[00:52:10] Liz: we might be able to do that. I, there might be some bargain that could be made in there. I did have to buy her a gumball machine. Um, but that’s a whole lot. You have to, there are organic gumballs by the 

[00:52:19] Michelle: way.

We trying. The fifth is where things go. Weird. You gotta be careful. I have to gobble a fire. One particular bad thing happens, but then the fifth is like the second half of the series is the dark half is 

[00:52:31] Liz: Goble of Fire. The fourth one? Yeah. Goble Fire is the fourth. Okay. We’re in the fourth one right now.

The problem, so one of the problems, this is not a problem, I’ll get back to my original question, but the problem that we’re bumping up against right now is like I can, I’m a good reader. That’s kind of, that’s my jam. I can kind of modify the text. If I’m reading something and I’m like seeing something coming, I can kind of like change a couple words and sketch over it.

She’s not following along that closely. Yet so I can kind of make the books [00:53:00] Okay-ish and kind of, you know, modify the things that are gonna, you know, potentially give her nightmares since you read it at night. But her favorite thing to do is to read the book and then to watch the movie. So that’s where like, I can’t , I can’t modify the movie as much, or as well, although there is a service that you can, you can use on your computer, not on like big tv, but on your computer where you can actually like, select like different things that you want taken out of whatever movie you’re watching anyway, so, well, I’m, I have a lot of things I need to look out for in the future, but I’ll remember this process forever.

It’s been really fun. However, my question is, Michelle, why is it that, what is the nurse’s name? Is it Madame Palm Frey? 

[00:53:42] Michelle: Okay. Why is this? Yeah, 

[00:53:44] Liz: yeah, go ahead. I’m thinking it might be somebody else. I think it’s Palmford, but Okay. It doesn’t matter. Why is it that the nurse, that the nurse at Hogwarts can regrow bones?

Mm. But Harry Potter still has to wear these crappy glasses. Is this a 

[00:53:59] Michelle: [00:54:00] legitimate question? But his glasses, you can repair the glasses. Wait, can 

[00:54:04] Liz: we repair Harry Potter’s eyeballs, 

[00:54:07] Michelle: you mean? Oh, you mean like vision? Yes, we can. What row bones? I mean, what are we talking about here? I mean, this is, you know, I mean this is the, the thing is that if we also, if we made these questions about literally any part of Harry Potter, you’re gonna be in big trouble.

My answer too is, and I’m 

[00:54:26] Liz: in big trouble 

[00:54:26] Michelle: right now, ex, I’m my. Thing to you is focus on the love of the story, , focus on the loyalty and focus on nothing else. You can’t do, don’t overthink it. I mean, like, you can’t play this game with like back to the future either. Like I could say like the, the hundreds of thousands of inconsistencies and huge, huge Back to the future fan too.

That’s a fan. Yes. Um, you can’t, you’re playing the wrong game. The game with Harry Potter is feeling and experiencing the magic. Don’t get lost in the details because uh, you know, let’s, we can parlay this back into our conversation, which is that it’s not about [00:55:00] the words of the book, it’s not about the protocol, it’s about how it makes you feel underneath.

And that’s where the magic of Harry Potter is, is you’re so context of the relationships between these characters and how much they love, oh God, I’m literally crying. and how much they, how much they love each other. I almost got, it’s so funny cuz this is related to this conversation too, is that Dumbledor has this quote that’s like, it’s not our abilities to define who we are, it is our choices.

Mm-hmm. and I almost got like the word choice tattooed to me. During my hardcore time to be like, you gotta make good choices every day. And I’m like, so glad I didn’t because I, I don’t actually believe that. I believe it’s like our, our soul that dictates all of these things. So my answer to is, you know, lean into the soul of the book.

Okay. And less about the details, cuz you’re gonna get into trouble in that way. Okay. Yeah. It doesn’t make, it doesn’t make sense cuz it’s a magical world, but I’m not wrong. No, sure. I mean, of course you’re not wrong . Exactly. But okay. But let yourself be wrong and then just feel it’s, it’s a very feeling book.

[00:55:56] Liz: Okay. I’ll feel Now what do you, how do you feel [00:56:00] about whether the movies did justice 

[00:56:01] Michelle: to the books? Okay. This is an extremely important question. Okay. More important than anything else we talked about. Absolutely. You know, people’s health or, you know, happiness, please. It’s Harry Potter. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Um, . So I, my order for the movies and ways of appreciation is different than my order for the books. So my movie orders is two, one. 5, 2, 5. One part one of seven, six, I guess three. Part two, part seven and six. Cuz here’s my problem with part six. Part the, the movie, six would of eight. They literally create scenes that didn’t happen in the book.

And I am definitely Harry Potter purist, where I’m like, it’s gotta be like you can take stuff out cuz the books are really long. Sure. But you can’t make up entire scenes. I agree. And there’s a scene at the Borough that is like so [00:57:00] insane that never happened in the books. And I’m like, you can’t just make stuff up.

I felt that the sixth, by the way, I, what I used to do for all the Harry Potter movies was I, I would dress up and then would buy the tickets three months in advance every summer. They always came out in summer and I would wait online with my cousin and my sister for 14 hours in the blazing hot sun.

Like sometimes it was on my birthday. My birthday is July 9th. Like we would literally sit for 14 hours to say we were the first people in New York to see Harry Potter. We were the first people in the theater. . We also. Like, uh, the people in li it was very magical though, cause people would be like, we would like sing like the theme song in line.

I was like drawing lightning rods with eyeliner on people’s head. Like, it was definitely like, extremely fun. But we did it. I, I remember like after eight hours of being outside, then you could go upstairs inside the theater and it was like air conditioned, but then you still had eight hours cuz you could start lining up at like 9:00 AM or something.

So you’re like there until 12. But I would say that the sixth movie, there was reporters always outside cuz in New York they would also show the movie. Time zone wise, it would be like, actually the first viewing in [00:58:00] the world is like this 10:00 PM ish viewing. So there would be reporters outside asking people how they liked the movie.

And we came out of the sixth movie and we’re like, we’re never seeing Harry Potter again. Like, we’re So, did you make it on them? Did they use the clip? They didn’t use the clip. Cause of course not. I do have videos of my sister on the train and I was like, you look so deranged. I’m so glad that wasn’t on the news.

I would’ve like lost my career. Like it was so insane. So point being, I have an extreme distaste for the sixth movie and an extreme love for the fifth because I love the fifth cuz it’s like Dumbledore’s army and all the love and togetherness and I’m, I’m like very obsessed with loyalty and like soul and intensity.

Mm-hmm. . And the fifth is really the, for me, like actually the most magical because it’s all them banding. 

[00:58:42] Liz: Okay. I’m sorry. I have one more question for you. Are you good for one more minute? Okay. I’m more than good. Okay. Dumble Door, and I forgot the actor, but dumb. The first actor that played Dumble, Richard Harris, he passed and then they brought in a new Dumble door

I feel very strongly that the first Dumble door was the perfect dumble door for those movies. You 

[00:58:59] Michelle: [00:59:00] couldn’t, you feel differently. You couldn’t have nailed it more. No, I do not feel differently. He doesn’t play the 

[00:59:05] Liz: second one doesn’t play it 

[00:59:05] Michelle: right in the goblet of fire, he runs into the room where Harry is and he’s like, Harry, did you put your name in that cup?

And he’s like shaking him and it’s like, sir, Dumble door would never, like, you’re not getting the whole thing is that he’s extremely even-tempered and calm and like Yes, makes everyone feel safe with his wisdom and logic. And he’s quirky and we love him for it, but like his evenness is what makes him so dumble dory.

It’s like his wisdom. That’s like the whole thing. And he is like, shake, how did you put our name in that cup? We. Please calm down. Like you have to get, you have to back up and get away from us. Yeah. No, it’s not, it’s not even a question. No remote hate to the actor because anyone in our world, I mean, the Harry Potter world is very important to me.

But yeah, we gotta give it to Richard Harris. We gotta give it to Richard Harris. Oh 

[00:59:50] Liz: my gosh. Okay. Well, and I think my, my seven-year-old noticed it too. She was like, I don’t feel like dumb. Like, I don’t feel like that’s how Dumble door would. She was like, is dumb. 

[00:59:57] Michelle: She was like, is Dumble door okay? ? [01:00:00] 

[01:00:01] Liz: You’re like, no, you can’t remember what she said.

I was like, I don’t know how to break this to her, that there’s two dumble doors and one of them, one of them is dead. I don’t know, like, how do I explain 

[01:00:09] Michelle: this? Well, I mean, she’s really not gonna. You can, you can kind of start that because she’s really not gonna like, obviously as how the series progresses.

Yes. And 

[01:00:18] Liz: sometimes we have to use, , I have to actually explain to her she, this is a whole other tangent, but there are times she, , she loves dinosaurs. So we did Jurassic Park and there are times where I had to kind of turn it down and be like, no, this is just a movie. And all of these people are just running around pretending there’s dinosaurs everywhere.

And isn’t that funny? , you know, you have to kind of couch it in a way that she can kind of detach from, from the, the intensity of it. So this might be one 

[01:00:41] Michelle: of those, well, Hyde Potter’s super, super intense. I found like, I feel like seven is probably. Young for the later ones. Yeah. But she also might not understand some of the really dark stuff that’s going on, which is an advantage 

[01:00:55] Liz: I feel.

Well, maybe I’ll read, read it ahead of time and kind of, you know, [01:01:00] mark out the parts that we’re gonna 

[01:01:00] Michelle: skip. Have you read all the books before or 

[01:01:02] Liz: is this your first one? No, no, I never did. And actually the only reason we started, I’m still glad I didn’t say spoiler. Okay, good. No, you can say, I’ve actually looked up a couple of things and it’s like, for example, I’m sorry, turn it off.

If nobody has, if you haven’t 

[01:01:14] Michelle: read Harry Potter and you Yeah, please. No spoilers. Oh my God. I would hate to take that away from someone. Yeah. Yeah. That’s why his 

[01:01:19] Liz: Harry Potters the, ugh. I don’t know how to, okay. Hmm. Just, just skip forward 15 seconds. Ready? 1, 2, 3. I was really sad to hear that Sirius Black doesn’t.

Because we just finished the third book and I was, and then he had to disappear. And I was sad that he’s not 

[01:01:38] Michelle: gonna, it’s excruciating. And for most people, the hardest Harry Potter loss for a lot of reasons. Because for the first time Harry had like a sense of family. Yes. And it was a savage mood Move on.

JK Rowling move, I’ll tell you that JK Rowling has said in interviews that she wanted to actually make that Fred Weasley, and she tried to literally kill, [01:02:00] um, no, Arthur Weasley. Sorry, dad. Arthur Weasley. She tried to write like when he’s attacked and he gets it. This is all spoiler. Don’t listen, don’t listen.

Arthur Weasley, keep going. She tried to write Arthur Wesley’s death, and then she like literally put her pen to paper and like, couldn’t do it. She was like, I, I just, I like literally can’t do it. So the goal was for you to know, just for your reference too. Was that she did ultimately make a decision that she was going to , as part of Harry’s growth and struggle was that she was going to cut off all father figures from him. Okay. That was important for his like, storyline is that he like didn’t have those people, which sung.

Oh. But yeah, exactly. So Sirius, you should feel violent pain when he Okay. You know what happens to him? Yeah. I mean, I’m 

[01:02:48] Liz: never ready for it. Okay. 

[01:02:49] Michelle: Okay. Well, in the, you’ll never be okay again. The whole fifth movie, you’ll never be okay again. I’ve. Actually when the movie also is another crazy thing. So I got the movie on bootleg, like [01:03:00] right after it came out in theaters.

But it was so like not a thing then to do that. That there was literally no screen. It was just a black screen and it was just the voices. 

[01:03:09] Liz: Oh my God. That’s like Seinfeld level stuff. The boot legging of the Harry Potter movie. That’s really 

[01:03:14] Michelle: funny because I couldn’t, I saw it on theaters like 10 times, but it wasn’t enough.

Like obsessed. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:03:19] Liz: I feel that, I feel that, uh, I would really love to have you on again at some point in the future and we can just like really dive into this. I can ask all the Harry Potter. 

[01:03:26] Michelle: The Harry Potter. We can make I, if you want, we could also make references to the nutrition and coaching that I do, cuz if you can believe it, it’s embedded in the work that I’m doing.

Yes, there’s a lot of Harry Potter quotes that are re relevant to the work that we do. Yes, 

[01:03:38] Liz: absolutely. Okay. That’s very good to know. . Okay. Michelle Shapiro, you’re so awesome. I’m so happy that we were able to do this today and I hope you’ll come on again and tell everybody where 

[01:03:49] Michelle: to find you. First of all, thank you so much for having me on.

You’re like one of my favorite friends I made this year. I’m so grateful and honored that you have me on your podcast. Likewise, you can find me on [01:04:00] Instagram at michelle shapiro rd. My website michelle shapiro rd.com. Um, if you are interested in that anxiety, The anxiety proof program. Um, it’s getting anxiety proof.com/join, and I just hired a new dietician in my practice who now is working with clients exactly like I do in the same way I’ve been training her for a year.

Nikki, she’s amazing. So if clients want a more accessible and affordable option to work with someone one-on-one in the long term, they have Nikki now too. 

[01:04:25] Liz: Love it. Thank you so much, friend. We’ll talk to you soon. [01:04:27] Michelle: Woo-hoo.

[00:00:00] Michelle: I never wear the headphones cuz I’m bad. 

[00:00:01] Liz: So I don’t wear the headphones.

No, I don’t either. I hate ’em. I 

[00:00:04] Michelle: I have honestly, you also have like, your hair is obviously a thing. Like you have amazing hair. I don’t want it to screw up my 

[00:00:09] Liz: hair. Like you, you have amazing hair. I noticed 

[00:00:12] Michelle: that about you. I also noticed it about you. Besides your gorgeousness your hair is a thing.

How could we ever put headphones on these things? Like 

[00:00:18] Liz: please, it’s a terrible idea. Don’t do it. Well, I have, I actually, it has to be from this. So this is the angle I do everything from. I don’t know why, it’s just not the 

[00:00:27] Michelle: same. You know what’s so funny? I can’t do anything on this side. So your hair side is not actually your side.

That’s very interesting. It leaves this side. Wow. Because you also have an amazing facial structure that you need the world to see as 

[00:00:41] Liz: well. I see what’s going on. No, I’m just tilted the correct direction. That’s, 

[00:00:44] Michelle: and on the other way, I’m like, how are we doing, Liz? That’s, how are 

[00:00:47] Liz: things going? Exactly. Well, if we were in person, then it would be perfect for like a little, you know, a photo.

Right? Because we would 

[00:00:52] Michelle: have. It would be exactly right. It would work right. I could either be in the center or on that side and you, we gotta get together for a photo now. , you 

[00:00:59] Liz: look amazing. [00:01:00] It’s settled. It’s settled, it’s done. Done. Yes. We’re technically recording right now, which as long as that’s okay with you, we can just 

[00:01:06] Michelle: like talk.

I am very, as you know by now, I’m very open talking about literally anything at any time. It could be on the podcast even. I’d be very happy. I’m so happy. Liz has amazing hair and facial structure. There you go. 

[00:01:17] Liz: Put that right on. Michelle has amazing hair and facial structure and wing a eyeliner. She’s gonna have to do a tutorial.

Have you done a tutorial? A lot of people have been asking you how you do your eyeliner, . 

[00:01:26] Michelle: That’s what we’re here to talk about today. How to do the wing eyeliner. It’s don’t do it in any sort of accurate or even way and just do it. That’s that’s the way I would recommend. Yeah. Don’t, don’t make it look nice in any way.

Just throw it 

[00:01:38] Liz: on your head and see what happens. I’ve like put tape right there. I’ve put business cards right there and tried to wing it out. It just 

[00:01:44] Michelle: doesn’t work. Yeah. It’s a, you know, I’ve also, this has been my signature since I was like, 16. So I, I do have like a thing where even if I get my makeup done, I’m like, I’m gonna have to do it.

You don’t, it’s like a feel, you know? Yes. 

[00:01:57] Liz: Yes, I did my own wedding makeup. No, you [00:02:00] didn’t. That’s amazing. I did, I did. I had, well, that’s a whole story and I can’t tell it because I don’t know if my old wedding hairdresser listens to the podcast. She probably doesn’t, but that would be one for Off the Air, that whole story.

[00:02:12] Michelle: That was, that was okay. Well, we’re gonna have to hang on after. 

[00:02:14] Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Out the hair . Um, okay, so one thing about this, I don’t know when this is gonna air because I have, technically now I have two, I don’t have two podcasts, but I’m about to have two podcasts 

Um, I would like for you to be on all the episodes. 

[00:02:27] Michelle: So every 

episode 

[00:02:28] Liz: from now on, that’s it. Every episode going forward, you’ll be the co-host. Wait, so you, you’re starting a podcast I wanna hear. Yes. 

[00:02:36] Michelle: Tell me about it. It’s called Quiet the Diet, and it’s basically to help people like access their inner voice, that they cannot listen to anything anyone else tells them, and it’s just about bodily autonomy and helping people to learn about their own authenticity around their health.

So I’m, I’m doing some solo episodes. Then I’m also bringing on some just guests in functional medicine or nutrition who are really focused on distinctly how to access your own voice and just other like, [00:03:00] cool functional medicine and nutrition topics. 

[00:03:02] Liz: I love that. Okay. Well, maybe you should tell me really quickly how all of this, I know what you’re doing now.

Well, I don’t know everything you’re doing, but I’ve been following you on Instagram and just obsessed with everything you’re doing, the way you articulate all your thoughts around that kind of, that spectrum, that continuum of dietary approaches, especially around issues like body neutrality and what do you call it?

Do you call it loving, loving or thoughtful weight? 

[00:03:26] Michelle: Yeah. Approaching 

[00:03:27] Liz: your weight lovingly. Approaching your weight lovingly. Yeah. I also wanna hear what, what got you to that point, because right now I feel like, at least in, in my my frame of reference, like, I, I joke with my husband about, about this all the time, cuz he’ll send me stuff on Instagram and I’m like, wow, your Instagram looks very different from my Instagram.

Like, he’s seeing catme, the algorithm, you know, stupid, I don’t know, just stupid stuff. And everything that I’m seeing sort of over the last year or so has become centered around body positivity or body [00:04:00] neutrality, or there are no bad foods, that type of thing. So 

[00:04:02] Michelle: all foods fit kind of Yes. Wording. Yes.

Let’s call 

[00:04:05] Liz: it, yes. All foods. So tell me, just tell me whatever you wanna tell. 

[00:04:09] Michelle: Absolutely. Do you want me to also give you a personal kind of health journey to tell you where Yeah. So I’ll take you through that and we’ll parlay it into the professional and, and kind of where Perfect. We’ve all ended up what I would call you and I in the middle ground.

Yes. And how we live in that middle ground. So I grew up in Queens, New York, like super diverse neighborhood, and I always occupied a larger body from the age of like five to 18 around for me growing up in Queens, which. Diverse place of thought, body, gender, race. Um, I never really was that concerned about my body size.

Of course, I do feel it was prohibitive for me in some ways, which we’ll explore absolutely on this podcast, but it wasn’t a huge deterrent for me to be, you know, successful in school, have amazing friends, and all the things that I wanted to do in life. I was like class clown in my high school. Like crowning achievement of my life.

Honestly, there [00:05:00] was 5,000 students in my high school. It’s kind of a thing. 

[00:05:01] Liz: Okay. Oh, that is, that’s a big achievement. There were, I had a big high school, but it was like 500 and I was nowhere near the funding class. High school. 

[00:05:09] Michelle: 500. 500 

[00:05:10] Liz: might, my middle school was a hundred. Wow. And I was class clown of the middle, not class clown, but I definitely was on the top of some, some piles 

[00:05:19] Michelle: in the middle.

I mean, if we, ranking wise, it’s the number one spot. It doesn’t matter how many people are there, it’s, I’m giving you exactly the same credit. It does. There’s no exponential damage here because it was one, you know, times 10. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I grew up in Queens again. So just your exposure to amounts of humans is so high that I feel like your judgment is lower, which is like the beauty, obviously of New York City.

I also grew up in a neighborhood which is determined as the most diverse place in the entire world. And you know, near flushing in Queens. Really fantastic. So again, when I was going away to school, I was going to the University of Delaware and I was like, Hmm, this is not going to be like my experience growing up.

I’m going to like a much more [00:06:00] homogenous place. It was like a reverse culture shock almost. And I don’t think people there are gonna know, I’m Michelle Shapiro, I’m cool, I, you know, I, I’m great. All these things about me, whatever. Like, I’m sure like people from high school would not say those things. I’m sure, you know, uh, whatever, you know, joking.

But not to basically when I’m going to school, I’m thinking though, like I kind of have to look away because people are gonna judge me on first impressions. And I’m aware that society is not New York City society looks different in other places, in suburban places, and this is gonna be a much more homogenous environment.

So I went on, and I’m issuing a trigger warning here because I do not recommend this at all. A very drastic weight loss journey before going to school. I, I mean, I was eating very, very little on a vegan diet. Super restrictive, absolutely disordered, and lost about a hundred pounds in a three to four month period before I went to school.

And when I went to school, I was very validated for my weight loss and very validated and could tell even, you know, the minutiae of people’s weight. There was a lot more judgment around it. And, and you [00:07:00] know, also growing up, obviously we’re talking about 10, 15 years ago, the whole idea of weight and body positivity was already so much different then.

Um, and Delaware’s known for like a huge Greek life sorority stuff. I, of course, like am from New York and would never have like joined a sorority, sorry, other people from New York City, like kind 

[00:07:16] Liz: of get that. I was a Cayo Omega, 

[00:07:18] Michelle: but it’s fine. Exactly. Oh, all my roommates were too. And yeah, it’s, it was a thing at Delaware and my, my sophomore year roommates and I loved them, but I definitely saw in that world, There was a lot of weight judgment.

And I know one of, one of my roommates, oh my God, don’t listen to this. I love her. I love her, I love her. But one of my roommates at the time had experienced weight judgment, and I would classify her as having a normal quote unquote, normal. She was normal sized in societal standards for sure. Um, and so I was like, oh, wow.

I still was probably bigger than her then. And, and thank goodness people were not even cruel to me because it was, it was just a very rough social picture, which by the way, like, I can’t tell you how much [00:08:00] I disagree with this, but I, I was aware and had the foresight to know that I was gonna run into some issues if I didn’t.

So from that weight loss, I actually. , I mean the health issues that came up from that weight loss were drastic. And I had a hypothyroidism, I had really bad reflux. I had all these symptoms and doctors were basically like, you know what? You should lose a little more weight. If anything, that’d be great. And, and of course it was the fact that my body had been thrown out of this homeostasis.

When you starve your body, there’s gonna be a reaction cause your body’s trying to save your life. So I really didn’t put these pieces together, that weight loss was an issue until I was going through my dietetics degree. And I started looking around and seeing what other dieticians or you know, soon to be dieticians were eating.

And I was like, these people are eating a lot more than me. I’m like noticing that. And it was really helpful for that reason. But you know, the dietetics degree then also was centered more around clinical nutrition and there was definitely a calorie and macro aspect to it. May or may not have been helpful for people at the time.

And you know, we can talk about that too. [00:09:00] Yeah. So after I graduated college, my panic attacks had gotten so bad towards the end of my college experience that I was like, I at some point said, I need to like handle this because I cannot live like this. And I never really had anxiety before I lost weight.

And now doctors are telling me, you have an anxiety disorder, you have a thyroid disorder, take these medications. And I was like, but I didn’t have them a year ago, so now I just have them forever. I don’t, my brain doesn’t work like that. So I basically made myself a, what I call like a battle plan, which is I, I said, what lifestyle supplement, nutrition, hydration recommendations can I give myself to reverse my anxiety and my health issues?

And then enacted it? And it helped a lot. And then I ended up seeking the help of a naturopathic position who really took me back from the physical and mental issues and the damage that came from the weight loss. Since then, I’ve been very committed to having my clients not lose weight the wrong way so that they don’t have to do the cellular cleanup after basically mm-hmm.

Cause I know weight loss is touted in our society, is something that’s so positive, but you release toxins from your cells, your fat [00:10:00] cells, when you lose weight, you can throw your body out of homeostasis and it can have really strong potential damages and there are ways to mitigate those risks. And I just don’t want my clients to go through the pain that I went through for no reason.

Yeah. There’s, there’s good ways that we can approach these things now and, and a lot of that is the mindset work around losing weight 

[00:10:18] Liz: too. . Mm-hmm. What one of the things that I’m learning about right now in a course that I’m taking is actually the actual physical. You’ve got all of these things that happen when you lose weight.

We also have your actual tissues, your fat cells. When they release fat, their actual structure kind of goes into stress mode and can become more, I don’t know what the words are right now. I need to go back through all of this, this course material that I’m taking, but can become, more rigid and it becomes actually kind of like this desperate attempt to like refill that structure.

I don’t know if any of that sounds, plausible to 

[00:10:50] Michelle: you, . Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, again, and it’s the same I, if something’s happening on a macro level in our body, it’s also happening on a micro level in our body. [00:11:00] Mm-hmm. , our body’s always trying to maintain. Homeostasis on some level or another.

Right. As in balance, if like, let’s take, take the word homeostasis and replace it with balance our body. Even if our state of balance is sickness, our body will try to defend sickness in some ways. Mm-hmm. , if our state of balance is a weight that’s a hundred pounds higher than what we feel is right for our bodies.

Cause I don’t really like love the B standards as a, you know. Right. Uh, as a standard, I guess I would say it will still defend that, that higher weight because it feels that where you’re. Is the survival level, essentially. Yeah. So that would make sense on a cellular level that it’s also defending, which is really interesting and powerful.

[00:11:38] Liz: I mean, everything is an adaptation, right? Like you, you get to a certain place and your body makes a a million little adjustments to keep you as safe as possible in the place that you are. And so, like you said, any, it’s all a stressor. Any, any kind of change that you wanna make, mental, emotional, physiological, biological, you have to deal.

You have to deal with what actually happens. And you know, to that point, which I think we’ll [00:12:00] talk about today, you know, why you’re undertaking a dramatic change like that, or maybe not dramatic, why you’re undertaking a lifestyle change and what mental, emotional, psychological aspects need to be put in place as a safeguard against obsessive behavior, orthorexia, all of that stuff.

So I think I definitely wanna tackle that. I’m curious though, did you choose to become a dietician because of this journey that you 

[00:12:25] Michelle: were on? It’s such a good question. So this is a fact that you’re gonna know, but. I went to become a dietician cuz I wanted to learn the secrets of weight loss. Mm-hmm. , I wanted to know what can I do to op to optimize this thing and go further into my disordered eating.

Dieticians do, on average have a, a disproportionate level of eating disorders compared to other careers. So it is, it can, we can be pursuing something for the, for me it was pursuing it for the wrong reason, but ended up in the right place, which is really good. And for me it definitely was. I knew I would always be in some sort of service career, but [00:13:00] I actually went into my undergrad the first semester and was a marketing major and then I was like, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna do this thing and then went into nutrition.

Cause you, you really, dietician school is very like, uh, structured. So you really can’t just like transfer in the second year. You’re gonna have to add on two more years basically. So I was, I, I switched in and that was my goal initially and within the first semester I was like, oh. Look at what everyone else is eating.

Look at the, you know, I really, I really learned about my undereating during that time, which I found to be very helpful versus other parts of the curriculum that I don’t now reflect on as being as helpful. I did notice that, and again, even knowing this statistic about dieticians, it doesn’t, I don’t wanna dissuade anyone from going to a dietician, but it is, it is a true and interesting thing that we pursue things sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons.

[00:13:48] Liz: Oh, I think so many of us can resonate with that. I mean, I ended up where I am now, after years upon years of completely whack, whacked out, disordered ridiculous [00:14:00] eating of every kind. And I’ve never, I’m not a oof, I don’t know what the word would be. I don’t. Uh, I am not attracted to consistency . It’s not, you know, my strong suit.

I sort of do things in spurts. I wrote a book in a spurt. Um, so I never, you know, maybe to, maybe this is fortunate, but I never actually stayed anywhere long enough, I think, to really destroy myself. I would try one thing and then I’d kind of go back. So it was kind of this yo-yo thing, but it was never like super drastic.

It was like two weeks here, you know, a year there. And I feel like I never really, really, Lost a ton of weight or put on a ton of muscle and maybe, maybe I’m lucky in that way cuz I feel like I’m actually in a fairly good state of health now approaching 40. Woohoo. Yeah, that’s just 

[00:14:49] Michelle: awesome. I actually so excited.

Truly wouldn’t have known that. And I don’t really think there’s any, like, people should look their age and it’s completely fine. But like you legitimately look a lot younger than your [00:15:00] age. That’s very amazing. Even though you’re a young age, 40 is very young still, obviously, 

[00:15:03] Liz: I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a filter on Instagram called the Paris Face.

You swipe once, you know once and zoom, you can kind of blur yourself out a little bit too. So I’m not saying you don’t 

need 

[00:15:12] Michelle: to be blurred . I was gonna say we’re not on Instagram and I’m looking at you and you look good. 

[00:15:16] Liz: Okay. That’s all good. Well, you can do it on Zoom too. I just, you might, I don’t know if you want that for future information, but I think I have it mirrored 

[00:15:23] Michelle: at least.

But you know what I, yes. What you said is really interesting to me because this is actually something that I’ve never really explored on a podcast before. I think my worst disadvantage was the fact that I am a very hardcore person. Mm-hmm. . So I was like, Hey, I’m gonna be vegan. It was almost like a gag for me to be vegan.

In the beginning it was like my sister was vegan. I was like, I can do that more than you like for fun. like, I don’t know. And then it turned into like so much of my identity and I was vegan for over 10 years. But I can’t even tell you the scientific basis for it at the time because it was more just like if I say I’m gonna do something, I am gonna do something [00:16:00] regardless of, you know, the potential negative outcomes.

I’m much less like that now. I think I was much more fervent when I was younger. But I do think it was an advantage to your body, and maybe it was because you were listening to your body without even realizing and picking up on subconscious cues, maybe where I was overriding my body’s needs with.

Willpower or quote unquote, or whatever that is where, right. I never want my clients to do that. I never want people to use willpower over intuition. You know? That’s definitely something I wanna avoid. And I would say that, yes, I think your personality type favored you, or maybe your body just spoke to you and you 

[00:16:32] Liz: listened, pat.

I think that’s probably a very generous assessment. Mostly I think I just like pasta and Chinese food and whatnot. And you know, it becomes this thing where, yeah, I realized eventually where it was like if I’m saying, no, no, no, I’m not supposed to do that, and this goes to the mental part of everything.

Yeah, I’m not supposed to do that. No, no, no. Then all of a sudden it’s like, blah, I did it and now you know, everything’s shot and now I’m going to eat. You know, anything that I feel like I’m not supposed to eat, whether I want it or not. And it’s a very interesting psychological thing because I would be eating something and [00:17:00] I’d be like, I don’t even want this.

Mm-hmm. And yet I would be eating it because some kind of back and forth psychological emotional thing and you know, I would do that. And then, And then kind of pull back. But what’s, what’s interesting, and maybe we can talk about this, is eventually I was like, I kind of dipped my toe in that idea of not that there’s no bad foods, because I actually do believe that some things make me feel terrible and those things are things I don’t wanna eat anymore or I wanna limit as much as possible.

But shifting my mindset to say, eat what you want. Like this is your life. You do what you wanna do, and stop listening to all this outside input. For some reason, for me personally, that took some of the strife out. Some of that just obsessive trying to, trying to hold onto a bar of soap in the shower where you’re just like, and it just keeps popping out of your hands.

So that was really helpful to me. But interest something. That kind of sang to me when you were talking a little bit earlier about your personality and about how you learned all of these [00:18:00] lessons in such a short period of time. I mean, you’re talking about you went to college, you lost a hundred pounds, you know, you were doing all of this, became a dietician, and now professionally you’re doing something entirely different than what you set out to do.

I mean, that’s, you were on like warp speed there because it takes people a lot longer to learn those things. I think. Well, it takes a lot of people a lot longer to learn those things. So maybe that kind of, you know, warp speed personality that you have is, or you know, that really go hard. Go Baker home in New York, and this I love.

I love New Yorkers. My cousin lives in New York. My dad used to live in New York. I just, I feel like I’m maybe polar opposite. I’m not sure, but I definitely have a little part of me that wants to be, I don’t think you’re polar 

[00:18:41] Michelle: opposite. . You fit. Great. Come on down. You’d fit in. Come on 

[00:18:44] Liz: down. Okay. I’d be, the buildings are so tall, I would just feel like they 

[00:18:48] Michelle: are, I’m tall.

It helps. I think that’s, how tall are you? I’m five nine. Five 10. Oh, I was gonna say, you look super tall. That’s an amazing thing. I love tall people, 

[00:18:57] Liz: so amazing. You know what, it’s, I, [00:19:00] I don’t know. You’re, you’re married, right? Yeah. Okay. Is your husband taller than you? 

[00:19:04] Michelle: Yes. And you know what’s, I mean, this is like a, this is like a totally crazy thing to say on a public forum.

Doesn’t matter that my, so I’m Jewish and my. Jewish and he’s six foot five and he’s for like Jewish guys who like skew a little bit shorter sometimes. Mm-hmm. , I, my like opinion of Jewish men was always that they were like super tall and cuz my uncle’s like six two, like they, like I have very tall Jewish men in my family, like randomly, so my husband’s like six one, but that’s like, I mean he’s like pretty tall.

I mean that’s like, you know, especially again, For like a lot of Jewish guys who are like, you know, no love them, love everyone at every height. But yeah, it’s like, it’s, it’s, I’ve generally seen ’em skew a little bit shorter, so yes, my husband’s taller than me six one. Okay. 

[00:19:42] Liz: That’s, that was a dumb and very personal question.

My husband and I, when I’m in kitten heels, which I don’t know if we wear kitten heels, I don’t wear, I live for kitten heels. Okay. You live, they’re so in. Okay. Yeah, they’re in right now. I know nothing. This, I’ve had this, I’ve had this black cardigan for 10 years. Got it. In San Francisco with Diane. Okay. So my husband is, [00:20:00] I think six feet tall.

He’s military, so he wears these real chunky boots and I’m always like, you keep the boots on just for the rest of the day. You don’t have to take your shoes off when you come in. We’ll all take our shoes off and you leave your shoes on. Cause it’s kind of fun to be shorter than somebody sometimes. Cuz then it’s rare.

I’m just, it’s rare that I’m, you know, not tall. 

[00:20:16] Michelle: The’re 12 people we’re, 12 people we’re striking we’re, yeah, exactly. But I like. Tall woman and short woman and everyone obviously we’re, there’s no bias. Again, if, if also, oh, please, please, Jews. I’m one of you. I’m, I’m cool with like anyone at Eddie Height, obviously, 

[00:20:31] Liz: you know, I’m not, I am a, but I’m a Jewish hanger on 

[00:20:35] Michelle: again, hang on.

Okay. That’s amazing. The, um, what I was gonna say about the, the like hardcores and the doing something so straight up before that’s, that’s also really important for us to talk about is that if I was occupying a body that was a hundred pounds over what doctors or whoever would tell me was my ideal body weight.

It creates an extreme sense of [00:21:00] urgency inside of you to lose weight. I mean, again, from societal pressures, maybe internal pressures because of how you’re feeling, similarly to when people are experiencing chronic illness. So my biggest concern for people when they’re seeing different practitioners is if you.

Like chronic pain or something, you’re gonna be willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of that chronic pain. So if you end up in the wrong or unsafe hands, you might be willing to do something and go far in something that’s not safe. Mm-hmm. . So I think that addressing the urgency in people, which is real and tangible, and they sh they are entitled to feel that urgency is really, really important.

So it could also have been why I, again, realizing the radical pressure from society was going to be on me. I was willing to do whatever it took, quote unquote, even if it was at my own expense to lose a hundred pounds. I was gonna do whatever it took. And again, it wasn’t my own expense. I do not recommend it.

But I think when people are in more discomfort or have more urgency, the likelihood that [00:22:00] they’re gonna do something more drastic is higher too. Yeah. And we have to acknowledge that. again, people are in different levels of privilege and understanding and everything with their bodies, and we have to understand that people who are at whatever societal disadvantage it might be or whatever physiological disadvantage might have that increased urgency too, so, mm-hmm.

you know, I know people who have really severe chronic illness definitely identify with this, but it’s like, you know, if for instance, I have a client who has lupus or something and they’re going out to dinner every single night and they know the food’s gonna be super inflammatory for them, they’re gonna have to be the person who sets hard boundaries around their friendships and what time they can go to dinner and where they go.

It’s not necessarily due to their personality. It’s just due to the fact that there is a legitimate need and urgency. So I think acknowledging where people are at also lets us know how far they’re willing to go and to be really careful if they’re willing to go very far too. Yeah. 

[00:22:53] Liz: Oh my gosh. So much, so much nuance.

So much context is involved. So much respect for the individual and [00:23:00] the, the internet just in general. Mm. Is not set up for that unfortunately. And the whole concept of, well, I mean maybe not though nicheing down like your niche is, is catered to these ideas of nuance and context around this type of thing.

I wanna acknowledge something you just said about privilege and this is where my limitations and this conversation pop up, I think, or I would probably assess myself to have for all of my life existed within a spectrum of weight and body composition, which is. Considered, quote unquote, acceptable by society, 

normal, 

[00:23:40] Michelle: acceptable, whatever the term is, normal, acceptable.

[00:23:42] Liz: It doesn’t mean I wasn’t really hard on myself, it doesn’t mean I hated myself. Course not parts of life. But I think there is a fundamental difference between existing in that quote unquote spectrum and saying, you know, I’ve been there. I’ve hated myself. I’ve done all these crazy things. And then being [00:24:00] in this other space where you have those same feelings but are potentially existing outside of what is considered acceptable.

And if anybody watches the office, I say this in my head all the time, Michael Scott, society sucks. I don’t even consider myself a part of society. Katie, that’s always playing in my head. Head when I think about that. He, he wasn’t a 

[00:24:20] Michelle: part of society, by the way, and he wasn’t. He actually wasn’t. 

[00:24:23] Liz: Yeah. So I feel like I need to acknowledge that, and that is a limitation to my.

Entry into this conversation. I’m very curious about the concepts of body positivity and body neutrality, but I also think, I can’t speak to them from the same perspective as many other people who are having this conversation publicly can. 

[00:24:44] Michelle: I think it’s important also that we don’t stratify everyone so much that only certain people can have conversations about their experience.

Yeah. I want everyone to be able to have exper conversations about their experience, but I think it’s totally fair for you to acknowledge [00:25:00] that and then also to say that you still wanna be able to support people. So you’re wanting to understand and curious to understand. Yeah, I have to, versus saying questions.

Mm-hmm. , it’s it’s questions and it’s learning and it’s understanding and you’ve also like seen clients and everyone’s experience like you’ve empathized with so many people’s exper experiences too, that you do have a voice in the game, I would say and And everyone wants to hear it too. So I just have to say that also because we can’t.

We have to listen to everyone’s perspective. But I will say what I’m seeing, and this is again, we’re already so much, so many levels deeper than the conversation we even wanted to have that we’re gonna have to eventually come back up by the way, and do like the high level conversation. But what I’m seeing in this All Foods fit group is a lot of like really thin women who have never occupied larger bodies.

And I’m like, that’s. . I’m not gonna judge a practitioner based on what they look like ever, but it does give me a moment of reflection where it’s, it’s like, it’s nice to hear you say that all foods fit, but if [00:26:00] my clients eat like the Oreos that you’re eating right now, they are gonna be like sick for a little a really long time.

So it’s like a lovely psychological idea that all foods fit, but in application it’s like, have you never like eaten gluten and then like literally been vomiting for 72 hours because like, yeah, then you don’t know my people , but like my people are people who are like, you know, their immune system has been, they’re overridden again, maybe it’s from stress, maybe it’s from gut issues, maybe it’s from trauma or whatever it is.

These are people who, you know, much like myself, have tried things, are willing to try things and are not seeing results. So just getting information. All foods can be eaten in moderation, to me is so flippant, dismissive and gas lighty. Especially coming from someone who’s never had the same experience they’ve had either with occupying a larger body or experience in chronic illness because both of those, you know again, is it someone is occupying a larger body and which may or may not be correlated, they’re having blood sugar [00:27:00] dysregulation issues like eating those Oreos in that one instance, sure it’s not gonna cause any sort of in long stream effects that cannot be repaired.

But if it makes them feel like crap for 24 hours, like that’s pretty substantial to me. Or if it’s leading them down a path of further insulin resistance, cuz that can be influenced by just one food we eat. Obviously I feel the ethical responsibility to give people very gentle but still. Informative nutrition education.

So again, we’re gonna talk about the real nuance of that. But I, I will say that it is startling how many people in the All foods fit crew. Cause I’m not really talking about health at every size or intuitive eating. I’m really talking about a th a, a kind of more militant division that is this All foods fit, which is just basically nutritionist eating garbage food and being like, you can have this too.

You also can have this, don’t restrict foods. And I’m like, that’s reductive and pretty stupid. I think [00:28:00] they’re not stupid, but the information’s unusable is what I 

[00:28:02] Liz: mean by that. The information is unusable. That is a, that is an excellent. Wow. That’s, that’s really good. One thing that I wanted to throw out there, and this is not a fully formed thought, but this idea that the Oreos, 

they’re not the solution. So it’s like, even if all foods did fit, would these Oreos be the solution to whatever it is that is holding you back? And I’m not saying weight is holding you back, but I’m saying inflammatory conditions, feeling really bad, having horrible sleep, and just in general knowing that you can live a life where you feel better in your body.

[00:28:38] Michelle: Mm-hmm. So that’s the important part. Yeah. The important part for me is that what I’m noticing in, in kind of every area of life right now is that there’s so much more acceptance of discomfort, but not tolerance of discomfort. So it’s like, and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. So acceptance in this [00:29:00] case means, oh, how about, I think I’m flipping it.

I think there’s more tolerance of dis discomfort and not, I mean, you could really use the words interchangeably. What I’m trying to say is yeah, explore it. People when they know they have chronic illness and they’re told there’s nothing you can do about it, you’re stuck like this. See you later. Lose hope and it’s not productive.

People feel that by coddling people and being like, this is just how it is. You have i b s, uh, which is like a cluster of symptoms. Like IBS isn’t a mm-hmm. a condition. IBS is a cluster of symptoms, right. That they classify as a condition. So I think when we tell people it’s normal to feel like this, and I see, we see all those pictures of people super bloated and being like, it’s normal.

It desensitizes people to extreme discomfort and pain that is not normal. Mm-hmm. , it’s not how our bodies are actually optimally functioning and it is possible to reverse and change these things. So I think that ex sometimes, you know, again, if someone has, I’m gonna just use the example of lupus. If someone has lupus, they [00:30:00] might ha very well have to live their lifestyle differently than other people, depending on what.

Health status is you need to do different things than other people might need to do. And that’s the reality. It’s not that everyone who has any health condition can do whatever they want because there’s consequences on a physical, mental level obviously. So I think that we need to accept where we’re at and then also accept where we’re going.

Mm-hmm. , I think tolerating discomfort is really important for healing of all kinds because that’s like the reparative process of our bodies is super uncomfortable. It’s not, it’s not like an awesome thing, but there’s a difference between tolerating it and, and then just stopping and saying, mm-hmm , hey, this is it and it sucks and I have to learn how to accept it or tolerating it.

Finding out how much you have to tolerate and then fighting like hell for your future. So there’s like a step one and a step two. I think that the internet is stuck on step, step one in ways of like, you know what? This is it. We’re all super sick and that’s how we’re it’s gonna be. I’m [00:31:00] like, but we weren’t like 50 years ago.

Mm-hmm. . So why is it now? It’s the same way when I got super sick in college and doctors are like, This is it. Now I’m like, lifestyle driven. Chronic illness is not a lifelong thing. If it’s lifestyle driven, you can un lifestyle it in most cases, right? Mm-hmm. . So I, I think that we need to know how much we have to accept and how much we can fight for.

[00:31:23] Liz: Okay. So the higher level conversation that you alluded to earlier, where, where does that start? Where does the higher level conversation start on this ? 

[00:31:32] Michelle: Yes, exactly. We jumped like to level four underneath, and we need to go all the way at the top. So right now, what I’m seeing in the nutrition world is a divide between people who are more, what we would consider a quote unquote diet culture.

Mm-hmm. , let’s say there’s three camps, functional dieticians who believe food and supplements and things can be healing. And then this all foods fit group, which is a, a kind of more. Aggressive version of health at [00:32:00] every size practitioners or the model of intuitive E the 10 steps of intuitive eating, would that 

[00:32:04] Liz: be where, like the expression, um, oh geez, everything is diet culture, would that kind of fit in that bracket?

[00:32:11] Michelle: Yes, I would say so. I, I mean, like, again, being anti-d diet culture, you know, it’s a larger group, but I really am supportive of body positivity and health. Every size practitioners for the most part. Mm-hmm. , it’s really like, there’s been a sectioning off, which is people of, that goes into the more all foods fit group mm-hmm.

which is kind of against intuitive eating anyway, because you wanna be eating things that also honor your body. So it’s, it’s not really what I think that intuitive eating gets a lot of. Like slack from diet culture people, cuz they’re like, if I intuitively ate, I would be eating Oreos all the time. Like that’s definitely not what intuitive eating is.

Like we need to be much more nuanced than that. So I’m taking the larger group of body positivity and I’m dividing it into maybe there’s intuitive eating and he and haze. And then there’s another group that’s kind of forming on its [00:33:00] own, which is the All Foods fit group, which is really about super reductive Instagram.

Things that are like, You know, dieticians shouldn’t be telling you what to eat. You have to eat things that’ll make you feel better. And what that group is, is really providing this psychological solution of heal your relationship with food and then your physical self will be better. Or they just believe you can’t make your physical self better at all.

Okay. Which is where I think functional nutrition should come in. 

[00:33:27] Liz: Mm-hmm. . Okay. And that’s obviously, that’s where, that’s where you sit. That is what you do with your clients and that’s what you’re doing with your online presence. And so I guess tell me, okay, maybe we can do like a little bit of a fictional client.

And I know there’s only so much that you can probably say because as soon as somebody falls into the bracket of the fictional client, they’re gonna be like, Michelle said , that I should 

[00:33:49] Michelle: do this. Exactly, yes. Nuance and context. That’s our game. Yeah. Our game is middle ground nuance and context for everyone.

[00:33:56] Liz: So I imagine that in, in your mind, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but there [00:34:00] would be a difference between someone who came to you in general good health, like the, the health at every size. Like, I’m feeling really good, but I feel like I might want to lose weight just based on whatever.

And you know, maybe there, I’m sure there are questions you ask that person, so maybe I’d like to talk about that person. And I’d also like to talk about that person that comes to you with i b s or some kind of disease that we have. A very good idea can be managed through dietary changes. So let’s start with the person that comes to you generally healthy, but feels like they might wanna lose weight.

What does that look 

[00:34:32] Michelle: like? I’m gonna, I’m gonna add a layer to that person. Okay. And I can definitely answer this without giving specific recommendations that’ll throw people off because Yes, like if you looked at my clients, I make battle plans now for my clients too. Yeah. If you looked at a battle plan between one client or another, it would be so vastly different.

I have never given the same recommendations twice, and I’ve seen over a thousand clients. It’s like everyone gets super customized recommendations. Mm-hmm. . So what I am seeing from a [00:35:00] trends standpoint is a lot of people are seeing like super ultra diet culturey, you know, practitioners. Hating that noticing they’re having an impaired relationship with food.

Heading over to a hazed practitioner, a health at every size practitioner, they’re saying, you can’t lose weight, you can’t make diet changes. And then they end up coming to me. Okay. So it’s usually people who have actually done both things, but when they. Did the diet culture stuff. Their relationship with food was all jacked up.

They did the health at every size practitioner, their physical body was jacked up, and then they come and we bring all the pieces of the puzzle together because I wanna help my clients maintain an excellent relationship with food. So if someone was coming to me and they wanted to lose weight, first. I would address again that urgency of wanting to lose weight.

Is that coming from a place of health? Is that coming from a place of fear? And if it’s coming from a place of fear, we’re not gonna respond to urgency with urgency. And what I mean by that is if a client comes to me and says, I have to lose weight, I’m not gonna be like, oh God, let’s get the weight off of you.

You know, that’s not how I’m gonna respond. We’re gonna be [00:36:00] really curious and explore and see what the reigning, what I would call like the reigning powerful voice in your head is, and I wanna know the different voices that are talking in someone’s head. Did you see the Pixar movie Inside Out where it’s like The Alone?

Yes. We’re definitely gonna talk about that. So cute. It’s so freaking cute. I’m a huge believer in Internal Family Systems, which is like loosely the psychological model that that’s based on. Mm-hmm. , which is that we have all these different protective and amazing voices in our head, and they’re trying to send us these messages.

Protection, even though sometimes they can come off really harsh in doing that. So I’m wanting to know, is that like your authentic self that wants to lose weight? Or is that coming from a place of fear? If it’s coming from a place of fear, that’s the work that needs to be done. If it’s coming from a place where they’re like, my relationship with food is excellent, I just wanna lose weight and I know that someone’s ready to lose weight when it feels like more of a data driven or health driven goal.

If it fe, you know, you can feel the heat when people are talking about things. And again. Mm-hmm. , if a client comes to me and says they wanna lose weight, I’m not telling them that they [00:37:00] don’t wanna lose weight and that they shouldn’t lose weight, because that would be me taking away their autonomy again.

And my whole goal is don’t listen to the diet culture. People don’t listen to health. Every size people listen to you, don’t listen to me, listen to you. And so a lot of the work we’re doing is finding out, are they ready to make those health change? And I use this example, which is that if we think of a knife, nutrition information, you know, we’ll, we’ll use a um, metaphor for a knife.

You can use a knife to like cut food or you can use a knife to harm another person or yourself, right? Nutrition information can be really profoundly helpful for people. It can also be a tool for self-harm, so you have to hear and know whether the person sitting in front of you is ready to receive that information.

Again, if I was talking to someone and said, Hey, you know, eating refined sugars, Influence your blood sugar negatively and like not in all cases. Sometimes people can tolerate it. By the way, for people listening, no alarms going off yet. Hold on. People can have different carb tolerances. , 

[00:37:59] Liz: we’re [00:38:00] gonna cut that part out.

That whole preface. We’re gonna cut it 

[00:38:01] Michelle: out. Exactly. It’s out. It’s done. Exactly. But point being, every person’s gonna hear what I just said differently. Yeah. So I wanna be really sure that the person I’m giving nutrition information to is ready to receive it. So that’s a lot of my initial consultation is I’m reading body language, I’m listening to the words that they’re saying, and I’m getting a really comprehensive health history.

I have clients who come to me and they wanna lose weight, and maybe the urgency from a health standpoint is not as high, but it’s more from a fear standpoint. We’re not talking about. For like six months. Mm. Oh wow. With their consent, obviously. Mm-hmm. , I’m not, I’m not withholding anything from my clients, but I, I ask, I mean, the word consent comes up in my sessions, like every five minutes.

I’m like, do, how would you feel? Are you comfortable? Would you consent to this? I wanna, I’m pl it’s like we’re playing back and forth with each other. Mm-hmm. , I’m noticing resistance. I’m stepping back when I feel it, and really just assessing where someone. The entire time. You know, it’s not uncommon for my sessions to include like laying on the floor and doing [00:39:00] meditation in the middle of a session.

Like sometimes we hit something, you know, this is, food is so personal, it’s never about food. It’s about who we are. Mm-hmm. . And again, we’re accessing these really important emotional and mindset features of ourselves. So it can be sticky. The answer is it’s gonna look different. One person, I might be able to give nutrition information in the first follow.

Another person, it might take a a much longer time, but what is going to happen in every session is addressing whatever the heck my client is feeling. And so why someone wants to lose weight, I wanna know, I wanna understand and would be curious and compassionate the whole way through. So that’s client one.

[00:39:33] Liz: Okay. Okay. So client two would be someone that came in was actually the sense of urgency is around, around health, around how they mm-hmm. Feel. Mm-hmm. And maybe their willingness is different. Maybe their whole calculus is probably a little bit different. So where do you start with that and how do you avoid when someone doesn’t come in with kind of the maybe diet culture or diet history?

Baggage. Somebody that comes in is like, I just need to feel better and I need to feel better now. How do you keep [00:40:00] that from sliding into orex? Does that make sense? 

[00:40:05] Michelle: It’s a, it makes total sense because what I do see now too is like, I am like obviously a fervent lover of functional nutrition and functional medicine.

I like, I’m like, oh, this is it. Like, I’ve always felt that way about naturopathic medicine too. I was like, oh, this is the thing. Like, I, I still feel that way, but what I’m seeing now, everything is so, there’s so many layers with everything with me, it’s annoying. So in the functional nutrition and medicine world, what I’m seeing now is patients coming in with chronic illness and they’re getting handed a piece of paper, here’s a SIBO protocol.

Mm-hmm. , here’s a, uh, an i b S protocol, whatever, you know, here’s low FOD map. Whatever the, the thing is, they’re getting a piece of paper with supplements and food on it. So if a person does not have a bad relationship with food, they absolutely can develop a bad relationship with food from getting a piece of paper that says what’s good and bad.

Mm-hmm. and these protocols. For me, that’s against the magic of functional nutrition and medicine, which is treating the person, not the symptoms and treating every single [00:41:00] person as a whole. Being as opposed to just trying to fix something in the body. Mm-hmm. . So when it comes to chronic illness, what I like to do with clients is like hit heavy hitters.

Again, if I have clients who are really have extreme gastric distress, I would say like, all right, if lifestyle-wise it’s very challenging for you to change the foods or it feels like there’s resistance or fear coming up around the foods. Can we explore a meditation we could do once a day? Can we explore a supplement?

We can include whatever. Like some clients, again, we’re doing supplements first. Some clients we’re doing food first. Some clients, it really depends on the person’s tolerance of change, what they want to see happen. And I wanna, you know, as much as I want to immediately eliminate symptoms in some cases, You know, there is symptom management that is needed with chronic illness, but my goal is to hit the root cause.

So clients come wanting symptom relief, but I know that they need to address their actual health and their actual lifestyle. So that’s why it takes so many [00:42:00] sessions to get there, cuz you need to really explore who you are as a person, not just what you’re eating or anything like that. So I would say my answer.

I would address symptoms with clients, and I’m not against like clients incorporating anything in western medicine. I’m integrative use whatever you have to do to get through life. And at the same time, I’m working on the long-term stuff too. So address the symptoms. Absolutely. But while you’re addressing the symptoms, you have to be addressing the root cause at the same time.

[00:42:25] Liz: Mm-hmm. , this is a little bit of a departure, but I’ll, I’ll bring it back around. Yeah. One of the things that I see after doing the internet practitioner thing for 10 plus years , is that it gets to a point where everybody doing good work, one-on-one with people, gets burnt out, ends up having to ski and, and I get this, I get this because I’ve done it.

I, I having to feel like you have to A, stop doing client work and b, encapsulate what you’re trying to do in a course or a, you know, whatever. Something that you can sell for a lot cheaper, but that also doesn’t have that [00:43:00] really personal. Touch that, that evaluative process when you find out where whether somebody is actually right for your program or course, , and that burnout with practitioners who are doing this amazing work one-on-one.

It kind of turns into what you were just saying, almost handing somebody a piece of paper, charging them 300 bucks for your course and basically handing them a piece of paper. There’s no way you can go through all of those layers. So I guess my question for you is, how do we keep people like you doing the client work, doing the one-on-one stuff so people can actually come through and hear their needs taken care of?

What’s, 

[00:43:36] Michelle: have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, I, I also mentor dieticians and I’m, I’m hosting a conference with my two functional RD besties, Jillian and Amanda, who are amazing, um, about really helping. Create a really safe client space that’s also safe for you, because , I know this is corny to say, but obviously a lot of dieticians are empaths and a lot of them, you know, have a lot of feeling and, [00:44:00] and these sessions, I mean, can be extremely, extremely draining Yeah.

In a positive way. Like you’re exchanging energy in these sessions and , you know, you’re in a session with someone. The fact that a practitioner sitting across from you is in and of itself a healing experience. Yes. You have mirror neurons fighting, firing off during that. I mean, quite literally what people don’t understand about you’re, when someone’s investing one-on-one time with you, you’re investing in the experience of knowing someone.

Mm-hmm. . So I, I actually have at this point about 20 clients who have been with me for over a hundred sessions. So they’ve been with me for like four years, some of them. And we start off working on one thing. But at this point, it’s just this really powerful relationship where you just know someone and that is more helpful than anything else.

I think. Yes. It, it, you know, it’s, it’s more important than what. Protocols. I know and I know ’em all, but it’s more important than that. So I would say that creating long-term relationships where you’re building on itself is really relaxing. I think for practitioners and what [00:45:00] can lead them to burnout and feel really exhausted is if you’re seeing someone for those initials which are heavy, like the puzzles that are going off in my head of putting all the pieces together of a person.

Mm-hmm. during initial consultation. I love initial consultations for this reason, cuz I’m like, all right, we’re going on a timeline back to like, were you breastfed? I have to learn 50 years in this hour and a half, or, you know, hour depending on the person. It’s so condensed and so important. But then what I think becomes really soothing and easy for practitioners is just showing up the same way to the rest of the sessions because you’re learning someone’s resistances and everything like that.

So my advice would. Trying to find a way to structure programs that people can work longer with clients, because I think that that becomes, I, I feel no burnout whatsoever in my work with clients because I feel like you, you create like a very parasympathetic relationship. Mm-hmm. , your nervous system is so in flow in those sessions, once you get to know someone that you [00:46:00] feel like you can deliver on a, on a very soothing, neurological level.

And I would also say that, , it’s really hard for dieticians to market functional dieticians specifically to market their services again, based on longer term commitments with people. Yeah. But I, I will not hand someone a plan and then they walk away, my minimum commitment’s three months and , I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with a client just for the, , very, very few clients I’ve worked with for just the three months.

So my, my answer would also be, if you’re in those online programs, don’t teach. The actual or protocol as much teach people how to advocate for themselves, how to access information for themselves and how to incorporate information. Mm-hmm. be much more focused on the utilization of the information than the information itself.

 So I would say my answer is give people the tools to heal themselves Let’s walk it back and if those programs are really walked back, people can use all the information in them forever.

[00:46:56] Liz: Oh, that’s really, really good. One of the things that you said [00:47:00] a moment ago about just this, this act of being known is so, so powerful and it’s why Well, one of the reasons I like to pay for massages is because, you know, at home when my husband gives me a massage massager, I feel like I owe him something after

I’m cutting that part out, by the way, it’s so freaking funny. Oh my God. But, but part of the reason I like to pay for. Body work. I like to pay a therapist. I like to pay a professional, which I know that’s not within reach for everyone, but I do like to do that because I feel like I don’t have, I, I’m very prone to feeling guilt around taking up people’s time.

So if it was, you know, I have a great network of friends that I can talk to about things. But it also gets back to that like, old Sex in the City episode where Carrie’s friends get really sick of her talking about big all the time and they’re like, you need to go see a therapist. Especially cuz 

[00:47:46] Michelle: it was big.

[00:47:47] Liz: Ugh. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I didn’t see the second movie, but I was glad that he died. 

[00:47:52] Michelle: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, there’s, it was really good timing for him to die. Also, by the way, publicly. 

[00:47:57] Liz: Yes, it was public. [00:48:00] Oh my God. Horrible. So I do like, I like that relationship. I like the idea of building a relationship with somebody in that way, and I, and I feel more comfortable when I’m actually paying for it, but to be able to sit there and feel like this time is mine and it’s time for me to be known and understood, it’s of such high value to me.

And at times, I don’t always like the word compliance, but I imagine that that is a very, very powerful and genuine way to affect compliance that may be under different circumstances would just kind of manifest as willpower as you were saying before. Like, well, I guess I gotta just power through this because I’m supposed to do it and because this is what I was told to do, versus like, I’m known, I’m understood, I’m empowered, and we’re doing this together.

[00:48:43] Michelle: It’s, yeah, there’s such a big difference between forcing yourself to do something and allowing yourself to inform you that you can do something, right? Mm-hmm. , there’s such a big difference. For me, this is like, you know, again, I. I like the, the higher level body positivity and functional [00:49:00] nutrition. I’m like, yes.

And then it’s when we get broken down into these different subgroups that I start getting concerned. Mm-hmm. , my, my concerns from functional nutritionist is, again, if someone is, you’re coming in and someone’s prescribing a protocol, it is really against the heart of functional nutrition, cuz the heart of functional nutrition is getting to the root of something, which means that you’re also allowing the body to do the work of healing itself.

Right? That’s the core of it. You’re facilitating the body’s ability to do that. If we try to take in information or take in supplements to fix a problem, it goes against that. So just being known by someone allows your neurological system to feel safe enough to take in that information or to be able to generate the information yourself.

I don’t believe that we have an education issue around nutrition as much as people think that’s the, I don’t think that’s the main driver. It’s not the deficit that we’re a dealer, it’s not a, it’s not the de the deficit is that people have outsourced their [00:50:00] power to diet companies and to food companies, and they believe that they are the ones protecting them.

And there’s only one person who can protect you and it’s yourself. Right. I mean, I guess like, you know, physic, I guess like, you know, that’s a at, at the core of health though, if you are not doing things for your health, no one else can do it for you. So we have really. For some reason, you know, and I know the reason it’s money.

Diet companies or food companies know our bodies better than we do. And there is not one person, not one doctor dietician, no one who knows your body better than you know your body. So if you let someone else into that beautiful insight of this puzzle of who you are in the terrain of your health and everything, that’s where the magic of healing starts to happen.

So again, handing someone a protocol that says, here, eat a low FODMAP diet for i B s has pretty much nothing to do with functional medicine in my book. That’s not functional nutrition or functional medicine, like learning about the history of someone’s health and life and then making tiny little [00:51:00] recommendations to support them based on exactly what their experience has been and move them an inch every session.

That’s what functional nutrition is, them moving themselves an inch every session hot damn. 

[00:51:15] Liz: That’s just so good. That’s so good. You are so, you are so good at encapsulating this. It’s absolutely amazing. And I actually feel like we’ve been on for like an hour. We could probably wrap it up right about there, but I have a really, um, important question Yes.

For you before we do that. Yeah. I see that you’re a Harry 

[00:51:30] Michelle: Potter fan. Crazy, insane. Harry Potter fan. Crazy. 

[00:51:33] Liz: Okay. So I’m reading the Harry Potter books to my seven year old right now. Oh, I love that so much. It’s been the most wonderful, I mean, I will remember it for the rest of my life. This experience of going through these books with her, they’re getting a little more, a little scarier, like a little more.

Um, you know, constant, I 

[00:51:51] Michelle: mean, there’s like, there’s like basically a, there’s like a genocide in like the seventh, basically. Oh, 

[00:51:55] Liz: awesome. Okay, cool. So I’m gonna reading a little bit slower, . [00:52:00] 

[00:52:00] Michelle: Exactly. I mean, it’s, it’s like pure blood crazy. It’s crazy stuff that’s gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah. She gotta, she gotta wait till she’s like 20.

Okay. So you’re gonna have to read very slow. It’s a page a year. I think that you’re gonna have to do, 

[00:52:10] Liz: we might be able to do that. I, there might be some bargain that could be made in there. I did have to buy her a gumball machine. Um, but that’s a whole lot. You have to, there are organic gumballs by the 

[00:52:19] Michelle: way.

We trying. The fifth is where things go. Weird. You gotta be careful. I have to gobble a fire. One particular bad thing happens, but then the fifth is like the second half of the series is the dark half is 

[00:52:31] Liz: Goble of Fire. The fourth one? Yeah. Goble Fire is the fourth. Okay. We’re in the fourth one right now.

The problem, so one of the problems, this is not a problem, I’ll get back to my original question, but the problem that we’re bumping up against right now is like I can, I’m a good reader. That’s kind of, that’s my jam. I can kind of modify the text. If I’m reading something and I’m like seeing something coming, I can kind of like change a couple words and sketch over it.

She’s not following along that closely. Yet so I can kind of make the books [00:53:00] Okay-ish and kind of, you know, modify the things that are gonna, you know, potentially give her nightmares since you read it at night. But her favorite thing to do is to read the book and then to watch the movie. So that’s where like, I can’t , I can’t modify the movie as much, or as well, although there is a service that you can, you can use on your computer, not on like big tv, but on your computer where you can actually like, select like different things that you want taken out of whatever movie you’re watching anyway, so, well, I’m, I have a lot of things I need to look out for in the future, but I’ll remember this process forever.

It’s been really fun. However, my question is, Michelle, why is it that, what is the nurse’s name? Is it Madame Palm Frey? 

[00:53:42] Michelle: Okay. Why is this? Yeah, 

[00:53:44] Liz: yeah, go ahead. I’m thinking it might be somebody else. I think it’s Palmford, but Okay. It doesn’t matter. Why is it that the nurse, that the nurse at Hogwarts can regrow bones?

Mm. But Harry Potter still has to wear these crappy glasses. Is this a 

[00:53:59] Michelle: [00:54:00] legitimate question? But his glasses, you can repair the glasses. Wait, can 

[00:54:04] Liz: we repair Harry Potter’s eyeballs, 

[00:54:07] Michelle: you mean? Oh, you mean like vision? Yes, we can. What row bones? I mean, what are we talking about here? I mean, this is, you know, I mean this is the, the thing is that if we also, if we made these questions about literally any part of Harry Potter, you’re gonna be in big trouble.

My answer too is, and I’m 

[00:54:26] Liz: in big trouble 

[00:54:26] Michelle: right now, ex, I’m my. Thing to you is focus on the love of the story, , focus on the loyalty and focus on nothing else. You can’t do, don’t overthink it. I mean, like, you can’t play this game with like back to the future either. Like I could say like the, the hundreds of thousands of inconsistencies and huge, huge Back to the future fan too.

That’s a fan. Yes. Um, you can’t, you’re playing the wrong game. The game with Harry Potter is feeling and experiencing the magic. Don’t get lost in the details because uh, you know, let’s, we can parlay this back into our conversation, which is that it’s not about [00:55:00] the words of the book, it’s not about the protocol, it’s about how it makes you feel underneath.

And that’s where the magic of Harry Potter is, is you’re so context of the relationships between these characters and how much they love, oh God, I’m literally crying. and how much they, how much they love each other. I almost got, it’s so funny cuz this is related to this conversation too, is that Dumbledor has this quote that’s like, it’s not our abilities to define who we are, it is our choices.

Mm-hmm. and I almost got like the word choice tattooed to me. During my hardcore time to be like, you gotta make good choices every day. And I’m like, so glad I didn’t because I, I don’t actually believe that. I believe it’s like our, our soul that dictates all of these things. So my answer to is, you know, lean into the soul of the book.

Okay. And less about the details, cuz you’re gonna get into trouble in that way. Okay. Yeah. It doesn’t make, it doesn’t make sense cuz it’s a magical world, but I’m not wrong. No, sure. I mean, of course you’re not wrong . Exactly. But okay. But let yourself be wrong and then just feel it’s, it’s a very feeling book.

[00:55:56] Liz: Okay. I’ll feel Now what do you, how do you feel [00:56:00] about whether the movies did justice 

[00:56:01] Michelle: to the books? Okay. This is an extremely important question. Okay. More important than anything else we talked about. Absolutely. You know, people’s health or, you know, happiness, please. It’s Harry Potter. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Um, . So I, my order for the movies and ways of appreciation is different than my order for the books. So my movie orders is two, one. 5, 2, 5. One part one of seven, six, I guess three. Part two, part seven and six. Cuz here’s my problem with part six. Part the, the movie, six would of eight. They literally create scenes that didn’t happen in the book.

And I am definitely Harry Potter purist, where I’m like, it’s gotta be like you can take stuff out cuz the books are really long. Sure. But you can’t make up entire scenes. I agree. And there’s a scene at the Borough that is like so [00:57:00] insane that never happened in the books. And I’m like, you can’t just make stuff up.

I felt that the sixth, by the way, I, what I used to do for all the Harry Potter movies was I, I would dress up and then would buy the tickets three months in advance every summer. They always came out in summer and I would wait online with my cousin and my sister for 14 hours in the blazing hot sun.

Like sometimes it was on my birthday. My birthday is July 9th. Like we would literally sit for 14 hours to say we were the first people in New York to see Harry Potter. We were the first people in the theater. . We also. Like, uh, the people in li it was very magical though, cause people would be like, we would like sing like the theme song in line.

I was like drawing lightning rods with eyeliner on people’s head. Like, it was definitely like, extremely fun. But we did it. I, I remember like after eight hours of being outside, then you could go upstairs inside the theater and it was like air conditioned, but then you still had eight hours cuz you could start lining up at like 9:00 AM or something.

So you’re like there until 12. But I would say that the sixth movie, there was reporters always outside cuz in New York they would also show the movie. Time zone wise, it would be like, actually the first viewing in [00:58:00] the world is like this 10:00 PM ish viewing. So there would be reporters outside asking people how they liked the movie.

And we came out of the sixth movie and we’re like, we’re never seeing Harry Potter again. Like, we’re So, did you make it on them? Did they use the clip? They didn’t use the clip. Cause of course not. I do have videos of my sister on the train and I was like, you look so deranged. I’m so glad that wasn’t on the news.

I would’ve like lost my career. Like it was so insane. So point being, I have an extreme distaste for the sixth movie and an extreme love for the fifth because I love the fifth cuz it’s like Dumbledore’s army and all the love and togetherness and I’m, I’m like very obsessed with loyalty and like soul and intensity.

Mm-hmm. . And the fifth is really the, for me, like actually the most magical because it’s all them banding. 

[00:58:42] Liz: Okay. I’m sorry. I have one more question for you. Are you good for one more minute? Okay. I’m more than good. Okay. Dumble Door, and I forgot the actor, but dumb. The first actor that played Dumble, Richard Harris, he passed and then they brought in a new Dumble door

I feel very strongly that the first Dumble door was the perfect dumble door for those movies. You 

[00:58:59] Michelle: [00:59:00] couldn’t, you feel differently. You couldn’t have nailed it more. No, I do not feel differently. He doesn’t play the 

[00:59:05] Liz: second one doesn’t play it 

[00:59:05] Michelle: right in the goblet of fire, he runs into the room where Harry is and he’s like, Harry, did you put your name in that cup?

And he’s like shaking him and it’s like, sir, Dumble door would never, like, you’re not getting the whole thing is that he’s extremely even-tempered and calm and like Yes, makes everyone feel safe with his wisdom and logic. And he’s quirky and we love him for it, but like his evenness is what makes him so dumble dory.

It’s like his wisdom. That’s like the whole thing. And he is like, shake, how did you put our name in that cup? We. Please calm down. Like you have to get, you have to back up and get away from us. Yeah. No, it’s not, it’s not even a question. No remote hate to the actor because anyone in our world, I mean, the Harry Potter world is very important to me.

But yeah, we gotta give it to Richard Harris. We gotta give it to Richard Harris. Oh 

[00:59:50] Liz: my gosh. Okay. Well, and I think my, my seven-year-old noticed it too. She was like, I don’t feel like dumb. Like, I don’t feel like that’s how Dumble door would. She was like, is dumb. 

[00:59:57] Michelle: She was like, is Dumble door okay? ? [01:00:00] 

[01:00:01] Liz: You’re like, no, you can’t remember what she said.

I was like, I don’t know how to break this to her, that there’s two dumble doors and one of them, one of them is dead. I don’t know, like, how do I explain 

[01:00:09] Michelle: this? Well, I mean, she’s really not gonna. You can, you can kind of start that because she’s really not gonna like, obviously as how the series progresses.

Yes. And 

[01:00:18] Liz: sometimes we have to use, , I have to actually explain to her she, this is a whole other tangent, but there are times she, , she loves dinosaurs. So we did Jurassic Park and there are times where I had to kind of turn it down and be like, no, this is just a movie. And all of these people are just running around pretending there’s dinosaurs everywhere.

And isn’t that funny? , you know, you have to kind of couch it in a way that she can kind of detach from, from the, the intensity of it. So this might be one 

[01:00:41] Michelle: of those, well, Hyde Potter’s super, super intense. I found like, I feel like seven is probably. Young for the later ones. Yeah. But she also might not understand some of the really dark stuff that’s going on, which is an advantage 

[01:00:55] Liz: I feel.

Well, maybe I’ll read, read it ahead of time and kind of, you know, [01:01:00] mark out the parts that we’re gonna 

[01:01:00] Michelle: skip. Have you read all the books before or 

[01:01:02] Liz: is this your first one? No, no, I never did. And actually the only reason we started, I’m still glad I didn’t say spoiler. Okay, good. No, you can say, I’ve actually looked up a couple of things and it’s like, for example, I’m sorry, turn it off.

If nobody has, if you haven’t 

[01:01:14] Michelle: read Harry Potter and you Yeah, please. No spoilers. Oh my God. I would hate to take that away from someone. Yeah. Yeah. That’s why his 

[01:01:19] Liz: Harry Potters the, ugh. I don’t know how to, okay. Hmm. Just, just skip forward 15 seconds. Ready? 1, 2, 3. I was really sad to hear that Sirius Black doesn’t.

Because we just finished the third book and I was, and then he had to disappear. And I was sad that he’s not 

[01:01:38] Michelle: gonna, it’s excruciating. And for most people, the hardest Harry Potter loss for a lot of reasons. Because for the first time Harry had like a sense of family. Yes. And it was a savage mood Move on.

JK Rowling move, I’ll tell you that JK Rowling has said in interviews that she wanted to actually make that Fred Weasley, and she tried to literally kill, [01:02:00] um, no, Arthur Weasley. Sorry, dad. Arthur Weasley. She tried to write like when he’s attacked and he gets it. This is all spoiler. Don’t listen, don’t listen.

Arthur Weasley, keep going. She tried to write Arthur Wesley’s death, and then she like literally put her pen to paper and like, couldn’t do it. She was like, I, I just, I like literally can’t do it. So the goal was for you to know, just for your reference too. Was that she did ultimately make a decision that she was going to , as part of Harry’s growth and struggle was that she was going to cut off all father figures from him. Okay. That was important for his like, storyline is that he like didn’t have those people, which sung.

Oh. But yeah, exactly. So Sirius, you should feel violent pain when he Okay. You know what happens to him? Yeah. I mean, I’m 

[01:02:48] Liz: never ready for it. Okay. 

[01:02:49] Michelle: Okay. Well, in the, you’ll never be okay again. The whole fifth movie, you’ll never be okay again. I’ve. Actually when the movie also is another crazy thing. So I got the movie on bootleg, like [01:03:00] right after it came out in theaters.

But it was so like not a thing then to do that. That there was literally no screen. It was just a black screen and it was just the voices. 

[01:03:09] Liz: Oh my God. That’s like Seinfeld level stuff. The boot legging of the Harry Potter movie. That’s really 

[01:03:14] Michelle: funny because I couldn’t, I saw it on theaters like 10 times, but it wasn’t enough.

Like obsessed. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:03:19] Liz: I feel that, I feel that, uh, I would really love to have you on again at some point in the future and we can just like really dive into this. I can ask all the Harry Potter. 

[01:03:26] Michelle: The Harry Potter. We can make I, if you want, we could also make references to the nutrition and coaching that I do, cuz if you can believe it, it’s embedded in the work that I’m doing.

Yes, there’s a lot of Harry Potter quotes that are re relevant to the work that we do. Yes, 

[01:03:38] Liz: absolutely. Okay. That’s very good to know. . Okay. Michelle Shapiro, you’re so awesome. I’m so happy that we were able to do this today and I hope you’ll come on again and tell everybody where 

[01:03:49] Michelle: to find you. First of all, thank you so much for having me on.

You’re like one of my favorite friends I made this year. I’m so grateful and honored that you have me on your podcast. Likewise, you can find me on [01:04:00] Instagram at michelle shapiro rd. My website michelle shapiro rd.com. Um, if you are interested in that anxiety, The anxiety proof program. Um, it’s getting anxiety proof.com/join, and I just hired a new dietician in my practice who now is working with clients exactly like I do in the same way I’ve been training her for a year.

Nikki, she’s amazing. So if clients want a more accessible and affordable option to work with someone one-on-one in the long term, they have Nikki now too. 

[01:04:25] Liz: Love it. Thank you so much, friend. We’ll talk to you soon. [01:04:27] Michelle: Woo-hoo.

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