When Christy Harrison posted on her Instagram that “giving birth broke me open in every way imaginable” I knew I needed to ask her about it. The anti-diet dietitian and author of Anti-Diet and the forthcoming The Wellness Trap tells me about the heartache and joy, tenderness and vulnerability of becoming a new parent. This is the conversation I wish I’d had as a new parent. We also hear about Christy’s exciting new book, and how the wellness industry can be especially dangerous for new parents. And, hear Christy's thoughts on the idea that we are ‘born intuitive eaters’ as she navigates milk feeding and introducing solids with her daughter. This is such an enriching conversation, but ngl, it gets heavy in places. Have some tissues handy, and if hearing about traumatic experiences related to birth isn’t for you today, then give this one a miss.
Find out more about Christy here.
Follow her work on Instagram here.
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Here’s the transcript in full.
Christy Harrison
You know, again, sort of feeling like giving birth like broke me open, it's like, it's, it kind of released some of that anger and made me like more soft and vulnerable and, you know, just less, less angry and less kind of, you know, I don't have such tightly balled up fists anymore, even when I'm critiquing structures and systems that are harmful.
Laura Thomas
Hey, Welcome to Can I Have Another Snack podcast, where I'm asking my guests who are what they're nourishing right now and who or what is nourishing them. I'm Laura Thomas, an anti diet Registered nutritionist and author of the Can I Have Another Snack newsletter.
Today I'm talking to anti diet dietician Christy Harrison. Many of you will know Christy already. She is host of the Food Psych podcast, author of Anti Diet and the forthcoming book, The Wellness Trap. This conversation is one that I've really been looking forward to sharing. Christy tells us all about what life has been like as a new mother who is nourishing two babies, her human baby and her second book The Wellness Trap. Christy gives us a little peek inside the new book sharing some of the research that she's uncovered about the wild wild west of the wellness world. And how a lot of the really harmful wellness dis- and misinformation really capitalises from parents who are just trying to do the best for their kids. We also talk about her experiences with milk feeding, and then going on to introduce solids with her baby and how that has made her reconsider some of the things she says about intuitive eating being a birthright. I think you'll be really interested in hearing what she has to say about that. And finally, I asked Christy about a post that she shared on her Instagram, which said, giving birth broke me open in every way imaginable.
And also, this was a really tough and pretty emotional conversation. It felt like the conversation that I wish I had heard about birth, rather than the conversations about whether you should, I don't know, shave or wax, which are real articles that I've seen in parenting publications in 2022. But anyway, just a heads up that we do talk about traumatic themes in this episode around birth and the early weeks of recovery and medical trauma. So if you aren't up to hearing them right now, then I trust you to do whatever you need to do to look after yourself.
We'll get to Christy in just a moment. But first of all, I wanted to let you know that you are listening to the long edit of this episode. From October I'll be publishing a shorter edit here in your podcast player and a special long edit for paid subscribers have the Can I Have Another Snack podcast as a little bonus for supporting my work alongside weekly discussion threads, my dear Laura column, and loads of other fun perks on Can I Have Another Snack newsletter, you can head to laurathomas.substack.com to subscribe. It's five pounds a month or 50 pounds for the year. And if that's inaccessible for you, please email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk for a comp subscription.
I'm keeping all the content on Can I Have Another Snack free for the month of September, and turning on the paid community features and paid subscriber only columns from October. If you value this work, you can help keep it sustainable by becoming a paid subscriber. And last thing if you enjoy this episode, I would really really appreciate it if you could support me by rating and reviewing it in your podcast player and maybe even sharing it with a friend. It makes a huge difference to a new podcast. You can find a full transcript of this episode over on substack. Again, that's laurathomas.substack.com. And I would really love it if you wanted to leave a comment over there to let us know what you thought of the episode. And to keep the conversation going. Alright team, here's Christy.
Laura Thomas
Christy, I'd love it if you could tell us who or what you are nourishing right now.
Christy Harrison
That's such an interesting question for me at this moment because I feel like I'm nourishing two very important and very different things. The number one being my baby. I'm breastfeeding and also giving her solid foods and so like really literally nourishing a human being, you know, and it's like incredible and overwhelming sometimes and feels like a huge responsibility and, you know is so fraught in some ways with diet and wellness culture, as I'm sure we'll get into and so, but it's also like beautiful and just such a beautiful bonding experience. And I feel really lucky to be able to breastfeed because, I mean, many, many people aren't. And I didn't think I was going to be able to at first because I had a traumatic birth experience and wasn't able to breastfeed right away. And so the fact that it, like, ended up happening at all is kind of a miracle. And so it's been like this beautiful bonding journey of feeding her and just getting to spend that time cuddling and you know, having time together, but just in the past couple of weeks, she started biting. So got a tooth. And it's like, it's brought up so much, because, you know, it hurts, it scared me, I sort of reacted, and then she reacted and cried, and, you know, and then I got scared and started to feel really anxious every time I was feeding. And so this beautiful bond that we've had that I don't think I even fully appreciated while I was in the easy part. And, you know, sometimes I'd be like, looking at my phone and like, doing other things while feeding her like, suddenly I'm like, no, like, Why did I spend all that time, you know, not paying full attention, not being fully in this moment, when now it's going to be taken away from me, you know, potentially soon, in a way that feels like it's too early. And yet, you know, we have fortunately been able to consult with a lactation consultant, and she's helped a lot in terms of, you know, figuring out a better position and better strategies to kind of alleviate the teething pains so that she's not biting on my boob. And so, you know, it continues, our breastfeeding journey continues, but it's, it's starting to feel like this precious thing that, you know, the sand is slipping through my hands of the time that we have together.
Laura Thomas
No, I just, I really, that resonates so much, because we also went through the biting stage. But we were able to overcome it. Two years, we're still going. But I, I hear what you're saying as well, just in that, you know, that those, I don't want to over romanticise breastfeeding, because I feel like that's a danger that we can run as well. But I do kind of, do try and soak in as much of it as I can, when I'm, you know, when I'm able to, there are definitely times that I just want to check out and scroll on my phone. And at the same time, you know, he's getting older, I'm trying to sort of let him lead the way in terms of weaning. And then there, there are days where he just doesn't seem that interested. And I'm like, oh, have we had our last feed? And then we had a spate of illness recently, and he was just like, glued to me, just so attached. And then it's almost like the opposite end of the spectrum, where I'm like, Okay, are you ready to ween? So yeah, I, there's, there's just so much emotion tied up in breastfeeding, which is kind of what I'm hearing from you is that it's just this, there's a constant tension with it.
Christy Harrison
Totally, so much emotion and so much, you know, I didn't, I kind of naively thought, I guess that like, once we were over the really hard part of the beginning, where I didn't have enough milk, and we weren't even sure if it was gonna happen. And I wanted to try, but I was also sort of like one foot in like formula. And just like, you know, if we have to do formula, it's fine. I'm fine with that. But wanting to, like, give it a shot with breastfeeding, you know, once we got through that, and it was going strong, and we had our latching down and our positions, and she was getting more efficient at feeding and stuff, I was kind of like, okay, like, you know, this is how it's going to be for the next, you know, however many months and I'd love to get to a year and like, we'll see how it goes, whatever. And so I didn't sort of reckon with the emotions, I think for a while, you know, it was probably a good four or five months there where it was just kind of easy, smooth sailing, which again, like so lucky, because I know, a lot of people have ongoing struggles with it even at that point. But then now to be sort of coming back to like, okay, like, what is it going to look like to potentially wean her to formula or to stop feeding as much now pumping some time, you know, parts of the day, and just like thinking about all those logistics and dealing with the emotions that come up and knowing that like, hormonally too there're shifts that happen when you, you know, shift over to even pumping more and I'm starting to kind of feel that and I'm like, Okay, how much of this is just sort of hormonally, my, my body is kind of telling me to be more sensitive or making me more sensitive and how much of this is like, you know, just kind of the, the natural emotions of like, something beautiful coming to an end and something that like, you know, was always a little challenging too in some ways. It's just yeah, there's just a lot. A lot of mixed emotions.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, yeah. No, I, we also had a challenging start, and my supply was low, my baby was in the NICU for two weeks, and the support or lack thereof, I suppose around feeding in the hospital just really left its mark. And, you know, we went through the rigmarole as well of lactation consultants and getting help. And even I would say, it took us a good three, maybe four months to really get the hang of breastfeeding. And, and then, you know, it's almost as soon as you've got the hang of it, you're like onto something else. Oh, while we're weaning now, or like we're introducing solids now, and or, you know, I'm having to pump more, it's just such a, or there's a tooth, there's just a constant roller coaster of, of emotions. And I feel like that's just a perfect metaphor for parenting in general. It's just up and down constantly. Christy you said at the beginning that you have two things that you're nurturing at the moment. So what was the the other thing?
Christy Harrison
Yeah, so the other thing is, it's also big and just but very different, you know, much more intellectual, which is my second book, I'm working on revisions for that now. And I wrote it while I was pregnant, like pretty much except for the first month of writing the manuscript or something I was pregnant the whole time. And then, you know, turned it in, went on maternity leave, came back and got revisions, and now working on those and they're due in a week. So it's actually like, down to the wire. And I'm feeling pretty good about the structure of it. And it's kind of more fine tuning at this point. But that's been a whole journey as well, because the book is about wellness culture, and it's called The Wellness Trap. And I look into, you know, how, in the my first book Anti Diet, I posited that diet, or that wellness culture is the new guise of diet culture that, you know, diet culture has cloaked itself as wellness, in order to kind of evade people's growing suspicion about diets and sort of doneness with diets. And, you know, diets now say they're about wellness and lifestyle change and all this stuff. But in researching the second book, I found, you know, I sort of always suspected there's so much more to it, that it's beyond just diet culture. And then in fact, there's like this symbiotic relationship, I think, between wellness culture and diet culture, where diet culture uses wellness as its cloak and shield against criticism, and to sort of make itself seem more important, because now it's not just about, you know, mere vanity, but it's about this noble goal of health and wellness. But also, wellness culture has really incorporated the tenets of diet culture, kind of wholesale into its own belief system. And I traced the history of that. It was really interesting to see like where that came from, because the first use of the term wellness in the late 1950s by this man Halbert Dunn, who was a public health professional, was actually very similar in some ways to like what I would consider well being and sort of talked so much more about mental health and social relationships and the importance of of those things. And, you know, there's almost nothing about food, other than to say that we need enough of it in his in his major writings, his book, and there was, you know, a tiny, fat phobic statement, but it was sort of, you know, pretty minor in the grand scheme of things kind of just talking more about the effects of fat. And, you know, so the original idea of wellness really wasn't built on diet culture, I think in the way that it is now. And I think the reasons for that shift had to do with a lot that happened in the 1970s around kind of the hippie food movement and sort of the emergence of like naturopathy and other alternative medicine, other alternative forms of medicine, kind of coming a little bit more into the mainstream. And, you know, people who were influenced by that, doctors who were influenced by that, sort of taking up the mantle of wellness, discovering this guy, Halbert Dunn's work from a decade and a half before and being like, yes, wellness, we love Halbert Dunn we're going to proselytise his ideas to the public. And yet, like really twisting them and infusing them with so much diet culture. And so that sort of became the version of wellness that that grew and went mainstream, and that now is, you know, really kind of has really taken over. And so that, you know, there's that piece of it, where diet culture is really built into wellness culture now, but there's also so much more beyond diet culture that is sort of related like clean beauty or clean housekeeping right this this worry about what's in your products and what you're putting into or next to your body and sort of irrational or maybe not irrational, but over over blown, overhyped kind of fears about chemicals and products. And, you know, this sort of fomenting of fear among the public in order to sell products. And then there's also the piece of the internet, which I think is like the most fascinating part of my book and research and has just hit the closest to home for me too, is how the Internet and specifically social media and other algorithmic technologies that, you know, see how people interact with the content, and then feed them more of that content in order to maximise engagement, how those technologies have actually allowed mis- and disinformation to proliferate. And in fact, they feed on that, because mis- and disinformation spreads farther faster and deeper than than the truth. And you know, when things spread and go viral, that tells the algorithm like, Hey, we've got something here that is gonna keep people engaged. And so let's feed them more of that, that tells the creators of that content that there is a market there, right, the creators of mis- and disinformation are able to monetize their content and capitalise on that, you know, social media driven spread. And then also the, you know, way that social media and other algorithmic technologies affect our mental health by keeping us engaged in those ways. You know, it really drives anger and hate and outrage, those are things that are again, engines of engagement. And so the algorithms feed us more and more of that. And it's really having a detriment to people's mental health. It's driving diet culture, because again, the more extreme, the more sensational diets and things that promote eating disorders are the things that the algorithms pick up and feed people more of. And so you can go into and you know, I think probably some, some listeners will have heard of Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, who kind of blew the lid off of some of this that Facebook knew its algorithms were driving, teenage girls, you know, specifically on Instagram, driving teenage girls who showed an interest in quote, unquote, healthy eating deeper and deeper into extreme diet content and pro eating disorder content. And they did nothing about it. Right. And they are not forced to do anything about it under current US law, and I think laws in other countries as well. But you know, especially in the US, for Facebook, and other social media companies, major social media companies are based. There's this law called Section 230. This is like so in the weeds, but it's so important.
Laura Thomas
I'm loving it. I said to you off mic that I was looking forward to your book, because I know it's going to be so deeply and thoroughly researched. And I think all of these little rabbit holes are so fascinating. So yeah, go ahead. What were you, What were you gonna say?
Christy Harrison
Yeah, so So section 230 is informally known as the 26 words that created the internet. It's basically the law that gave rise to user generated content that allowed social media companies to even really come into existence. I think without section 230 we wouldn't have the Internet as we know it today.
Laura Thomas
And what's it say?
Christy Harrison
And so it says that internet service companies or you know, at the time it was, it, this was in 1995 that it was passed so like this was way before anyone conceived of social media as it is now but you know, internet service providers are not liable for they're not considered publishers of information that their users post. Right and so that opened the floodgates for user generated content of all kinds and for platforms built entirely on user generated content that monetize it like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all that right which you know, kind of use our content as lures to get other people to look and and you know, then serve us ads and that's their way of making money. And in the reason that section 230 was passed is so interesting because in 1994, there was a defamation suit brought against prodigy services, which some people who are you know, like elder Millennials like me and above might remember I that was like my first way of getting on the internet was my friend had prodigy and we went and like, went to weird chat rooms or something. I don't even remember what it was.
Laura Thomas
I remember the weird chat rooms.
Christy Harrison
Yes, chat rooms were the thing. And so yeah, Prodigy someone took to prodigy and defamed this. I think it was an investment firm Stratton Oakmont which interestingly is portrayed in The Wolf of Wall Street Leonardo DiCaprio portrays their founder who's like this awful awful finance guy. So someone had taken to prodigy to defame Stratton Oakmont and then Stratton Oakmont sued them for defamation or sued prodigy for defamation rather. It went up to the New York State Supreme Court and New York sided with Stratton Oakmont saying yes, you were, you know, Prodigy is liable for having defamed you because they do some moderation of content on their forums, they have terms of service that you have to agree to. And if you're not, if you're in violation of those terms, you can get kicked off or your content can get removed. And so therefore, they're acting more as a publisher, because they're not just, you know, hosting the content, they're actually edit, exerting some editorial oversight in some way. So like, if that had been able to stand or if that had gone to the US Supreme Court, and they had held it up, we would have a very, very different internet today. But instead, what happened was two members of Congress were really troubled by this because they wanted moderation of content, justifiably, understandably, you know, they wanted some wanted companies to be able to moderate content on their message boards so that the internet wouldn't just become a sea of pornography, which, you know, it is anyway, but, but at least to be able to keep pornography off of certain channels that, you know, kids were going to be on and stuff like that. So they proposed this amendment to the Communications Decency Act of 1995. I believe that is section 230. And it you know, it said that internet service providers can't be treated as publishers, as long as they're not, you know, they're not, they're not to be held liable for content that users post. And they get this protection of like, like free speech protections. And so, you know, from there, we get the internet that we have today, where, you know, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which, for many intents and purposes are acting as publishers, right, because they are, their algorithms are promoting different things. They're sort of curating things in a way, right, the way that a newspaper or magazine would, and, or even, you know, an editorial website, right, they're, they're giving things different weight, they're sending things out to different groups of people, you know, they're allowing advertisers to specifically target certain kinds of people so that, you know, someone with a particular identity might see a feed that's completely different than someone with another identity. And that can open people up to like being targeted with antivax content or other really harmful, you know, quote, unquote, wellness content, as well as political content, all kinds of other things. And so, you know, so kind of digging into all this, right, it just, it just showed me how deeply embedded wellness mis- and disinformation are into the social media system and into these algorithmic technologies in general, because, you know, you have YouTube, which is not officially social media, but it acts in very similar ways, where it's recommending things to you, and it's seeing what you like, or what you're, you're spending your time on, and it's driving you further and further down the sort of rabbit hole of extremes, you know, showing you one kind of content and then you can be like, 50, steps down into something really, really extreme, like, going from, you know, some centre right politicians speech into, like q-anon, you know, conspiracy theory territory in like, however many steps. It's terrifying.
Laura Thomas
And I think that this is kind of where, in some ways your two babies come together, right, this kind of intersection between parenting and wellness culture. And I've heard you talk specifically about the sort of predatory messaging that's directed at new parents, I think that you've even experienced yourself. I'm wondering if you could speak to what's going on in that space? Because I'm not sure if that's something you necessarily cover in the book. But it's, it's obviously very, like I said, that's where your two sort of babies meet.
Christy Harrison
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so one thing that I've that I do cover in the book that sort of speaks to that predatory nexus is the anti-vax movement, which has been fomented and enabled by social media and algorithms to, you know, get to these levels that we never would have seen, I think without those technologies, and unfortunately, specifically, a lot of new parents are targeted, even people who are considering becoming parents, even people who are starting to do searches around fertility and things like that will start to see increased levels of antivax content being suggested to them. I interviewed one woman who is a technology researcher who's actually written and spoken out, you know about this for years, Renee DiResta at Stanford University, but she herself is a mom and got interested in all of this when she had given birth to her first child and was looking into cloth diapering. And I think maybe like making her own baby food or something. She's not like a super crunchy person. She actually doesn't identify as crunchy at all but she says that she was looking into these pursuits that are kind of crunchy ish and yeah, crunchy adjacent or could be part of a very crunchy lifestyle but you know, she was she was just sort of interested in them for,
Laura Thomas
And let's be real, we're all a little crunchy.
Christy Harrison
We're all a little crunchy these days especially yeah, like I think it's I mean, oh my god like that's a whole other thing too is like how far down the crunchy rabbit hole do you want to allow yourself to go and but so you know she was she started to be served group recommendations by Facebook for anti vax groups because of this interest in cloth diapering, she, it was like from cloth diapering to like backyard chickens. She was like, Oh, that's cute, like, let me you know, like this page related to backyard chickens. And then suddenly, these anti vax groups started popping up, you know. And so she started looking into this proliferation of anti vax communities, and how, in the role that social media has played in that and has now become one of the leading voices kind of speaking out against this. But, you know, I think it's really, really interesting to see how quickly that can happen, and how these things that we might think of as, you know, parenting choices to even just look into not necessarily be all in on but like, let me you know, like a group about this and see what, or join a group about this, or like a page about this and see what you know, they have to say what the benefits are, or whatever can can lead you down this path where the algorithm thinks you're susceptible. And yeah, unfortunately, one of the ways that people are kind of the most susceptible, I think is when they've lost a child, like infant loss is one of the ways it's, I mean, just heartbreaking to think about as the parent of an infant, you know, like, I can't imagine what these parents are going through and then to be, you know, systematically targeted, right, and these parents who, you know, have lost infants to sudden infant death syndrome, or suffocation, from, you know, sleeping, co sleeping and stuff like that. And then suddenly, you know, you have anti vax entrepreneurs in their feeds or their messages being like, you know, this was not your fault, which, I mean, who doesn't want to hear that when something so tragic happens. And these parents are blaming themselves and feeling horrible guilt, you know, to say, like, it wasn't your fault, it was the vaccines, right? So they're serving up this, just a horrible misinformation in a moment where people are incredibly vulnerable. And of course, that's going to have an effect, right. And it has an impact even on people who see that, who haven't lost a child, but are terrified of it. Like I'm, you know, constantly terrified of that. And so people who are, you know, parents trying to do the best for their kids, like, looking into all the ways to keep them safe are suddenly made to feel like, if a vaccine, you know, touches their child, it's gonna, it's going to instantly kill them. Like, that's the level of rhetoric and I talked to some former anti vaxxers who are now speaking out and in favour of vaccines, which I think my favourite kind of person to interview, I think, is like a person who is a former, something, you know, like, sort of, I don't know, it's just so interesting, because I'm that way too, like I've gone through some stuff and you know, come to see things really differently. And I just find it really interesting to see like, what are people's journeys through this and I also didn't want to interview any current anti vaxxers because I didn't want to you know, promote harmful messages my book so I thought it would be interesting to kind of get into the psychology of of what drives people into this and one of the women I talked to Heather Simpson who's now really speaking out against the anti vax movement you know, said that it started for her when she was even considering having a child she was having fertility issues she kind of got into wellness culture that way. And so you know, from there started being served all these anti vax, all these pieces of anti vax content and she got so far down the rabbit hole that she literally thought vaccines were poison and would, you know, kill her child? And I mean, we should probably put a trigger warning on this episode because
Laura Thomas
I 100% will, because yeah, we're touching on some really difficult difficult subjects but yeah, sorry, carry on.
Christy Harrison
Yeah. So I mean, just in researching all that I started to see like how deep and dark it can get, you know, and I think you know, there are less kind of dark aspects of this that are the start but that can easily pull people down these really extreme paths, right. So like, for example, like I recently you know, with the biting stuff I was talking to my lactation consultant who's wonderful and has helped us so much but is a little crunchy you know, and has has the ways in which she's crunchy tend towards the sort of herbal remedies and stuff like that.
Laura Thomas
Yeah the brewer's yeast and all that,
Christy Harrison
Right, and the homoeopathic you know, drops and tinctures and stuff and so I was looking into it because I you know, for the book again, I researched homoeopathy. A lot of this didn't make it into the book but has just been background and forming my perspective on things. And you know realising, homoeopathy just really doesn't have good evidence behind it. And it has been recommended against by, you know, many scientific and health authorities which, you know, have their own problems sometimes, but I think, in many ways are really solid in terms of being able to look at and critique evidence for these alternative pathways, alternative health practices. Anyway, so you know, looking into the homoeopathy, homoeopathic medicines and seeing that, you know, they're part of this unregulated or very loosely, minimally regulated supplement industry, which, you know, dietary and herbal supplements in the US at least, and I'm not sure how it is in the UK. But in the US, there's almost no oversight of these of these medications that can go to market without ever being tested for safety or efficacy, you know, just on the the word of the manufacturer, and the FDA doesn't review them, the Food and Drug Administration doesn't review them for safety or efficacy until someone complains or enough people complain after the fact after they're on the market and potentially harming you know, 1000s or millions of people. And then the FDA doesn't have a huge budget for oversight. And there's, you know, many reasons why they don't, they don't review many things. And so things can be out there just you know, causing tremendous harm. One of which, unfortunately, is like homoeopathic teething products, it was found, I think, about 10 years ago that there were levels have detectable levels of deadly nightshade, which is a poison in some of these homoeopathic teething remedies, and FDA recommended against using any of them because, you know, you don't want to be poisoning your child, obviously. And I think it's just so ironic and so deeply frustrating to me that the reason people would gravitate towards those products in the first place is because of the worry about toxicity of things like Tylenol or, you know, other sort of more standard over the counter remedies, you know, people wanting to do the best for their child and give them something that's that's going to be less harmful. And to see that, like, because of this lack of regulation, literal poison can be slipped into these products without any sort of oversight. It's just, it's just heartbreaking. You know, and really, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's some of the nexus of these two, these two babies I've been working on.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, yeah. And I'm curious to hear you said, at the beginning that the I don't know, if you're talking specifically about your breastfeeding, sort of journey for one word, or, you know, you're now at the part where your little one is eating solids, and you said that it was fraught, at some point, and I was curious to hear a little bit more about just your experiences with the feeding, particularly from your background as an intuitive eating counsellor, you know, that's what you're really known for, is, is intuitive eating and kind of being on the other side of it now as a parent, and, and having, I suppose, witnessed your little one learning to eat and and kind of what your thoughts are on, you know, some of the things that I know, I've said, and I think you've maybe said similar things about how, you know, intuitively we're all born as intuitive eaters, I kind of get the sense from some of your podcasts, I've listened to recently that you've shifted, you know, how you speak about that a little bit? And I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that.
Christy Harrison
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, you know, I think it's so interesting to see it from the perspective of a parent and to see a little baby like, actually going through it, because I do think that, you know, we're all born as intuitive eaters in the sense that we don't have diet culture messages installed in us, you know, as when we come out, right, we don't have any of this total sense of like, needing to eat less or exercise more like do things to change the size and shape of our body or, you know, that some foods are good, and some foods are bad, and that we need to be quote unquote, healthy and eat a certain way. You know, none of those messages come to us until later until we're socialised into them. Right. So I think in that sense, we're very much all born, you know, as intuitive eaters in the sense that we're free of the diet mentality. And we're also born with innate hunger and fullness cues and, you know, the ability to like root around and find the nipple on a bottle or a breast and, you know, get our food needs met, and to cry when we're hungry and let people know you know, let the caregivers know and stop when we're full to some extent but it also is like very interesting to see the nuances of that where, you know, a baby will, like, you know, babies it's a learning process, I think for both caregiver and baby To learn how to eat, like to learn how to latch on to the breast, for example, or to learn how to take a bottle or to learn, you know how to eat enough to satisfy them without spitting up, right? Like, sometimes babies are so hungry and taking in so much, but the size of their stomach is just, you know, not there yet. And so they split up. And that's a normal part of the process. Like that's a, you know, I don't like the word normal so much. But I think in this context, I'm just saying, like, that's, that's a part of the process for growing and developing babies is to, like, learn the capacity of their stomach in that way.
Laura Thomas
And I think older kids as well, you know, I think from the perspective that the kids need to, in order to learn how to self regulate, they need to be allowed to make mistakes. And I think that's where we so often go wrong by when we restrict kids from, let's say, eating sweets and chocolate and things like that, is that they, they don't actually learn what feels like too much and what feels uncomfortable, and they need to, they need to be able to overshoot the mark, they need to be able to undershoot the mark, because that gives them information, if that makes sense.
Christy Harrison
Totally, I completely agree. And I feel like I've been so much more aware these days of like, friends, kids who have limited access to sweets at home, you know, seeing how they interact with them at our house or things like that. And you know, that that, you know, my, my daughter is very much learning in that way to have like, you know, sometimes undershooting and being hungry again, you know, shortly after, or sometimes overshooting and, you know, having a bit of a tummy ache, having some sped up and stuff like that. And that is kind of a beautiful part of the process. That's something that needs to be fostered and allowed, and that, you know, it's not like, intuitive, easy eating is not as easy as it may be as made out to be and as maybe I've made it out to be in the past for babies, you know, where it's like, oh, yeah, they just know what to do. It's like, well, they, in some ways, there, there's definitely instinct there. But there's also some learning and some aural development skills that have to come into play, right. And, you know, with solid feeding, too, there's the textures, and the different flavours and stuff like that, that babies have to get used to, and sort of learning how to eat in that way versus, you know, just taking in liquid. nourishment is a whole different process. And, you know, seeing seeing my baby be like so excited about food in some, some moments and you know, excited about so many different things, but then also having something she just really doesn't like and making funny faces and not really eating like, even just last night, we were at a friend's house and you know, hadn't brought solids for her. But my friend had, like, some yoghurt and raspberries. And she's like, Oh, should I just make that for her? I was like, Yeah, that sounds great. Let's do that. Not even thinking about how tart and tangy that would be, like, my baby had not had something that tangy. And she was just making horrible faces and refusing it, but then also super hungry and getting fussy. And you know, we had to kind of work it out. And then my friend was like, Oh, wait, we have these pouches, because my older daughter still eats them as a snack. So let's try that. And then it was like, brilliant, okay, well, we're satisfied. But, you know, having to kind of go through this trial and error of like, what foods are going to be satisfying, and how much and how to express hunger, you know, it's a little more nuanced and complicated than I think I had realised.
Laura Thomas
Absolutely. And I feel very similar kind of being on the other side of it now and reflecting on some of the things that I might have said, before becoming a parent, and sort of just giving the impression that that intuitive eating was this, you know, natural for want of a better word thing that everyone is capable of, from, you know, the moment that they're born and maybe not being so considerate of, you know, things like disability, or neurodivergence, or, or some of these other things that can impact feeding on top of just that initial learning curve that everybody has to go through which, you know, I've done a lot of training and reading and things around how, you know, infants and children learn how to eat and, you know, things have completely blown my mind, like the fact that they don't have the oral motor skills of an adult until they're three and a half, which means they literally cannot chew food, in the same way that an adult can until they've been eating for three years. That's kind of it's kind of mind blowing. And, and then, I think another sort of layer of this kind of bringing it back to wellness culture is sort of the messages that parents receive about what and how much and when their child should eat and there's this real insidious sort of narrative and discourse around you know, kind of this idea of the perfect eater, your, your child should be able to eat perfectly, and they're going to eat kale and broccoli. And, you know, they're only going to eat the so called, you know, right amount of food and it just doesn't leave any space for that learning process. And so I think that the the kind of disruption to that, you know, innate, instinctive embodied, you know, just ability to, or not ability, but that exploration of food that happens in those early years, it kind of gets intercepted by adults, and we cause disconnection I think so much earlier on even then, I think I appreciated and realised, from the perspective of even like when we think about infant feeding, and parents receiving the message that they need to kind of feed to a schedule or feed for a certain number of minutes, if they're breast or bottle feeding, all the way through to, you know, pressurising and controlling toddlers to eat or not eat certain foods. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or even know what I'm talking about?
Christy Harrison
Oh God, totally, I feel like it has happened, I mean, it happened almost from the instance, she was born for us. Because, you know, like I said, I had a traumatic birth experience, I ended up having an unplanned C section, and then complications from that, that kept me in the hospital for some extra days, and really was in so much pain that I couldn't nurse and my milk was, you know, so early in the process anyway, didn't really have a lot of milk. And so we ended up doing formula kind of from day, you know, maybe day two, and did formula for, you know, several weeks. And so I think when we made that decision, it's interesting that you said, you know, you didn't feel a lot of support around breastfeeding in the hospital where you were, I feel like it was almost the opposite with us, because I don't know if you have this in the UK, but in the US, there's the Baby Friendly Hospital designation.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, it's a World Health Organisation designation. So because it is UK wide. But the difference Christy is that my baby was intubated in an incubator. So there was no way that I could feed him in those first days, where I didn't feel supported was twofold. I think, first of all, I was discharged after 12 hours. They didn't give a shit about me Christy, I was sitting with a beaten up perineum on a concrete floor, because it was COVID. And there were no chairs in the waiting room. Just sitting outside the ward it honestly, we could devote a whole episode just to my birth trauma, but we're not going to go there. So what happened with us is that someone handed me a syringe and a plastic cup. No, not a syringe, just a plastic cup, like 100 ml beaker, and was like, okay, express colostrum into that. And then the other. I mean, there were a few different things. So then, nobody told me about the hospital grade pump, in, you know, just two doors down from where my baby was lying for quite a few days. And I think that would have helped with my milk coming in. And then the third thing was just the way that I was treated on the ward. While you know, trying to get feeding established after you know, I didn't get to put him to my breast until a week, maybe. So yeah, that's that anyways, that's kind of the context, we do have the baby friendly initiative. I think that's what it's called. But it was kind of just flipped on its head. And in fact, one of the first questions that I was asked when I, you know, finally was able to stand up and walk myself through to the NICU was, I was given a choice between two different brands of formula. And so that even in and of itself, like I was able to register with my like, nutritionist brain, while it doesn't fucking matter, just feed my child, right? It doesn't stop trying to get me to buy into some sort of brand loyalty here when my baby is lying you know, like, intubated. And so like, I was able to access that somehow, through everything else that had happened, and get my baby fed. But yeah, it was almost kind of like an inverse of what you experienced, I suppose.
Christy Harrison
Totally, that is so sad. And just,
Laura Thomas
I will put all the content warnings.
Christy Harrison
Yeah, totally. I mean, there's just so many ways in which we are failed by the healthcare system, and not just conventional medicine, but alternative medicine as well, which I get into in the book, but I mean, so yeah, I'm so sorry, that happened to you. And for me, I think it was, it was a little different. But also, there are some similarities in some ways where but I think the biggest the biggest thing that I'm thinking of kind of going back to what you're asking about, you know, pressure to feed in a certain way or pressure to like, make sure your baby doesn't quote unquote, over eat or whatever it was that, you know, because I ended up doing formula pretty early on. And I've heard so many horror stories of people in Baby Friendly hospitals who had to fight for formula and like, we're like, yeah, my kid isn't getting any nutrition. Like, they seem like they're starving. And yet, you're not like giving me formula, like, fucking give me formula, you know?
Laura Thomas
Yeah, they don't even keep it in the hospital. I've heard some parents have had to, like send their partner out to, you know, a shop to go and get it.
Christy Harrison
Yeah, I know, I've heard I've heard that experience, too. And I, we actually packed some formula, just in case for that reason. But thankfully, our hospital was was really good about it. And, you know, pretty quickly, when it was evident that I wasn't going to be able to breastfeed, they were like, you know, and I said, I think we should probably do formula, you know, I talked it over with my husband, he was like, yes, let's do this. And, you know, the nurse came by, and we said, we think we want to do this, and she's like, great, you know, I'll go get you some, we've got these, you know, easy to feed, kind of, like quick bottles that you don't even have to mix. It's just prepared, and we'll give you nipples and everything. And it was it was amazing. So that, you know, we had some nurses that were incredible and super supportive of the whole process, because not only did this one nurse do that for us, but she also brought in the hospital grade pump. And she said, if you want to try it, because I had expressed that I really would love to breastfeed, it just was not going to be possible at this point. She was like, you know, let's get you set up on this pump. And we'll see what happens. Yeah, and brought in the lactation consultant, everything, it was great. So that, you know, I think it's, it's so different with different nurses, though, because then there's a shift change, and we get a different nurse. And we see that this one nurse has really specific ideas and sort of anti formula ideas. And she's suddenly like, well, since you're feeding your baby formula, you can overfeed her let's not, you know, like, she's crying, she I think she's hungry. Like, we changed her we walked her, we burped her, we did all the things like, you know, ocum's razor seems like she's hungry and, and, you know, can we get some more formula? And this nurse was like, well, you know, you really shouldn't be feeding her more than x amount and her stomachs too little, you know, she shouldn't be spitting up like blah, blah, blah. It was like, so much shame coming from this nurse. And she made some comment about, like, you know, her chubbiness, which is just like, it's like, she's not, I mean,
Laura Thomas
Fresh out the womb and the anti-fat rhetoric starts already.
Christy Harrison
Right? She's like a few days old.
Laura Thomas
Like, the other thing that it sounds like is that your instincts were being gaslit as an as a new parent, when what you need, you know, immediately postpartum is people to kind of like back you and trust you and, and, you know, reassure you that actually, you know, what you're doing here.
Christy Harrison
Totally, I mean, and it was so amazing that we had some nurses that really did that, you know, they're really supported, like, those instincts. And then some others just, you know, I think, because of their own fat phobic ideas, and you know, their own relationships with food, or whatever it is, you know, buy into diet culture, it was like, you know, just from the get go, like, you're only allowed to feed this much, because especially, you know, what, it's formula, it's like, oh, you know, you're you're already doing a bad thing, you're already giving her bad food. So, you know, we have to be really careful with this bad food, right? It's just when formula is a fucking miracle. Like, you know, we wouldn't have, like, I, I shudder to think what would have happened if we hadn't had formula, you know, so. It's, it's so fraught, and I want to say to just for anyone listening, because I know, the parenting space is so tricky, and everybody has their own experience and their own journey with things. And so like, this is no shame to anyone for anything they're dealing with, or choices they've made, like, I support parents and making any kind of feeding choice that works for them, you know, and I just, for me, it was, you know, I think formula was, so the right, the right choice from the beginning. And then we're so lucky that we were able to breastfeed too. And we've been able to, you know, have both experiences. But I think, yeah, feeding is just so complicated. Going back to, you know, again, the sort of ideas about intuitive eating that I didn't really fully understand until being a parent like, it's, it's not just about your child's instincts, it's about like, what's available and what you know, and it gave me sort of a new appreciation for situations of food scarcity, or lack of food availability, and the parents going through the formula shortage that just happened recently too like,
Laura Thomas
Yeah, that's a whole terrifying terrifying thing. Just kind of watching from here watching it unfold from the UK, and I was like, What the fuck? Like ship some formula like, we've got loads, take it please. You know? And, yeah, yeah, it really, really scary and from what I understand, they are putting measures in place to make sure that something like that doesn't happen again. But it just seemed like the response to that was so painfully slow, yeah,
Christy Harrison
And then, you know, the shaming responses of like, well just breastfeed, why don't you just breastfeed? It's like if you've been formula feeding, you can't just breastfeed like you don't have a milk supply.
Laura Thomas
People don't understand basic physiology.
Christy Harrison
Ridiculous. And then be like, you know, a lot of people formula feed because they can't breastfeed or choose not to, or, you know, whatever, breastfeeding isn't going to work for them. So why are you shaming people for a choice that they need to make and this life saving nutrition for their child is not available. Like, yeah, let's have some empathy for that.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, I mean, just just shout out to formula where it has literally saved, probably, I don't even I couldn't even guesstimate how many babies lives have been saved by having access. I know, you know, my child would have starved without it.
Christy Harrison
Yeah. I feel like a lot of us wouldn't be here without formula, you know?
Laura Thomas
Yeah. 100%. I feel like you've maybe answered this in some ways. And I'm, I'm also a bit afraid to ask you Christy, because I reckon I'm gonna cry. But after the birth of your daughter, on your Instagram, you posted that giving birth broke you open in every way imaginable. And I'm just really interested to hear, I think you've talked about some of your ways, you know, a traumatic birth, but I'm just wondering what else? In what other ways you feel that that just kind of cracked you right open?
Christy Harrison
Yeah, I think I'm gonna cry this too. It's, I feel like my emotions are just so much more on the surface. And that's one way that it's happened, you know, is that, like, I just, I feel like, I went through so much in those early days of feeling like a failure in some ways, and that I wasn't, you know, like, nobody is. But, you know, having these ideas about how I wanted my birth to go and then having it not go that way, and then having ideas about breastfeeding that didn't go that way. And having sort of a delayed bonding experience with my child, like, you know, having had this this idea of like, bringing her to the breast and just this beautiful oxytocin release, like instant bonding, and
Laura Thomas
And that, what's that, the golden hour that you're promised?
Christy Harrison
Yeah, that you're promised. And we did actually have one one breastfeeding, you know, skin to skin moment when I was first out of surgery, but I was so drowsy and, and there were signs all over the hospital room that were like, don't fall asleep with your baby, you're gonna suffocate your baby. It was like, terrifying. I was terrified. And my husband had been up for we had a prodromal labour too. So it was up for like, 72 hours before even getting admitted to the hospital. And then like another 36 to 48 hours of like, labour and delivery. So like, you know, we were exhausted, he hadn't slept. So he like crashed out on the cot. My baby, like, was just sort of in a blissed out dream space nursing. And the nurse got us set up and was like, okay, it seems great. Seems like breastfeeding is gonna go, Well, I'm gonna give you to some time, and left the room. And so then I'm just like, Oh, my God, like, what, I have to stay awake, like, what's going to happen, you know, so like, from the get go, there's just so much anxiety there. And so, you know, and and being in the hospital and having like, my husband having to kind of do everything for her because I couldn't get out of bed. I was hooked up to like, catheters and IVs and, you know, couldn't move and had the, like, things on my legs to keep from getting blood clots and stuff. And so he was like, changing her and rocking her and feeding her and singing to her and just like him singing to her in the hospital. Like, he had a couple of songs that he's sang that I still can't even like, think about because, like, you know, I wanted to be part of that. And, and I couldn't, and I think that was, that's one thing that really, like, really hit me and has been really hard to overcome, even though like we have such a great bond now and it's been so lovely. But, you know, I think also, I had to go back to work after three months. And so I had this incredibly emotional, you know, first probably eight to 10 weeks. I didn't officially have postpartum depression I had, you know, my therapist said it was like kind of an extended baby blues but it just sort of went on beyond when the supposed baby blues
Christy Harrison
I think we call that trauma Christy
Christy Harrison
Right? I think so too. Yeah, yeah, and it's, uh, you know, on top of existing PTSD, it's been, there's been a lot to recover from. And then I had such a difficult time going back to work because, you know, even though I'm right, I'm working from home, I'm in the same house, I can pop over and breastfeed her, you know, whenever she's hungry, just like the getting back and forth between, you know, the mom space and the mom, part of my brain and the workspace, and this person that I was before I gave birth that I don't even recognise, in some ways, you know, like, I mean, not even just physically, but that's, you know, that's a tiny bit in there too. But like, this person that, you know, was so driven and able to work so hard and efficiently and effectively, and like, get all my stuff done. And, you know, now feeling just kind of, like, not very good at what I'm doing, and are not very efficient and productive. And all of the sort of capitalistic pressures that come with that, right. And the, and the feeling of like, you know, I'm the primary earner right now. And my husband is the primary childcare and like, there's so much on my shoulders that, you know, if I can't do it, my brain goes to these, like, anxious places of like, we're gonna lose our house and our food and you know, like, it just goes to like, it really not true beliefs, when I really sit down and think about it and look at it, I'm like, Okay, this, we have savings, we're okay, we're not gonna, you know, it's not gonna happen. But just having a child I think sort of unlocked a new level of anxiety in a way of like, this existential like, and like protecting, you know, needing to protect her in so many ways that sometimes I feel incapable of, and also just like, you know, I think it has given me more empathy for everyone. And I try to hold on to that all the time. You know, it's sometimes I think it was so on the surface, like, right when I was coming back from maternity leave, because I'm just like, you know, everybody is someone's baby, right? Like, everybody was this helpless once, and everybody hopefully had someone who, you know, felt some sort of way about them, like, a maternal or paternal or parental kind of instinct. And I don't know that just that has, when I really like, tap into that, again, I think it's given me so much more empathy for everyone in every situation, you know, even people who are causing harm, right, even people who, you know, are perpetuating diet culture, right, even people who are because I have always tried and I have always, you know, really attempted to live by this notion that like, I'm not out to attack individuals, I'm out to
Laura Thomas
Shoot the message, not the messenger, right?
Christy Harrison
Right. I'm critiquing a system. And, you know, there are people who are participants in that system willingly and unwillingly. And I was one of them. You know, I was a dietician who practised in the traditional weight centric model. And I was trained in that. And so I, you know, we all live in glass houses, right? I think I couldn't fault people for their participation in diet culture to a certain point, you know, then again, I would, I would think, like, but these people who are really profiting off of it, and who really should know better, you know, like, I couldn't help but feeling anger towards them. And I think in a way, giving birth has just helped me soften all of that, you know, like, I, I think, and I wrote about this in my first book, like the importance of anger, you know, the importance of going through that angry phase and getting angry at the system and angry at diet culture, and maybe even angry at the people who perpetuated in your life, as much as you might try, you know, to forgive them ultimately, it's like, you might have to have a phase of, of anger towards them. And I think, you know, for me personally, in my own healing from disordered eating, maybe that was, you know, a part of my stridency in my writing and my podcasting and my work was like me having that angry phase and having to go through that angry energy of getting out that that you know and externalising right the anger towards the system and the culture and the structures rather than turning them in on myself as I had for so long as so many of us are conditioned to do, but I don't know if maybe now I'm in a different phase and if like, you know, again, sort of feeling like giving birth like broke me open it's like, it's a kind of released some of that anger and made me like more soft and vulnerable and, you know, just less angry and less kind of, you know, I don't have such tightly balled up fists anymore, even when I'm critiquing structures and systems that are harmful.
Laura Thomas
First of all, thank you for sharing all of that with us. And I think we don't talk about what giving birth is really like, because what it's really like is everything that you just spoke to, like we, we talked about some of the physical changes, and you know, snapback culture and all of that stuff. But I think this, I really resonate with this idea of like, our emotions just being so close to the surface, and just having like this, just feeling this enormous amount of empathy for even the shittiest of humans. I remember, I was like, I was looking at the news the other day, and there was this article about these cojoined twins that were separated, and there was like a picture of them just lying next to each other holding hands, and I was just like, gushing for like, hours afterwards. My husband was like, are you okay, like, they're fine, the twins are fine. It's just, like things like that get to me in a way that, like, before I became a parent, like, that just wouldn't have registered in the same way I would have been like, Oh, that's sweet. But so yeah, I really, really feel that. And I think it's just so valuable to have these conversations, because I know that a lot of the folks listening to this podcast are parents too. And I think it's really hard. Because we don't have these conversations, because we don't talk about becoming a parent in this way, that it's really difficult to access the language and the vocabulary to express that experience. And it just when I saw that post, I knew exactly what you meant. I mean you've said it really eloquently. But I knew I could feel exactly what you meant without even having had a conversation or knowing any of the details of what you went through. I knew what you meant. And I don't experience that very often with, you know, mum's parent stuff. So, yeah.
Christy Harrison
Thank you, that means a lot because I have struggled so much with the language around it too. And with like, expressing anything that doesn't feel cliched, and I think it's cliched for a reason, right, like this idea of like, you know, having a child is like walking around with your heart outside your body, you know, I mean, that's actually sort of a beautiful sentiment, but it's, I think it's become very cliched in sort of parenting circles. And that sort of gets at it a little bit, but it doesn't quite capture, you know,
Laura Thomas
On a sort of similar thread of I read someone they had written that, like giving birth is like giving birth to your own heart. And, yeah, but you, you have, yeah, in that sentiment, and everything that you've just said, here, you've you've absolutely nailed it. So thank you for kind of opening up that conversation because I don't think some people are as kind of brave to have that, to, you know, just put that out there in the way that you did. So, yeah, it really struck a chord with me.
Christy Harrison
Thank you so much. Thank you for like facilitating this too. Because, interestingly, although I I mentioned a little bit about my experience on my own podcast, and in my own newsletter, I kind of, you know, back when it's just me talking into a mic on my own, I don't really, you know, I think it's there's something about having someone empathetic, listening, asking questions, and you're such a good interviewer, you know, to be able to, like, draw out this experience, I think is really helpful.
Laura Thomas
Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing it and I really do appreciate that. And, with all of that in mind, I have a really important question, I think for you, given everything that you've been through this feels really pertinent. Who or what is nourishing you right now?
Christy Harrison
That's such a good question. Thank you. I think my husband first and foremost and my baby, you know, like the love I have for them. And I mean, the love that, you know, anyone who has been a parent just like you know, seeing the look that your baby gives you the smiles the, the way they light up when you come into a room like that is such nourishment, and my husband like literally and emotionally every day like you know, bringing me lunch while I'm working Giving me you know, the emotional support and the sounding board and the really insightful feedback that, you know, keeps me going. You know, I think like family has just become such a, such a bigger part of my life in so many ways I knew like growing my family would you know, of course, make family more important, but I haven't, I didn't really understand in what ways until now. And it is just giving me such such an anchor and such joy, you know, I think to like, being offline, as much as I can, I mean, I use I've had to use the internet a lot for book research, but I've done it in a way where I'm like, treating it as a library, like I'm looking up things that are interesting to me, I'm going down, you know, deep dives of research that I find important and helpful. I mean , I am officially on social media, like technically on social media, but I don't really post much at all anymore. Other than, you know, when I came back from maternity leave, and occasional things to kind of promote my work and stuff, but I'm not spending time on there, I'm not scrolling, and I'm trying to just, you know, spend time in the real world to like the physical world, like walking around my neighbourhood, spending time with neighbours and friends locally. And, you know, I know that's, like, that's such a different experience. Now post or not even post COVID, in COVID and in the pandemic, right, and for people who are still having to be super careful, because of disabilities and things like that, I think it's, you know, not everybody has the luxury, the privilege to be able to spend time with people in person still, and I feel that very acutely, and I'm feel grateful that, you know, even with multiple chronic illnesses, I'm still able to, like, be out there and be social. And, you know, the vaccine has given me enough antibodies that I'm not immunocompromised and stuff. So but yeah, I think I think just, you know, trying to really be present with my physical life has been a huge nourishment for me. And just kind of stripping away, you know, and also, like, I want to acknowledge the huge privilege, speaking of privilege of like, having been able to build a career that is largely online, and social media has been part of that. So I have a very complex relationship with it, for sure. And like, it has not been good for my mental health, I can say that categorically. Now, it has not been good for my mental health. And that's been the case for years, you know, I think it's been at least five years, if not, you know, nine or 10, that I've been struggling with my relationship with social media and the way that it affects my mental health. And yeah, to kind of have come, you know, all this way now to see like, the depth of the problems with it. And to say, like, it's not just me, whose mental health that is, it's affecting, and to step away has been really, really nourishing.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, yeah, I'm, it's so complicated, because I rely on social media for, you know, promoting my podcast and other things. And at the same time, in August, I've given myself a complete break from it, and I'm just feeling all the benefits of not being on there. So yeah, I can hard relate to everything that you're talking about. Yeah.
Christy Harrison
So challenging to have to have to rely on it for business, and yet to be in this just minefield of, you know, the algorithm wants us to be activated and anxious and angry, because it keeps us you know, keeps us riveted.
Laura Thomas
And this is why I'm so excited about having the substack newsletter because it's like having, you know, when you get really exciting post. I feel like that's what substack is for me. Like it's getting, it's like getting a letter from a friend. Even though that's not it's not exactly what it is, but it feels just much more enriching in a way that social media doesn't and I don't have to kind of like deal with all this like aspiration, you know, like highly manufactured content that makes me feel really bad. So yeah, yeah, I really hear what you're saying on that.
Laura Thomas
The last question I have for you, Christy and this is kind of a little segment where we share a recommendation. What are you snacking on right now? And it doesn't have to be an actual snack. It can just be something fun that you want to recommend to the listeners.
Christy Harrison
I mean, this is maybe you know, who knows problematic and also not available probably anywhere, everywhere in the world, but well, two things. One is Better Call Saul, the TV show.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, is it good?
Christy Harrison
It's so good. I am obsessed and I didn't watch Breaking Bad for a long time because I thought it was gonna be violent and I don't like violent shows and you know the whole thing but ended up watching it and loving it. But I think Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. I may ruffle some feathers there by saying that that's just my opinion.
Laura Thomas
Okay. Good to know.
Christy Harrison
Don't at me bro.
Laura Thomas
You won't be on social media anyway.
Christy Harrison
I guess, I guess people are gonna, yeah. Yeah, for me personally, it's just a better show to, like, it's not as violent. And I don't have to sort of contend with all the like nervous system activation that I had with Breaking Bad. Like, there's still some of that, but it's also like, just a really fun, delicious romp in some ways. Weird, weird of that weird for me to say that. But. So there's that there is. This is like totally weird and tangential. But I am doing vision therapy, I learned that I have a visual disorder that like, like a binocular vision dysfunction, because I've had a long standing for probably five years phobia of driving on the highway. And I get so anxious out of nowhere for no, like there's no cars around me big open road. And suddenly I'm just like, yeah, and I slow down and I can't do it and I get sweaty and my heart racing. I'm like, you know, anxious even thinking about it. And I learned that it's because I have this binocular vision dysfunction where my eyes don't like focus properly in and it's especially relevant in like high speed situations, my brain can sort of, what's the word like, correct for it, in kind of everyday life, but if I'm like speeding down the highway, it's like too much. And so I'm doing vision therapy and wearing special glasses and like, it's really changed my life. I feel like I'm really, I don't want to oversell it or anything for anyone who might be listening or wanting to go through it. But like, the visual therapy exercises are kind of fun and interesting. And like, it's, it's helping me see better, it's helping me like I have gone on the highway a few times without as much panic. And yeah, I don't know, that's not like, particularly a snack, I guess. It's like kind of work. But also it's just, it's giving me like freedom. So it feels like a relief in some way.
Laura Thomas
That's so interesting. I'd bet that like really resonates with a lot of people like I, I don't drive in the UK, but living in the States, I can really attest to the panic of getting on a highway like, yeah, even just hearing you talk about it, like I can feel my heart rate getting up right.
Christy Harrison
They're terrifying.
Laura Thomas
It's so scary. It's so scary. So with, like factoring in the vision side of things I can't even imagine how terrifying that was. So I'm really glad that you're getting that help.
Christy Harrison
Well and I'm trying to talk about it, trying to talk about it with people too, because I feel like I know a lot of people who have these phobias of highway driving, who just don't do it. And like it happens to a lot of people as they get older. And my doctor said that, like ageing is a is a real factor. And a lot of people have this, you know, underlying, maybe genetic tendency towards like binocular dysfunction anyway, but it gets sort of triggered as you get older. And you know, many people don't know they have it. So I'm like, who knows who's listening who might benefit from this. And I just discovered it on some random deep dive into Google for like, you know, help with panic attacks on highways. So maybe that'll help someone else.
Laura Thomas
That's so interesting that that's like the thing, yeah, that it was .Wow.
Christy Harrison
Right? It's, it's wild.
Laura Thomas
Yeah, um, there's a lot of people going to be going to their optician soon. All right, I'll tell you my thing real quick. So mine is a kid's book. And I think it's written by a UK based author, but I will provide a link so that you can get it internationally if anyone wants to. And it's actually part of a book roundup for kids zero to five of like body affirming books that I'm doing on the newsletter next week. But I thought I would just give it a little shout out now, because it's so cute. And my two year old loves it. So it's called What Happened To You? And it's about a little boy called Joe who has one leg. And basically the story is, the kids at the playground keep asking Joe, like what happened to you? And they come up with all these ridiculous reasons as to why he only has one leg. Like did a lion bite it off, did it drop down the toilet, and like all of these things, and throughout the book, you can you can kind of see Joe getting like more and more upset and about the fact that like, he just wants to play his little pirate game and he wants the kids to play with him, but they just keep asking him ridiculous questions about where his leg is. And eventually they kind of just kind of connect over their differences and play and do kid things. And it's just this really sweet story, I think, to open up conversations about disability and ableism with kids. And what I really appreciate is that it was written by a guy who's a dad who has one leg. And he goes into a lot of depth at the back of the book, giving parents pointers for how to navigate conversations with your children about disability and really just normalising body diversity. And you know, sometimes people have accidents that mean that they become disabled, some people are born disabled, and just how do you navigate these conversations with your kids? So it's just a really cute book. And it's really beautifully illustrated as well. So it's called What Happened To You? And it's by James Catchpole, and I'll link to it in the show notes.
Christy Harrison
Oh, that sounds wonderful. I'm definitely gonna check that out.
Laura Thomas
It's very cute. Having had a kid has really like enabled my obsession with buying books to a whole new level. So I'm like, surrounded by them. And I'm not complaining. Christy, before you go, can you tell everyone where they can find more of your work? And more importantly, how they can find out about the new book when it's ready for preorder?
Christy Harrison
Yeah, thank you. I don't know depending on when this comes out. It might be by then. But if not, you can just or at any time, you can find out more about the new book at my website, christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap, it's called. And right now I just have a signup form to get on my newsletter to find out more when the book is available for preorder. But soon there will be links there for preorder as well. And then just to learn more about me and my work in general, you can go to my website, christyharrison.com. My podcast is called Food Psych. And you can find that wherever you're listening to this. And yeah, maybe don't find me on social media, because I'm not gonna be spending much time there. But if you want, you can look through the stuff I posted previously.
Laura Thomas
Yeah. Thank you so much for being here, Christy, especially, you know, when you're doing book edits, and, you know, being caught in that, you know, that space between being pulled between baby and work, I really, I know that feeling. So thank you for being here. And thank you for speaking so openly about your experiences, it has felt like a really nurturing conversation. So thank you.
Christy Harrison
It has for me too. Thank you so much for creating the space for it. And it was a nice break from all my work. So thank you.
Laura Thomas
Thanks, Christy.
Laura Thomas
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Can I Have Another Snack? If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review in your podcast player and head over to laurathomas.substack.com for the full transcript of this conversation, plus links we discussed in the episode and how you can find out more about this week's guest. While you're over there, consider signing up for either a free or paid subscription Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter, where I'm exploring topics around bodies, identity and appetite, especially as it relates to parenting. Also, it's totally cool if you're not a parent, you're welcome too. We're building a really awesome community of cool, creative and smart people who are committed to ending the tyranny of body shame and intergenerational transmission of disordered eating.
Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas, edited by Joeli Kelly, our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser. And the music is by Jason Barkhouse. And lastly Fiona Bray keeps me on track and makes sure this episode gets out every week. This episode wouldn't be possible without your support. So thank you for being here and valuing my work and I'll catch you next week.
Laura Thomas
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