Registered dietician Alida Iacobellis joins Dr. G and Kortney to discuss how intuitive eating, diet culture, and food anxiety impacts those managing food allergies. Alida uses intuitive eating as a tool to help her clients find food freedom and believes it can also work to help people with food allergies gain a positive relationship with food.

Alida is registered with the College of Dietitians of Ontario and holds membership with Dietitians of Canada. She also manages multiple food allergies, so she knows first hand how it feels to experience types of food fear surrounding allergens and anaphylaxis.

What we cover in this episode

• The difference between a registered dietitian and a nutritionist
• What is disordered eating and how to recognize it in yourself or others
• How disordered eating and living with food allergies can cross paths
• People with food allergies have an increased risk of developing eating disorders
• The role of diet culture in disordered eating and how it also impacts those managing food allergies
• Anxiety around food - the underlying factors behind disordered eating
• Questions a doctor can ask to figure out if their patient may be experience disordered eating
• How can people with food allergies develop a better relationship with food
• Intuitive eating and how people with food allergies can adapt it
• What are food rules - why it is important to identify them and where they came from
• Thinking food will be a quick fix to our problems and how this is not always true
• What are the determinants of health and the role food has
• How to start your intuitive eating journey: food rules and listening to your body
• What does respecting your body mean for people with food allergies? It is about eating everything you can and having a good variety in your diet to meet your needs
• Emotional eating, turning to food to soothe or not eating at all due to anxiety
• Meal planning for intuitive eating
• Parent anxiety transferring to their child and how intuitive eating can help
• How to help someone or yourself identify disordered eating and first steps to reclaiming food freedom

Helpful Resources:

• Kortney’s her journey with disordered eating: Disordered eating hiding behind my food allergies
• Intuitive eating resources for food allergies
• The graph on the determinants of health
• Dietician directory Websites: Dieticians of Canada, Health Profs
• Intuitive Eating Website

More about Alida Iacobellis RD: website, Instagram @alida.iacobellis.rd