Live From Dream Run Camp: Abby Chan

Okay, it's Thursday, which means it's live from DreamRun Camp here at the Dream House in Flagstaff, Arizona. I'm your host, Matt Fitzgerald. We are presented by 80/20 Endurance, and we have a— well, I said this every week, but I mean it every week— we have a very special guest for you. Uh, my friend and colleague Abby Chan is here. Abby Chan. And so when I put together my dream team for Dream Run Camp, it was, it was sort of like, you know, the Blues Brothers, we're getting the band back together. And so it was like some folks largely that I knew before, knew and loved and trusted, but I needed a dietitian, someone really good and special and like-minded to serve as the official dietitian for Dream On Camp. And I got a recommendation from AJ Gregg, who was here last week, um, and the woman he recommended was me, Abby. Um, and like, you know, so anyone who's read— I'm just gonna— I don't have a script here. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, so when I was here in 2017 as a fake pro runner, um, AJ became my— like, Nataki's and my guy for recommending restaurants. And like, we're foodies and we have high standards, and this is going to be a food-centered talk here. And so like, when AJ said a restaurant was good, we learned it was good. Uh, so anyhow, that's the background for like, when AJ makes a recommendation, I'm very inclined to put a lot of stock in that recommendation. It's panned out with you, Abby.

Thank you. I'm so glad. Glad to be here.

Yeah, no, I was telling the folks earlier the The better I get to know you, the more I like you. It's one of those things.

It's good it's not the opposite.

Yeah. Which happens.

It can.

You just get a misread on people sometimes. So I think I'll just shut up and let you introduce yourself. Just like a quick resume credentials type of thing. Who are you and what do you do?

Great question. So I am Abby Chan. I am a registered dietitian and the co-owner of Evolve Flagstaff, which is a Integrative Health and Performance Training Clinic in Flagstaff. And I have my undergrad, so my bachelor's degree in nutrition and dietetics, as well as my master's in nutrition and dietetics. And yeah, outside of that, I'm also an athlete. I am a cyclist. I'm a runner. I'm an aerialist. What else do I do? Yeah, I just like playing. Basically, and I love food, obviously, because I talk about it all day, right?

Yeah, yeah, you better love food.

I better love food, right?

Um, so ahead of the sit-down, um, you requested and I accommodated the request for some questions that we— some ground we would cover in this interview, but that was just a ruse. We're not really going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Bitcoin.

I know nothing. I know utterly nothing.

Uh, no, that's an inside joke. My Instagram was hacked.

Okay, I was gonna ask you guys. Okay, I was like, this is interesting. And I was like, oh, you don't know me that well, right? Well, I was like, maybe he's like really into Bitcoin and like he got a new car and a house. Maybe you should ask him about this. Yeah, that was okay. Good.

I'm glad that was a bad scene.

I mean, I was like, I wasn't going to text you, like, did you get hacked or did you actually make a lot of money on Bitcoin?

Yeah, I don't know, like, no to the second question, yes to the first. And yes, and so, um, yeah, dozens and dozens and dozens of people I know texted and emailed me to say, I think you've been hacked. Anyhow, we're not going to talk about Bitcoin.

That's good, I don't really know much about Bitcoin.

So, um, so yeah, if someone were to just like, I guess, Google you, and they, they might I find that you are self-described as an anti-diet dietitian. Can you unpack that a little bit? What does that mean?

Yeah. So an anti-diet dietitian is a dietitian that really tries to look at health outside of just what is the weight of your body. It is a much more inclusive way and approach to nutrition that doesn't— I mean, I think Right now, even like diets are not super in vogue. Like, no one's like, oh, I'm on a diet now. It's more like I'm doing this one protocol or this type of cleanse or whatever. And so from an anti-diet perspective, we're really looking at how do we have less rules around food and how do we really make food fit for you and your lifestyle and your culture. And again, looking at health from a much broader perspective outside of just how are you moving your body, what— how much is gravity pulling on your body and what's your caloric intake? Because health is much more than that. And any time that we do have a lot of restriction around food or a lot of unhelpful food beliefs, that's going to then impact our mental health. It's also, if you're an athlete and move your body a lot, it's most likely also going to deeply impact your recovery and your performance. And so from an anti-diet perspective, I really believe in looking at each individual and looking at what's going to work for you and what's important to you. Because if I'm just telling you to eat chicken and rice and broccoli and you hate those things, it's not going to be very effective. And we need to look at, too, a lot of nuance around how do we not create this binary relationship, not only with food. So like good foods versus bad foods. And same thing with even exercise and movement of how do we create a more flexible relationship amongst all of those things.

Right on. Well said. That clarifies it. I'm very conscious of our age difference. Well, because I grew up— well, so I came of age at a time at— because you made a reference to diets are a little bit out of vogue. Well, when I came of age, diets were maximally in vogue, and we all are influenced by our environments. We all are, to some degree or another, like it or not, products of our circumstances. And, part of the reason I'm really glad that we connected and that you are the person guiding DreamRunners on nutrition, food, dietetics, all that stuff is because I think that we're quite like-minded. And yet, we're not quite of the same generation. And so, I don't have your training and expertise in this stuff, but I have an abiding interest in it, diet, nutrition. You know, how these things like affect performance, health, wellbeing. And, and I felt like I had skin in the game and I had beliefs and opinions, but they were influenced by this, this environment where it's like, you know, just like these, you know, mega diet crazes, you know, just like people just getting crazy rich off of South Beach and Atkins and, you know, uh, uh, was it the paleo and all that stuff? And like, like, you know, I look back at it and I'm like, shoot, I should have been born when Abby was born because I like, I would have been— but like, you know, I was like doing my best because I really do feel like I like, we, we think about food in similar ways. You're just more knowledgeable. Um, but like, you know, all this leading up to a question like, is it possible for you to sort of like imagine being— having been born in 1971 and coming of age as the person you are at the age I did? Like, do you think it would have been harder for you to like, you know, find the role that you occupy in your present circumstances in reality in that type of environment in like maximal diet craze hysteria?

I think it depends. And I think it's really interesting because now we don't have specific diets that are branded or trademarked, but we still have other things like keto, right? No one's making— there's no like keto king or queen or royalty who's making a bunch of money off of it. But you can see it like stamped on things or whatnot. So there's a difference between— and there's a whole like encompassing diet culture which is basically has really, really longstanding deep roots into even just like colonization and colonization of certain types of bodies and a way to even differentiate like what is okay and what isn't. So we can trace it way back. Sabrina Strings is an author that wrote a book called Fearing the Black Body and kind of goes through the cultural obsession with thin bodies. And so, and that still exists now, even though it's not specifically diets, it still is very prevalent in what is culturally accepted, what are our societal norms. And so even if people aren't on a diet, they could still be again doing a cleanse or doing something even like Whole30, which is technically kind of branded. But there's a lot of ways that now people aren't using that language because it's not interesting and it's not cool anymore. And now it's more like wellness-based. Type things. And I think even with that, of like, because this does go so far back, it's generational. And so I work with all ages of individuals. I work with any— I work with teens, I work with people up to 70, 75. And so it's interesting to look at just the generational kind of repercussions and how a lot of these societal norms and body norms are carried through, and then also the behaviors in controlling that body norm and kind of what what we call in my world, like the thin ideal or whatever the ideal is. It may not always be like hyper thin. It could— it shifts every 5 to 10 years with social media. It's now shifting kind of more at a hyper speed. But it's really interesting because we are all raised by our caregivers who have their own relationship to food, which is then going to impact our relationship to food. And then if we don't start to be the disruptor of that generation, we are going to continue to carry it on. So I would say there's still a lot of individuals who are like deeply entrenched in all of this. And so I don't think it's always generational, but I think that it's really easy no matter your age to either opt into this or also opt out of it.

Right on. Yeah. So yeah, let's unpack that a little bit further. Well, just like, you know, it makes me wonder, and I think this was on the list of Bitcoin questions I, I gave you. I'm sorry, food questions I gave you.

Sorry, sorry, right, right, right.

Um, so have things changed only superficially? Have they not really changed that much? Or have they changed, and have they changed for better or the worse?

I think it depends. It's really interesting now when I work with teens or more like Gen Z population, it's really cool to see kind of just more radical acceptance of having diversity and celebrating diversity in that. I think there's probably going to be repercussions with this generation as well of what are going to be the body norms of it. But I do find I think it is changing and I do think that people are recognizing that this actually is taking up how I'm either choosing to eat or feed my body or all these rules are really impacting my life and my family. And I have a lot of parents who come in and they're like, I don't want my kids to struggle the way that I struggled. And so how can I be that disruptor of it? So I think that it is changing. Granted, there is a lot of wolf in sheep's clothing of like, oh, now strong is the new skinny. And it's like, okay, well, what does that mean? Now you aren't supposed to be skinny, but now you're supposed to look this other way. And so I really—

Wink, wink, strong.

Totally. And it's where it's actually just hypertoned and all these things. And so there's a lot where I do think it is changing, but it, again, it's kind of whiplash all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know Ryan Whited? Yes. Local guy. So for those of you listening, Ryan is a local strength coach. Basically, he and I are co-authoring a book together. And through him, I've learned about this biopsychosocial model of pain. And the idea is like pain believe it or not, just isn't just physical. It's multidimensional and it goes beyond that. It's true of pain, but it's also true of basically anything health-related. And I wonder if it sounds like just hearing you talk that you have kind of a biopsychosocial approach to food and eating and nutrition and health and well-being. Is that fair? Fair characterization?

Totally. I mean, I think so much of our genetics, are one aspect. And I think even from our culture, like what the culture that we grew up in and the culture around food that we grew up in. So working with different individuals of different ethnicities, like I am Chinese and growing up in this culture, it's like a lot of our foods until our homogenized culture in the US decides to deem it as a superfood, they're not okay. And so I think there's a lot when we look at food and our relationship to food that's much more than just calories in and calories out and what are the nutrients nutrients you're taking. It's much more of like, what is our relationship to these things? Because if we don't actually investigate that, what we end up doing is we don't actually have a foundation for structure around food. How are we feeding ourselves? Um, what does that actually look like? And then people end up just going from like one diet to another to another. And I think even from kind of like the psychosocial standpoint, obviously things that impact our relationship to food are caregivers, how we grew up, definitely media and like what is portrayed in the media, um, from a body norm perspective, from a food norm perspective. And then there's aspects too of when we look at the mental health aspect of it. Um, a lot of times I work a lot with eating disorders, and so when we see a lot of those come up, there are genetic components for sure, but society does impact that a lot. We saw eating disorder rates store through the pandemic and through lockdown and things like that. And when we really start to boil it down, food is one thing that when we are younger, we may not have the ability to actually say like, hey, here are my needs. And so that's where food, either lack thereof food or restricting that and having some sort of like control over it, ends up being a coping mechanism. So same thing with like if it comes to food or substances or a variety of different things. There's ways that our body is always trying to regulate and find a baseline, whether that be in an excess form or an inadequate form when it comes to food. And that's going to really impact our worldview of food and how we see it and how we integrate with it.

Mic drop. One after another. Damn, you're good. Yeah. So, just thinking about like, you know, a while back, out of the bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks, I got a sports nutrition certification, like way back, like 2006. And so, I have that. Again, like, you know, I care, you know, I feel like I have— you know, the bar is so low, you know, for people who are offering, you know, guidance on eating to athletes in particular that like, I feel like, you know what, I can do better than that. So I do it, but for me, it's kind of a background thing. But insofar, you know, I coach athletes, food, nutrition, these things come up. And my orientation at this point in July 2023 is, you know, the nice thing about being a performance coach is like, I don't have to interrogate people's goals. I think you probably are in a position. Where you have to— you, you have people walk in the door and say, I want this, and you're like, why do you want that?

Or I'm like, let's peel all of these layers back and get to what you really want.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I can afford to be like, performance is fine, you know, like that you're an athlete, you want to perform, and then it's all about the how. And, and, and so in as, in as much as I go down the rabbit hole of nutrition, I I'm very process-focused. It's like, let's— same as we do with training, let's do things by the book and see where that gets us. Let's not say I need to weigh X, just assume that based on what, who knows, and then do whatever it takes to get to that weight. So are you— would you say that you are— well, that's two things, I guess. Like, do you tend to be very— to try to steer people in the direction of being process-focused? And do you find yourself with your clientele having to, you know, sort of like, you know, dig into the motivations and the goals themselves, which I don't have to do as a performance coach?

Yeah, I definitely dig into the motivations of someone who's in my office and they're like, I, yeah, say it is like theoretically I want to lose weight. I'm like, okay, well, what would that do for you? And, or like, what would be the benefits of that? Or what do you foresee the benefits being? And some of it's like, well, I would, more energy, or I think I would be faster, or I would, I don't know, sleep better. I would have more— I would feel mentally better, whatever it is. And it's like, great, we can actually do all of those things without actually like changing the number on your scale necessarily, or by that being the sole focus of it. And so I do a lot with boiling down like, how do we actually get to like, what is the root of your goals? And also what's the why behind your goals? Like, Who decided this for you? Did you decide it, or did everybody else decide this for you? Um, and so like society in general. And so there's a lot of that for sure, but even in the background, like, there is a structure. Um, I believe that in our culture, and even just from an educational standpoint in our society, like, we don't have great food culture in general. Like, we don't have traditions in the United States around how we eat, how we consume food. You know, it's like we did. And then Industrial Revolution and Depression and all these different things. And it has just been this rapidly shifting culture that's always been driven from a production standpoint. And so it's how do we make things more efficient? How do we always be producing instead of really looking at like, no, we have a siesta every day. You know, we come together and we have family dinner together. We spend time cooking together. And like, granted, in our world right now, that's not the most realistic thing forever. But it's really looking at like, how can we build some structure around food of at least like, how do we have enough food frequency? It's like, are we eating enough in our day? And I even think from below frequency, like the thing that's most important from that is do we have like enough adequacy of food as well as access to food? So if it's someone thinking from a financial standpoint, it's like we can't eat better if we don't have enough food. So that's one. But also if you're an athlete and you're training and you're putting a lot of volume in and you also work, it's like If you don't have access to food, no matter what your relationship is, you're not going to be able to actually feed yourself enough. So we need to look at, do we have food accessible? Are we structurally, like, planning it in your day and adding it in to your day? And then we can look at, again, that adequacy standpoint. Like, are we eating frequently enough? Are we eating around training? Do we have enough variety of not only macronutrients but also micronutrients coming in to really support training and recovery? And then, like, because most people come to my office and they want, like, the very snippet of like, what supplement should I be taking? What can I be doing? I just want to focus on like fueling around my training. I'm like, cool. That's like the very top level. And if we can do these other from the ground up steps, this is going to matter a lot less because you're going to feel a lot better and your body's going to be able to regulate a lot more. So there is definitely a lot of structure in the back end, but I'm also someone who doesn't believe in like, again, giving someone just a protocol or totally overhauling something. I really believe in looking at How can we do more and how can we layer some of these behaviors and shifts into things that you're already doing so it doesn't feel like, okay, like diet starts tomorrow. Like I got to overhaul everything and I'm got to get rid of all these things or I have to go and buy a bunch of new foods that I've never cooked or had. It's like, how do we layer these things in and look at what's going to meet your life, your time, your cooking skills, your preferences, all those things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Picked you for a reason. Um, so yeah, you know, my, my— again, to sort of relate, you know, my role to, to yours, um, you know, my, my fundamental philosophical orientation toward being a performance coach is, um, it's like a best practices approach. So like, like, let's look at what the champions are doing. And you have to be careful with that, but, but by and large, like, these folks aren't idiots, you know, like they win for a reason. And so I do that with training, you know, like my 80/20 running book. It's like, well, here's, here's how the pros balance intensity. And guess what? It also works if we're out—

we're actually not a pro. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And also with, um, you know, uh, we just— I, I just gave a talk. We do coaches office hours at 4 PM every afternoon. I did one that was, um, focused on Sport psychology, same deal. I spend enough time around enough champion-level endurance athletes, it's like, wow, they're actually thinking kind of different from us. It's like, guess what? Our minds are malleable. We can move a little bit in that direction in as much as we care. And then nutrition too. I wrote a book called The Endurance Diet where I traveled all around the world. This was fun. I didn't care if I ever sold a single copy of this book because the research was so fun. Um, just studying the diets of elite endurance athletes in different disciplines like cyclists, triathletes, runners, um, you know, Japan, Kenya, Brazil, Canada, um, and, and looking for common patterns, right? Because we're all human and performance is performance is like, you know, what are they doing? And a lot of it, you know, even when I embarked on that project, I sort of knew what I was going to find because I wasn't starting from zero, but, but The biggest— I don't know if it was a surprise, but one of the standouts that I wasn't necessarily looking for was, uh, had to do with not what was on the plates of the food— I mean, on the— not the food that was on the plates of the athletes, but their relationship with food and with eating. And what I found over and over and over again that stood in stark contrast with the competitive amateur athletes that I, I tend to work with was that eating the way these athletes ate didn't feel like work to them. It didn't— there wasn't like a lot of stress around it. There wasn't a lot of guilt around it. There was a lot of pleasure and enjoyment around it. Things were like, you know, things were, you know, they weren't eating outside of like their cultural preferences. It was just like they, they weren't swimming against the tide. They were swimming with the tide. The standards were high. They weren't eating KFC, you know, it was good quality, healthy food, but it was fun, you know, and it wasn't work. And it— I'm like, wow, sometimes I just want to, you know, tell one, like, the one of the competitive amateur athletes that I deal with, uh, that I have the pleasure of working with, um, it's like, you know what, my prescription for you is just to spend 80% less time thinking about food and let the rest take care of itself. But talk about that notion of, I think maybe for some people, it's like, no, it's not about the food. What are you talking about a relationship with food? I have a relationship with my spouse. I have a relationship with my boss, but with food, what is that?

Yeah. A lot of people ask me that when I'm like, most people come to my office, I'm like, what's your relationship with food and movement and your body? And they're like, I've never thought about what does that mean. And so I kind of frame it as like, okay, if food were a person, what would you say to this person? What would this person say to you? Would you say to this person that like, you're bad? And then the food in turn be like, well, you shouldn't eat me, or like, you should eat me, or whatever. And so there's this whole aspect. And like, really, when we look at relationship to food, there should be ease in it, right? Like, there should be this sense of ease, and it shouldn't take up— and if we do have, again, a foundation to an it shouldn't take up a ton of mental energy. And I think once again, we start to add in those rules that are going against us, the currents going against us. That's when, like, all of this noise comes in around food. That's when it's like, well, should I eat this? How much? Should I, like, weigh this? Should I measure this? What should I do? Is this a bad food? Is this a good food? And it's like that when you have to spend that much time overthinking it. A, we just robbed all the joy out of it. Or B, if we have been in a really restricted state of like we have a lot of food rules, when we eat the food that we have restricted, even from a brain chemistry level like dopamine, serotonin, all of our feel-good hormones, those are primed to actually give us more reward because we spent so much time thinking about it and obsessing about it that once we do have it, it's like, oh God, that was the best thing ever. And then we are typically, if we're either in an underfed state, so we're undernourished, we will eat more of that, which then ends up if we have a lot of these rules, we end up feeling guilty. We have shame, which then ends up turning into eventually there's a whole like diet restriction, binge-restrict cycle where it's like, cool, we have this moment where it's like, okay, we finally stop white knuckling and we let go, or it's like a cheat day or whatever you want to call it. I hate that word. But then what happens is then we restrict because we're like, well, I don't want to do that again. I clearly can't trust myself around these foods, so I just shouldn't keep them in the house. Eventually it's your birthday, eventually you have them, whatever. And then it goes into again that we go from restriction to then feeling guilty to I can't do this anymore to eventually our physiology winning, especially if we're not in a fed state. So it kind of turns this whole thing. So when it comes to our relationship to food, it's like, how do we strip away these rules? How do we have more flexibility? And even from like a performance standpoint too, like with my athletes, I am very rarely being like, you need to eat X amount of grams of this many carbs and this and this, and this is how many calories you need to get in. Like, in the background, that's my job. I get to worry about all of that. But from an athlete standpoint, like, I don't like to give them that much information because it's just too much. It's too much to think about on top of everything else. I like to make food easy as much as possible, looking at how can we add these things in, what would be interesting for you and fun for you here so that there is more peace and ease within that relationship.

Yep. Yeah. Uh, to overgeneralize a little bit, I, I, I put people in, in terms of their relationship with food in, in 3 buckets. There's like, there's the folks who don't give a shit and they eat whatever they want, like KFC all the time. And you know what? That's not entirely bad because like they're eating some unhealthy stuff and there will be consequences over time. But, you know, the psychology is actually, you know, not too bad. And these folks, I don't think, are a lot better off than the folks who care a lot about food, but there's a lot of stress, a lot of guilt, anxiety. And it's like, I think, you know, I don't envy either of these groups, people who don't give a shit and eat like shit, the people who care a lot and, you know, drive themselves over the bend. You know, where you want to be is when you care, but you enjoy food as much as, you know, the person— I'm not— I don't mean to pick on KFC.

Well, you've got a KFC booth here.

But you know what I mean? It's like, like, and this is possible. Like, that, that's where I ended up, you know. Like, you know, I, I ate pretty healthy growing up, but, you know, when I was sent out off my own, it was KFC. And then, then I started to realize, well, as an athlete, you know, maybe I should like raise the bar a little bit because I'll perform better, I'll be fitter and healthier. And so I did that, but I personally wasn't going to sacrifice enjoyment. You know, I fortunately just didn't have a lot of complication in my personal history with my relationship with food. And so I got to a point where like, you know what, I did raise the bar. I'm eating, you know, you know, I'm eating like the pros. And it, it feels good. But like, how do you feel about like that character characterization that the person who cares a lot and is really compromising their mental health really isn't better off than the person who just doesn't give a shit, needs whatever? Yeah, whatever.

Yeah. And I would actually say that those two people are actually the same. And the people who, from the outside, it looks like they don't care or whatever. It's again, they don't really have that foundation possibly, or they didn't have someone to model like what that was or what even like how does food work for us. There's so many rules in our culture of like carbs are bad. I mean, in the '90s it was like fat's bad and now we're keto crazy. There's all these different aspects. And so it's like if we don't have that foundational knowledge of how do these foods actually work for us and someone to help model that for us, then it's like we don't really have we're not starting off on a good foot. And I think one thing with that too is the people from the outside who look like or seem like they don't care, they actually care a lot in a way because there's a lot of stigma in our society around people who— not saying that those people inherently exist in larger bodies, but there's a lot of stigma and anti-fat bias in our culture and weight stigma that they are being deeply impacted by this, which is going to also delay health care and a lot of different things. So they do care and they also No, they don't feel good, but they may not have either the ability or the ability to actually change what they're doing, which then leads to them being hyperfocused, going on a wild diet or something or protocol, being hyperfocused until they can't do it anymore. So I would actually say that these two people are very similar.

That makes a lot of sense.

But both of them just kind of— one's lacking structure, one has too much structure, but they're both consumed with thoughts about food all the time, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's clarifying. Um, uh, let's talk about Bitcoin. No, let's talk about you a little bit. So, um, you know, uh, I, I, I quote Friedrich Nietzsche too often, uh, but he, he has a quote that I like. Uh, there are no philosophies, only philosophers.

Furrs.

Um, his point being like our beliefs, our convictions, our philosophies tend to emerge from our biographies. Uh, and so, um, uh, and I tend to believe that's, that's true, you know. So like, um, you know, you are— you chose the profession you did probably not just like doing this type, type of thing. You have your orientation toward your profession probably for reasons that are rooted in who you are and where you came from. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Like, you know, can, can you look back— you know, when I look back at my journey, like, you know, casting back from what I do for a living now and how I do it to like, what's like, wow, I was clearly on that path from day one. Is that the case for you or not so much?

I would say yes in some ways. So I grew up, my dad raised my brother and I, um, and He did cook. He's actually a very good cook. Um, but a lot of the household things eventually kind of landed on me, especially once I was a teenager. And I was a competitive dancer all growing up. I was also a climber. Um, I really ran. I ran to support those things, but I really ran for transportation because I was also not a very good teenager. So I was grounded all the time. I got my car taken away. So I would just like run to go see my friends or like run across town to go to the mall or whatever. I eventually got my running shoes taken away, so that was also a whole thing. Yeah, it was wild. Love you, Dad. And so I love you, KFC. And so I ended up— because being in a dancer world, and there's a lot too in my background where life wasn't super easy growing up, there was a lot of family things, and I actually really struggled with an eating disorder from probably about 14 until my early 20s. At that time, I didn't actually even know it was necessarily an eating disorder until way later. And that was also because, like, no one ever asked, like, hey, are you okay? When clearly not okay. But there are a lot of different things where coming from that place, it wasn't— I think this is one thing that people don't understand a lot about eating disorders, too, is that they're not just to be thin or to be a certain size. They're really a regulation tool and a way to regulate our nervous system. And so that's one thing, or again, kind of a coping mechanism or way to feel like you're, quote unquote, in control. I like the term regulate better because control is just a weird way to describe it. So I really struggled with my relationship to food and it was more of a slippery slope. Like for a while I was like, oh, I heard sugar is bad. Like, I'm not going to eat sugar anymore. I'm not going to have soda because that's a good thing because that's what what we're told to do. Um, and then I was like, oh, I'm gonna be vegetarian because that's also what we're supposed to do. Um, and through this, it also really disconnected me from like my family and my cultural foods because my whole family is again like Chinese, and a lot of them— oddly, we live in Arizona— but a lot of them hunt as well. So it was like automatically there was a huge disconnect. So I actually had to learn how to make all my own food, and like I made most of my food once I was in high school and college. And so that's really what inspired my love for cooking. But I was a dancer and I danced anywhere from 24 to 30+ hours a week growing up. So it was a lot of volume, a lot of training, and I was injured all the time. I had shin splints all the time. I was severely anemic. There were so many things. And so once I finally decided to go to college, my whole family's in business. And what do you do when you don't know what you want to do? You go to business school. For all you people in business, it's great that you're doing what you're doing. It wasn't my passion. I just didn't know what I wanted to do and I had to go to college. And so there was a lot of things that really, after my freshman year of college, I went through my first year and I was like, this is dumb. My brother actually ended up passing away after my freshman year. And so that was a time that was actually allowed me to really pause and figure out like, what do I want? Instead of just being on this like life escalator of like, like you graduate high school, you go to college, these are all the things that you do. And I knew that even if I did continue with business, I would have to take some science classes. And I wasn't really pushed in high school. Again, my dad raised me, he did a great job, he worked a lot, but I wasn't ever academically like, yes, you need to try really hard in these things. I did well, privileged in that standpoint, but I really didn't do a lot of science. So once I actually started taking science class, I'm like, this is so cool. And then I was like, I really like food. I was interested. I didn't even know you could be a dietitian. That wasn't even like something on my radar. So that was like not an option when I was going in. And so I was like, oh, this is a thing you can do. And so I transitioned after that. I changed my degree, shifted it. And yeah, then. Now I'm a dietitian and I knew I always wanted to work with athletes because I was also an athlete in that standpoint too. And I wanted way back then, I was like, I want to work for a sports team. I'm so glad I don't now. Love all the dietitians that do, but I do not want to be a mom to like 50 individual athletes. That's ridiculous. And make you smoothies and give you supplements. That doesn't sound like fun. But so I wanted to work with athletes, but then also through undergrad, like there were a lot of things that we were learning and all of our medical profession and even just like education in that professional standpoint, whether it be med school, physical therapy, um, chiropractic, whether it be nutrition, all of it's again going to be from a very weight-centric approach. And a lot of the things we were learning were all the things that like I was doing when I had an eating disorder. I was like, this feels bad. This doesn't feel okay. Like this person needs to lose X amount of weight in this amount of time. And this is how many calories they should eat. And I was like, this isn't okay. And so that was also really when I started questioning, like, what do I want to do and how do I want to practice? And so luckily it was kind of early in my career that I knew that how we were approaching nutrition wasn't correct. And really, in my world, like, I don't think it's ethical, um, and it's also not sustainable and doesn't meet people where they need to be and where they want to be. And so that's kind of like how I shifted into—

yeah.

Where I am now.

Right on. Uh, I'm gonna really reach for another parallel.

Yeah.

Between our biographies, but, um, I, I have written quite a bit about how, um, in, you know, I, I was an athlete, um, in school as well, and I did not develop an eating disorder, but I did become what is often labeled a head case. And so, you know, so I was limited by, um, you know, my mind, you know, like, you know, I just, uh, I, I, I sort of self-limited because I just didn't have stuff figured out, uh, in my head. You know, I was young, I didn't have awesome coaching, um, whatever, it just didn't work out and I kind of burned out and quit. And, and when I got back into running as an adult, I looked back and thought, you know, I need to, I need to rewrite this story. Um, and, and so, you know, I have a, an abiding interest in sports psychology, but, um, you know, what's exciting is that, you know, that transformation that I sought, I achieved, you know, I went from being like, you know, like my mind was my greatest weakness to it was my greatest strength. And I did it by just making it a goal and working on it. And so for you as a young athlete who developed an eating disorder, um, you know, I, I would think that you actually represent hope for, you know, the all too many people who go down that same path because it's a thorny one. That is a tough one to break out. You know, I've seen it plenty, as you can imagine, and it's like it's just hard because you're like, you know, as soon as you see someone just go over the edge, you're like, I just don't know, like, you know, all the king's horses, you know, just like, it can be tough to like, you know, so can you speak to that? You know, you know, to what extent do— does, you know, does your experience offer hope to people who have, you know, experienced some of the things that you did when you were younger?

Yeah, I mean, I hope so. And I don't think anyone who's— I mean, it's kind of like that too. Like even in the counseling world, it's like we are all trying to search for like, what is our basically our greatest weakness and how do we fix that? And so I would say that most people who— a lot of people who are dietitians have actually struggled with either an eating disorder or disordered eating. That's in my world, kind of a spectrum of what that looks like. And to get a true diagnosis, that doesn't mean that you aren't sick enough if you don't have one. And I would say a lot of people like won't go into that field. And probably if they do recover, like, I don't ever want to really think about nutrition again. But I do think that there is a lot of hope in it. And I think it takes a whole team and it takes a lot of introspective work to really figure out like why, what are the things that either predisposed me to this or that are like my triggers or things like that that really set me up to continue down this spiral or continue down this path. And it's really coming from a place of like, how do we shift out of that space? And how do we really come back to like what matters to us as humans and as athletes and really getting really right and clear with our personal values and what actually matters? Like there's a lot of people who will say like, you know, at your funeral, no one's going to say like, oh man, they, they like, Bob was so great. You know, he was X amount of pounds and da da da da da. And he looked like this, like no one's going to do that. And so it's really looking at getting right with yourself of like, what do I want to do in this world and what matters to me and what lights me up? And also how does that then have a ripple effect into my community so that, yeah, I can help people with, um, coming from a space of either underfueling or eating disorders who still want to be active because I have a huge space of compassion for that. And I think even for more of the amateur athlete is even probably somewhat at higher risk because they're training, working, living, and living under this world of like more like diet culture and wellness and all these other noise that we get where the elites, they've just been elite. They've been training like that for a long time. They're like, I know this works for me. If I don't eat, I can't perform. And it is, there are definitely more athletes coming out who are like, oh, I have struggled with eating disorders, but There are aspects too to where in order to get to a very elite level, like you will get broken before you can actually get there. So I think that amateurs actually struggle much more because there's so much more noise and they don't have a solid team around them. They don't have a dietitian. They don't have a coach who's looking out for all these red flags. They don't have trainers. They don't have all this whole team around them to support them, to help them like along this path and be on the lookout. On all sides.

Yeah, yeah. I discovered long ago that you can't reason people out of—

nope, nope, nope, nope—

going down that path. And so, you know, for me, for someone who cares very much, you know, um, you know, I have a very different role from, from yours, but like, I don't, I don't want people to self-sabotage in any respect. So what I do more of now is like, I'm like, look at so-and-so, like, you know, so-and-so is where you want to be as an athlete, and they— why are they there? It's because they didn't go the path down the path you went down, or they went down that path and came back from it. Like, that can be— it's, you know, to make a dangerous analogy, like, you know, the, the best, you know, the most effective counselors in drug rehabilitation programs are usually, you know, ex-addicts, right? It's like, hey, I can relate. There's the science over here, but let's just, let's be real. Like, you know, I've bottomed out the same way you've bottomed out. And that, that's, that's, uh, you know, like, you know, we're all, you know, we have a rational side, but we're also, you know, emotional beings, right?

We all think we're thinking beings. And the more we try to rationalize and just think our way through something, that's the more we got, we get caught up in all the noise. And if we can actually get into more of like the feeling aspect of it and then the doing aspect of it, that's much better than just like trying to go— even when we think of work a lot with body image too, and it's like we can't just tell ourselves that we like ourselves, then we're just gaslighting ourselves and lying to ourselves. And so how do we actually pull it back to like, how can I treat myself with respect? How can I best show up for myself today? How can I get into more of a feeling? Like, how does this food make me feel? How does my training make me feel? How can I best take care of myself today so we can get from that feeling place to that doing place? And it all coming from this place of like self-respect.

Right on. Do you notice that I don't actually have the list of questions I wrote for you?

I know, it's pretty good.

Yeah, I don't—

well, you're nailing it.

No, well, just— no, it was like I just knew that I wanted to talk to you. Um, so it's super easy and yeah, we could go on for a while longer. I try to keep these to 45 minutes or so. And so, well, if I haven't burned a bridge, like, I'd love to have you back for, for another Live from Dream Run Camp because there's so much more we could talk about. But, but one thing I did want to hit before we wrap up is, so you are, you know, providing, uh, your dietetic services to dream runners, and you had your very first Dream Runner come through your office recently. She's right over there, didn't want to be on the sectional with us. But could you just talk about, for those who might be considering coming here, or just who, like, wow, that woman's amazing, like, I, I might want to work with her or someone like her, like, can you, can you explain actually what it is like from a client's perspective to work with you?

Yeah, that's a good question. So It's a deep dive first, like hour and a half session where we go through kind of your whole like life with food. Like what was it like growing up? What is it like now? How has it shifted? How has it changed? What are your goals as a runner? What does, what does your daily life look like from like a work and just schedule standpoint? What does food look like? What are your preferences? All of these different aspects. So we kind of like dive into all of those things. Um, and I do think, I think one session is great. If we can do follow-ups, that's even better because then we have a little bit more time to build in more nuance and also check back in and look at like, all right, how did things go? Whenever someone leaves my office, I never call what we're working on as goals because goals are very binary. They're black and white. And if we don't do them as humans, we typically don't want to go back and try it again because we are scared of failing. So I call everything that we do like practices of like, can we practice, you know, like fueling during your run. You know, what can that look like? There's a million different sports supplements that are great and awesome, but if you don't like those, how can we maybe fuel you with Rice Krispie treats? You know, how can we maybe do Skittles? How can we make food fun and interesting for you and still meet your needs? Um, and so that's kind of what it looks like, is looking at how do we— or if someone's struggling with a lot of, like, again, their relationship to food or thoughts and feelings around that, or their body or training, I always look at what is someone's overall, like, stress level, what does their training look like, so that we can actually look at adapting to recovery as well. So I've been a trainer and, like, a strength coach for, I don't even know, 15, 17 years or something like that. I've been teaching something, so I do have a lot of knowledge in that. I don't go into the coaching realm, but I have a lot of knowledge. So there's a lot of ways that I'm like, okay, how can we also downregulate? How do we, within your training plan, how do we Really take your easy days as easy, you know, and that's going to be essential from that standpoint. So there's a lot that goes into what do you want out of this? What foods you enjoy? How can we add food in? Most likely, I rarely ever tell anyone to eat less. I don't know if I actually ever have in my life. I'm always looking at can we add either more fruits or vegetables or can we add more carbs? I'm never like, you can't have ice cream or you can't have X, Y, or Z. All of those things fit. All of those are great and they all serve serve a huge purpose. So yeah, so there's a lot of things from what it looks like from an actual food standpoint, an intake standpoint, to what is our relationship to food, our relationship to our bodies. How do we stop kind of that self-sabotaging cycle, whether it be things that are impacting your performance of like, oh, I weigh myself all the time and if it's on a number that I want, then I don't eat the next day. I'm like, great, well that's taking your performance. How do we like not do those things. Um, so there's a lot that goes into it, and every single person is different, so it kind of depends.

But what does that have to do with Bitcoin?

Nothing. Because I wish— unless you want to pay me in Bitcoin, we could probably figure that out, and then I could look at somehow investing that maybe, or just losing it to the market. I don't know.

Sorry, do we have any questions from the gallery? Now is your time. You were fortunate enough to have one-on-one with Abby, so maybe not. Lauren? Yeah.

Can you talk about one of your favorite things about your role or something that inspires you with your role and something that you love about being a dietitian? Oh my gosh. I love everything about being a dietitian. Sometimes it's really exhausting from a standpoint of because it is like I'm feeling like I'm swimming upstream. Stream in like this world of noise. So that can be exhausting at times, whether it be seeing an athlete like being like, oh, I actually, I thought I recovered well before, but now I actually recover. Now I know what it feels like to have power. Now I know what it feels like to not bonk every time I go out for a long run. So that's always like super fun and exciting. It's really cool when I, when I'm working on someone's food flexibility of like them even like say it's like I had someone today, it was like, I actually had ice cream in my house and like it didn't like talk to me and it didn't feel like I was going crazy with it there, like it was driving me out of my mind. And so that was, that's really cool to see people's relationship to food like slowly start to heal and like have things be okay. Um, or even I work with a lot of gut-related things as well because those definitely go hand in hand with athletes and definitely go hand in hand with eating disorders and all these things things intersect. And so I had someone today, not an athlete, just a, um, teacher. And it's like she had a very limited diet, felt tired all the time, couldn't do what she loved, like couldn't have time with her kids. And it's like I see her a month later and she's like totally vibrant and like has energy. And it's like, you totally changed my life. And it's like little things. It's not— again, I'm not overhauling things, but it's really looking. And I think just being able to listen to people and their lived experiences is really like inspiring to me too.

Yeah, it's a rewarding work, super rewarding. Yeah, God bless you. Um, yeah, and so I said, uh, at the top of the show that the better I get to know you, the more I like you. So I like you more now than I did 45 minutes ago.

Score!

Yeah, the trend continues. But seriously, thank you so much. That was, that was impressive. And I hope it was valuable to me. I think everyone in the room, I think everyone listening. Thank you so much. More to come. We'll definitely have you back. We're just getting started here at DreamRun Camp. Thank you.

Great.