Things we dive into in this episode:
Optimizing your nutrition is not real
Images of faces you see are often not real
Intense rom-com, fairy tale love is not real
📘Resources
Learn more on my website about my In Real Life Retreat and join the early bird list for exclusive discounts & freebies
📌Episode Highlights
It's not real to completely optimize your nutrition.
We are constantly inundated with messages about optimizing our health, optimizng our food intake, and how to eat optimally. But this just isn't real!
We are not computers or machines. There is not one way to optimize health for all. Each human is unique and we all have different metabolisms, bodies, needs, etc.
All you can do is the best you can do in that specific moment. All you can do is decide what's most important for you and implement a few gentle nutrition practices that support the life you want to live.
Even if nutrition hacks are backed by research, that doesn't mean they're healthy for us or good to incorporate into our lives.
What IS most helpful is understanding how to eat enough energy to fuel your life, how to create balanced plates, how to add little bits of fiber and vitamins and minerals to aid in digestion and support the immune system, and healing your relationship with good so that you're in touch with your hunger and fullness cues.
The most sustainable and essential nutrition advice is boring!
Most of the images and videos we see of people online are not real.
We mostly see facetuned, filtered, photoshopped faces and bodies online and even on Zoom calls! Even lighting and angles make faces look different than how they look in real life.
When we stare at ourselves on Zoom all day we have a different perception of what we actually look like and hyper-fixate on our appearance.
Because we're seeing so many fake images of faces on a regular basis, we have to build a tolerance for real faces and we have to expose ourselves to real faces. We need to see people face to face, in real life, not through the lens of a camera and not through a filtered photo or video.
Rom-coms, Disney movies, and fairy tales are not real.
Seeing fictional, romanticized, over-exaggerated love stories gives us a distorted perception of what our love lives are supposed to look like and what our romantic relationships are supposed to look like.
Love doesn't need to unfold so quickly and intensely. Allowing things to unfold with patience and intention doesn't take away the magic. The magic's still there. There's still a sense of butterflies. It just builds over time.
Slowing down in building a relationship creates a greater sense of safety and trust, which allows our sense of self and self-worth to remain intact.
Thanks for listening! 💖 Stay tuned to Caitie’s website for more episode updates and other exciting programs and resources.
Transcript
Caitie: We need to see people face to face in real life, not through the lens of a camera and not through a filtered photo or a filtered video. This is, I guess underlining the importance also of just really connecting with humans in real life, like actually seeing people whose hands you can hold, who you can hug, who you can talk to face to face. Maybe that's another important part of coming on the in-person retreat that I'm hosting, right? Like we need some in-person experiences to expose ourselves to real human bodies. Again, we're not computers, we're part of nature. Our face is going to fluctuate, but most of the time the fluctuations that we're perceiving in our face are exaggerated by the fact that we are constantly exposed to fake images
Welcome to Whole, Full & Alive, a podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself and be yourself. I'm Caitie Corradino. I'm a Registered-Dietician Nutritionist, a body image coach, and the founder of Full Soul Nutrition, a method that combines nutrition counseling with a powerful toolkit of somatic healing modalities. I have guided hundreds of clients to freedom with food, their bodies, and every aspect of their lives. I've also been through this healing myself. And on this podcast, I want to help you eat with confidence, embrace your body, form aligned relationships, and create a life that you're in love with. I'll share actionable tools, no bullshit stories and interviews that will remind you why you have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive. Are you ready? Let's get into it.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full, & Alive, the podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself, and be yourself. I'm so stoked to be here with you today. Thanks so much for tuning in. This is a straight from the heart special. Today, I'm gonna be talking to you about a few things that I know will help you find some relief when it comes to food, body image, and romantic relationships. And when I say this is a straight from the heart special, I really mean it. I am gonna talk straight from my heart today. These things that I'm gonna tell you are coming from some things that I've been processing in my own life. Some things I've been reminding myself lately that I know are going to really resonate with you. So I'm so excited to share. And I think once a month, I'm going to do one of these straight from the heart specials where I really do just try to speak from what's going on for me right now or what I've been processing a lot with clients right now. Just speaking from what's coming through authentically.
Before we dive in, as always, I want to invite you to take the deepest breath you have taken all day so far. So wherever you are, maybe if it's accessible to you, you close your eyes and take a nice deep breath in through your nose and feel your lungs fill up and take a long exhale out your mouth. Let's try it one more time. And this time, make sure you're really breathing into your lungs and not just breathing into your shoulders. Deep inhale, feel your lungs fill up. Maybe that breath even reaches towards your belly. And then exhale, let it go. I hope that deep breath can shift the way that you listen to this episode. I hope that that deep breath helps you kind of connect to your body a little bit more so that you can really feel what resonates with you from this episode and you can leave what doesn't resonate with you. I really just feel called to remind you that podcasts aren't for you to be able to relate and apply every single thing that you hear. Podcasts are for you to be able to take what's working for you and what feels resonant in your body and leave what's not working for you, what's not feeling resonant in your body. You're never going to agree with everything that someone says. Not everything is going to resonate with you. Not everything applies to you. And I hope that by taking a deep breath before we start this show, it'll help you kind of put your sensors on so that you can figure out, you know, what's, what's working for you here and what I share today.
Before we dive in, I also want to make a really fun announcement. I have officially shared all of the details for my next retreat. My next retreat is coming up this December. It is going to serve as a transition into the new year. So the retreat starts on December 30th, 2024, and it ends on January 4th, 2025. And I cannot think of a better way for anyone to start their new year sincerely. This retreat is a cocoon to practice things that you might've been wanting to implement, but haven't been able to get yourself to do at home. It is going to be five nights and six days of breath work, exercises, movement practices, nutrition and body image workshops, deep connection, deep community, and of course, travel. I love helping people tap into the expansive power of travel. Travel reminds you that anything is possible and travel also helps you feel. It helps you come alive when you explore a new place that blows your perspective wide open. It just makes you feel truly more in touch with the present moment and more in touch with your senses. And that is actually what I've decided this retreat is all about.
So if you've been listening to me for a while, you might know that my retreats used to be called the Nutrition & Intuition Retreat. And now I'm changing the name. The retreats are now going to be called the In Real Life Retreat. Because based on some feedback that I got from my last retreat, I've realized that the main mission of this retreat is to help you feel more alive. I think that the biggest problem with this virtual, Photoshopped, face-tuned, you could always be doing more, you should always be multitasking world that we live in, is that it makes us feel less alive. It makes us feel less sensitive. And I don't know about you, but growing up, I was always told that being sensitive is a bad thing. So I thought that becoming less sensitive would be a good thing. But then hours of scrolling on Instagram started to take me way out of my senses and diet culture made me resist my real and healthy body. And the pressure to be constantly productive led me to become so exhausted that I couldn't feel anything. And eventually all I wanted was to get my sensitivity back, to step back into my rawest, most embodied, most real life. And so, the retreat is now called the in real life retreat. This retreat is going to be a space where you will step into your most raw, your most embodied, your most real life while you release anxiety about food, exercise, and body size. All right, that is my announcement today. If you are interested in joining this retreat, please don't hesitate to click the link in the show notes and get on the early bird list so that you can be one of the first people invited to sign up and one of the first people and edit and one of the only people to get the early bird specials, the early bird discount, the early bird freebies that will come with this retreat. I am so, so, so excited about the name change. I am so excited about the location. It is in Portugal. I don't even think I freaking said that. So there's just so much to say about this retreat, but I don't want to take up the whole podcast. So we're gonna shift out of that now, find more info on my website or at the link in the bio and let's get into my straight from the heart episode.
Like I said, I wanna share some things with you today that I think are going to help you with nutrition, body image, and romantic relationships. The format of what I'm gonna share today is three things that I have to remind myself are not real. So it goes very much in line with this retreat announcement, because the retreat is called In Real Life Retreat and the mission of it is to get you back into your most raw, most real, most embodied, most, you know, not virtual life. And yeah, the three things I want to share with you today are three things that I have to remind myself are not real. And when I remind myself that these three things are not real, my relationship with food, my relationship with my body and my dating life gets better. So what are these three things that I want to remind you are not real? Let's dive in.
The first thing that I need to remind myself on a regular basis is not real, is optimized eating. I don't know about you, but left and right, I am seeing these messages about how to optimize your health, how to optimize your food intake, how to eat optimally. And that word, optimally, in and of itself, first of all, it makes me think of a computer. It makes me think of a piece of technology. I don't know if this is going to age me, but I think of like optimum online. I think of like a computer that runs on an algorithm, a piece of technology that is created with metal and algorithms and wires. And I don't think of a person. I don't think of a human. I don't think of a mammal. I don't think of a body that is part of nature. I think of a machine. Yet it's unfortunately become so normalized to talk about food and nutrition as if we are computers as if we are machines, as if we are not all really unique human beings with really unique human mammalian bodies that go through cycles and ebb and flow and have their own individualized metabolism.
I have to remind myself when I'm seeing all these messages about you should implement this supplement regimen and you should make sure you have micro greens this many times per week and you should make sure that you home cook 90% of all of these different recommendations that are thrown out online, right? I have to remind myself that it will never be possible for me to completely optimize my nutrition. All I can ever do is the best I can do. All I can ever do is decide what's most important to me in life and implement a few gentle nutrition practices that are going to support me in living the life that I want to live. That is all I can do. Just because someone recommends this supplement or this particular superfood or this particular nutrition related routine doesn't mean I have to do it. Even if there's research on that, right? Like a lot of the stuff we see online is just very quacky and ridiculous and there is no research to substantiate it. And it's just like, we're not going to implement that anyway, right? Like, for example, we're not going to go on the carnivore diet and we're not going to wear a glucose monitor if we don't have diabetes. And we're not going to do all of these like quacky, gimmicky health regimens that we see all the influencers promoting, but there might be even some like, good things that are out there like good little nutrition tools and tweaks and things. But even if they are supported by research, that doesn't mean that it's realistic or even healthy or good for us to try to incorporate them into our lives. At some point, we have to just create a gentle structure that is aligned with our life and our values. And at some point we have to decide that enough is enough.
Why am I sharing this as like the straight from the heart thing? So it's definitely been coming up with my clients a lot lately that they'll like text me and be like, Hey, I saw online that I should be taking this supplement or Hey, I saw online that I should be having 40 grams of protein at every breakfast or I saw online that, you know, insert nutrition recommendation here. And like I said, not all of the nutrition recommendations that you see online are necessarily bad. They're just not necessarily necessary for you. And you can only take your nutrition structure so far before it starts driving you crazy, before it starts taking over your life. We want to implement nutrition tools and nutrition structure that is going to support the life that we want to live. We don't want to form the life that we're going to live around our nutrition regimen. That's just not a healthy way to live. I want food to support my life. I don't want food to be my life. I want nutrition to support my life. I don't want nutrition to be my life.
And aside from how this comes up for my clients, I can also admit that this comes up for me, right? Like I said, this is something that I consistently have to remind myself is not real. It's not real to completely optimize my nutrition. It's gonna ebb and flow. There's gonna be different chapters and different seasons and different stages of my life where I'm going to be able to partake in certain routines and structure when it comes to nutrition. And there are some chapters of my life where I just really need to keep it simple and basic. Make sure I'm getting my proteins, fats and carbs every four to five waking hours, little pop of fiber and veggies in each meal. And like, that's kind of it. But then there's other seasons of life where I can also add more supplements. I have access to more supplements. I can make more interesting and fun recipes. I can be more mindful about incorporating variety and increasing certain vitamins and minerals, but that's not always healthy or realistic for me to be tracking. That's not always healthy. It's not always healthy or realistic for me to be zooming in on the minutia of my nutrition. Sometimes other things in life are more important and as long as I am getting enough food to support the systems of my body, energy, healthy digestion and to accommodate my personal needs like celiac disease and my peanut allergy, I'm good.
And then there's other seasons of life where I can pay a little bit more attention to it and I can experiment and I can be like, okay, if I have this meal before a workout, how do I feel if I have this meal after a workout? How do I feel? You know, there's seasons where I get to pay attention to this a little bit more in a gently structured way. And then there are seasons where I need to focus on other aspects of my health. And I'm not saying that I dump nutrition out the window. I'm a dietician. Nutrition is always important to me. But I just am not always in a season of like being experimental with different recipes and different supplements and trying new things like tart cherry juice to help me fall asleep. Like I'm seeing all these things like that, right? And another way that this has been coming up for me on a personal level is that I have to remind myself that I don't need to stay up on every single little tiny freaking nutrition hack for my clients. That is not what's helpful to most people. What's helpful to most people, especially the clients that I work with is helping them understand how to eat enough energy to fuel their life, how to create balanced plates, how to add little pops of fiber and vitamins and minerals so that their digestion is good and their immune system is supported, and most of all, how to heal their relationship with food so that they're in touch with their hunger cues and their fullness cues so that they feel peace when they're eating, so that they're not overthinking their eating or just not thinking about it at all and not feeling good. That's what's most helpful.
I don't have to worry about what the capitalist society tells us we should be worried about, right? Most people who force you to focus on little tiny nutritional minutia are people who are just trying to sell you something. People who are trying to sell you some sort of digestive enzyme supplement that's very expensive. People who are trying to sell you what's that Bulletproof Coffee guy doing nowadays? Like the red glasses and I don't even know what this stuff is. Most people who are focused on minutiae are just trying to make a sale. And most people who are actually going to help you with nutrition are people who understand that nutrition is flexible, individualized, it's going to ebb and flow in different seasons of your life. And it's kind of boring. Like the most important nutrition advice isn't sexy. The most important nutrition advice isn't about like a fancy supplement that you're going to go buy or, you know, red filter glasses. Like if you don't know what I'm talking about, sorry, but, or buying a glucose monitor, right? Most nutrition advice, the good, sustainable, most important, most essential nutrition advice is boring. Remember that. It's about learning how to implement the basic and boring and accurate nutrition advice in a way that allows you to live your fullest life and have a good, good, good relationship with food and your body. So that's the first little nugget I want to share with you today is remember that optimizing your nutrition is not real.
What else isn't real? The second thing that is not real, and this one's going to be a lot simpler to talk about, is most photos that you see online or elsewhere. Most photos that you see, most images that you see, and now even most videos that you see are not real. We are not seeing real bodies on a regular basis. What we're seeing is facetuned, filtered, photoshopped bodies. Why am I sharing this even though it's obvious? Because I am finding that these fake photos are causing face dysmorphia. We talk about body dysmorphia a lot. We talk about fixating on different parts of our body shape and size. But I'm finding lately that a lot of my clients are particularly fixated on their faces. And it is because of the fake images that we're seeing of faces. We very rarely see a real face when we're watching a video, watching an advertisement, even when we're on Zoom. Zoom has freaking filters and people have different light lighting and lights in their room. And it's at certain angles, like we're not actually seeing real faces that much. And then when we look at our own face in the mirror or our own face in a photo or in just a quick raw candid selfie that we take, we're like, what is that? It's a real face. That's what it is. Wrinkles and crinkles and acne and acne scars and bags under our eyes. Like these things are all constantly wiped away by all of the filters that are so customary.
There's also an obsession with jaw lines that is happening. And a lot of people are using Facetune and filters to take in their jaw to make their face look slender, to make their jawline look more defined. And it's really having an impact on us. On a regular basis, I have a client say to me, okay, my body's fine, but like not my face. My body's okay, but I'm not okay with the way my face is looking or my face is getting puffier, right? Puffy is a word that I hear like 95 times a day. And I will share it because this is a straight from the heart episode that this also has an impact on me too. I find myself looking in the mirror sometimes and I'm like, what is that? What is my face? And it's because I'm also seeing filtered faces constantly. We need to give ourselves more grace if we're experiencing face dysmorphia, if we're experiencing a lot of distress about the way our face looks or the way our face is gaining weight. It's really sad, but I do have a lot of clients saying that to me. Please remember that it is because we're seeing so many fake images of faces on a regular basis and we have to build a tolerance for real faces and we have to expose ourselves to real faces. We need to see people face to face in real life, not through the lens of a camera and not through a filtered photo or a filtered video. This is, I guess underlining the importance also of just really connecting with humans in real life, like actually seeing people whose hands you can hold, who you can hug, who you can talk to face to face. Maybe that's another important part of coming on the in-person retreat that I'm hosting, right? Like we need some in-person experiences to expose ourselves to real human bodies. Again, we're not computers, we're part of nature. Our face is going to fluctuate, but most of the time the fluctuations that we're perceiving in our face are exaggerated by the fact that we are constantly exposed to fake images, right? Your face is gonna fluctuate throughout the day, throughout your life, but remember that the fake images we're seeing of faces are causing us to perceive more extremity in these fluctuations. There's a distortion, a dysmorphia being created by seeing so many fake images. Okay, that's number two.
The last thing I want to share, the last thing that I want to remind you is not real, is really coming straight from the heart. So the last thing I want to talk about today is dating and relationships. The more I move forward in this podcast, the more episodes I produce, the more listener questions and feedback I get, the more people are consistently asking me about dating and relationships. And this is a topic that I'm really passionate about speaking about because I think there's so many parallels in how we heal our relationship with food and our body image and then how we heal our relationship with other people and how we heal our relationship to dating and romantic relationships. And this is obviously something that I am immersed in on a personal level because I am dating. So what I'm going to share with you today is what I personally have had to remind myself is not real when it comes to dating and romantic relationships.
Rom-coms, Disney movies, and fairy tales are not real. And this is another one that's probably like, duh, Caitie, of course, those things are not real. But I'm feeling particularly inspired to share that and remind you of that today, because I've noticed that just like the same way seeing a bunch of filtered faces on Instagram, gives me a distorted perception of my own face. Seeing a bunch of fictional, romanticized, over-exaggerated love stories gives me a distorted perception of what my love life is supposed to look like and what my romantic relationship is supposed to look like.
I will share that I have been dating someone now since March of this year. And I want to say that it is the first time that I am experiencing what people call the slow burn. Like there isn't this like, there wasn't an intensity to the start of this relationship. We weren't just like strangers and not dating one day and then like, shacking up the next day. This has been honestly my first like relationship that I've allowed to unfold with patience and it's very vulnerable to admit that but pretty much every other partnership that I've been in has happened very fast. Every partnership that I've been in has had this like rush of like passionate intensity and then also just like rushing the steps of the relationship. And now, like I said, for the first time I'm experiencing something slower and I thought for a while that allowing myself to experience something slower would take away the magic of entering a new romantic relationship. But what I've learned is that allowing things to unfold with patience and intention doesn't take away the magic. The magic's still there. There's still a sense of butterflies. They're just forming a little bit later and they feel a little bit safer than they've ever felt before. And there was also still a sense of like connection at first sight with this person. It just wasn't like insanity lust at first sight. It was like, grounded, calm, certain curiosity at first sight.
And I think I've, at first when I entered relationship with this person, because there wasn't that like insane sort of like rush happening, I thought maybe that this person like just wasn't the person for me. I was like, hmm, like maybe this isn't it. Maybe I'm not experiencing the same sort of like chaos that I normally experience. But what I've come to recognize is that the chaos that I've previously experienced with past partners was actually some form of like red flag. Like, I should have rolled back on that instant chemistry and been like, hmm, why does this feel so exciting? Because what I have to say about this very certain, I kind of want to call it like certain curiosity at first sight that I felt with this person is the only thing I ever want to feel ever again. Like, should I enter another relationship after this one? I think I've learned now that it's a calm, certain curiosity at first sight. And then that allows more loving, butterfly kind of feelings to form over time. Patience is important.
But that's not what we see in fictional stories. That's not what we see in the Disney-fied love. That's not what we see in the fairy tale kind of love. We see like, it's instant and when you know, you know, and like, it can happen so fast and like, boom, chock-a-lacka, like, I'm more interested now in pacing and I am more interested in reminding myself that love is calm and love doesn't have to be fireworks. And that's the last thing I want to remind you is not real. You know, the same way we see fake faces everywhere and then think like my face should look like a filter at all times. We see romanticized, whooshy, rushy, over-emphasis on chemistry kind of love promoted to us. And then we think, that's what my relationship should look like. I have to say, like with certainty, this is like the best and healthiest connection I've ever had with a romantic partner before. Even though I've been in relationships that are years long and this connection has only been a few months so far I am certain that I've never experienced healthier connection. It's hard to admit that a lot of connection I've had in the past was unhealthy. But it's also beautiful to realize that I'm arriving in that place now and one of the reasons is because I've reminded myself that love is calm. Love is not an instant firework fairy tale. There can be a certain curiosity about someone and you can follow that where it leads you.
Just like intuitive eating is experimental and curious, just like getting to know your body unfolds over time. Like I really do think there's a lot of parallels here. In addition to just wanting to be honest with you and open up about what's going on in my life, I will hold to that statement that I think there's a lot of parallels between intuitive eating and dating. And maybe I will do an episode just on that. I've been saying I'm going to do an episode just on that for a long time and I haven't. So maybe that's going to be my next straight from the heart episode. All right.
Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Before we hop off, I'm just going to remind you one more time that optimizing your nutrition, implementing every little nutrition hack ever is not real. You are not a computer, you are not a machine, you are a human being, your life is going to fluctuate. Nutrition is mostly boring. It's not sexy. It's not marketable. And remember that when people are trying to be like, your whole life will be solved if you optimize your health. Second, remember that Facetune and most photos of most faces you see on a regular basis are not real. Period. Full stop. And number three, remember that fairy tale rom-com Disney-fied love is not real. What is real is safe love. No, I wanna say that differently, edit. And remember that rom -coms, Disney movies, and fairy tales are not real. And therefore the way love is portrayed in those circumstances is not real. And real love in your real life might look, can look, probably will look very different from that rom-com Disney fairy tale love.
And on that note, real life, join my In Real Life Retreat in Portugal at the end of this year. It's coming up in less than six months. Save your space. There's only 10 of them. I can't believe how amazing this retreat is going to be. The itinerary is so exciting. Yeah. Thank you for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this show, please leave a five star rating on Spotify or Apple or where you get your podcasts or please share this episode with someone who you think could benefit from hearing these messages, from hearing these things that are not real. Remember how much you can help someone else out by sharing this show. You might really help someone shift their perspective on something that can be pretty life altering for them. And I hope that as you were listening to this episode, you figured out a few things that really resonate with you. Take a deep breath before you move into the rest of your day. And I will be back here next week.
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