In this bonus episode, registered dietitian Jonah Soolman returns to discuss the role of acceptance in navigating chronic health conditions, what to look for in a healthcare provider given the problems with the alternative- and integrative-medicine fields, whether eating-disorder recovery can ever be compatible with alternative medicine, and more.
Jonah Soolman is a registered dietitian specializing in the treatment of eating disorders and disordered eating using a HAES perspective. He and his wife, Joanne, co-own Soolman Nutrition LLC, a private practice where they offer individualized nutrition counseling, in Needham, Massachusetts.
Most commonly, Jonah works with people who have tried numerous diets and are sick of seeing their weight temporarily drop only to inevitably rebound. Fed up with failing diets and being at war with food and their bodies, they come to Jonah because he offers the antithesis. By taking the focus off of weight and rules, he helps them to form a new and more peaceful relationship with food based on satisfaction, flexibility, and health.
When Jonah is not working, he enjoys getting outside and moving his body. In addition to time spent playing NCAA tennis, his proudest athletic achievements include riding his bicycle from Seattle to Boston for charity, running up Mount Washington on four separate occasions, and rebounding from multiple back surgeries to finish the Newport Marathon four times. Find him online at SoolmanNutrition.com.
Resources and References
Christy’s new book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
2023 scientific review looking at efficacy of alternative therapies for eating disorders
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
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Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Hey there! Welcome to this bonus episode for paid subscribers of Rethinking Wellness. I'm Christy, and my guest today is registered dietitian Jonah Soolman, who is the guest in this week's main episode and is back to discuss the role of acceptance in navigating chronic health conditions, whether eating-disorder recovery can ever be compatible with alternative medicine, what to look for in a healthcare provider given the problems with the alternative- and integrative-medicine fields, and more. So without any further ado, let's go to my conversation with Jonah Soolman. So Jonah, welcome back. Thank you so much for sticking around for this bonus episode.
Jonah Soolman: Of course. Thanks so much.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. So I'm curious to talk a little bit more about some of the stuff we got into in the main episode. Sort of the note we ended on in the main episode was this idea of acceptance, and I think you expressed that really beautifully, of coming to a place of more acceptance of your chronic conditions and the limitations of wellness. And something that I said in that episode just touched on at the end was that I get a lot of questions from people about how they can get to a place of greater acceptance and feeling like there's a resistance to accepting the limitations of our bodies and the existence of chronic conditions. And I know I personally went through that myself as well. Definitely for years, I think was sort of the mind, well, I shouldn't have to live with this. I should be able to feel better.
And I get it. I really do because I wanted to feel better and I still want to feel better a lot of the time. And it's frustrating to have to live with things where you don't feel as good as you think you should and that we really all deserve to feel good. And yet, I think there is just so much in wellness culture and American culture and Western culture in general that pushes us to feel like we should always be optimizing, we should always be doing better, and that it's our responsibility to do that. And I think that paradoxically makes us feel worse.
Jonah Soolman: Yes, yes, I agree. So
Christy Harrison: I'm curious, yes, what it took for you to get to a place of more acceptance and if there's anything you would share with anyone who's struggling with that and maybe grieving or resisting the idea of acceptance.
Jonah Soolman: Sure. Well, the short and perfectly candid answer is therapy for me, talking about the concept of acceptance in therapy as it relates to certain things about my health, including my back. It's not something that I came to quickly or easily. It's something where it's been a lot of work, a lot of discussion that's kind of helped me to get there. And there are still some areas of my life where I'm still working on the concept of acceptance, even though I think in terms of my back conditions, I'm much more there than I am in other places To expand upon that, I think for me a lot of it is looking at what would the alternative paths look like? So if I didn't accept whatever it is that I'm struggling to accept, what are my other options? And if I go down those roads, what are the outcomes likely to be?
And it's kind of like you said, some people, we feel this pressure, there's this pressure on us to try to optimize, to always try and work on getting better. But like you said, does that actually get people to a better place? In my experience, no. I mean, it can lead to frustration, it can lead to physical injury. I mean, it can lead to eating disorders. I mean, there can be so much negative fallout from trying to go down that road. Also, in terms of what we just spent the main episode talking about in terms of alternative medicine, there can be financial costs and everything. And so instead it's, okay, well if none of those roads look appealing either. So then we have this idea of acceptance where it's, yeah, things still aren't perfect if we go this acceptance route, but at least there's more peace.
There's not this angst, this constant itch to try and change things. It's just you just sort of, again, just to use the term, you just kind of accept that it's there. And one of the things that my therapist suggested to me is to almost pretend that there's this person outside yourself, almost like this friend that you didn't invite over, but they always kind of tag along and you wish that they weren't there, but they're just always there. It can be the back pain monster or whatever name you want to give them, but they're always there. They're just always hanging around. And you can either fight against it and be like, damnit, I wish that back pain monster would go away. And you can fight it and fight it and fight it and use all your energy on that. Or you can just be like, okay, I accept that the back pain monster is going to hang out and they're just going to hang out, and that's just what they're going to do, but I'm just going to continue to do my thing and I'm just going to accept that this back pain monster is just coming along for the ride whether I want 'em to or not, and I'm not going to focus on them as much.
I'm not going to try and fight it. I just accept that they're here and just go about my life. And when I started to look at it that way, that I found super, super helpful. At least for me, it helped me to reframe things and look at it in a different way.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's really helpful. I think we can all think of situations in our lives where there's someone around that it's not our cup of tea that we wouldn't choose to hang out with. That's maybe someone in the, or some other situation that we have to be in contact with in some way, but they're not our ideal person. And it's like we would never try to, I mean, some people might, and if it's toxic enough, certainly you might leave the job or do something to get away from the person. But for most people, I think in that situation it's like, okay, how can I learn to live with this person? How can I maybe minimize my contact with them or not spend so much time just not devote so much headspace to this person, not let them ruin my experience? And yet when it comes to our health and wellness, it's like our health and wellbeing, but wellness culture makes it out to be that we can optimize away all of those things that we never would really be able to do in other aspects of our lives. So I think maybe thinking about it in this other domain can sort of be helpful in that sense.
Jonah Soolman: Yeah, exactly. This fallacy that if we just work hard enough that we can accomplish anything that nothing's impossible, it's obviously untrue. And sometimes the best path forward is just to just acknowledge that nothing really, I can Dalebout this thing, whatever it is that's bothering me or whoever it is that we're talking about, there's not much we can realistically do. So rather than continuing to fight it, just going to accept that it's here and just kind of broaden my scope of what I'm paying attention to instead of focusing solely on that back pain monster or whatever, paying attention to what else is in life too, and just kind of go about things. Sometimes I think that the best and most realistic path forward.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Yeah. Because really not much you can do in some situations. I am thinking about the parallels with that and internal family systems work, which is the type of therapy that I do and that my therapist uses that I've found really helpful. And it's a lot about allowing space for the parts of ourselves. Internal Family Systems is all about, you might be familiar with it, but for any listeners who aren't like this idea that we all are made up of different parts and different parts of ourselves are sort of in charge at different times, and we have this kind of leader part that could be in charge and sort of listen to the other parts and then make its own decisions. But sometimes we have parts that kind of take over and edge out the leader part and are acting out of trauma maybe or past their much younger parts that developed when we were really little and maybe don't have as much relevance to our adult life, and yet they're still in charge in these situations or whatever.
And so internal Family systems looks at all parts as good, and there's no bad parts and there's no parts we want to exile in ourselves, and we want to be able to be with all of our parts and sort of accept and acknowledge all the parts, but also not be controlled by the parts and not have the parts that aren't serving us be the ones driving the bus. It's like the leader needs to be driving the bus and the kids are in back. These parts that are clamoring for attention might get our attention at different times, but aren't going to be the ones driving our decisions in life. And I've found that personally really helpful for thinking about just different dynamics and mental health issues that I've struggled with
Jonah Soolman: Personally. I really appreciate that you explained that I only had a vague understanding of internal family systems. I knew the term, but I really didn't know much about it. So I'm kind of in the same boat probably as some of your listeners in terms of, I just learned a lot from what you just said, so thank you.
Christy Harrison: Sure, yeah. Yeah. I think one good primer on Internal Family Systems is the movie Inside Out, if you've ever seen that, the Pixar movie.
Jonah Soolman: Oh, why does that sound familiar? I think I have seen it, but I can't remember which movie that is.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, it's pretty old. I mean, not old, but it's probably 10 years old or something at this point. But it's very sweet. It's kind of about this little girl's internal family systems and sort of how they navigate this big change that she's going through. And it's really interesting.
Jonah Soolman: Oh, is it that just did her family move?
Christy Harrison: Yep.
Jonah Soolman: Okay. Yes, I have seen that.
Christy Harrison: Yes. Yeah, yeah, it's very sweet. So that's a lot of I f s therapists that I've talked to about that are like, oh, that's such a great calling card for if f s modality, that it's an easy way of explaining it kind of through that movie.
Jonah Soolman: Oh, that's interesting.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. So kind of going back to something that we talked about in the main episode, we talked a little bit about eating disorders and how alternative medicine approaches can really be triggering and exacerbating for eating disorders. I'm just curious, and I think I probably know the answer already, but would love to dig into this a little bit. Do you ever think eating disorder recovery can be compatible with alternative medicine or do you think they're sort of fundamentally incompatible?
