Hello, I'm Kate Freeman and this is The Daily Doll. Transform your eating habits and achieve long-term well-being with Ayla Health. Ayla Health is a mobile app that combines micro-learning with me planning into a seamless user experience that teaches you how to eat well for the rest of your life. One habit at a time.
Download it now from the episode. It's free. On this episode of The Daily Doll, I'm chatting with nutritionist entirely on from nutrition guru and the chef about with the dema. Not only will Tara share what the evidence is about nutrition's role in the management of with the dema.
She'll also share some of her lived experience with the condition as well. It's dollop time. Hey, hey, my name is Kate. I'm a registered nutritionist and after 20 years in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start.
And so I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empower to maximize your health. Every weekday will dollop an episode into your feed covering everything from busting nutritionist, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics and habits for a healthy life. My promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free and strictly no-woo.
Only good science translated into easy everyday advice. Let's do this. Welcome back to The Daily Doll Podcast, everyone. I'm actually stoked and extremely excited to introduce my guests on the podcast this week because I'm having a little social media like crush me your, you know, personal look up to your moment.
Tarolie Young is a university called Thani Trishness and she was a registered nutritionist and lecturer in nutrition at the University of the Sunshine Coast for many years. And she is a Facebook and social profile, the nutrition guru and the chef. She also has her own podcast 99% FAD-free. Where she thoroughly unpacked nutrition myths and wellness woo.
So all of a sudden after my own heart, welcome to The Daily Doll Tara. Thank you for having me Kate. It is so good because you've been doing this a really long time and I've been doing this a long time too. You've been on my social life and following you for a long time and you're fighting the good, woo fight nutrition.
Trying, trying sometimes banging my head against the wall and then sometimes breaking through, which is yeah, it is good. It does feel like it is a bit never ending but we do have to persevere. I'd like to know actually just randomly. Do you think it's getting better or worse?
Nutrition is information. Oh my. Hmm. I guess that's a, for we could do a whole five episodes on that one.
Thank you. Good. Oh look, I think that we've come a long way in that when social media first came out, it was very personality based. So a lot of businesses didn't use social media.
So what that meant was people were sharing their own stories and so people were connecting on social media and finding out what other people do in terms of all sorts of aspects of life. And it was very captivating in that way in that it was people we knew sharing information and that was really good. But they're not kind of morphed into this business tool where companies brands, celebrities all started using social media. And I guess in a way that's where social media became a really tricky beast because suddenly it became very difficult to know who to trust because a lot of the messaging was marketing.
But not only it wasn't just marketing that we had been used to like ads on the TV. All of a sudden it was marketing in terms of influences showing us what type of protein powder they were drinking and all of us not understanding that they've been paid $10,000 to drink that protein powder. And so there was a time when no one understood that. I think that what is wonderful is many nutrition professionals nowadays are actually using social media for good people and really trying to help educate people on the dangers of social media and not critiquing information.
And I think that message is starting to get out there. I do think and I see it particularly among my friends that people are a little bit more what's the word. They're just a bit more cautious as to the information that they consume now. It's still not in a great place.
We've still got a long way to go. But I do think it is changing and shifting a little bit. Yeah, definitely. So tell me more about your career because you have been doing this a long time.
What's been your story from starting nutrition to me right now? Yeah. And I remember at the time that I started my nutrition guru account it was maybe 15 years ago or so. I was literally like the only nutrition professional that it started in the accounts.
And I remember at the time a lot of nutrition professionals, what they were saying was, I'm not starting an account. I don't have time to waste on that. And I was at that time I was really confused and quite a well known dietitian at that time was on TV. I was at our reviews to use social media because it's almost below me.
And I was really confused because I was like, you can reach so many people on social media. And this is where people are looking for the information. And it was actually quite hard because at the time there wasn't many other people doing it. But I also loved it.
It was a great way to connect with people and kind of disperse information that was really important to get out there. And I think I started that kind of my final year of studying nutrition at university. I think I started writing on social media as a way to practice science communication. So when you're in your nutrition or science student at uni, everything is very science based.
It's really, really tricky. And so you can have all of this really great knowledge and you heard. But it's actually very difficult to then relay that information for someone who doesn't know anything about nutrition in a way that they can understand. And not only understand, but they need inspired to then take action.
Yeah. So that's how I found social media is a way for me to practice my skills. Yeah. So once I graduated, I also had my own, my own clinic where I was seeing clients.
And I also did a lot of recipe development for newspapers and magazines and a lot of writing about really hot topics at that time for newspapers and magazines and interviews on radio and ABC. And I just, I really love that side of science communication. It's really great. And then I moved into teaching at the university, which was just wonderful in helping to shape the future nutrition people of Australia.
Yeah. That's really cool. So what is your most favorite area of nutrition that you kind of like talking about? Would you call yourself a specialist?
I'm finding more of a general, generalist nutrition. Yeah. I could never be a specialist. I have a very deep interest in social media and the way that social media impacts our health in both a negative way and a positive way.
And I do have an interest in the way that professionals can be using social media. And then I guess if anyone follows me, I've been going on a lot about body neutrality and accepting bodies and people of all different various sizes and shapes and really trying to accept that body for who it is and what it is. And focusing that rather than all of the mixed messaging we get from diet culture. So I have started to call myself a non-influencer.
I do like to educate people about influencing industry and how we can kind of be a bit clever and bits which aren't and not take what they're saying for gospel. Yeah. Great. So that leads me into the question because I got this question on social media.
Okay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I've taken my daughter to the GP who's got a little bit of a dema hat and is put on a consider about amount of way in a short time. So her self has gone through huge weight battles and knows how much she taught to herself as a young woman around the way that she's been trying to be very sensitive with her daughter. And you shared very, very, very, a lot of views ago now on your experience with the dema.
And so I just knew exactly who I wanted to talk to. I got this question about libidema and the GP gave. So interesting about talk about later. But let's start off this conversation and we'll finish off today's episode on what is libidema and what does this mean and those are so much more about it.
Well, it's a lot more common that we think it is a strange name that not many of us have actually heard before. And so I'm sure that the subcutaneous adipose fat tissue disorder and actually affects around 10% of Australian women. So when you think of the women in our perhaps in your workplace or in your friend's circle, that's one in ten of your friends may in fact actually have this. It's characterized and I should start actually by saying that libidema is not obesity.
So often it actually looks like it is and I'll be very honest here, but my legs are really big. They're massive. I've got no ankles. So they've got no knees.
They just be column trunks. So I'm sure that the body is often disproportionate. So often there is no libidema tissue in other areas of the body except for the legs and hips, the buttocks and then sometimes the arms as well. And so as my condition has progressed, I've now got it in the back of my arms.
And the other really important thing is it's actually not caused by lifestyle factors. So this condition isn't caused by eating too much or not exercising enough. And we may be able to talk about that in terms of often the misconception that someone who has this disorder doesn't need to eat. Let's chuck up and move a bit more.
We will talk about this in future episodes, but I'd like to leave the listeners on this point. I wonder considering how prevalent it is. And the weight to think our own advice is that we hold within our culture, how many women have felt blamed or felt like it was their fault that they're body changed in this way. And then you know, we're very hard at dieting or exercising in an attempt to get the body to be more socially acceptable or smaller again and found themselves frustrated and stressed about that.
So we're going to talk about that more in the next episode. I have to our goal of the whole week, guys. So hopefully we'll finish up this episode today, but please join us tomorrow. We're going to keep chatting.
We will catch you there. The Daily Dollar podcast is proudly brought to you by Ayla Health, built for your confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits at that last. As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes.
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Until next time.