Ep 38. When “Metabolic Balance” Isn’t Balance: Diet Culture, Clinical Protocols, and the Naturopathic Dilemma

I’m unpacking how “personalised” protocols like Metabolic Balance slip diet culture into naturopathic care. We’ll unpack the things clients say that can signal disordered eating beneath the surface, the ways practitioners can cause harm (even unintentionally), the pitfalls of elimination diets, and why supplement fixes can’t heal restriction.

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What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Two ways disordered eating shows up in naturopathic care: the client brings it into the consult room, or the practitioner endorses it (ouch).
• Why Metabolic Balance and other “clinical” weight loss programs cause more harm than healing.
• The fine line between elimination diets and harm - especially for neurodivergent clients.
• How supplement-heavy approaches can mask restriction.
• What truly non-diet, trauma-informed naturopathic care looks like.

Resources and Links:

 ✨ Download my free practitioner guide: Working with Clients with Disordered Eating for Naturopaths

🌿 Join the waitlist for my 2026 course: Body as Earth: A Root-Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths (you’ll be added automatically when you download the guide!)

📖 Prefer to read, or want all the research references? Find the article for this episode over on my blog!

That other article I referred to in this episode: Detoxification: so NOT about juice fasts & colonics

LINKS:

Casey's website: https://www.funkyforest.com.au
Casey's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funky.forest.health
Casey's Instagram: @funky.forest.health

Non-Diet Naturopath Instagram: @nondietnaturopath 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hey everyone, it's Casey Conroy, dietitian, naturopath, and general stir of wellness pots. And welcome back to the Non-Diet Naturopath. I'm recording this one from a little stay away from home in Ninjeri. So on the Sunshine Coast, but a bit closer to the coast. We've just had school holidays, they were hectic for lots of reasons. Unfortunately, I ended up having to work from home through most of them with the kids home a lot of that time, which let's just say was a lot. We celebrated my son's tenth birthday, had multiple birthday parties and play dates and the whole shebang. If you're a parent, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. So this mama is feeling a little bit exhausted, I'll be honest. And this little break that I'm on right now has been such a good reminder that we all need to pause and reset and actually practice the rest we keep prescribing to others. I was smiling pretty much the whole drive here, and it was yeah, it really hit home. Anyway, that's me. Today's episode is a biggie. We're diving finally into metabolic balance. Yep, I'm going there. And we're unpacking how diet culture keeps sneaking into naturopathic practice under this banner of personalised medicine. It's a long one, so I'm going to try to smash through as much as I can, but I might have to split into two parts, or it'll just be one massive ass episode. Before we get into it, I want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I'm recording on right now here in Nindery, which are the Gubby Gubby people, and pay my respects to elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was and always will be aboriginal land. Alright. Deep breath. Let's talk about metabolic balance and why it's anything but. And it's pretty easy to sign up. Just go to the link via the show notes on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. It is free. And you'll also get early access to my practitioner course and other nerdy nuance-loving things. I also have another kind of just general monthly newsletter that kind of lines up with the moon cycles, uh, sort of. So if you're not a practitioner and you don't want to know or care about like more clinical stuff, you just want like updates and more wellness critique and um eating disorder recovery stuff, then there is also a link to that newsletter. Okay, so I think that's all the housekeeping. Let's dive in to when metabolic balance isn't balance. Diet culture, clinical protocols, in air quotes, and the naturopathic dilemma. So this is part three, hopefully just part three, not gonna turn into part four, of the Disordered Eating for Naturopaths series. In the last two instalments, which I have both on this podcast and on my website in my blog, we explored the spectrum of eating and also the five main types of red flags that practitioners should really be aware of. And now we're looking at the uncomfortable middle ground, the place where disordered eating and naturopathic practice collide. So I've seen this happen in two big ways. The first one is when clients seek affirmation of their already disordered eating through naturopathic care. Okay, so a client rocks up to your clinic space and they already have some form of disordered eating or eating disorder or chronic dieting, and they're consciously or subconsciously seeking validation and affirmation of those eating behaviors through you, a natural health practitioner. That's the first way. The second way, which is a little bit more spiky, is when us naturopaths and holistic health practitioners unintentionally and sometimes directly reinforce disordered eating patterns. I know. I'm gonna be honest, this one's going to sting a little, but it's also where real growth starts. So let's go. Okay, I'm gonna start with the first one. Clients seeking affirmation of disordered eating in naturopathic care. So one of the biggest challenges in our work is that clients often come to us hoping that we'll affirm their restrictive behaviors. Whether they're aware of that or not, you know, who are we to know? Um, but this is kind of the stage that's set. Unlike a dietitian, although that's not always um the case, or a GP who might sometimes warn against excessive dieting, although with the rise and the allure of GLP1 medications that are being prescribed for weight concerns, I'm seeing this tendency for GPs to warn against um, you know, weight-focused care really start to diminish. And dietitians, like if you if it's a non-diet dietitian or an eating disorder credentialed clinician or something like that, then they're definitely going to warn against excessive dieting. But dietitians are plenty guilty of um affirming disordered eating in their offices as well. So, not just throwing naturopaths under the bus here. All kinds of practitioners do this. But if you're listening, you probably are trying to not be one of these people. Um, so basically, what I'm saying is naturopaths are often perceived as being more likely to give the green light to things like clean eating, fasting, and detoxes. And I've seen this play out countless times in clinic. So I'm gonna give a bunch of examples of things clients say that um might give us a hint that they are seeking affirmation of some disordered eating behaviors already happening. So the first thing a client might say is something along the lines of, I think I need to detox my liver. I had a huge binge over the weekend on party foods and alcohol. Okay, so this sounds responsible, right? Even kind of virtuous. This classic Monday morning wellness confession. And we as naturopaths know the drill. You know, this might um cue us into uh conversing about hepatic clearance and phase one and two detox pathways and sulfonation and glucuronidation and all that good stuff, and you know, throw around B vitamins and NAC and turmeric and all that kind of good stuff. But we've just got to be careful because a weekend of binging on party food and alcohol, like, yeah, okay, it's not like the same thing as going to a health spa. But what is underneath that I think I need to detox kind of statement. Often it's a person feeling shame, right? After eating more or differently than usual, our nervous systems can tip sometimes for some people into threat mode. We might get cortisol rising, digestion slowing, and guilt can sometimes get translated get get translated into I feel toxic. And then the urge to detox is kind of the psyche's way of seeking purification. Um, not necessarily the liver's way of asking for support because physiologically the body is already detoxing constantly, right? We know this. Um hepatocytes don't clock off for the weekend. What spikes after a single binge isn't toxin load as much as it's stress hormones and self-criticism. Restricting food again or launching into like a juice fast or something like that only worsens the cortisol roller coaster and it's going to perpetuate this binge restrict cycle that comes with um any form of restriction generally. And the ironic thing, and this is something that I've written about over half a decade ago, um, in an article that I can pop in the show notes called um Detox is so much more than colonics and juice cleansing or something like that. The ironic thing is that this kind of restriction actually impairs detoxification. Phase two liver conjugation, for example, needs amino acids, it needs sulfur donors, and it needs glycogen, all of which drop when someone undereats. So the very act of cleansing or juice fasting, because there's bugger all protein coming in with your typical three-day juice cleanse, um, that stuff can leave the liver less supported. And I've gotta remember to not say bugger, I said it too in one of my consults with like a 20-something client, and and they were like, Do you know what that word actually means? I was like, Oh sorry. I'm from far north Queensland and I'm 40. So, anyway, segue. Um, back to detoxification and restriction. Our job as naturopaths isn't to hand over another detox protocol. Of it's to gently name the shame beneath the science talk and reframe binging as a signal of deprivation, right? And remind clients that nourishment, nourishment, not punishment, is what truly supports hepatic resilience and detox pathways. Okay, so that's the I think I need to detox my liver after partying. What if a client comes in and says something like, My gut is inflamed, I can only tolerate clean foods now. This one sounds so clinical, right? My gut is inflamed. It's it's um kind of easy to take that at face value. Words like inflammation, intolerance, gut permeability, and even clean eating still kind of feel safely nestled into our little naturopathic lexicon, right? But underneath that polished language is often a body in distress and a nervous system stuck in protection mode. So when someone reports that, you know, everything I eat upsets my gut, my gut is so inflamed, I'm super sensitive, I'm intolerant to all these things, this long list of foods, it's really tempting to kind of reach for the um SIBO breath test kit or a low FODMAT protocol or a list of gut healing powders and you know, chuck all of them at the person, maybe. And yet we've really got to be cognizant that chronic restriction itself is one of the most potent gut irritants there is. Here is why. Let me unpack that for you. So it's taken me like over 10 years as an eating disorder dietitian to to figure this out and to learn this and to piece it together, but I've seen it over and over and over in practice now, and now I can't unsee it. So here's a couple of things to keep in mind. Undereating slows motility. So if someone's not getting enough energy or dietary variety, peristalsis becomes sluggish, that leads to bloating, constipation, nausea, sometimes all of those things. And then clients might interpret those gut symptoms as further intolerance, even if those symptoms were initially triggered by not eating enough. Another reason low food volume actually thins the mucosal barrier. So think about the gut lining, it relies on regular contact with food and short chain fatty acids from fiber fermentation. When dietary intake is limited, short chain fatty acid production drops and the mucus layer thins, and that leaves the barrier more sensitive, not less. So low food volume can be um you know detrimental to the gut lining. We've also got the nervous system, and remember the nervous system amplifies sensation, especially when there's chronic stress and hypervigilance. These things heighten interoceptive awareness, so normal digestive sensations can start to feel really like they're really easily felt, or they feel painful or alarming. Um, and this is a really well-recognized feature of functional gut disorders, right? Anyone with um a certain degree of IBS, they have hypersensitive um digestive sensations, they experience the same peristalsis or you know, the same normal digestive sensations we all do, but they feel them more acutely. And when our nervous system is ramped up by stress or anxiety, this is what will happens. Also, malnutrition itself alters microbiota balance. Restrictive eating reduces microbial diversity and shifts metabolite profiles, and this can often worsen the very symptoms that it was meant to solve. So, this avoiding of lots of foods saying you can only tolerate clean foods or clients saying they can only tolerate clean foods because their gut is inflamed. Can you see how this creates this vicious cycle of under-eating, slow motility, low food volume, affecting mucosal barrier, amplified nervous system, malnutrition, messing with the microbiome? If we just have that stuff, that is already enough to cause some pretty significant gut upset. But we add in social media messaging that glorifies clean or anti-inflammatory diets, and then you know, you've got the perfect storm for orthorexia, really, disguised as gut healing, and that's not what we want, and it's certainly not what we want to affirm, we want to catch that kind of stuff. We can still talk about intestinal permeability and inflammatory pathways. Sure, of course, that's what we are qualified to do as naturopaths. We know about that stuff. Um maybe we can even talk about methylation if if that's relevant here. But we really need to address the foundational issues for many people, and that is safety and sufficiency. If someone is not getting enough food, if they're not getting regular, adequate meals, then you know you can chuck all of the gut R and PHGG at them that you might have in your um clinical cabinet, but it's not going to solve that root cause. We need food variety, we need adequate calories, and we need nervous system regulation. These things are the foundations of gut healing. And sometimes I think that you know they're not the first thing that we go to, but they should be. So when a client insists that they can only tolerate clean foods, it's worth just gently asking, you know, what does clean mean to you? And what happens if you eat something outside that list? And often what we uncover isn't a fragile guart, but a fragile sense of safety. Okay, what's some other stuff some clients might say um when they're looking for affirmation of disordered eating? They might say something like, I don't get hungry until the afternoon, so I skip breakfast. Alright, so most people are on board with, you know, skipping breakfast is not ideal. Um, and from a naturopathic lens, this one can quickly lead us into conversations about cortisol curves and circadian rhythm or blood sugar regulation, and those are all really valid things. Um, unfortunately, I've also heard from some clients who were congratulated on their inadvertent intermittent fasting when they disclose their lack of morning appetite to a naturopath, and that's just like, yeah, I just want to face palm myself when I do that, when I hear that rather. So let's just zoom out. When someone doesn't feel hungry until later in the day, it's rarely because their metabolism is efficient, it's more often a physiological hangover from chronic restriction or stress. What is really going on here? Let's just unpack it a little bit. So when you regularly suppress food intake, whether that's through intentional dieting, fasting, skipping meals kind of thing, or consistent lack of access to food, poverty, that kind of thing. Um, famine. Whatever the reason for suppressed in food intake, the body just adapts, whether it's a weight loss diet or famine. Um, cortisol and adrenaline rise to keep blood sugar stable and you know, maintain alertness because that's really important. Those stress hormones blunt hunger cues. So your cortisol, your adrenaline, they're going to blunt and dull those hunger cues by dampening ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and numbing interoceptive awareness. We don't want to numb interoceptive awareness. We want to know when we're hungry. If this keeps happening over and over again, your body learns, or the client's body will learn, we don't eat in the morning. My human doesn't eat in the morning, hunger isn't useful, maybe it's not even safe. Let's use what little energy we have coming in for other more important functions. Stuff like keeping their heart beating, keeping their brain working, keeping them alert, even more alert than usual, because now we're in a famine. As a practitioner, this kind of adaptation sometimes, or maybe you know, to non-practitioners as well, this can look like discipline or like the person's metabolically adapted from the outside at least. But often, as I've alluded to, it's a dysregulated stress response. When the body is stuck in fight or flight, hunger is postponed, it is dulled in favor of survival. So just because someone isn't hungry until the afternoon or they don't have an appetite for breakfast doesn't mean that they don't need it. Doesn't mean they don't need that food. And we all know that if you skip breakfast or you don't eat till later in the day, you know, your first meal isn't till 12, 1, 2, 3 p.m. or whatever, then come afternoon that cortisol dips, the adrenaline wanes, and the hunger just surges back often really fiercely. And that's when clients will say, you know, they're fine all day, but come 4 p.m. they can't stop eating, or at night, or after dinner, you know, I've had my dinner, why am I still hungry? It's 8 p.m. and all I want to do is empty the fridge and stand in front of it and eat. This is not due to a lack of willpower, this is biology rebounding and making sure that that human animal, that their body is adequately fed for the day. It's not ideal to backload like that, eating all their calories later in the day. But the body is wise and it's going to try to get that energy in one way or another. So when someone says, look, I'm just not hungry in the morning, it's really worth exploring why. Um, the goal isn't to force breakfast, but to rebuild safety and trust around consistent nourishment. Obviously, there can be other stuff going on here. There can be um, you know, liver detoxification issues and whatnot. Um, but this this one's just really important to check if they have this dysregulated stress response, to check if they're stuck in a blunted hunger cues cycle. Skipping breakfast, I don't think, is a sign of balance. There might be some other practitioners who disagree with me, but especially for women and people who have uteruses, skipping breakfast isn't generally a great idea. It's often a sign of a body still waiting for permission to eat, even if those hunger cues aren't there. Okay, where are we at? Alright, time-wise, we're doing okay. I'm gonna keep going with these examples. So, what if a client walks in and says something like, um, I feel puffy whenever I eat carbs? Should I just cut them out? Okay, so as a naturopath, we might think about insulin sensitivity and inflammation and stuff like this. But I want you to know this: that transient puffiness when the person eats carbs, it's usually just water. It's just water, it's not toxins, it's not fat gain, it's not even inflammation. Let me explain. When you've been restricting carbohydrates for a while, whether that's because you're on keto or because you think that you're sensitive to them and you've been experimenting with cutting them out, whatever the reason, your body doesn't care. You've been restricting carbs and it's going to register that. What your body will do is um it's glycogen stores. So where we store carbohydrate in the liver and the muscles, that glycogen becomes depleted. And each gram of glycogen binds to roughly three to four grams of water. So when you start eating carbs again, your body naturally replenishes those stores of water and it holds on to that associated water. The result is a temporary feeling of fullness or bloat, and that's completely normal. It's actually a sign of renourishment, not dysfunction. Ironically, chronic restriction itself can also drive water retention. I can speak from personal experience when I was in the depth, like deep depths of my eating disorder and restricting hard, and I was so um water retentive. It was really water retentive, and as you can guess, that just played with my mind so much. Um, but anyway, chronic restriction can drive water retention because when the body perceives scarcity, whether that's through low calorie intake or stress or dehydration, cortisol rises. Okay, we know this stress, low calorie intake, dehydration, all these things can push cortisol up. That shifts um some things to do with our sodium handling capacity, and then our tissues may hold more fluid. So, what looks like carb bloat or carb fluid retention is often the body finally exhaling. Oh my god, I got some carbs. Whoo! Okay, so we're just gonna store some water with those as well. Cutting carbs in response to this only just deepens that cycle of restriction, leading to water loss, leading to that temporary feeling of lightness, and oh, I've lost weight, and then you know, usually the person will reintroduce carbs or try them again or just like not be able to stand the sugar cravings anymore, and then the water will return, and then the panic sets in, and then they restrict again. This is not um pathology, this is not a sign that they should cut carbs out. This is physiology, and plus cutting carbs is usually cutting connection to body trust. I don't know many people who have um just cut carbs without exposure to diet culture ideas and felt good. Um, I just yeah, I just don't. Just a little side story on that, because I like telling side stories. The other week, I think it was last week when my we were on school holidays. My beautiful daughter, I love her so much. She's seven going on 17, but she's uh really excited about making breakfast, in particular, bacon and eggs. She does a beautiful scrambled egg. I'll admit, it's better than anything I can do because I get distracted really easily and I burn stuff at least 40% of the time. Anyway, she made me some eggs for breakfast, and I was really preoccupied that morning. I was really busy and I was doing all this stuff for the kids, and I gratefully ate this beautiful omelette she had made. It was like bacon, I think she put some onion and veggies in, um, and like I don't know, three eggs or something like that. And it was really yummy. And then I went to do a weight training session on my back deck because I work out from home because I hate gyms. Um, and oh my god, I struggled so much. I hated that session. I got halfway through and I was like, damn, why does this feel so fucking hard? And I realized I did not have any carbs for breakfast. Holy crap! I just ate this beautiful breakfast that this little girl made me, which was all protein, and now I'm doing some heavy lifting, and this is not working. Anyway, cutting carbs. Not great, at least for me. I need a little bit before I do um that kind of training. And yeah, not completely related to getting puffy, but the power of carbs. Oh my god, I'm not saying you you should go crazy and only eat carbs or eat two kilos of whatever wheat bigs in every morning or anything like that. I'm just saying they're important and there's a reason that um our bodies work well when we have enough of them. Okay, I'm just gonna give maybe two more examples because I know this is getting long. Alright, so how about the person, the client who walks in and says, I'm highly sensitive to processed food. I can only eat organic whole foods. Okay, this one's a cousin of the I can only eat clean narrative, but with an added dose of classism, ableism, and maybe a sprinkle of moral superiority disguised as health, um, on the surface. This kind of sounds sophisticated, right? Even admirable. Like I can only eat organic whole foods, and my body only wants um healthy foods. There's this language of sensitivity and purity, and that fits perfectly within the modern wellness culture that we've got, where clean eating has become shorthand for moral worth. I've written tons about this in the last 10 plus years. Um, I could go on and on, but I'm gonna try to stick to this to this topic. So, under that polished phrasing of like I'm sensitive, I can only eat clean foods, I only eat organic, whole foods, etc. Underneath that, we will often find fear, not actual physiology. Sometimes clients truly do have reactions to. Certain additives or preservatives. Okay, for sure. Not denying that. But more often than not, sensitivity to anything that's not a whole food kind of becomes a socially sanctioned way to describe anxiety about contamination and loss of control. The idea that only organic, natural food, natural in air quotes, food, is safe, offers a sense of order in a world that feels chaotic as fuck, right? And this is where classism and ableism and moralism kind of silently creep in. Wellness culture rarely, never acknowledges that organic only eating requires money, time, privilege. These are luxuries that not everybody has. For many clients, these strict food rules begin as a health pursuit, like kind of a huh, let's try this. This this sounds like it could be a good thing. But it ends up as a burden. It can be really socially isolating, financially draining, and shame-inducing whenever so-called lesser foods are eaten. Let's talk physiology. So physiologically, chronic restriction and stress can lower digestive capacity. I spoke about that earlier, making even small deviations feel uncomfortable. And that's this, it becomes this self-fulfilling loop. It just reinforces fear. The nervous system tightens around food rules and the body mirrors that tension in the gut. When we as practitioners celebrate purity alongside our clients without examining its roots, we unintentionally reinforce disordered eating. It's just wrapped in this ethical, environmental, or this spiritual value. So I know that's an uncomfortable point. Don't be too quick to be like, oh, that's amazing. Well done for only eating organic and whole, like, whoa whoa whoa whoa. Let's put the brakes on. Why? Why are they doing this? Is it because it's just a piece of cake and they can do it, or are they like busting their guts to afford, you know, organic radishes and they won't eat food if it's not organic? So instead of nodding along when our clients like, I can only eat organic, let's gently widen the frame. You know, we can ask, what does process mean to you? What's what's a whole food mean to you? How do these food choices impact your sense of freedom and connection? And what would balance look like if health wasn't equated with purity? What would that look like for you? So this isn't about shitting on organic food. I don't want to dismiss it. Organic food is beautiful. Like if I could if I could afford all my food to be organic, then maybe I would. I don't know. Haven't thought about it. Because I don't buy all my food organic, I buy very little of my food organic, and I just do my best and grow a few things at home and buy organic food if it's on special or reduced to clear, quite frankly. Um, but it's really you know, for me at least, it's about dismantling the hierarchy that makes someone feel dirty for eating anything aside from whole food organic, that kind of thing. Our role isn't to moralize food choices, it's to return clients to this radical nourishing truth that all foods can belong because they truly do. I, you know, it was my son's birthday party, there are a lot of mini Snickers bars left over. I freaking love Snickers bars. I chucked a few of those bad boys in the freezer, and you better believe that after dinner for a couple of nights in a row, I was having Snickers bars frozen. Mmm. Chef's kiss. Cannot recommend more highly. Okay, one more client example. The person who comes to you and wants to get advice about portion control. Hmm, I know this has happened to you if you're a naturopath or a nutritionist, someone who comes to you and says, I know I'm eating too much, or maybe, you know, I've been so bad, whatever. Can you help me with portion control? Or put a different way, can you help me increase my metabolism? Ah, yes, the metabolism question. Diet culture's favorite pseudoscience, dressed up as biochemistry. It sounds rational, right? If I could just speed up my metabolism, I'd finally eat normally and not gain weight. Always that weight focus. And it's so easy, right, as naturopaths, to meet that question with talk of thyroid function and adrenal fatigue and mitochondrial cofactors, methylation support, blah blah blah blah blah. But underneath it all, this question, can you help me with portion control or can you help me speed up my metabolism? I'm eating too much. This is really not a question about metabolism, it's a question about permission, about who is allowed to eat, how much, and without apology. Okay, so the funny but not funny thing is that most people asking this, at least in my experience, are already under-eating when they're like, I just can't quite get a grip on portion control, and I just can't help myself. I need to eat more, and I I binge sometimes. They're already under-eating, usually. Um, chronically restricted intake slows resting metabolic rate as the body adapts to perceived famine. We've known this for about 75 years since the Ansel Keys study back in 1950. This is a protective mechanism, it's not a personal failure. When food becomes unpredictable, whether that's through dieting or fasting or endless whole 30 resets or you know, being in a war zone, it doesn't matter, your body doesn't know the difference between um Weight Watches and being in a war zone and not getting enough food. Whatever the reason, when that happens and food becomes unpredictable, the body lowers energy expenditure, it conserves glycogen and it increases efficiency. In other words, the so-called broken metabolism is usually a very smart metabolism responding beautifully to chronic scarcity. When nourishment finally increases, those glycogen stores are going to refill, digestion ramps up, and thermogenesis returns. And that can feel to some people who've chronically restricted, it can feel like they're eating too much, but it's actually restoration, the metabolism turning back on. Diet culture hijacked this concept decades ago. You know, um, I won't go into detail, I don't have time, but nowadays, boosting metabolism is code for how to eat all the things, oh sorry, how to eat less rather without your bodice body noticing. There's supplements, detox powders, so-called metabolic resets, and they all exploit that anxiety of how to eat less without your body noticing. Just do a little calorie deficit or you know, let's just do this little metabolic reset, which is just a semi-starvation diet. There are even practitioner-only protocols that promise to rebalance metabolism or reset leptin sensitivity. It's in this language that sounds really scientific, la la la, but usually it just means calorie restriction with methyl donors chucked in or, you know, a few supplements. True metabolic support looks far less glamorous. It's not sexy, although I kind of think it's sexy. But I'm an eating disorder dietitian, so you know, I'm weird. Um, but true metabolic support is consistent meals, adequate carbohydrate intake to suppress cortisol. Note that I'm not saying go crazy with carbohydrates. I'm not saying go eat McDonald's three meals a day. I'm not doing that. Adequate carbohydrate intake so that it's enough to suppress cortisol. We're getting enough protein, enough micronutrients to rebuild muscles because there's going to be sarcopenia associated with chronic dieting and chronic restriction. Um, we also need the protein and the micronutrients coming in to restock enzymes, digestive enzymes, a bunch of other enzymes. And permission to rest, like true metabolic support requires rest. And sometimes the most effective metabolic tonic is a friggin' sandwich and a nap. Okay, so when clients frame eating in terms of metabolic optimization or something along those lines, we can gently redirect the conversation and maybe ask what would it feel like to, you know, focus less on speeding up your metabolism and more on just trusting that your body knows how to find equilibrium when it's fed. Because after all, the goal of neuropathy isn't messing with our metabolism. It's not metabolic manipulation, it's metabolic safety. We want to create resilience and safety and sturdiness. That at least that's what I think we should be doing as naturopaths, not fucking with our metabolism and biohacking until you know the cows come home. Um, okay, so all these client statements sound kind of familiar. You know, some of them sound pretty reasonable. They use the same language we're trained to respond to, things like toxicity, inflammation, sluggish metabolism, imbalance, hormone imbalance, blah blah blah blah blah. And these are all valid terms when used in context. But underneath those clinical phrases, sometimes there's this plea for control and safety and validation. Um sometimes when someone is asking these kinds of questions, they're often expressions of fear and shame and control and not actual physiological dysfunction or not physiological dysfunction purely. So our job is to listen for the story underneath the story. When a client says toxic, do they mean guilt? Are they feeling shame? When a client says clean, like eating clean, do they just mean eating safe? Or when a client says balanced meals, do they mean smaller portion sizes or something like that? Listen between the lines. What sounds like a request for naturopathic care is sometimes really a request for permission to continue restrictive or compensatory behaviours. So let's please be careful about that. And it can be a bit tricky because if we don't pause and examine what's driving those so-called symptoms, we risk becoming diet culture's most credentialed accomplices. Okay, that was the first half of what I want to talk about today. Second half, and it's just as big. This is when naturopaths actively encourage disordered eating without realizing it. Sometimes the problem isn't just what clients bring to the consult desk, it's what we prescribe. And to be clear, I'm sure that most, well, hopefully all naturopaths do not intend to do harm. It's not like we're trying to do harm. We enter this profession because we care deeply, because we want to help people feel better in their bodies. But intention doesn't cancel impact. Many, many of the popular kind of clinical nutrition pro when I say clinical, I'm doing bunny is many of these nutrition programs in neuropathy are diet culture, fair and square. They look scientific, they sound sophisticated, they're often bloody expensive, um, but they reinforce restriction, guilt, and shame. So let's talk about the biggest culprits. And here we are, drum roll. Metabolic balance. Yep, I'm going there. Let's do this. Let's take a deep breath. This is gonna be a full-on dissection. Okay, so let me preface this by saying if you're a practitioner using metabolic balance, this is not a personal attack. I know and I respect many naturopaths who are certified in this program. I also know that some of you genuinely want to help your clients feel better. Like all of you genuinely want to help your clients feel better. And I get it, the system is seductive. It looks clinical, it sounds scientific, it's packaged as personalized and balanced and holistic. And hey, let's not ignore the cherry on top. It's pretty damn lucrative. So, where does metabolic balance come from? Metabolic balance was developed in Germany in the early 2000s by Dr. Wolf Fun Fack, a physician, and Sylvia Burkel, a food scientist. The program claims to balance your metabolism through a nutrition plan calculated from your blood values, marketed as personalized nutrition based on science. Metabolic Balance was introduced to Australia around 2011-2012 and is now offered through the official Metabolic Balance Australia and New Zealand Network, which recruits naturopaths, nutritionists, GPs, and other natural health practitioners as licensed coaches. It's marketed to practitioners as an evidence-informed, personalized approach to metabolic health. Yet there is currently no published peer-reviewed research validating its claims of biochemical personalization or long-term metabolic benefit. So that's kind of a big gaping black hole right there. The website calls it the program with a side effect of weight loss. So, in other words, it's still a diet, it's just rebranded as biochemistry. And it's trying to be diet-like, it's trying to be like, we're not a diet, it's just a side effect of weight loss, we're focused on health, you know, the same old shit. Um, there's no publicly available data on how many Australian naturopaths are certified metabolic balance practitioners, which I think in itself speaks volumes about transparency, but I digress. Um, you can though have a quick scan of the natural um naturopathic websites in Australia and the Metabolic Balance Australia website. You can look up practitioners and you can count them if you want. I just couldn't be asked. And there are quite a few, I'd say probably hundreds of practitioners across Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, all promoting metabolic balance as this like premium clinical service. Let's talk money. The standard program in Australia sits between$1,600 and$1,800, so up to$1,800 Australian. Um, and that it's often packaged as like a 12-week plan that includes pathology testing, a personalized food list, and follow-up sessions. Um, often the initial consultation is not included. I'm sure some people do include it. Um, some people offer payment plans, and the marketing I've noticed frequently frames this as like an investment in your biochemistry, an investment in your future health. Look,$1,600 to$1,800, that's a pretty steep price for what is functionally a glorified meal plan. So let's talk about the four phases of the metabolic balance program and why I think they're harmful. Phase one is called cleansing. So you can tell that that's already gonna piss me off. Okay, but I'm gonna stick to the facts. So phase one, cleansing. This is two days, two days of low calorie eating, things like soups, juices, sometimes fasting. This phase primes clients for restriction and it frames the body as dirty or toxic with that word cleansing. And that's a narrative stray from Diet Culture's playbook. The program's website claims that during this time the body in and I quote, the body feeds itself from within, from the fat reserves in brackets, keto metabolism, and that hunger is minimized. End quote. So that might sound reassuring, but physiologically this just it just doesn't hold up. Like when calorie intake drops suddenly, as it would in this phase one, the body initially suppresses appetite through a short-term surge in stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. This can create a temporary illusion of reduced hunger, this kind of metabolic shock response. But it's not balanced. This is survival, this is a survival um mechanism. Within days, you've got hunger hormones like ghrelin, neuropeptide Y rising sharply to try to restore that energy intake. By the way, I've got references for a lot of this stuff in the article, same name on the website, maybe the same name, hopefully. Hopefully, I'm organized and call it the same name. Anyway, in other words, any absence of hunger during these this two-day cleansing phase, it's not a sign of metabolic harmony or that you're doing something right. It's the body sounding the fucking alarm just more quietly before turning up the volume later. In practice, this claim teaches clients, I think, to mistrust their bodies. When hunger appears, as it inevitably will, it's interpreted as failure rather than feedback, you know, more often than not. And this is going to lay the groundwork for the shame and suppression cycle that so often follows in restrictive eating. The person's hunger is pathologized and fullness is moralized, and body wisdom is overruled by external rules. Okay, so that was phase one. And also, two days of low calorie eating, that's not really long enough to go into keto, ketogenes, um, ketosis, rather. It's not long enough. So I think that's pretty misleading. Phase two, conversion or detox. This is called. So phase one is called cleansing, phase two is called detox. Okay. The metabolic balance Australian New Zealand website describes this phase as lasting at least, and I quote, at least 14 days, end quote, during which, and I quote, the body needs time to detoxify and adjust your metabolism in order to get back into a healthy balance, end quote. There's a lot of quotes here. It promises that a little bit of discipline is worthwhile. I'm just gonna do the voice for the quote bit, okay? And that alkaline minerals bind acids and allow them to be removed. And in what might be the most telling line, that if you want, you can stay longer in the detox phase. Okay. End quote. Let's unpack that. First, the idea of detoxifying for two weeks is biochemically kind of meaningless. Um, the liver's phase one and two detoxification enzymes are working continuously, not on a schedule. This is basic biochemistry. They don't need 14 days of restriction and alkaline vegetables to do their job. They need consistent energy, amino acids, and micronutrients. The notion that alkaline foods bind acids is also pseudoscientific. This is like old school stuff that was floating around 10, 15 plus 20 years ago. Um, we know that systemic acid-based balance is tightly regulated by respiration and renal function. Food actually has a pretty minimal effect on blood pH. Okay. Second, the claim that one should stay longer if you wish in the two-week detox phase. This, at least for me, raises a serious ethical red flag. Fourteen days of restrictive eating, and trust me, this is restrictive eating. Fourteen days of that is already sufficient to ultra-thyroid hormones, ultra-resting metabolic rate, change gut motility, usually slow it down. Encouraging people to extend this period risks pushing clients into chronic underfueling, electrolyte imbalance, and obviously disordered eating patterns. So, in plain talk, why the fuck would you want to prolong a phase that deprives the body of the very nutrients it needs to detoxify and heal? And then call that phase detox. I don't get it. Third, the insistence on discipline. So if you go to the website and read about the phase two where it says, you know, a little bit of discipline is worthwhile. So there's no oils, there's no snacks. This is the diet, five-hour fasting windows, one protein per meal, all your food is weighed, and then there are obscure items like carp or eel appearing on meal plans that are supposedly personalized. All of this reframes obedience as wellness. These rules, they might generate short-term weight loss because, like, starve yourself, of course, you're gonna probably lose a little bit of weight, but physiologically, they reflect energy deficit, not metabolic magic of any kind. You're gonna get hunger suppression, um, at least initially, then you're gonna get the fatigue, the mood swings, and all of these are interpreted as adjustment when in actual fact they're the very predictable effects of under-eating and low blood glucose. And perhaps most concerningly, this kind of language teaches clients that well-being is something they have to earn through compliance. With any for anyone with a history of food restriction or body shame, that just screams relapse, dressed in the language of biochemistry and moral virtue. It teaches compliance rather than connection. This is definitely not a body connection um kind of diet. Well, no diet is. Okay, a rejuvenated appearance, as they say. It's that's not a marker of metabolic balance, that's just a marketing promise dressed as physiology, and also it's super vague. Like, what the fuck is a rejuvenated appearance? Does that just mean you're skinnier? I think so. I think that's what they are trying to say, but just making it sound cooler. Okay, and then comes this bait and switch. You can read all this stuff off their website. After they say all that with the like the triumphant finale bit, they'll say, avoid diets that are not conducive to you or cause discomfort. Okay, so that there, right there, that is a very clever rhetorical pivot. This program positions itself as anti-diet whilst functioning exactly like one. What because it is one. This is teaching people to distrust their appetite, outsource food decisions to a plan, and demoralize hunger as imbalance. It's the diet that swears it isn't a diet. I mean, they friggin' all are nowadays. But the most insidious part is still coming. Are you ready for it? It then says this in phase four. If you still get into trouble with your metabolism, you always have your metabolic balance practitioner to turn to and your plan to go back to. End quote. Jesus fucking Christ. That isn't empowerment, that's dependency. It ensures clients remain tethered to the system financially, psychologically, and metabolically. Once that re inevitable rebound weight gain or the digestive discomfort appears because the body is finally refueling, the clients are then encouraged to see it as a personal failing or metabolic trouble, not the predictive. Aftermath of chronic restriction, the plan becomes both problem and product, a lifelong subscription to control. So, no, your metabolism hasn't reset. It's been suppressed, defended, and exhausted. And by the way, when I'm talking about the inevitable rebound weight gain and the digestive discomfort that comes back when you do start to eat again, um, that digestive discomfort doesn't necessarily stay there forever. For some people, it can hang around for a long time, which really sucks. Like dieting really fucks with your digestion, and it sometimes takes a like some serious time and effort to get it back on board, if it ever finally comes back on board. But um, you know, with some luck, people do get past that initial digestive discomfort. But when you start to finally refuel and people feel that, you know, oh my god, I'm suddenly so bloated, my digestion's usually not used to this much food, and I'm starting to gain weight. That's when they're being told to go back to their MB practitioner and go back to their plan. Oh let's say. Um, you know, while you might feel temporarily in control on this diet, your body is really just biting its time, it is just waiting, as bodies always do, for safety, for enough food, and for permission to eat again. Okay, I told you it was gonna be a deep dissection. So, what's the bigger picture? What does balance really mean? If we zoom out, these four phases of metabolic balance read like a case study in how diet culture adapts and survives. We've got restriction disguised as cleansing, compliance repackaged as self-discipline, um, conditional freedom renamed as intuition, or like, yay, we're so free, not and dependence framed as empowerment. It's it's pretty, yeah. I find it really unsavoury, and that's why I'm doing this podcast. And this is where we as naturopaths, herbalists, nutritionists, we need to take a good hard look at what we're endorsing if we're if we're endorsing this and what we're enabling. Because programs like this trade on the language of metabolism, detox, and balance, and yet they operate on the same physiological principle as every other diet, which is energy deficit equals weight loss until it doesn't. These diets offer biochemical mystique, but their true currency is body control. As practitioners guided by principles like first do no harm and treat the whole person, we're called to do so much better than this. Balance is not achieved through depletion, it's restored through nourishment, through connection, and through safety, nervous system safety. The real reset happens not in the mitochondria, I think, but in the nervous system where clients can finally trust that they don't have to earn their food or their self-worth. So if you want to talk about metabolic balance, let's redefine it. To me, metabolic balance means regular meals, enough carbs, rest, pleasure, a metabolism that harms because it's fed, not because it's fighting like hell for survival. To me, that's the kind of balance worth teaching, and I think as naturopaths, that's that's where we should be coming from. But, you know, in my humble opinion. Okay, so what are clients saying about metabolic balance? Um, I went to, you know, Reddit. Where do you go first? I've got my own, you know, client testimonials, but I'm gonna go online. And I went to Reddit Threads, and it really, you know, this paints a much more complex picture of metabolic balance than its glossy marketing suggests, of course. If you jump on Reddit, you'll see some participants reporting earl uh like early enthusiasm. You know, I'm on phase two and I love it. One person wrote, um, describing rapid weight loss and the comforting structure of having every meal prescribed. Other people said the plan felt empowering, even transformative. One person one person shared that both she and her partner lost weight, improved sleep, reduced inflammation, and rediscovered their love for cooking. So that all sounds fucking shit hot, right? But for every glowing testimonial, there are so many stories that tell a different truth. This one um commenter said about metabolic balance, it's too extreme, restrictive, and unsustainable. I thought this would be a nutritional re-education, not another impossible standard. Touche. Another participant realized that they were eating fewer than 1,000 calories a day, despite the program being marketed as balanced. Others reported side effects like fatigue, anxiety, and eczema flares. So, for example, this one person said, I lost weight, sure, but I was eating under 1,000 calories. My body crashed and I gained it all back. From an eating disordered dietitian standpoint, so from where I'm standing, this is a fucking serious red flag, okay? If you're eating under 1,000 calories a day, that isn't metabolic balance, it's metabolic shutdown. At that level of intake, the risk of refeeding complications, nutrient deficiencies, and cardiovascular strain rise sharply. Um, clinical guidelines for eating disorder management recommend prophylactic thiamine supplementation whenever energy intake dips below a thousand cal per day or during like reintroduction after restriction. So that's like eating disorder, clinical guidelines. Um, like saying, hey, a thousand calories a day is bugger all. We need to fucking intervene here. Um as a side note, thiamine depletion that can occur within two to three weeks of inadequate inadequate intake. It does not take long, and it can lead to some pretty um severe neurological and cardiac complications, such as when Nikki's encephalopathy, I can never pronounce that right, but hopefully you know what I mean. Um, it's a preventable, sometimes fatal condition. Uh, and so that's not good. In other words, if a program leaves clients so underfueled that thiamine deficiency becomes a foreseeable risk, this ain't balance. This is medically negligent. Okay, I digress again. Let's continue with the client experiences. So several users highlighted the program's rigidity and opacity, confusion over food lists featuring obscure fish like carp and eel, and frustration that the reasoning behind food prescriptions was withheld as proprietary intellectual property. So, as one commenter put it, quote, they said my blood tests were sent to Germany, but I'm not allowed to know what they found because it's the company's intellectual property. There's no published science, just marketing, end quote. And the financial strain was not lost on participants. Multiple users described it as an expensive waste of time, quote unquote, once the initial novel novelty wore off, citing costs of around$1,700 Australian dollars, and disappointment that the promised so-called personalization was really just a restrictive AF meal plan. Taken together, these stories reveal a familiar pattern, right? The program works for some, at least temporarily, but for many others it delivers the same arc as any other diet. Restriction, weight loss, exhaustion, rebound. The same shame cycle, just dressed in some more clinical language. These online stories echo um what I've heard countless times in clinics. So, you know, clients who'll come to me maybe months after, you know, maybe trying the program, completing the program, or programs similar to metabolic balance, and they'll describe feeling confused, guilty, or even physically unwell. Many of these clients will say that it started off feeling empowering and scientific, but that it quickly turned into another cycle of fear and fatigue. And some will, you know, tell me about their digestion that's now disrupted or stalled or wacky periods, or like, of course, the sense of failure because they couldn't stick with it. And even more concerning and honestly fucking infuriating, um, not the clients, but these stories, uh, when I've got clients who've come in and told me about um, you know, they've done this metabolic balance program, and they told their naturopath before they started that they had a long history of disordered eating, sometimes even a diagnosed eating disorder. And rather than the naturopath or practitioner just like ditching the whole thing, they were still put on a metabolic balance plan, maybe with like a few minor tweaks to make it sound gentler or softer. But the call remains the same. It's restriction, it's food weighing, um, calorie counting, dressed up as like clinical. I cannot tell you how wild it is to hear this over and over again. I just can't deal. Because when a client is still weighing food and tracking every bite and they're still being told their body can't be trusted, that's not holistic care. It's like the opposite of holistic care. That's re-traumatizing someone to someone who came to you for help. That's active harm, full stop. And what worries me, well, you know, another thing that worries me is when programs like this are framed as holistic or evidence-based, they gain legitimacy within neutropathy. We mistake rigidity for rigor. We confuse compliance with healing, and we end up colluding often unknowingly with the very diet culture we claim to oppose. Every time we say, it's not a diet. When people leave these programs ashamed and disconnected from their bodies or financially depleted, that's not healing, it's obviously harm, and it's happening under our professional banner. And I just am not comfortable with that at all. And it directly contradicts the principles we're supposed to uphold as naturopaths. You know, first do no harm. Rigid restriction is harm, especially for someone vulnerable to disordered eating or who already has an eating disorder. Uh, what else? Treat the whole person. Metabolic balance treats blood test results, not human beings with histories and preferences and nervous systems and disordered eating histories. And then we've got the healing power of nature. This is metabolic balance, this is not nature. This is control, and control isn't healing. Why does metabolic balance appeal to practitioners? Well, this might be a well done, um, but I'll say it out loud for those at the back at the back. Metabolic balance offers naturopaths something the industry rarely provides: a turnkey product that promises results, authority, and financial security. It's marketed as a way to differentiate your clinic, complete with scripts, branded materials, and coaching certification. And for practitioners under financial strain, and there are a lot of us, that is such an attractive proposition. But it comes at a cost, ethical compromise, and erosion of trust. When clients hand over$1,700 for metabolic balance, quote unquote, and it triggers restriction, binging, or body distrust, they don't just lose faith in metabolic balance, they lose faith in neutropathy. Another thing I feel the need to say out loud, there are there's a lot of them, is this metabolism doesn't need balancing. Okay, hopefully I'm just reiterating here. Metabolism doesn't need balancing, it needs feeding, restrictive, low energy diets, slow metabolic rate, the opposite of what metabolic balance claims to do. This program, marketed as metabolic restoration, actually teaches the body to conserve energy and distrust hunger. And when practitioners package that as personalized care, we become complicit in metabolic confusion, selling suppression while calling it science. Finally, I know this has been a lot, so thanks for sticking with me this far. And this is only a very select few naturopaths that do this, but the ones who publicly claim to reject dieting while selling metabolic balance just make me want to rip my hair out. This is what I want to say to them. You can't sell metabolic balance and also say you practice body trust. You can't promote trauma-informed care and enforce rigid food rules, and you can't claim to help clients heal their relationship with food while centering weight loss. If your wellness program only works when people eat less, it's not wellness. It's dieting with better branding and a$1,700 price tag. Okay, so that was metabolic balance. I told you this is gonna be a massive episode. There's just a couple more examples of um where naturopaths can really slip into becoming purveyors of diet culture. And the next one is practitioner-only weight loss programs, such as the Shake It program. Have you heard of this? So we're gonna switch gears now to another practitioner-endorsed diet in disguise. Metagenics, one of Australia's biggest supplement companies, runs a practitioner-only program called the Shake It Practitioner Weight Management Program. It's marketed as, end quote, clinically supported, personalized approach to weight loss, end quote. It's pitched to naturopaths and nutritionists as an all-in-one solution. Meal plans, behavioral scripts, and branded shakes and bars, all neatly packaged under the banner of science and individualization. You can read this stuff straight off their website. The framework is really simple. Clients choose between a low-carb or a low-fat plan. They replace some meals with metagenic products, and they're coached by practitioners who undergo company training. The marketing language mirrors that of metabolic balance. So, you know, stuff like metabolic reset, hormonal balance, science-based fat loss, blah blah blah blah blah. But at its core, this is just another fucking structured calorie-restricted program. This is like obvious, right? Um, or hopefully becoming obvious. In this program, practitioners are encouraged to present Shake It as a quote clinical intervention, unquote, rather than a diet, reinforcing the same logic that keeps weight loss culture alive in wellness spaces. So, which basically means if it's wrapped in biochemistry and practitioner branding, it must be different. Let's be honest. A shake and bar meal replacement plan that markets weight loss as a measure of health is dieting. It's not medicine, it is certainly not health. What makes programs like this particularly insidious is that they blur the line between therapeutic care and commercial interest. When supplement companies supply the training, the talking points, and the products, and practitioners sell those products back to their clients, conflicts of interest are baked into that model. This is not holistic care. This is like multi-level marketing disguised as natural medicine. If neitropathy truly stands for treating the whole person and first do no harm, then weight loss programs built on restriction, dependency, and branded supplementation simply don't belong in our profession. Moving on, I'm gonna take talk about elimination diets. So these can be powerful tools. Elimination diets can be really powerful when they're used judiciously, but they can also slide into restriction and obsession when used without context or adequate monitoring. And that can happen easily because clients can sometimes disappear, right? They can sometimes slip away or they go traveling or they just fall off the radar and suddenly they're following a low FODMAP diet for six years. Have met those people. For many naturopaths, the challenge lies in knowing just when a targeted elimination is therapeutically justified and when it's simply another way to control the body under the guise of healing. So I'll give you two examples to just illustrate this. First, the low FODMAT diet for SIBO or IBS. This is evidence-based when it's properly implemented and reintroduced. But it's potentially disastrous when the reintroduction phase is skipped, or when safer, less restrictive strategies, things like fiber modification, gut-directed hypnotherapy, reducing irritants, andor improving the eating environment, um, when those things aren't explored first or thoroughly enough. And that happens just too often, I find. And that's how I end up getting clients who are like, I've been low FODMAT for six years, and my IBS is really not any better. Um, I'll give you another example. We've got things like the low histamine diet for, say, perimenopausal symptoms, um, when we can get that unopposed estrogen happening, progesterone dips. So this can be a useful short-term tool for reducing symptom burden if it's used with close monitoring again and a plan eventually for re-expansion. When it's prescribed without screening for disordered eating, which it so often is, um, and I'm not just talking low histamine diet for perimenopausal symptoms, that's just one example. I'm talking low histamine diet in general for histamine kind of symptoms. If we don't screen for disordered eating first, it doesn't have to be like a big, huge thing. It can just be like a, you know, checking some boxes in your mind, um, just listening between the lines. Uh, or you know, if clients are left without clear timelines or reintroduction steps, it can really easily drift into unnecessary long-term restrictions. One of my worst nightmares. And sometimes I'm like, oh my god, um, how long has this person been on this low histamine dial? We gotta we gotta change that. So before reaching for food lists, it's worth first addressing the root causes, if we can, of histamine intolerance. And they can be things like undernourishment, gut dysbiosis, chronic stress, nutrient depletion, unopposed estrogen, and so on. And, you know, really just try gentler interventions that don't erode body trust. And for neurodivergent clients, by the way, the stakes are even higher. Sensory sensitivities, executive functioning challenges, and a history of being pathologized around eating mean that restriction can hit harder and last longer for these folks. A simple, so-called simple elimination diet can quickly become unmanageable when food preparation, planning, or tolerance are already strained. Instead of assuming non-compliance or low motivation, we really need to ask whether the plan is even accessible to their nervous system. Supporting flexibility, predictable structure, and sensory safety often does more for gut health than any restrictive list ever caught, especially in our neurodivergent clients. So, as practitioners, we need to remember that elimination is a means, not an end. Every restrictive phase should be followed by reintroduction, reflection, and rebuilding. Otherwise, we risk reinforcing the very rigidity that we're meant to help clients heal from. And I get it, like sometimes clients, you know, reschedule and reschedule, reschedule, and they kind of start to slip through the cracks. But we we just gotta try our best, okay, to make sure they're not endlessly restricting for endless periods of time. Alright, we're getting there. Last kind of example that I'm gonna give in this second part is what I call supplements as permission slips. So this is another little subtle trap. Prescribing digestive supplements. So things like enzymes, bitters, magnesium, citrate, pH, hydrochloric acid, or like gut motility blends, um, you know, gut healing powders and stuff. So prescribing that sort of thing to manage symptoms that are actually the physiological consequences of chronic dieting and under-eating. So I'm gonna be really clear. I use these things all the time, all the time in clinic. I love these things. I'm sure you do too, if you're a naturopath or a herbalist or nutritionist. And um the thing is, I use these things alongside um, you know, clients recovering from disordered eating, and we're not just using those things. So they obviously have their place, you know, bitters can support cephalic phase digestion, magnesium relieves constipation, pH can feed beneficial gut flora, but by themselves, they're far from an adequate solution. If the gut is sluggish because the person isn't eating enough, there's no supplement in the world that can replace the mechanical, hormonal, and neurological effects of regular, sufficient, adequate nourishment. Can you hear a theme through this episode? Regular, adequate nutrition. If a client's SIBO is really like low motility from chronic energy restriction, magnesium's not going to fix that. Nourishment will fix that, or at least go a long way towards fixing that. Um, peristalsis itself requires adequate caloric intake. It needs, you know, fat and carbohydrate to stimulate the migrating motor complexes. When the gut isn't been being fed enough, it slows down, not because it's broken, but because it's conserving energy. The constipation, bloating, and food sitting like a rock kind of sensations that follow are often signs of starvation physiology. And we talk a lot about starvation physiology in my upcoming course, um, disordered eating for naturopaths. It's really important to get very, very familiar with the signs of starvation because they're so often confused for other things, and they can look like lots of other things. Anyway, when we reach for supplements instead of asking why someone's gut has gone quiet, we we sort of medicalize starvation. We turn the body's cry for food into a biochemical imbalance to be treated, usually with more capsules, powders, or pills. And this is how the wellness industry quietly colludes with diet culture. You know, clients will leave with a bottle of enzymes or magnesium in instead of a reminder to like eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner. Um, it's it's all good if they're getting, you know, the nutrition the gentle nutrition intervention and the bottle of enzymes or magnesium, but if they're just getting the supplements, it's just not enough. Um, if we're doing that, you know, restrictions gonna get reinforced under the illusion of this sophisticated naturopathic treatment. It's not that, you know, we might be we might be sending them the message that they're not hungry, it's just they're ugly, their digestive fire is weak, or their motility needs support. A supplement is not a substitute for a good old meal. And when we prescribe in ways that enable ongoing undernourishment, we're not practicing holistically. Alright, I've talked about a lot of ways we can practice and harm people, or a lot of ways that clients can come in and want to be affirmed in their disordered eating. So what can we do instead? We don't we don't need to ditch neuropathy. Okay, you can breathe easy. We don't need to pretend our$85,000 degree was a bad investment. We just need to take it back from the detoxes, from the diets, and from the bullshit. True naturopathic medicine, when it's practiced with integrity, is meant to restore harmony, and it does restore harmony and trust in the body rather than reinforce control over it. So a few things we can do. Return to our core principles. You know, our roots already hold the answers. We just need to remember them. Things like um toler totem, treat the whole person, body, mind, and kind of social context. When a client says they feel toxic, look beyond biochemistry, ask about stress, ask about shame, ask about housing, ask about um income earning capacity and hunger and rest. How about first do no harm? You know, even when help sells better. So that means kind of pausing before prescribing another thing or diet plan, even if it's you know trending or super lucrative, maybe especially then. And teach, don't control, docere, doctor is teacher, support curiosity rather than compliance. We want to empower our clients to understand our bodies. We don't want them to fear their bodies or to have to micromanage them. Um, I think this is what really separates healing from health marketing, that docere piece. What else can we do? Learn to see the red flags, uh, know how to screen, reflect, ask why. When someone's gut healing smacks of perfectionism, or when listen listening to your body sounds like fear in disguise, or someone's just like skipping breakfast because they don't have an appetite and they're calling it listening to your body, we gotta pause. You know, there are tools we can use. Some of my favorite screening tools are like the ED15, SCOF, the E26 questionnaires. We can use these to just start these conversations early. Um, if you need a refresher of what to look for in terms of red flags, revisit my blog or the podcast episodes, the eating spectrum, and the five red flags of disordered eating. I can't quite remember which number they are. I think like 34, 35 episodes, 34, 35, something like that. Um, they map out the subtle ways that disordered eating shows up in clinical practice long before it looks like an eating disorder. And this is when we really want to catch it if we can. And if a client seems relieved when you validate their restriction, that's your cue to slow down. We don't want to affirm these folks. We want to take a pause and read between the lines. Other things we can do: build your collaborative pathways. You don't have to fix everything. We can't fix everything. Um, and we actually need to know when not to try. So collaborate with GPs, collaborate with non-diet dietitians and psychologists and trauma-trained practitioners and mental health social workers. Knowing your lane and widening the safety net for your clients is such a sign of strength. And I will say this: while naturopaths can't officially diagnose eating disorders, we can and should recognize the warning signs. When restriction, binging, purging, obsessive food behaviors, stuff like that appear. We want to flag our concerns with that client's GP. We want to recommend further assessment. Um, you know, a simple, respectful letter outlining what you've observed can make a huge difference in that client's health long term and it keeps care coordinated and transparent and within scope, and that keeps you safe as the practitioner as well as the client. If you can't find trusted colleagues yet, try to start building those bridges as best you can now, even if it's um aligning yourself with like-minded naturopaths or naturopaths who specialize in eating disorders and disordered eating. And my dream, my hope is that they will be out there, they are coming. This is so needed, this is so needed in our field, and um, that's my mission to to um teach naturopaths how to develop this skill set and use it because there's such a massive need right now, and finally, we can. Hold space for complexity. So sometimes the most healing thing you can say is, you know, I don't know about that eating disorder, about Arford, about etnos, but I'll find out. Or what would it feel like to make this less about control and more about care? This is real neutropathy, the kind that listens and adapts and refuses to confuse purity with professionalism. If you want to go much deeper into how to actually do this in practice, from screening and red flag recognition to case studies and navigating your scope, we dive into this exact content in detail inside my upcoming practitioner course, Body as Earth, a root cause approach to disordered eating for naturopaths. So in closing, clients are often coming to us first. Holistic and natural health practitioners. They're often coming to us before anyone else. They often don't trust GPs or dietitians for lots of reasons. And that's that's a huge responsibility. Let's meet it with integrity rather than ideology. We don't need to be eating disorder dietitians to support clients with disordered eating. We really don't. But we do need humility, we need discernment, and we need the courage to question our tools. It's time to unlearn the diets disguised as protocols and return to what we do best, I think, which is helping people come home to their bodies and not escape them. If you want to bring this into your own practice, if this resonated with you and you're ready to practice neitropathy that nourishes clients rather than restricts, I've created a free guide to help you start. You can download my free practitioner resource working with clients with disordered eating for naturopaths from my website. It is filled with practical weight neutral strategies to help you recognize red flags and offer care that heals not harms. I also have a shitload of content on my blog. It's all free. And when you sign up for that, for that naturopathic guide, you'll also join the wait list for my upcoming course Root Cause Approach to Disordered Eating for Naturopaths, which is launching mid-2026. You'll get early access, special bonuses, and supportive emails to help you integrate non-diet, trauma-informed, and neuro-affirming care into your work because this is so needed right now and this is what I am here for. Reclaiming Necropathy, I really think starts right here in the messy, beautiful work of helping people come home to their bodies. Thanks for listening, everyone. Until next time, take care of it.