A delicious conversation with Ellie Gillam around intuitive eating and how to use food as a source of nourishment, a practice of connecting with your body and a way to holistic health. Ellie is a clinical nutritionist at Umami, she specialises in fertility, new mom, and paediatric nutrition, works in her own clinic and has experiences offering cooking classes and providing care for NDIS clients.
Her French heritage and journey with endometriosis deeply influence her work, as well as her passion for Mediterranean cuisine. Ellie is both a nutritionist and the recipe developer for Umami, a platform designed to support the professional nutrition community.
For more details, visit https://www.umami.clinic
Connect with her on instagram @elliegillamnutritionist or @umami.clinic
First 30mins transcribed, listen to full episode on Spotify :
For our chai and chats today, welcome to the Sanctuary Online podcast, blog type thing that we are doing here. Thank you listeners for being here. This is like early on in the recording of these episodes and I've had Ellie as one of my best friends for a long, long time, since high school.
So this is Ellie. I see you're 12 years old, yes. And she's always kind of been one of the people on my list to collaborate with, to work with.
How can we work together as friends and sisters and create and offer things that are helpful to people. So Ellie, did you want to introduce yourself? Yes, I'm Ellie Gillam. Still sounds weird saying that.
And I am a nutritionist. I work with, my mummy does nutrition and meal planning software for health professionals looking to find recipes for their clients. Fresh function recipes.
I used to have an online clinic, I technically do still have it, but I'm not practicing as an in-clinic, I guess, telehealth nutritionist like I was for a few years. I've also done cooking classes with NDIS, helping young people have cooking skills and learn independence in that way, because of Umami and making that a part of our platform. Amazing, I love it.
And for members of Sanctuary Online, we're working together to bring the gift of Umami to you as well, but obviously if you're not a member of Sanctuary Online, you can also sign up to Umami. It's available to everyone and anyone and it's such a beautiful website with such delicious recipes. I know when you were talking to me about Ellie and saying how you had inspiration from your travels in Italy and France, my mouth was already salivating.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of inspiration from the places that we were lucky enough to travel to. My husband and I travelled last year and spent a lot of time in Italy and in France and the year before I was in Greece, so there's definitely a heavily Mediterranean influence on all our recipes. Not just because I just love the med and the culture and the culture around food as well, but also because their food is delicious.
And heavily researched to be very nourishing and very health-promoting as well. We love an all-round, all-round benefit. And for those of you that don't know Ellie, we have many reasons why we're very good friends, but she's also French and I am half French, so I guess when we met each other in high school we were like, oh we know each other and we're both French girls at school and it was just so much fun.
But I bring this up because Ellie has always been such a great cook and I remember
baking with her and just doing little preps with her in high school and having the best food at her house. I actually realised when I was introducing myself that I just said all the things that I do for work. And that's not really, that's not me, I don't see that as my identity I guess.
Being a nutritionist is, it's my job, I guess it's more than a job when you're very passionate about what you do. But I'm also a, and I'm up as well in my, yeah. Yeah and we were just speaking earlier today as well, Ellie and I, and her full name is Elianor, which I love when she says it because she has such the best, most dreamiest romantic accent.
I do not have that French accent, I'm not being gifted like her, or I haven't practised it enough. You've said it practically. Yeah.
But we were saying how, or I was speaking with her about how last year when my partner and I went to France, we spent like, we'd spend hours eating and, which will lead into the conversation today of intuitive eating and mindfulness while eating. And how, you know, prior to that I used to go to France and yeah we'd eat all the cheese and bread and chocolate and we'd eat it so quickly and we'd eat so much that it wouldn't leave us feeling really good. But this time when I went back I was eating for, I was just taking my time to eat, chew my food, not try talking and eating at the same time, putting my cutlery down, and the whole experience was so much more nourishing.
I didn't overeat and I felt like, yeah, the food, I just experienced the food differently and it was just so nice. Yeah. The whole experience and doing that with my family and my partner and our, yeah, relatives over there.
Yeah, we had a similar experience where my family invited Fiz, my husband and I, to lunch and we arrived about 12 o'clock and in France you always start with the apéritif, you have like a drink and some nuts or some little nibbles to start with. And then we went to the table and, you know, it's very common in, if you go for lunch in France, you'll have multiple courses. So you'll have the apéro and then you'll have entree and then you might have mains and then you might have cheese and then you'll have dessert and then you have coffee and then you might have like a little, like a nougatine or something like that afterwards.
And we spent the whole day at the table eating and when we were driving home, it was like 8 o'clock at night and my husband was like, oh my gosh, we've literally spent at least seven hours at the table today eating and talking and laughing and conversing. But he's like, but I don't feel uncomfortably full, like we've eaten so much but I don't feel like I need to go into a food coma right now, like we were completely comfortable in our body even though we had enjoyed so much delicious food and I think that's something that the French do quite well in that you have perhaps smaller portions but you have a little bit of everything and because you're at the table for so long, you have time to actually
just like digest and you're not sort of in a rush eating. I think that we definitely live in that fast-paced world where we're having a smoothie on the go, on the way to work, driving while we're in traffic, yelling.
And then, you know, we have lunch on our half-hour lunch break and then we get home and we have dinner by watching TV. You never actually have that moment to actually sit. That's another thing that the French do as well is that you have two hours for lunch, in a lot of jobs even.
At school you have two hours for lunch, so a lot of kids come home from school to eat lunch at home with their family. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
And then they have longer school hours, so you start at around 8, 8.30 depending on the school. You might not finish until 4.35 o'clock. You have two hours for lunch.
And obviously not everyone has parents who can bring them home for lunch. And so some kids just stay at the canteen and have lunch there, but they have a full sit-down meal at school. And if you're coming home, like when you're an adult in a job, you also get an hour and a half, two hours lunch break.
So you can go home, have a cooked meal, and enjoy lunch at the table with your family. You're not sort of having a sandwich in your car in between meetings. I feel like there's just so much more respect for the meal time than the way you consume and then the digestive process that obviously follows that.
And when I think of France, I still also think of romance. So when I was hearing you speak, I was like... Romanticise it. Romanticise it and respect it.
It's like both, that we just don't do them when we're in a rush. Yeah. And I mean, it's easy enough to say, oh, that would be great if we could do that, yeah, but we just don't really live in a world where you can't just really tell your boss, like, oh, I'm going to have two hours for lunch every day, I'm going to go home, and oh, but like, what do you mean I can't do that? Like, you know.
This is not the busy way. This is not the fresh way. And they are very stubborn, the French.
I think it's interesting what different cultures do and what different places do and how you can incorporate and take bits and pieces from everyone and see what works for you. I know that for me, preparing like a warm, like a proper meal for my lunches that I take to work so that I can actually enjoy a proper meal, not just, you know, I mean I love a sandwich every now and again, but I wouldn't have a sandwich every single day for lunch. So I find like that preparing that meal, preparing on a Sunday to do my lunches in the week and just trying to sit at the table.
I'm lucky enough that in our office we have a table and like sometimes we take lunch together and again, you only get half an hour, so you want to get a coffee afterwards. It's a big diet. Yes, definitely.
And I guess today, and we'll get into it a bit more shortly, but it's like how can we, when we think about mindful eating and intuitive eating, what can we make, incorporate, and what can we make accessible in this life that is maybe more fast-paced or in this culture or environment where, you know, at work, how is it that you make it work for you? But you were mentioning before that there's a whole bunch of things we've already spoken about this time together, which I love, before recording this, but I guess as an introduction to intuitive eating or mindful eating, like, yeah. Yeah, so I guess in terms of being a nutritionist, I was always interested in a different way to approach nutrition, I suppose, and when I learned about intuitive eating in my first year of uni, I just knew that was the way that I was going to go forward in my career and my, I guess, my philosophy of practice, intuitive eating was originally coined by two dieticians in Canada, I want to say Canada, I think, and their names are Alice Rachmesh. I can't say her name properly.
It's R-E-S-M-E-S-H. I'm not sure. Rachmesh.
Rachmesh. And Evelyn Triboli, and they wrote this book, Intuitive Eating, and there's, it has like ten principles that just really, I'm probably not doing a good job of explaining it. It's about throwing away the expectation that we need to look a certain way to be healthy and actually just more being in tune with our bodies and how food can be a part of our holistic health in the whole picture, not just like the microcosm of nutrients, but the macro picture of our relationship with food.
So there are ten principles, I guess I'll go through a little bit of them. The first one is to reject the diet mentality, which is all about rejecting diet culture. So all those messages that tell us that we constantly need to do better and look better and be smaller, just rejecting the idea that we need to do that to be healthy and to live our life.
The second one is honour your hunger. So that's really about when you feel hungry, you should eat. So I think we're in that diet culture world where we're also conditioned that we should be, we should feel hungry and that's a good feeling to have and challenge and just not eat afterwards.
But it's really about honouring your hunger and honouring where your body's at and knowing that in some, especially for women, some phases of your cycle you might feel hungrier than others or sometimes you might feel like you have a meal and last time you had it, you had this portion and that was enough, but this time you still feel a bit hungry, so just honouring that feeling in your body. Then there's make peace with food. So that one's all about kind of an all foods fit approach, so not having forbidden foods.
I find this one is especially useful for in the past in my nutrition practice. I've had clients who, for example, say I can't have any chocolate in the house because if I have it I'm just going to eat the whole block. What does that mean? What does that mean? Not just you.
Okay, good. And when we make peace with food, that food now controls us, so you can understand that you can have that healthy relationship with food where you're allowed to have any food that you want at any time and it really takes away that power of restriction and then overconsumption. So make peace with food.
Challenge the food police. This one is a little bit harder because it means challenging sometimes the people that we love. So if someone tells you, oh, you're being good, you're not having dessert today, just challenging that and saying, well, it's not that I'm being good, I am a good person, just because I don't eat dessert doesn't make me, just because I did eat dessert doesn't make me bad, doesn't make me a bad person choosing to honour my hunger and honour my feelings and you know what I mean? So sometimes that's a little bit hard as well.
Or if I did have a client who said that there was sort of an office workplace wellness program kind of happening and so everyone was talking about how, oh, they managed to fast yesterday or like, oh, I didn't eat dessert for the last two days and sometimes that feels motivating and it feels inspiring but sometimes it feels judgmental and critical and you can turn that on yourself as well. So just finding where you're at with that and maybe challenging the people you like. Challenging, saying, well, it doesn't make me a good person, but I eat healthy, I'm a good person and I've got lots of choices I make in that moment and honouring my hunger.
Discover the satisfaction factor. So we were talking about this earlier today and that one's all about that mindful aspect of enjoying the food that you're eating. So if you do want to honour your cravings, say, for example, that you have some dark chocolate or any kind of chocolate, white chocolate, coconut chocolate, whatever and you really feel like this food, can you feel satisfied by sitting, tasting it, thinking, what do you like about it? What does it taste like? How does it feel in your mouth? Does it feel creamy? Does it feel crunchy? Does it feel smooth? Does it taste sour? Does it taste sweet? Thinking about what you like about it and then thinking afterwards, do I feel satisfied after that? And if I don't, honouring your hunger and maybe having another one and just repeating that until you feel satisfied.
And that might be different on a different day. We were using the example of having a Tim Tam. You have a Tim Tam and then you're just watching TV and you're just mindlessly eating Tim Tams.
You can easily just have half a packet and just go, oh my gosh, I didn't even feel like I enjoyed that. Where did they go? Who ate that? It wasn't me. But then if you actually see it and you really feel like a Tim Tam and you go to the shops and get a packet of Tim
Tams and you come back and then you bite off all the little eyes they do all around the outside and let it melt in your mouth and think, what do I like about it? And... Keep talking.
I did this exercise with... Cadbury brought out an Oreo block of chocolate a few years ago. And when I first... it's kind of like cookies and cream. Like a cookies and cream top deck is the best way to describe it.
And when I first got it, I finished the block in like a few days, two or three days. Which was quick for me at the time. And then I was like, I can't get that again.
I ate it way too quickly. I just can't even have it in the house. I had that mindset around it.
And then one night I really felt like it, so I got it. And I finished the whole block in two days by myself. Like Cadbury blocks are beautiful.
Yeah. And I was like, I felt so sick. I felt so ill.
And I was like, no, that's it. I don't want to feel ill in my body. So I just can't buy that food.
Because if I bring it in the house, I'm just going to eat the whole block. And then this was before I discovered intuitive eating. So then a few months passed and I read intuitive eating.
And I was reading that it discovered the satisfaction factor. And then also about making peace with food. And I don't want to have any food that I feel controls me.
I don't want to feel ever that I can't bring something into the house. Or if at the time I was living at home. So like if dad brought it into the house, I didn't want to be annoyed at him for bringing it into the house.
Because I couldn't control myself around it. So I did this exercise of mindful eating with this Oreo chocolate. And I got two squares of this chocolate.
And I sat down and I took one square. And I chewed it and let it melt in my mouth. And I was thinking to myself, what do I like about this? And keep in mind, when I was eating these blocks of chocolate, it was mindless because I was just eating without really thinking about it.
But I thought I was really enjoying it. When I sat down and I had these two squares of chocolate, I let it melt in my mouth. And I was trying to think, what does it taste like? I was like, it tastes really sweet.
It's really, really sweet. And then I was like, it's actually quite sweet. It's almost sickly
sweet.
And then I had the second piece. And I was like, what's the texture like? Really going through all the senses, all of the textures, everything in my head. And I was like, what does it taste like? What does it feel like in my mouth? I was like, it tastes like plastic.
And I was like, what the hell? Do I even like this chocolate? And as the exercise was going on, I was like, oh my gosh. This actually tastes really sickly sweet. And it tastes like plastic.
I don't like it. I don't like the texture in my mouth. It doesn't feel nice.
And well, let me tell you, I didn't eat any more of that block of chocolate. It literally stayed in the fridge for a week. And then the rest of my family finished it.
And now I haven't bought a block of it since. And it's like, this is a food that I thought controlled me. That I thought, I can't bring that into the house.
Because I'm just going to be crazy and just devour it. And I know that it didn't make me feel good in my tummy and in myself after I did that. So I was like, well, I don't want to feel like that.
So I'm just never going to bring it into the house. But isn't it different when your intention is, no, I'm not going to bring it into the house. Because I actually don't need to eat that food.
I don't want to eat that food. And it's not to say that there's not other bars of chocolate that have that effect that I do really like. And that I feel I could eat a lot more.
But it's just discovering that mindfulness of actually thinking, what is it that I like about this food? And that's not going to happen for everyone. You're not going to have this food that you think is your weakness. And you're going to do this exercise and then go, oh actually, I don't even like this food.
But you might. But it's just an example, an interesting example, where I thought a food was controlling me. But actually, that wasn't the case when I actually did a mindful exercise for it.
So discovering the satisfaction factor, you could do an exercise where you get a lint ball. And you have the lint ball. And you tell yourself all those things.
What does it taste like? What do I like about it? What does it remind me of? How has it helped me be whatever I am? What is the craving? Yeah. Where is this desire coming from as well? Because sometimes, I know for me, when I get stressed, it's that chocolate that I reach for. And then if I'm stressed and not even taking those three breaths maybe before to then sit with it, it's like I'm then mindlessly eating it.
I'm no better feeling less stressed in my body. And then usually, if I've overeaten it, then I feel sick as well. So then now I'm stressed and sick.
Exactly. And it's like, oh, I didn't even satisfy the craving of enjoying it and feeling fulfilled. Yeah.
There's the satisfaction factor of it. But the seventh guideline of intuitive eating, cope with your emotions with kindness. And also, how can you heal your emotions without using food? Yes.
And so that is one of the principles of intuitive eating because emotional eating is so, it's, but if you think about when you're a baby, when you cry, your mum gives you milk. And that is a solution to a lot of cries for babies. And it might not just be because they're hungry.
It might be because they feel unsafe or it might be because they feel like they've got too much light and they were in the womb for so long and then now they're out and they need comfort. And so what do you give to comfort them? Milk. That's food.
So even like if you think about beyond newborns and babies, toddlers, like if they are feeling upset or you have a bad dream, like you might give them a bottle to go back to sleep. That's food. So it's a completely normal response to having emotions is to use food as a coping mechanism.
I guess where it becomes not a healthy relationship with food is when you're only relying on food to heal your emotions. And you're not addressing the other aspects of why you're feeling like that or other ways that you can regulate your emotions. So we did skip one guideline which was feel your fullness.
So that one leads in with, I think honouring your hunger and feel your fullness are probably the two guidelines that people know the most with intuitive eating. So honouring your hunger, it's like a hunger fullness scale. So we use that in clinic a lot as well where you don't want to be ravenously hungry when you eat because you'll probably eat really quickly and over consume.
But you also don't want to eat past fullness because then you'll feel uncomfortably full afterwards. So feel your fullness is all about honouring your body's fullness cues. And fullness cues sometimes come later than when you actually finish eating.
So that's where that really slow eating comes into play because putting your fork down between each bite and chewing in and how do I feel? Do I feel full? I think that's where, and sometimes I feel like diet culture has co-opted intuitive eating principles and used it almost against people. So they'll say things like, I mean I'm sure everyone's probably heard about using a small plate to eat less and waiting five minutes after you eat to let your brain kind of catch up. And I agree with that in the sense that you do sometimes
have to wait before continuing to eat to feel your fullness fully.
As long as it's not yanked in a way that's restrictive. So I'm going to stop eating because I want to restrict my food intake. With your intention and your approach.
Yeah, so sometimes, for example when I go out for a meal, this happens more when I go out for a meal than when I'm at home. When I go out for a meal, I don't want to leave the restaurant feeling uncomfortably full. Some people want to go out, because they're buying food, they want to have as much food as possible and go home and have a food power.
I feel like that really makes me not enjoy the meal. If I feel uncomfortably full after a meal, I don't have a good memory then of that meal. Because it's the last experience of that meal.
Yeah, and I don't want to feel sick after I eat. I want to feel energized and I want to feel good, you know. Sometimes you can feel a bit sleepy, but I don't want to feel like I just need to go home and lie down because I'm so full I could just roll out of this restaurant, you know.
And one of the harder aspects of feeling your fullness is, one, when you're eating at home, to leave things on your plate if you are no longer hungry. It's even harder when you're in a restaurant, because you've paid for that food, so obviously you don't want to leave it on the plate and then not take it home. And so many people think it's embarrassing to ask for a doggy bag, but I've now learnt that I'm just going to ask to take it home.
I don't know if people thought that was embarrassing, but I guess we're all a little different. Yeah, I don't know, maybe that's just my way of doing it. I always thought it was.
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