An Interview with Registered Dietician Michelle Babb
Michelle Babb is a Registered Dietician with a master’s degree in nutrition from Bastyr University who utilizes a holistic approach to teach mindful eating and anti-inflammatory nutritional perspectives.
Jennifer Ghahari: Hey, thanks for joining us today for this installment of the Seattle Psychiatrist Interview Series. I'm Dr. Jennifer Ghahari, research director at Seattle Anxiety Specialists. I like to welcome with us registered dietician, Michelle Babb. Michelle has a master's degree in nutrition from Bastyr University. She is also trained at the Center for Mind, Body, and Medicine and her special training and functional medicine gives her a unique holistic approach and perspective.
In addition, Michelle is a cook's instructor at PCC Market and the author of three books: Mastering Mindful Eating, Anti-inflammatory Eating Made Easy, and Anti-inflammatory Eating For a Happy Healthy Brain.
Before we get started can you please let us know a little bit more about yourself and what made you interested in leaving your former career to go back to school to become a registered dietician?
Michelle Babb: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Jennifer. Let's see, so I actually was, I had a career in marketing and public relations before this, and I worked for a company called Health Com that's in Gig Harbor, here in Washington, and I had just this wonderful experience of exposure to the brilliant biochemists who started the company, but also a lot of very dedicated health professionals who were really trying to teach health professionals how to integrate nutrition into their practices.
And that was just the experience itself was really unique, but I had interaction with in particular one person who became my friend and mentor, who was a registered nurse, and then went back to school a little later in life and went to Bastyr University and got her master's degree in nutrition. And so, I ended up kind of following in her footsteps and really kind of moved from being in that world of public relations, communications into nutrition, but being able to also use some of those skills to be able to educate and inform around the topic. So, yeah, it seemed like a good fit.
Jennifer Ghahari: Absolutely. In your book, Mastering Mindful Eating, you talk about an integrated view on nutrition and that people should not just focus on the whole notion of calories in versus calories out, which I think we've all heard of, and can you explain what you mean by that to our listeners?
Michelle Babb: Yeah. I think we actually live in a pretty diet, obsessed culture. People who are really... There's always the diet of the minutes. So, whatever the fad diet is that people are latching onto, there's always this kind of obsessiveness around often tracking, counting calories, counting grams of fat. Now it's carbs.
So whatever it is at the most that people just kind of get hyper-focused on, I think makes us lose sight of some of the more important aspects of feeding and nourishing ourselves in particular the manner in which we eat. So just taking the time to engage with our food in a respectful way and to really optimize, not just digestion, but how our body is receiving the food so that we can self-regulate without having to do this incessant amount of tracking, which for most people is not sustainable long term. And it feels like another part-time job. And quite frankly just sucks all the joy out of eating. So, yeah.
Jennifer Ghahari: Yeah. When you need a calculator and a notebook in order to eat it, it kind of ruins it a little bit.
Michelle Babb: Exactly.
Jennifer Ghahari: On page 17 in your book, you note that, "Ironically, we spent so much time trying to figure out what to eat and what to avoid, that we've completely lost sight of the importance of how we eat." And can you explain what mindful eating is and how someone could practice eating that way?
Michelle Babb: Sure. Yeah, so I have a question on my questionnaire that patients fill out before they come in to see me. And the question is, "Are you generally multitasking while you eat? Yes, or no?" And as you can imagine, I would say 85% of the people say, "Yes, multitasking." And I mean, anything that takes your focus away from food. So even if you're sitting with a cell phone or anything that's screen related, of course, but standing over the kitchen sink and just hurrying through breakfast. Those kinds of things are more mindless eating, right? So, there's other things going on. You're just trying to get the food in your body and then you're moving on.
So this idea of mindful eating is really about creating the time and space for self-nourishment. And I recognize that this is not probably practical for people to do it for every meal and every snack throughout the day. Busy schedules and families and sometimes things that just will take us away from that. But if there's a way to integrate it, even in small ways, in most of the meals and snacks that we have through the day, it just creates a really nice awareness and ability to self-regulate.
And so just to describe a little bit more, what mindful eating, what it looks like and feels like, and how to do it, essentially. What I mean by that is that you would clear a space and it doesn't have to be a dining table. It can be just any space where you can get a little bit of a peace zone for eating and you put food on a plate or in a bowl and sit down, remove the distractions. I think it's okay to listen to music if that's something that you enjoy, but I really have been encouraging people not to have the news on and the background because there's nothing good happening there. So, they're not going to be getting good, happy messages that help with relax during eating.
And then I encourage people to just breathe. So, take a minute to just kind of get grounded and centered in your breath. And that act of breathing, that deep belly breathing, is what can stimulate the vagus nerve and tell your body, "You don't have to be in fight or flight anymore. You can be in rest and digest." So, you're really preparing your body to be in the optimal state for eating and then really starting to engage your senses.
So when I'm walking my patients, or when I'm teaching a cooking class, and walking people through this whole mindful eating activity, and I say, "Just take a minute to look at your food and let yourself salivate." And I always ask people, "How often do you just let yourself salivate?" That just doesn't that doesn't generally happen. We're in such a hurry, in such a hurried state, we're not doing that.
But that's kind of that first level of digestion. So just kind of noticing the food. Some people like to have a gratitude practice. It doesn't have to be religious in nature, but just having gratitude around having this food in front of you and all of the people involved to get it on your plate and then really engaging all of your senses in this sacred act of eating. So, what do you smell? What do you pick up on your taste buds? What is the texture of the food? Can you hear sound crunching or whatever it might be? And then kind of just noticing as you're eating the food, as it moves into your body, putting the fork down and just taking a minute to finish one bite before you move on to the next.
So, that's kind of mindful eating in its amplified version. And there's lots of smaller ways that you could do that to just have awareness while you're eating that doesn't have to be that kind of full-blown version if you don't always have the time for it.
Jennifer Ghahari: And I would imagine that would make food taste better too, right? If you're actually involving all of your senses into it?
Michelle Babb: Yes.
Jennifer Ghahari: As opposed to just kind of wolfing it down, which many of us probably do.
Michelle Babb: Yeah. Yeah. And it can go both ways. There's more enjoyment in much of the food that you eat, but I've also had patients who one who was talking about how they didn't want me to tell them that they had to give up their Egg McMuffin that they like to stop and get every morning. And I was like, "Okay, well, how do you eat that?" "Oh, well, I'm driving down the road and I eat it and I get to work and I'm done with it." He said. "Okay, well just take a minute and sit and eat that one bite at a time." And lo and behold, they came back and reported like, "That's one of the worst things I've ever eaten." So sometimes it happens where when you do a down and you have these habitual foods that you eat, usually the highly processed things or something like that, that when you really start noticing the taste, texture, feel of it, you're not as enthusiastic about eating it. So, it really can go both ways.
Jennifer Ghahari: That's amazing. And noticing how food can taste better or worse and, in many regards, and also you have a mention the vagus nerve. So, what are some benefits of mindful eating?
Michelle Babb: Yeah, well, so if we think about just the physiological benefits, I'll start with that. And I talked about being in the rest and digest mode instead of fight or flight. And that actually is so critically important for digestion. In my practice I work with a lot of people who have some kind of digestive disorders or difficulty with digestion that might include like IBS type symptoms or irritable bowel type symptoms, bloating, just abdominal discomfort often when they eat. So, when we really work on relaxing while eating and trying to do things, like I mentioned, optimize your digestion, they will often report improvements in how they're digesting their food and how that feels after they eat.
So, one of the things that happens when you stimulate your vagus nerve through, simply by breathing, is that you actually will, you can salivate more, you produce more digestive enzymes in your stomach and your pancreas. So that does a better job of breaking down the food and your body is ready to just kind of organize and assimilate the nutrients that come from the food because you're in this rest and digest mode. That's exactly what your body is meant to do when it's in that parasympathetic state.
Conversely, when you are eating when you're more stressed, and it doesn't have to be hair on fire kind of stress, it can just be that you're looking at something on the computer, you're under a deadline and you're eating your lunch with one hand. You're doing this shallow chest breathing. And now you're in that sympathetic state where that really is more similar to if you were running from a bear in the woods and you wouldn't be salivating. You produce less digestive enzymes. Your body just is in a very different mode and it needs to be because you need to be able, you wouldn't be eating a sandwich while you were running from a bear in the woods, you would just be like, "I need to get away."
So that's what's happening and you're not producing as many of your digestive enzymes. Your motility in your gut changes. So, the way that things move through your digestive tract is different in both of those states. So, that's, what's happening with one versus the other. And so, I think it feels empowering for most people to know that you, just even by the simple act of breathing, but just sitting for a minute and relaxing into the meal can really change that state, the physiological state that your body's in.
Jennifer Ghahari: Wow.
Michelle Babb: And then there's' of course the, so that's the physiological benefit, and then there's the kind of more on the emotional side of the equation. If someone tends to be what they describe as an emotional eater or a stress eater or eating for any other reason that's not rooted in physical hunger, then taking that time to really have the awareness and recognize what you're doing instead of going into autopilot really can help in terms of kind of that compulsive eating that sometimes people will describe where they will just kind of check out and can eat an inordinate amount of food, because they're just not paying attention. And their body goes into a very different state when compulsive overeating is involved.
So, it helps to just kind of recognize, even if it's just an awareness of what you're doing. And even if at the beginning doesn't necessarily change the behavior with the food, it definitely creates and starts to create a different relationship with the food.
Jennifer Ghahari: Oh, wow. Yeah. A lot of our clients will come to us under massive amounts of stress and anxiety. And also, they have a lot of people report having some type of difficulty with food, whether they're overeating or under-eating. There's so many different combinations out there people suffering from. So, you're saying, if people are trying to eat while extremely stressed or anxious, they tend to overeat or just kind of go into this mode where they're not really conscious of what they're eating?
Michelle Babb: Exactly. Yeah. And there are people who have a difficult time eating under stress and that happens too. But what I'm referring to is more the using food as kind of a coping mechanism for stress, for anxiety. Something that feels like it's self-soothing. And the downside of that is that, generally speaking, people afterwards don't, whether they physically don't feel good from overeating or emotionally, mentally don't feel good because they feel like, "Oh, I should have better self-control." Or all of this self-talk that happens around that. And really, it's like I said, it's almost like flipping a switch. So, the control around that or the self-control that people think they should have, the willpower, that's that ends up being kind of a fallacy because this is a, a device or a technique that people are using to just kind of numb themselves and check out.
And so it's, I think, challenging when that tends to be for some people that's the go-to response to stress or depression, or any number of emotions. Food is readily available in a very easy way. It feels like an easy way to self-soothe and some people have grown up doing that. So, they've been doing it for decades, for a lifetime. So, trying to kind of break or interrupt that pattern can be really helpful. And, and sometimes it's just, like I said, noticing and having the awareness, but also, I talk about treating mealtime more like a mini meditation.
So, for those who had been interested in meditating, but say, "Oh, I can't sit and quiet my mind." Eating can actually be a great way to practice a more dynamic meditation where you are just... When your mind starts to wander and go into different places, you just bring your mind back to the place mat or bring it back to the plate and use the sensations, where you're engaging your senses, use that to keep you really present in that moment. That can also be really helpful and prevent you from doing that thing that's just like the, "I just check out and I'm on autopilot."
Jennifer Ghahari: Yeah. Can you explain a little more about the difference between physiological and emotional hunger?
Michelle Babb: Sure. Yeah, I like to describe it as physiological hunger, physical hunger, is what you feel from the neck down. That kind of a little bit of a grumbling in the tummy. You start to sometimes get a little shaky if you've gone too far, if you tend to start to get hypoglycemic. And then emotional hunger is more what you feel from the neck up. So, this is really more about a lot of the self-talk that happens, the things that feel more kind of impulsive, that's more emotional hunger.
So, if you're tuning into the physical hunger, and one question you can ask yourself is, "Am I feeling it somewhere from the neck down? Am I experiencing a physical hunger?" That's starting of a, like I said, the grumbling in the tummy or a little bit of it feels almost like a pit in your stomach, like, okay. And the feeling of, "Okay, I could eat something now." Not waiting until you get to a place where you're starving, but just that, “Oh yeah, I feel like I could eat." That's the physical response to hunger.
Jennifer Ghahari: Great. Also in your book, which I love by the way, your book discusses the five spheres of wellness. And can you explain their importance to our listeners? (*Image here/below transcription)
Michelle Babb: Sure. Yeah. So, a lot of times I mentioned in the dieting culture, we have this “calories in, calories out” idea about things. And so, people start to get really discouraged when they're trying to work on weight management, let's say, and they think they're doing, they're being very restrictive with their eating and they're exercising like crazy, and why aren't things happening the way that they should?
And so I like to describe all of, and I have it organized in these spheres of wellness that are kind of that they're all interacting with each other. So, none of these things are independent. So, we have of course nutrition and how we nourish ourselves and physical activity. We'd never deny that that is a big part of wellness and important, and it doesn't have to be kind of traditional exercise. It could just be any way in which we move our bodies and try to stay active through the day and then sleep. So that's a big one that gets overlooked often. People who have sleep issues and either have just the fatigue that comes with not sleeping enough. Or the physiological impact of not having a rest period that allows your body to rejuvenate and allows you to have proper hunger and tidy cues. So, sleep can be a really big one. Stress, as I mentioned.
The other thing that happens with stress. So, there's the stress response, but there's also, what I think is really fascinating, is acute and chronic stress. Stress that's prolonged and ongoing, which is more the chronic stress picture. It influences the prefrontal cortex of your brain. So, it can shut down some of those functions and that's where kind of the high-level intelligence decision making happens, right? So, that can also lead to more compulsive overeating, so that stress management. And I always say, "You're in this business." So, I always say, I feel like it's not, if I just tell people, "Stress is a contributor," that feels like it makes people more stressed out.
So truly trying to find ways, other coping mechanisms for stress, or ways that you can view stressful, you have stressors in the environment that don't go away, ways that you can do them differently. So, coping mechanisms for stress, acknowledging that stress as a whole will never go away and we're meant to have stress in our life. So that in and of itself is not a bad thing, but how we deal with it is important, physiologically and emotionally. And then the other spheres are also probably less recognized, but relationship and community.
So how people are engaging and interacting with others, I think, is also really important. This has really, the pandemic has really shown a spotlight on this, for sure. And what happens when people feel isolated and how that influences and impacts people's coping mechanisms and how their ability for self-care and how they view that when they're more isolated.
And the sphere that I have kind of in the middle is connection with higher power. And that can be a higher self. And that for some people that is rooted in religion, but that is just more about kind of having faith that there is a higher power that exists. And how all of those things kind of interplay. So, when I'm working with clients, we sometimes do an activity where I ask questions in each of those spheres, so that you can kind of prioritize, where am I lacking? If my sleep is great, but I don't have any sense of community and I'm not really engaging in the way that I want to be. Maybe that's where we need to shine a spotlight before anything else. And all of these things influence how we eat, how we nourish ourselves.
Jennifer Ghahari: Yeah, that's great. Thanks. I think you kind of touched on this, but about self-compassion. Self-compassion’s incredibly important and a major component in many mental health practices. And I was really delighted to see that this resonated in your book as well. There's a section titled, "You Are Not Your Scale Weight." And I think this can really hit home for a lot of people listening. Can you talk a little bit more about how self-compassion factors into mindful eating and also overall wellness?
Michelle Babb: Absolutely. I think people are just really hard on themselves when it comes to this, all of the “should’s” around self-care. And when you think about it, all of the messages that we get about the need to be exercising every day, need to be eating perfectly, need to be avoiding this, need to be eating more that, it's so constant and it's not practical in the course of, however many waking hours we have in our day, to fit all of these things in. So, people get really just, I think, down on themselves when they're not doing this perfectly. Or when they tend to revert to some of the old habits they have.
So I just find that people come into sessions with me and the first thing they want to do is confess all of the things they did wrong in the two weeks prior, two weeks from when we last met. So, I really try to encourage people to really think about the things that you're proud of, that you have done, or the things that are starting to feel like you're forming different habits or things that you notice your body is responding well to that that just feel different when you're doing it in a way that feels productive to you individually. Who cares what anybody else thinks?
And recognizing that we also have this habit of hinging so much importance on those three numbers that show up on the scale. And people defining their self-worth or how successful they are with their wellness plan based on those three numbers. All kinds of great things can be happening in your body that, independent of what's going on with the scale weight, and people will discount those or not even notice those because when they stepped on the scale that morning, it said something different than they wanted it to say.
So really trying to unhinge from that and really drop into what's going on in your body and your mind and spirit. And noticing how that's being influenced by the self-care that you're doing. And knowing when enough is enough. You don't have to sacrifice the good enough for the perfect. You can just really acknowledge that we're all trying our best here and there will be times when days that aren't great and that's okay. Getting up and dusting yourself off and getting back to your plan and doing it in the spirit of nourishing your body in a way that helps you feel better and stronger versus any other standards by which we think we need to judge this, I think can be really helpful, just in terms of that self-compassion that we all need to find.
Jennifer Ghahari: Great. It almost seems like if we're trying to integrate a new eating plan or something like that, to maybe just stay away from the scale for a while, like you said, to see how you feel and what's actually working as opposed to just concentrating on that number, right?
Michelle Babb: Yes. There's part of me that wishes everyone could just get rid of their scales all together, but I recognize that for some people that is a tool. It's, just, I think, how much importance you're putting on the scale. And to recognize that there are other ways to monitor your success. Anytime you're trying to make habitual lifestyle changes, and I do have people and I mentioned this in the book, this is modeled around Danielle LaPorte did a book where she talks about setting goals with soul. And that really resonated with me. And I try to use some version of that with clients that is, the way you ask yourself, why am I doing? Why am I making these changes? How do want to feel as a result of making the changes that I'm making?
Because that goes a lot deeper than... That has nothing to do with the three numbers. That's not how you're feeling, that's what you're seeing, but how do you want to be feeling? And for a lot of people, I get these really great responses. "I want to be active with my kids." "I want to see my grandkids grow up." "I want to be able to keep my body active and in shape because I love to do X, Y or Z activity. And I don't want to have to give that up." So, a lot of really great things can come out of that.
And I encourage people to keep a list of your why's. Why are you doing this? How is this going to really resonate with you? So that you can check back on that and see notice where you are making some gains and making some improvement. Maybe your body feels more flexible. Maybe you feel stronger. Maybe emotionally, you feel like you are more grounded or stable as a result of some of the changes you're making. So, all of those things are so important and will often get overlooked. If we have just one way of measuring things.
Jennifer Ghahari: I like also how you had mentioned that people come to you and say, "All right, these are the things that I did wrong in the past week or two." But like you said, they should really focus on not the negatives, or potential negatives, but what they had done right. And that sounds like it's healthy mentally and overall, just healthy.
Michelle Babb: Yeah. I think that that makes a big difference. It's the same way when I'm trying to help guide people through whatever food changes they're going to make. And there's not just a one size fits all diet, but I would say in general, some version of a Mediterranean style food plan probably works well for a lot of people. So, when people are trying to make those changes, instead of saying, "Don't eat this, can't have that, shouldn't eat that, this is horrible. This food will kill you." Instead of doing all the don't haves, can't haves, because immediately you want to rebel against that and it's not sustainable. So, if it's more about what foods you want to get more of in your diet, so that you have the energy and vitality and that you can have some joy in your cooking and eating.
And that becomes a very different experience. Where you're thinking about, "If I want to get more vegetables in my diet, can I think about more color or more variety? Can I think about what's in season? Can I learn how to do different things, different, new things with some of these plant-based foods?" It then becomes kind of a fun challenge or an adventure and less of a, "Oh, sorry guys, I can't go to this party because I am not eating any of the things." So, there's definite cross over there too with just how you're viewing your self-care changes and these lifestyle changes just in general.
Jennifer Ghahari: That's great. So as a registered dietician who focuses on a holistic approach, is there any other advice or anything else you'd like to share with our listeners who may be struggling with dieting or have any type of difficult relationship with food or just sort of looking to feel better in general?
Michelle Babb: Yeah. I think the most important thing is that, I just mentioned that there is not a one-size-fits-all. So, anytime you hear about, "This is the new dieting out of the moment." Really go into that with a lot of skepticism and understand that your body is the very best judge of what feels right for you. So, whenever I'm working with clients to make the changes, and I'll say, "When you go away from this session and you work on this action plan, either keep a journal or really be too tuning into how your body feels and then we'll discuss what kind of revisions we want to make based on how your body's responding." And sometimes I'll have them try a different breakfast composition one day over the next and sort of see, and then notice, how your day flows and what your energy feels like.
So some people will eat oatmeal for breakfast and they'll feel satisfied for hours. And it's the best part of their day is their nice bowl of oatmeal in the morning. Other people are like, "Oh, I can't. Oatmeal doesn't work for me at all. I get hungry right away." Or, "I feel really weighted down. I really like to have eggs and veggies for breakfast." So, that's different for every person. And so just know that you really are an authority on what nourishes you and how your body feels. And the same goes with exercise too. We often get pushed in the direction of more intensity. And when I'm working with people who suffer from, chronic stress, high anxiety, doing things that are very intense workouts are often not the best kind of approach for them because that's showing up as more stress to the body.
So, doing more restorative gentle exercise can help them get to their goals easier or more readily than the more intense stuff. And that surprises people. Because if you're thinking like calorie in calories out, you're thinking more exercise, more intensity, less food, fewer calories, and it's not necessarily, that's not the prescription for every person. So really honor that body wisdom that you have and try to, not just recognize and hear it, but to really be responsive to the cues that your body are sending you.
Jennifer Ghahari: Fantastic. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed having you with us today for this installment and wish you all the best. We'd love to have you back in the future if possible?
Michelle Babb: Oh, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
Jennifer Ghahari: Thank you.
Source: “Mastering Mindful Eating” by Michelle Babb, 2020
Please note: The views expressed by the interviewee are for educational and informational purposes only, are not meant to diagnose or treat any condition, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seattle Anxiety Specialists, PLLC.
Editor: Jennifer (Ghahari) Smith, Ph.D.