Welcome to Dr. Warrick's podcast channel. Warrick is a practicing cardiologist and author with a passion for improving care by helping patients understand their heart health through education. Warrick believes educated patients get the best health care. Discover and understand the latest approaches and technology in heart care and how this might apply to you or someone you love. Hi, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop, and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast and videocast station. Today, I have a special guest, Sally-Ann Prisk, who is an author and a founder of the book called Eating For You and the organisation Eating For You, which is about transforming the mindset around healthy eating. Hi, Sally-Ann. Thank you for joining us. Hi, Warrick. It's great to be here. Look, just for those people listening and for me, Just explain what eating for you is all about and how you alter mindsets. Yes. Great question. Two questions, really. Yeah. So eating for you is really about, as the title suggests, finding a way of eating for you. that is healthy, nourishing and enjoyable. So it's taking all of our food knowledge and experiences of eating and turning it in to food choices that last. That's the summary. So the things that you see as, well, the average population, the people who you're dealing with, what are the hurdles that these people confront? When you say healthy choices, are they lacking education? Are they driven to the wrong foods because of maybe a sweet tooth or something like that? What are the main things that you work with in that space? Yeah, most of the ladies that I work with where I have a very good understanding of healthy eating, there might be some tweaking there because of all of the diets that they have done over the years and decades. But no, knowledge is not normally the issue. It's not the stumbling block. It's more education around. how our thoughts and beliefs about food and ourselves are standing in our way to actually making choices that last. And I never say creating a new habit. It's always a new choice. The eating for you approach is very much based on the practice of mindfulness. So it's about if any habits are formed, it's about the habit of being mindful. And tell me, how did you get to be in this space? What was your journey, Sally Ann? Yeah, look, I'll try and be as concise as possible because I've lived for a few decades myself now and I think the journey continues as a healthcare practitioner and as an individual, understanding what health and wellbeing and happiness means to us. But the main turning point for me was I had been a dietitian for a few years and then my brother died suddenly of a heart attack and I developed a comfort eating habit myself. And through talking to a colleague, also a dietitian, I realised I'd actually been a restrained eater up until that stage. And I was sort of being shown, you know, the extreme ends of what we think healthy eating can be. You know, it's like being restrained because of the dieting culture that I'd grown up with, even though at this stage I'd had, you know, four years of university education and was embarking on my master's research. I had all the knowledge but didn't even realise myself that I wasn't eating in a way that was really nourishing and sustaining for me. And, of course, developing the comfort eating habit to cope with the grief of my, you know, brother's sudden death. I was seeing what it was like to be on the other end of eating as well. So, yeah, huge, huge moment for me, obviously personally, but with my career as a dietician and healthcare practitioner. So, first of all, I'm terribly sorry to hear of the loss of your brother, presumably at a young age, because obviously you're young and he would have been not far off in the same age. That's terrible. As you know, my own interest is trying to stop events like this. So we might even talk about this when we finish the podcast, because I would genuinely like to make sure that others in your family, including yourself, are not at... at risk and unaware of that look the one of the things that's really interesting about this concept of comfort eating is what are the mechanisms behind that so obviously there's uh textural flavor flavors and things that people feel in their mouth then there must be saty type uh receptors within the gut then there must be a whole sequence of nerve responses that go through the brain and i'm sure you're completely across all of that why don't you deconstruct some of that just for the people listening and for me yeah look i i think without going into you know the deep physiological and neurophysiological responses to eating it's even more simpler than that at some stage in our life we have associated a type of food with being comforted And, you know, in my own experience, I realised that, you know, if I ever hurt myself, you know, and I was a pretty active kid, so I was always falling over, I would be given a sweet treat. So it was through nobody's fault at all, definitely not my mum's, that that association was already built, that if I didn't feel well, if I felt sad, unhappy, I could have something sweet to eat. And it was set. you know, before the age of 10, that was there. So it wasn't actually, as I said, revealed to me again as an adult until, you know, my brother died. And this can be the case for many of the ladies that I work with is that they're not aware of these strong, you know, emotional, neurophysiological, physical, you know, you know, responses we have for food because. They happen, these habits were formed, you know, when we were a child. And so that's why I say that, you know, having food knowledge is often not enough. You know, there's this other relationship with food that we have. As you're talking about that association, I'm almost thinking that's a conditioning response, like the Pavlovian sort of response where a situation arises. There's an action and we get linked to that action. Pavlov's dogs, I'm sure everyone's heard of, ring a bell and they salivate because the bell and food have been linked. And I guess we're often in situations where we're actually living that ourselves. That's what you're really talking about, where we've had events, our comfort has been food and we... we match those, we associate and condition on those. That's sort of what you're talking about. Oh, definitely. And anyone who has done first-year psychology, which I did at university, You know, until you get into your career, you don't see these practical examples of Pavlov's dog. You know, it's just like a very much a theoretical learning experience at university. But, yeah, I've seen it in so many ways in my career as a health care practitioner, but also, as I said, personally. And what I think is great about this Warrick is that. Yeah, we're still making that choice, but we realise that it's not just about I can't stick to a diet. You know, there's a few more steps in between that we need to take to actually make those lasting, healthier food choices, which I think is reassuring because a lot of people, you know, males and females that I speak to, feel like there's something wrong with them because they haven't been able to stick to their heart plan, their diabetes plan, their weight loss. plan but it's understanding we need to do something to stop that habit that automatic reaction that we have when we're triggered to eat for comfort stress emotional release so as I'm listening again I'm wondering if that those habits are actually inherited through actions rather than genetically but through actions you see your parents take maybe alcohol as a comfort at the end of the day, food becomes a comfort, and that may actually, there may be transmission of that through generations, through behaviour, I'm guessing. Is that what you see? Oh, definitely. And I'm so glad you raised that because talking with a friend of mine who's a psychotherapist, a consult. psychotherapist and she said very much because I explained a couple of my own experiences with reactions to grief and trauma that were quite opposite you know I mentioned the one of overeating and I was actually living with a family at the moment where the mum had a comfort eating habit so I had you know, in those years adopted that. Whereas earlier on with my biological mum, we'd had a family incident and we all lost our appetite because that was mum's response to stress. So you're very, very true. You know, what we grow up with, who we're with on a highly subconscious level is impacting on how we're reacting. to situations and food. So it's so insightful just to understand it's not just our immediate family, it's all those experiences that happen through our life that could be influencing how we're eating. Yeah, wow, that's fascinating. One of the things that struck me from doing a bit of background research on eating for you is that you seem to focus predominantly on women. I'm not sure if you see men as well, but is your practice predominantly and was your book written predominantly for women or do you see both men and women? Just give us some comments around that. Yes, certainly. The book was definitely written for everyone. And as I got progressing with my work, like a lot of healthcare practitioners, I had to make some choices about who I was going to predominantly work with. So you're right, I do predominantly work with women, but it's not as if... the approach isn't helpful to men. You know, men buy the book. Men will contact me and obviously I will talk with them as well, but predominantly women. And that's why, because I do a lot of group coaching work now, we find that a lot of the lifestyle experiences and also biological experiences that women face through childbirth and raising children and so forth, and they're often key. markers for those ladies in terms of health changes, weight changes, menopause and so forth. So that's why I have gravitated most recently to working with women. It's an interesting space, isn't it? Do you find that alcohol or cigarettes and the use of alcohol and cigarettes ties in with people having a somewhat dysfunctional mindset around eating as well? Are they sort of the crutches that Do they come in clusters, I guess I'm asking? Yeah, quite different. Some of the ladies that I work with certainly have realised that they've formed a habit that getting home from work, have a glass of wine as a form of their relaxation routine for the evening. And it's just, again, with any of these habits, it's that awareness. And when we look at the... process of mindfulness in a really practical sense the first thing we need is awareness of what our habits are and to be able to look at them in a very non-judgmental way and say okay that's interesting I get home from work I have a glass of wine is that actually working for me yes or no and then What do I do next? So in terms of mindfulness, mindful eating is a really practical way to not only observe our habits, but to work out whether they're the best choices for us now and what we can do to actually change our drinking or food choices. Do you incorporate meditation or self-hypnosis in your program or forms of that to help support your? your clients? Yeah, certainly. I do encourage a daily mindfulness or meditation practice as part of the process because it just... allows the ladies on two levels one is to start the day in a centered calm way to experience what it is just to focus on one thing rather than the myriad of tasks that they're trying to accomplish in the day and secondly it is to just focus on what being mindful really is and taking it from that formal sitting mindfulness practice where they may focus on the breath, for example, to then taking it to their food choices as well. So it's like a training ground, I say, to let's put this into practice because I know myself as a daily meditator, there have been occasions where I've literally stepped off the match and thought, oh. I've lost it already, you know, but that's part of it. And I speak to other mindfulness teachers and it's not about staying calm. So if you're listening to this thinking. oh, I know what Sally-Anne's talking about. You know, how is it that my 10-minute, 20-minute, one-hour practice doesn't keep me calm all day? That's not actually the intention of the practice. The intention is to allow us to be more aware of where our mind is at the time and to recenter, to refocus and calm ourselves as quickly as possible. So it's... teaching us to not get away so far away from centre and then to get back to centre as quickly as possible and calmly as possible. And I guess in that space of eating choices, it allows people to have some awareness of how am I feeling in this moment when I want to indulge in, you know, a donut? How am I? How am I feeling? Is this the feeling that I want to be running me at the moment or do I want to choose a different feeling and a different, therefore, different outcome? That's sort of what we're talking about, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I think from what the research shows that the biggest benefit of taking mindfulness into, you know, behaviour change, changing eating habits. into any habit that we have that we want to change, is that mindfulness allows us to create space, to have a pause before we go into autopilot, into Pavlov's dog type situation we were talking about earlier. So it creates that break before we actually make the choice. And it's like a circuit breaker for that habit. You know, what I hear from my ladies transitioning through this process when they've got a habit is that the first step is that pause, as you said, and that internal questioning about, well, is it the donut that I need now or is it something else? If I eat the donut, how am I going to feel physically, emotionally, mentally? What's my energy level going to be? really what I'm going to to get to but they're kind of like a stage of progression with transforming eating habits the first one is taking that pause thinking about whether it's food or not that I need right now if I make this choice how is it going to make me feel you know so that's really in simple terms the three steps look I'm the way I'm Hearing it and imagining it is that we have reflexes, which we've learned, which we're a bit unconscious to. I want a donut because I'm upset. We don't really process that because it's a reflex. If we put our hand on something hot, we would pull our hand away immediately. And I get the sense that this mindfulness allows us that pause or break, that space for a choice. So we go from... a reflex to an opportunity for choice. And I get that. I think that's incredibly powerful. Yeah, and it is. And it's so empowering to the women that I work with to realise it's not about willpower. You know, it is actually something else that's going on. And the other powerful thing about mindfulness is that when we are aware of our choices, we can see the choices that we're making that support our health goals, as well as those that are still not quite working for us. Because this is what I have found working with ladies is that. very good at identifying all the food choices that are bad or are not working for them, but not so good at acknowledging the choices that they're making that are really positive for themselves. And, you know, as you'd be aware, you know, our motivation comes from recognising that what we're doing is working, that we are capable of making choice that progresses towards our health goals. Yeah, look, Sally-Anne, I'm going to be a little bit mindful around time. So I'm going to start to wrap up. What I'd love you to share is how people might find out a bit more about Eating For You, your program and your book. Yes, thank you. The first thing I would suggest is taking a look at the... Eating For You Triggers Checklist for Emotional Eating. And that can be found at checklist, sorry, eatingchecklist.com. And the other resources are available from the Eating For You website, eatingforyouinforwords.com.au. Sally-Anne, that's fantastic. Look, thank you so much for sharing. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time. So for those listening, thank you very much, Sally-Anne. Thanks, Warrick. It's been my pleasure to be here. I'm always encouraging people to enjoy their food and eat mindfully. So we'll wrap that up now. For those listening, I'm sure you've learned some information, which is incredibly valuable about how we choose our food. Again, I'd like to thank Sally-Ann for joining us. If you have any queries or questions, drop us a note. And if you've got any ideas for future podcasts, let us know at info at drWarrickbishop.com. Again, thank you so much for joining us and wishing you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now. You have been listening to another podcast from Dr. Warrick. Visit his website at drWarrickbishop.com for the latest news on heart disease. If you love this podcast, feel free to leave us a review.
