Talking With Our Mouths Full

In this episode, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker discusses how she addresses clients' wishes for weight loss in her practice. She mentions factors that drive thin ideals, factors that influence weight, and describes how she works with clients who present with eating disorders that include fixation on weight loss.

In Episode 11, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker discusses how we might reconcile the oft discrepancy between relying on lab values and other data points to serve as health markers with patients' lived experiences. She uses examples like that of the BMI chart to illustrate how little is being captured in numbers on a page and suggests some reasons why clients and clinicians alike may be more likely to defer to rote numbers a than to think and listen critically to individuals' inner worlds.

In episode 10, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker discusses how talking about food and body is a gateway into even deeper, relational conversations that can help clients heal from disordered eating in a more meaningful way. She gives case examples to illustrate this process and encourages addressing the clinical relationship to effectively treat eating disorders.

In Episode 9, Amy discusses the flip side of "When Food Hurts"; when digestive conditions are effectively managed and foods that were once off limits can be re-introduced, how might we understand the seemingly contradictory feelings that arise, and how do we go about re-integrating foods in a way that feels both physically and emotionally possible?

In Episode 8, Amy considers why carbohydrates specifically have received the level of notoriety they have in the nutrition and diet world. She touches on the science of what a carbohydrate molecule is, it's chemical role in the body, and describes how our unconscious mind may be operating when it comes to our complex craving for and aversion to carbohydrates.

In Episode 7, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker distinguishes between food as a supporting cast member in digestive distress, exacerbating symptoms, rather than the root cause of the condition. She discusses the importance of identifying and treating the root cause so that food intake can remain diverse and sufficient, and the digestive system can remain intact and functional.

In Episode 6, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker explores the appeal around cleanses and generally getting rid of things from the body or diet. She then extrapolates these desires to the eating disorder treatment world, where she suggests clinicians may inadvertently seek to eliminate things from the clinical landscape too, for similar reasons as clients.

In Episode 5, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker delves into what happens when eating food has negative physiological repercussions and how eating disorder treatment can be prolonged when these digestive disturbances go unacknowledged and untreated. She focuses on two such digestive disorders: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS).

In Episode 4, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker discusses the phenomenon of not being able to stop eating once you start. She explores its biological and evolutional underpinnings and suggests how to interrupt the cycle.

In Episode 3, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker explores how disordered eating behaviors are often urgent and creative attempts to solve seemingly unmanageable problems, and how we can accept more nourishment as we find relational means to resolve the original problems. 

In Episode 2, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker investigates what we might really be attempting to weigh when we step on a scale and how we can better understand ourselves in light of this pursuit. 

In Episode 1, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Amy Isabella Chalker explores how we might understand what is being communicated when we're hungry, but nothing sounds good. She digs into how we might understand this struggle and ways to approach a solution from a place of curiosity and empathy.