Ep.14/ Body Led Eating As a Pregnant Mom and Teaching Cultural Habits to Your Kids To Develop Healthy Relationship with Food with QTBIPOC Wellness Coach and Dietician, Dalia Kinsey
EP.14/ Body Led Eating As a Pregnant Mom and Teaching Cultural Habits to Your Kids To Develop Healthy Relationship with Food with QTBIPOC Wellness Coach and Dietician, Dalia Kinsey
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Note: This transcription has been created with a help of an AI thus errors and mistranscriptions may be present.
[00:00:00] Dalia Kinsey: Hello? Maternal Health 911? What's your emergency?
[00:00:14] Dr. Jill Baker: Hi, I'm Dr. Joe Baker. I'm a wife, a mother, a community health scholar, an executive director, and a fertility coach. More than 12 years ago, I was on my own infertility journey. Since then, I've made it my personal mission to help anyone who is on their own journey. To become a parent as well as shed light on infertility and maternal health experiences of BIPOC women and couples Now let's begin this week's episode of maternal health 9 1 1
[00:00:53] Dr. Jill Baker: Greetings everyone. Welcome to this new episode of maternal health 9 1 1 I am your Amazing podcast host, Dr. Jill Baker. And I'm very excited to have with me on the show today, someone who is doing some amazing work and we were introduced to each other by our producer, Antoinette. And. I think Antoinette realized we had so many things in common, but particularly I would say our passion on health inequities in this country, particularly for the BIPOC community.
[00:01:43] Dr. Jill Baker: And really trying to think of out of the box kind of solutions to challenge these continuous health disparities and inequities. So I'm very excited about our conversation today and the knowledge that all of you are going to Be able to learn from our conversation today. So today on this show, I have Dahlia Kinsey, a queer black registered dietitian, a keynote speaker, the creator of the body liberation for all podcast and author of decolonizing wellness.
[00:02:21] Dr. Jill Baker: A QT BIPOC centered guide to escape the diet trap, heal your self image, and achieve body liberation on a mission to spread joy, reduce suffering, and eliminate health disparities in the LGBTQIA plus and BIPOC community. Dahlia rejects diet culture. and teaches people to use nutrition as a self care and personal empowerment tool to counter the damage of systemic oppression.
[00:02:55] Dr. Jill Baker: Dahlia works at the intersection of holistic wellness and social justice, continually creating wellness tools and resources that center the most vulnerable. That hold multiple marginalized identities. Dahlia's writing can also be found at WW Dalia Kenzie. Without further ado, general Health 9 1 1.
[00:03:19] Dr. Jill Baker: Audience, welcome Dahlia to the show. So hi.
[00:03:26] Dalia Kinsey: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:03:29] Dr. Jill Baker: I am. So excited to finally have you on the show. How did you get into the work that you do and walk us through your journey for what made you decide to get into the work and. Also, was part of that from any personal experiences that you had yourself?
[00:03:55] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah, I was really interested in using food and plants as medicine from as early as childhood because my maternal grandmother was Raised more in the Caribbean than anything else, and that was basically the way that folks were taking care of themselves when she was coming up, and even though she moved to the United States way back in the senior year, which didn't happen.
[00:04:24] Dalia Kinsey: She still found comparing the two options of a holistic approach versus constantly going to the doctor that just she wasn't getting equal access to care when she went to the doctor's office. So what was her origin country? So she was. Cuban, but her family, a lot of times went back and forth from Cuba to Jamaica.
[00:04:48] Dalia Kinsey: So it's a blur what are we really, a lot of families in Jamaican, a lot still lives in Cuba. Some only speak English. Some only speak Spanish. So we've lost track. We know that of course, a lot of our African ancestry came from being kidnapped. enslaved in that part of the world. We also have a lot of ancestries coming from other places too, because this is what happens when you go through the process of being colonized or being enslaved.
[00:05:21] Dalia Kinsey: You get uprooted from your ancestral lands and then you become a hodgepodge of whatever you get dropped in. And so identity is it's very vague and confusing in our family. We're just like, All over the place, but even that has informed how we relate to our blackness because that's the through line is our African ancestry because everybody's blended, but everybody still seems to identify strongly with.
[00:05:51] Dalia Kinsey: Their African ancestry. Oh. The ones that haven't decided to completely pass through something else. So not everybody,
[00:05:58] Dr. Jill Baker: , right? Yeah. I just had to ask and all, I guess I had a, feeling that Jamaica was in there somewhere because Jamaica is one of my fa, favorite countries and places in all, in the whole world.
[00:06:10] Dr. Jill Baker: I'm not Jamaican. But I grew up around a lot of Jamaicans in the Bronx and my husband is part Jamaican and I got, we got married there. So it's very near and dear. It's one of my favorite
[00:06:23] Dalia Kinsey: places. I love that. And you've seen, I'm sure that Jamaican still overall, you find people using herbs, spices, plant remedies a lot more than you see in the typical.
[00:06:36] Dalia Kinsey: Absolutely. American household. So I feel like I inherited that understanding that plants can do a lot of things. And now the science in a lot of ways is just barely catching up because what people would have called witchcraft or something, people are like, Oh yeah, phytonutrients are actually doing a lot.
[00:06:58] Dalia Kinsey: And garlic does have all of these properties that it makes sense that grandma would just Grind up an entire bulb of garlic and put it in honey and say, why in the world would you want cough syrup? You will stink for a full week, but it really did not cold out pretty quickly. So I grew up with that respect for using food as medicine, but then.
[00:07:22] Dalia Kinsey: That drew me to dietetics and nutrition. But what I didn't understand was how different that Western or American perspective of the role of nutrition was going to be when I was in school. By and large, I felt the through line was everybody should just be in a small body, low key. It would be best if that body was white.
[00:07:41] Dalia Kinsey: That's generally the vibe. That's the through line. And a lot of times when they would talk about different groups of people not having great health outcomes, they would always blame it on that person or that group's failure to assimilate food wise. And it was always attributed to, Oh, soul food. So evil, so dangerous.
[00:08:02] Dalia Kinsey: And these people don't have healthy and it's our job to teach them how to feed themselves. And you can feel in that, like something's not adding up there, but it took a while after being inundated with that type of messaging for me to realize through lived experience that there's a lot that we can get from Western medicine.
[00:08:24] Dalia Kinsey: And there's a lot that we cannot get from Western medicine and we have traditions, especially in the BIPOC community that are way older than what we have here. Like nutrition science is only about a hundred years old. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics just had its hundred. That's still young.
[00:08:41] Dalia Kinsey: It's a baby, right? And it's ignorant to assume that this one knowledge system has more and better than the rest of the entire planet. And. Through living with a chronic illness. I have Graves disease and being in a marginalized body. I'm a femme presenting person I have dark brown skin. I Go through periods when I'm in Different size body so I get a lot of fluctuations Yeah, when I was trying to get diagnosed because I was having all this fatigue.
[00:09:12] Dalia Kinsey: My hair was falling out I was having hot flashes. I had hand tremors. It was a little bit of everything I went to physician after physician and they kept blaming it on. The size of my body and wow, what they imagined I was eating. I even had a couple of people tell me like, Oh, things like fried chicken.
[00:09:34] Dalia Kinsey: You really got to watch that. You shouldn't have a lot of that in your diet. And I was plant based and with my mom not being the American one, she has probably fried chicken like twice in our whole lives. And that was a lot of begging for my dad. So I don't really eat it. I definitely don't know how to make it.
[00:09:53] Dalia Kinsey: And it was just interesting that people were projecting their assumptions about all people with brown skin have the same food culture, which isn't true. We're part of the global majority. How could anyone know what we're all eating?
[00:10:04] Dr. Jill Baker: So yeah, so you're sick and you're eating fried food, you're eating unhealthy food, and you're eating fried chicken because...
[00:10:13] Dalia Kinsey: That's what we all do, apparently. That's the word on the street. So dealing with that there was a big issue with cultural competency in healthcare and wellness in general. And I thought about the one class that my cohort had to take while I was Doing the coursework to be a dietitian before the basically supervised practice.
[00:10:41] Dalia Kinsey: Yes. And how much pushback and how much lack of interest there was in understanding that. You can't read a list of stereotypes and actually know what your non white clients are eating. No one ever tried to memorize what do all white people eat because obviously that's ridiculous. But it apparently didn't feel ridiculous to them to try and memorize what are all South Asian people eating.
[00:11:08] Dalia Kinsey: Oh, we've got a list. It fits in a paragraph. So of course that's accurate. What are all people with black skin eating? We have a list. It's a paragraph. We've got
[00:11:18] Dr. Jill Baker: it covered. I think that's also just. Being lazy, sorry, but it's the truth and trying to shortcut, really taking the time to find out what is going on, what is that person's diet, what are they eating, where do they shop.
[00:11:38] Dr. Jill Baker: What is their culture? I just think that just often. That happens in so many health care settings with trying to shortcut,
[00:11:46] Dalia Kinsey: right? Yeah, it really feels like it's an epidemic in capitalism that everybody wants. A uniform process, a template, they essentially even want to put human beings on the assembly line and as quick as possible.
[00:12:02] Dalia Kinsey: And it just doesn't work. We are too individual. And if you want to make assumptions about people, you're wasting your time, you're wasting your patient's time. You haven't even established what they already know. It's fascinating. It still happens to me all the time that people will give me like a short report.
[00:12:20] Dalia Kinsey: Lecture on general nutrition, even though you fill out paperwork when you come in and they ask you what you do for a living, presumably maybe to understand like how much physical activity you're getting or who knows, but apparently nobody actually reads it because if I said, I'm a dietitian, I don't need you to explain to me what carbohydrates are but it's constant, but it's that assumption.
[00:12:41] Dalia Kinsey: I'm positive that I was a thin white lady. At the exactly the same age, the assumption would be, Oh, of course this person knows what carbs are. Because the assumption is white femme people are very healthy.
[00:12:56] Dr. Jill Baker: And it doesn't always mean that because someone is thin, that they're actually healthy.
[00:13:02] Dalia Kinsey: And that's another, that's been a fascinating thing about having Graves disease.
[00:13:05] Dalia Kinsey: When I've had periods of uncontrollable weight loss and I was extremely ill. Everybody kept saying, you look great. What are you doing? Oh, dying.
[00:13:19] Dr. Jill Baker: Can I get some of that? But I'm sick. You really, you don't really want this.
[00:13:25] Dalia Kinsey: It's really sad. There's some people that... When surveyed some people would be willing to take years off their life in order to be thinner And there's something really sad about that but that has been The dominant view that i've gotten from like american culture's viewpoint on nutrition and diet Is that it's more about the size of the body and how you present and How can you make your body as Euro centric as possible, even if you're not someone who has majority European ancestry, the goal is to achieve this very small, very controlled, like puritanical little European body.
[00:14:06] Dalia Kinsey: Yes. And it is not about wellness. It takes a lot of different forms, but not everybody's supposed to be. Super thin. And especially if you're a person who is really interested in carrying a child, that fat serves a purpose. The fat serves a purpose in everybody's body, it's got a big role in hormone expression.
[00:14:30] Dalia Kinsey: So not everybody needs to be skinny as a rail. If you are skinny as a rail, that may be perfect for you, but it's not for everybody.
[00:14:40] Dr. Jill Baker: And we need more of that. Normalcy and understanding that. It's not for everybody. That should not be the norm because we still have these, body image issues in our community that are taking a toll.
[00:14:57] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah. And it's really difficult, especially when people are thinking about having a family. Maternal health. It's foundational to intergenerational well being because if you look at how genes express themselves, what your grandma went through is affecting you right now, what your grandma went through while your mother was in her womb.
[00:15:20] Dalia Kinsey: So it isn't even just about Your health and the health of your child. It's the health of your grandchildren and it just keeps going and going. So you think about what kind of stressors our ancestors were under trying to survive in this country. It is no wonder that a lot of us are born predisposed to being really sensitive to stress.
[00:15:42] Dalia Kinsey: Because you need it to be, you needed to keep your head on a swivel to stay alive. And nine times out of ten, you still need to keep your head on a swivel. And so that's where our baseline is with our constant chronic elevated stress. It isn't just the environment we're in now. It's what did the people before us go through.
[00:16:04] Dalia Kinsey: And it's not like the way your genes express. It's not a death sentence. It's not. Like this definitive thing that can't be changed or worked with but you need to give yourself even more care and even more gentleness because of what you, the environment, the stressful environment we have been in through the generations.
[00:16:29] Dalia Kinsey: And you never find people encouraging. Now I would say honestly, just since 2020, we do occasionally find, generally it's still POC, encouraging POC to take care of themselves. Even if that means rest, if that means staying home, if that means doing nothing, but by and large, the story has always been, you got to work twice as hard to get half as much.
[00:16:52] Dalia Kinsey: How many times have we heard that? Oh,
[00:16:54] Dr. Jill Baker: We all hear that,
[00:16:56] Dalia Kinsey: right? And then all that pressure, like the focus on black excellence. Yeah. That's great. Yes. We are constantly doing excellent stuff, but what if I want to be regular shmegular? What if I just want to be mediocre? What if I just want to relax?
[00:17:10] Dalia Kinsey: What does that
[00:17:11] Dr. Jill Baker: even mean? Do we know what being
[00:17:15] Dalia Kinsey: reckless sometimes I feel like we don't when I looked at Just how hard it was for me to just rest when I had And how much I felt oh i'm doing something. I shouldn't be doing because i'm just laying here, right? even though i'm always telling people that Self care for a lot of us is just gonna be a nap, is going to be doing nothing, is going to be having clear days on our calendar when we don't plan on being productive, we don't plan on taking care of anybody, we don't plan on taking care of anything, we just plan on just being.
[00:17:55] Dalia Kinsey: But that is a tall order for someone who has been told. That right
[00:18:00] Dr. Jill Baker: there, I make sure that I have one of those days probably at least
[00:18:08] Dalia Kinsey: every Six to eight weeks. And is it hard to just sit still and relax or not anymore?
[00:18:15] Dr. Jill Baker: I think in, maybe in the beginning it was a little hard. I would say I probably committed to starting this maybe a few years ago, definitely once I had kids.
[00:18:25] Dr. Jill Baker: Yeah. And I think you realize that you missing out on time by yourself. It's critical. It's important.
[00:18:36] Dalia Kinsey: And I find a lot of moms, they don't feel comfortable taking anything for themselves. Whether it's time, whether it's like. A bigger piece of cake or the cake with the icing on the end, like everything to their kids.
[00:18:53] Dalia Kinsey: And it's beautiful that compulsion is there, that urge to give your children only the best. But I also think it's really healthy to model for your children, regardless of their gender. That you're a full person. You deserve care. You deserve nice things. And if you want the icing, mommy gets the icing.
[00:19:13] Dr. Jill Baker: Yes, because I talked to my kids about that and I think I try to do a really good job of modeling Self care also because a number of hats that are wearing me. I'm also a caretaker of my own mother So self care for myself. It's is critical or I'm going to be in the hospital and I'm not I don't have time to even be in the house.
[00:19:34] Dr. Jill Baker: I don't have time. So let's not do that. Let's take care of yourself enough and buffer yourself so that you don't end up in the hospital. Just get stressed out.
[00:19:45] Dalia Kinsey: We're having a panic attack. Yeah, because we have the option of listening to our body before things get urgent. Yes. Or we can ignore it and then your body will eventually sit you down or you'll completely Burn it up and never give it time to recover and you'll die way sooner than your body was capable of operating for, but you don't hear a lot of people.
[00:20:14] Dalia Kinsey: Encouraging women, girls, anybody who's been socialized female, you don't hear them being encouraged to prioritize taking care of themselves. So it feels unnatural and being a caretaker that one of the interesting things I talked about in my book was that you can actually look the cells and look for Markers of aging, and that people get aged by being a caretaker because it takes so much, especially when you're caring for someone who used to be able to care for you.
[00:20:50] Dalia Kinsey: It's like a one of a kind difficult experience. My mom had to take care of my grandma, like the last four years of her life, and it was so hard for her to watch. So she had to pull out all of the self care stops and. It was hard to watch her going through it. I was just bystander though. I haven't actually had the experience yet.
[00:21:14] Dalia Kinsey: But already, if your stress levels are constantly elevated because you are a person whose identities aren't being supported in the world, or you're actively being attacked by your government or by Or your family, or by anybody, right? So there's lots of different ways this could look. You can be a trans person, there's all kinds of laws out there that make it okay for people to harass you, yell at you, when you just want to go to the bathroom.
[00:21:39] Dalia Kinsey: It can be hard to keep a job because you're not fully protected.
[00:21:43] Dr. Jill Baker: Amanda Seales was talking about that on our show today, that a trans woman she was, she worked in sales, and she was Number one seller selling the most of whatever the products was in the company. Yeah. And she got harassed with going to the bathroom every
[00:22:05] Dalia Kinsey: day.
[00:22:07] Dalia Kinsey: And what does, to me, that reminds me of the early days of when offices were starting to integrate. So they would let Black people work there, but they didn't have bathrooms for them? How is that even acceptable? Now. How do we go through different levels of oppression ourselves, and then we turn around and see other people going through something similar and do nothing?
[00:22:31] Dalia Kinsey: I can't understand that. But when anybody's going through that type of chronic abuse, basically being treated like you don't matter or you don't exist, that's the way you don't belong. And you don't belong. It really wears on you. And then on top of that, your actual life is going to happen, which could mean.
[00:22:50] Dalia Kinsey: caretaking for an older family member, it could mean stress within, your own family because you decided to have Children and that continues to wear you down. At this point, I feel like almost everybody knows stress destroys the body and you hear people talk about it. Relatives that they know they're convinced died of a broken heart, and I believe it.
[00:23:10] Dalia Kinsey: If that's everybody's assessment, that's probably what happened, right? Even a word for dying of a broken heart in Japanese, like all over the world, people have noticed your emotional state could cause your body to just stop working. Only since 2020 have I really seen the U. S. As a whole, and some of our public health organizations recognize that racism and is stressful.
[00:23:36] Dalia Kinsey: Experiencing racism is extremely stressful. Experiencing sexism is stressful. Experiencing any blackness from any kind of
[00:23:43] Dr. Jill Baker: discrimination. It really everywhere
[00:23:46] Dalia Kinsey: is on you. But prior to recently, no one acknowledged that. And even you could go into mental health care settings and you could try and express that Some of your stress was related to that and the solution was typically you should change your mindset.
[00:24:01] Dalia Kinsey: You know who you are, you shouldn't let it bother you. Or you change
[00:24:05] Dr. Jill Baker: your attitude or how you deal with it or interact
[00:24:10] Dalia Kinsey: with those people, right? Yeah, like maybe you should just be tap dancing again. Shaking and jiving and just assimilating. Or try
[00:24:18] Dr. Jill Baker: to avoid people that you can't avoid people you work with.
[00:24:22] Dr. Jill Baker: It's just people you can't avoid.
[00:24:24] Dalia Kinsey: I find it so much more effective to validate, hold, and make space for people's actual lived experience so that people can feel their feelings and then move through it. Because when everybody's just telling you just pretend it's not happening, just ignore it. What ends up happening is those feelings go somewhere and typically you internalize them And you start looking for coping strategies to deal with all that discomfort that you've stuffed into your body And that could show up as disordered eating black people in general tend to have higher rates of binge eating and I think there's two things at play It's not always being safe to express your feelings because you know sometimes it is not safe to just have a feeling and be black outside your own home.
[00:25:11] Dalia Kinsey: And then secondly, I think a lot of us didn't have unlimited access to food as children. And so you develop a habit of doing like boom and bust eating when there's unlimited food available, you lose your mind because you don't know when it will be like that again.
[00:25:32] Dr. Jill Baker: Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense
[00:25:34] Dalia Kinsey: to me.
[00:25:35] Dalia Kinsey: And I see it a lot in people who don't even think of their upbringing as limited. Like they felt like they were food secure. There was enough food, but there wasn't extra food. So if you were going through a growth spurt and your sibling was at the same time you were probably going to be a little hungry that week or for those two weeks.
[00:25:54] Dalia Kinsey: And so then you go to a church gathering or something and everybody's brought food and you eat until you can't even stand. Because there's unlimited amounts and you're not used to us
[00:26:08] Dalia Kinsey: as adults, even in my office, when somebody brings in food or there's an event, and I know I just saw them eating lunch. But it's like that compulsion, that, Oh, what if it's not there later? Even though at this point we can go, there is unlimited food available to us. We have a car, we have money, we could go get it, but it still feels oh, I better get it while it's here.
[00:26:36] Dr. Jill Baker: So how do people make that con, connection then that maybe what's going on with them and there's a reason why from maybe their childhood?
[00:26:46] Dalia Kinsey: It's really amazing to me how much just noticing makes a difference. And slowing down enough, which can be hard depending on how much time do you get to eat from how many other people you're trying to feed while you're trying to feed yourself.
[00:27:00] Dalia Kinsey: But if you can find the space and the time to ask yourself why you're eating. What would be the most delicious to you right now? What could have made the last meal better? You'll start noticing things. You'll start noticing that some of the things that you always binge on, you don't even and it's really about the fact that it's not around very often, or it seems like a treat.
[00:27:23] Dalia Kinsey: Like I don't really like cake. But usually,
[00:27:32] Dalia Kinsey: I don't like
[00:27:32] Dr. Jill Baker: cake. Oh, but that's okay. You're one of those, my husband doesn't like cake.
[00:27:37] Dalia Kinsey: And it's weird though, because desserts are like the most beautiful out of all food. It usually is enticing because it's pretty. It usually comes out at special times, so sometimes you want it because, ooh, it's a celebration and I want to be part of it.
[00:27:53] Dalia Kinsey: And I've just had to watch how did my stomach feel afterwards? Usually it doesn't sit well with me. Usually two bites in, I'm like, this is too sweet. But then it feels wasteful because of how many times I was told as a kid, clear your plate, to, I took a big old piece, had big eyes, and now I don't want it.
[00:28:17] Dalia Kinsey: And I don't want anyone to see me be wasteful. So it was like so many levels and it's. It's not like I noticed all this in one day. It's just over time when I keep eating it and saying, I'm even like that. I'm even like that. Why am I still eating? It's about mindfulness and just watching yourself with curiosity and.
[00:28:39] Dalia Kinsey: Being open to experimenting what would happen if I go to this office party and I celebrate and I connect with people, but I don't eat, what happens? Do I still have fun? Do I feel deprived? Did I go back 30 minutes later because I really do want it, because I really do love cake? Everybody's answer will be different.
[00:28:57] Dalia Kinsey: I think it's just starting to notice what you're doing and asking, what could be behind this.
[00:29:05] Dr. Jill Baker: Oh, that's such a good. So a lot. I'm sure a lot of people really relate
[00:29:09] Dalia Kinsey: to that Yeah, I'm glad to see more and more people acknowledging the role that your childhood experiences with food can have in adulthood because what I see all the time is like people will go to a health care provider and they're given a list of things to do especially if you're carrying a baby there's a lot of rules and a lot of pressure to be there's a lot whatever
[00:29:32] Dr. Jill Baker: that means there's a lot of things you're not supposed to eat and
[00:29:36] Dalia Kinsey: it's stressful right and some things from a safety standpoint 110%.
[00:29:42] Dalia Kinsey: But some things, it feels like you get a lot of conflicting messages, maybe from the culture, from your family. Like you hear people talking about eating for two. Yeah, sure you are. But that other person is not grown. They're teeny tiny, right? And you probably need about 300 extra calories a day to feed that teeny tiny little person.
[00:30:05] Dalia Kinsey: And 300 extra calories. That's An apple, a cheese stick. An it's not a lot right, , but you've been hearing that your whole life. So of course you go into pregnancy thinking ooh, it's time to eat, gotta eat all the time. when you probably actually don't have to. It's learning to trust your body and also to take the recommendations from your caregivers. Yes. and figure out how is this going to look in my life and understanding the difference between. Optional and not optional. So like the things that can make you sick. Like having a bunch of seafood that's full of mercury.
[00:30:43] Dalia Kinsey: Obviously that's not going to be okay for anybody. Knowing that you need folic acid while you're trying to get pregnant because you don't want to put your child at risk for spina bifida and also knowing that most people don't know they're pregnant the first month. So you should already be eating the folic acid before you know you're pregnant.
[00:31:05] Dalia Kinsey: Knowing that like lunch meat, things that could have listeria, you have to heat them. It isn't that you can't have them, you have to heat them. And you really can't have like raw cheeses and stuff because of the cheeses, and I love cheese.
[00:31:29] Dr. Jill Baker: Although I've become lactose intolerant in the last few years, but I love cheese. Yeah. And yeah, there's so many cheeses you can't
[00:31:37] Dalia Kinsey: eat when you're pregnant. Yeah. But luckily there are some that you can. Yeah. But, so it's not like feta cheese. I
[00:31:44] Dr. Jill Baker: love feta cheese. Can't eat feta cheese.
[00:31:47] Dalia Kinsey: Unless something has changed. No, that's still true. Anything that's basically hasn't been pasteurized. And there's lots of cheeses where that's just not how you make the cheese. And there are a lot of really delicious cheetos that are not right So you just have to think like food safety wise Those things aren't optional because there's some things that would just make you extremely sick But the last thing in the world you need while you're trying to build up nutrients in your body Is to be losing them and you might already be losing them if you're nauseous all the time, right?
[00:32:17] Dalia Kinsey: But also exactly there are some things that can cross That barrier between your body and the baby's body and it would make the baby sick as well so those are the things that are like the no go's. But in general the rules for a healthy diet when you're thinking about fertility are the same as for the general.
[00:32:37] Dalia Kinsey: I was gonna,
[00:32:37] Dr. Jill Baker: yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to talk to us about that because there are you know, a lot of listeners going through infertility and it's one of my areas of awareness. And there are any listeners out there who are trying to get pregnant, what would you, yeah, recommend for diet and any other
[00:32:57] Dalia Kinsey: suggestions?
[00:32:59] Dalia Kinsey: A really plant rich diet is going to be a winner. You want a diet that is going to support your body in its Efforts to run optimally and foods that maybe are difficult for you to process foods that don't have a lot of nutrients. Those aren't supportive. It isn't that you have to make them an absolute no.
[00:33:24] Dalia Kinsey: But when you think about where can I get the most nutrients? It's going to be from vegetables. It's going to be from fruit. It's going to be from legumes. It's going to be from things you would typically see in like a Mediterranean. Diet. Yes. And the folic acid that you want to make sure you're getting or folate.
[00:33:45] Dalia Kinsey: You could get a natural form. You could get a fortified form. So grains that are fortified are going to have folic acid in them. So you'll see it on your cereal boxes. In some countries, they actually just have the fiber. Folic acid supplements, just like everywhere, like at gas stations, you can just grab them and take them.
[00:34:07] Dalia Kinsey: But in the States, we decided to fortify our grains with them so that presumably everybody who can bear a child should be protected from those deficiencies. But at the same time, if you don't. eat any whole grains, you don't eat any fortified grains, you could still find yourself low. So really trying to stay away from alcohol, that one is a given, but I know sometimes that's not so easy for everybody.
[00:34:38] Dalia Kinsey: Some people wait until they are pregnant to cut down. Anything that could stop you from really absorbing all of your nutrients, and tax your body. Alcohol is a lot of work for your body to process. I know that being at a quote unquote appropriate weight is a stressor for a lot of people because we hear Oh, if your weight's really high, according to whatever standards you're being compared to or really low, that fertility could be a struggle, but people in all sizes have babies.
[00:35:12] Dalia Kinsey: So instead of just focusing on the weight, focus on a balanced diet, like a really colorful plate. There are lots of phytonutrients in fruits and vegetables, and sometimes the color and the depth of that color is a hint to you that it's really good for you. So like blueberries, tomatoes, yeah, exactly. And it should be something you like.
[00:35:40] Dalia Kinsey: So it's not a struggle. You don't want to struggle for however long it takes for you to. reach your goals or to go full term. But sometimes
[00:35:49] Dr. Jill Baker: you have to still also
[00:35:54] Dalia Kinsey: do what you have to do. Yeah. And especially when I've worked a lot with pregnant women when I was in public health and one of the recurring themes was that people would have extreme constipation from their iron supplements. Oh. Yeah. Or sometimes like from the amount of iron that was in the prenatal vitamin.
[00:36:14] Dalia Kinsey: So then it comes down to, you got to do what you got to do. Even if you don't like a prune, it may be time for a prune or eating the peels on, I would say more organic fruit if you're eating the peel. So like the peel of an apple that can really help with constipation, but you probably wouldn't want a conventional apple because it's been.
[00:36:37] Dalia Kinsey: Sprayed with pesticide, but at the same time, your body is really tough. The fact that. We are here right now means that we came from a bunch of survivors and Perfection is not required if perfection in your diet was required. We would none of nobody would be here right now, right?
[00:36:56] Dr. Jill Baker: That's true
[00:36:58] Dalia Kinsey: So you do the best you can and when things come up, there's a lot of really good resources out there I know a lot of people have stigmatized The WIC program, originally that program came to exist to improve low birth weights, and it has a track record of improving that.
[00:37:17] Dr. Jill Baker: The history of it.
[00:37:19] Dalia Kinsey: And there are, even if your income is too high to participate in the WIC program, a lot of times there's lots of educational things you can draw up by the health department for. And you don't have to be enrolled in anything. A lot of times people are just sitting there waiting for somebody and need them.
[00:37:36] Dalia Kinsey: So there could be all kinds of breastfeeding support at the health department general nutrition ed, and if you can find somebody patient, you can sit there and ask a million questions.
[00:37:52] Dalia Kinsey: So they have a lot more time sometimes to see clients than maybe your other providers that maybe run a more packed schedule. But a lot of people because of their own just because of the stigma around being lower income, they don't even want to go into that.
[00:38:11] Dr. Jill Baker: Although there's some great resources.
[00:38:13] Dr. Jill Baker: When I was pregnant with the twin, I made myself eat certain things because I'm not a big fruit person. I know it's weird, but it's the truth. I had a fruit smoothie, like I made myself a fruit smoothie every single day, and I would just switch the fruits. Oh, I like that idea. And I made myself, because I like vegetables more than fruit, I did, I made myself eat dark green vegetables every day, so either whether it was kale or spinach or something.
[00:38:41] Dr. Jill Baker: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Which I ultimately feel that it made my kids they are, they're still, they're excellent eaters. They just took to food really well, and they all, actually, they all love fruit and vegetables. That's their
[00:38:57] Dalia Kinsey: preference. I feel like there's probably something to that.
[00:39:01] Dalia Kinsey: I know for a fact that there is some research to indicate that, what you're eating while you're nursing. can definitely make the baby more open to wide variety of flavors because just like I mentioned earlier with the garlic that stuff is funky and so it gets into the milk too but it's a good thing because it exposes them to a more wide array of odors and flavor profiles.
[00:39:27] Dalia Kinsey: And then they're more open to trying them when it's time for them to eat solids, especially since when you're a little kid, that's when your sense of smell is the strongest. I love broccoli, but broccoli, that sulfur smell, it's It doesn't smell good. So if we think it smells bad, it smells really bad to children.
[00:39:48] Dalia Kinsey: Yes. So if they haven't been exposed to those different kind of pungent, funky vegetable odors, because some of the veggies that are the best for you smell the least appetizing. That's true. Yeah. So you're giving the baby a leg up. when you're eating it. And then two, they probably are going to see you modeling, liking all kinds of different things.
[00:40:10] Dalia Kinsey: So it all connects. But I'm not positive how much happens while you're in the womb, but I'm sure. I feel like there's,
[00:40:17] Dr. Jill Baker: I feel like there's a connection. Yeah. I didn't get to nurse the twins. I did get to nurse my Mari, my baby. And I did the same thing with eating just. eating a variety of things and then really sticking to the introducing the new foods and having a schedule of when this new Fruit was introduced, did they not like it?
[00:40:45] Dr. Jill Baker: Okay, change. Come back three weeks later, try it again. Because a lot of parents like give, they give up, but it's bring the fruit or the vegetable back
[00:40:52] Dalia Kinsey: again. Yeah. And I heard free and I think
[00:40:55] Dr. Jill Baker: that's where people go wrong and they're like, oh, my kid doesn't like vegetables.
[00:40:58] Dalia Kinsey: No, you gotta give it Definitely more than one, give one time.
[00:41:02] Dalia Kinsey: Some kids will eat literally anything. But a lot of kids, I've heard numbers like as high as it could be 21 times. before a child will really accept a food. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a lot. So basically it's every time, it comes back especially if you are super busy and you're like doing a, you have a general cycle menu that you do as your house, you just bring it back.
[00:41:27] Dalia Kinsey: You just give them an opportunity. Don't force them to finish it. That too. That's important. In this house, we try stuff. You can spit it out if you want. You don't have to clear your plate. That really helps. So they don't feel like, Oh my God, once I get it on my plate, I'm locked in. And I think that was
[00:41:44] Dr. Jill Baker: our generation.
[00:41:45] Dr. Jill Baker: I don't think. Now it doesn't have to be. And I think that lends to what you said something before about, okay also what was going on in your household for your family to have and maybe limited income and you're going to eat this food. That took a lot for our family to get for you. And now it's just, not to say of course it's food insecurity is still.
[00:42:09] Dr. Jill Baker: A major issue, particularly in this country. But I think now if you can just like changing kind of the attitude towards food in your household and our whole thing has always been with eating. Try it once. Yeah. Try it once. Don't say no. Just be open to trying it and see if you like
[00:42:29] Dalia Kinsey: it. Yeah, at least give it a chance and then know that over time your taste may change And they do right?
[00:42:37] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah, absolutely And you might find you maybe even for me there have been some foods that I realized oh I just didn't like the way this person made it. So
[00:42:46] Dr. Jill Baker: I will tell you I never liked mushrooms Now,
[00:42:54] Dalia Kinsey: was it the preparation that
[00:42:55] Dr. Jill Baker: changed or just maybe it was the preparation or just getting older? Yeah, but I will tell you, it's also been for me, it's been traveling around the world and being able to do that.
[00:43:07] Dr. Jill Baker: And I had, I went to Barcelona maybe eight years ago. And just went to this restaurant that one of my friends told me to go to shout out to Adela. And they just brought out different food. And it was like, okay, we're going to bring out all this different food to you. No pressure. Yeah. And I was like, Hey, I'm going to try every single
[00:43:29] Dalia Kinsey: thing.
[00:43:31] Dalia Kinsey: I love that eating style with tapas because it's like... It was tapas,
[00:43:34] Dr. Jill Baker: duh. Somebody at the table will
[00:43:36] Dalia Kinsey: eat it. Yes, it was tapas. So you could just have one, it's not wasted. Somebody else wants it. I like
[00:43:41] Dr. Jill Baker: that idea. Yeah. It was... Was grilled mushroom. Life. I was like then I guess I like mushrooms. I thought that.
[00:43:50] Dalia Kinsey: Oh, that's really awesome. Yes. So interesting. Yeah. And being able to teach your kids that, Hey, taste buds change. People change. There are lots of different ways to make food and getting them involved in the process so they can experiment and be part of it. Like that. Oh, see
[00:44:06] Dr. Jill Baker: this. I'm not forgot. I forgot to tell you.
[00:44:09] Dr. Jill Baker: That my, I don't know if I did, but my twins cook. So Gavin and Gemma cook.
[00:44:13] Dalia Kinsey: Oh, that's awesome. They cook for real cook. Like how old are they?
[00:44:18] Dr. Jill Baker: They're going to be 12 next month. Oh, that's excellent. They actually cook better. They cook better. I'm sorry. My husband, I'm sorry. He cooks, they're on the same level as me.
[00:44:32] Dr. Jill Baker: But I, I started teaching them literally when they were maybe three, I would just have them in the kitchen with me. And they would have their own, step stool. So every time I cooked, I would just have them in the kitchen with me, just if I'm making pasta, I would have them, put in the noodles.
[00:44:50] Dr. Jill Baker: So I just started them that way with that and just had, and as they got older, I just had it just started them, progress with what they could do in
[00:44:59] Dalia Kinsey: the kitchen. And that can really help a lot with picky eaters. There's more buy-in when they made it themselves. And especially when you can start teaching them like how to express what you didn't like about it, because then I can help teach you how to address that.
[00:45:17] Dalia Kinsey: If it's too sour or if it's too mushy, if it's too, a lot of kids don't have the language to tell you. They just spit it out. Say it's nasty. And then sometimes people say they just won't eat it. Building that vocabulary, building that skillset. I think a lot of people are afraid that kids will get hurt in the kitchen, but they have a lot of cool kids, safe equipment now, like little knives where you can't cut your finger off.
[00:45:43] Dalia Kinsey: And there's lots of stuff specifically for them. And you can give them really simple tasks. and then keep building. And that's another thing that you can probably find because not everybody cooks anymore. So I know some folks who are parents, they wouldn't even know where to start because they don't cook.
[00:46:01] Dalia Kinsey: But if you have the time and you're interested in learning, there are like mommy and me cooking classes or family cooking classes out there. And there's YouTube and there's little kids chefs on YouTube as well. Like some kids learn on their own through YouTube, which is just as good. It's perfectly
[00:46:21] Dr. Jill Baker: valid, right?
[00:46:22] Dr. Jill Baker: But it's like you said earlier about family passing down heritage and because I came from a family of I lived with my whole extended family, my parents, my grandparents and my great aunt. So my great aunt was a baker and she made me, has this infamous kind of Carrot cake that now I bake and it's a family recipe.
[00:46:45] Dr. Jill Baker: So I used to bake with her as a kid and then my grandmother cooked. I didn't start cooking myself until I was in my 20s, until I started living by myself. But with the kids, it was just... Okay, I'm going to pass down what I grew up with. Yeah. And then my husband's family being the same and my sister in law, my sister in law shout out to Fakisha.
[00:47:08] Dr. Jill Baker: She is a chef and has her own catering company. And she lived with us for a year when I delivered Amari. And so she would cook, she cooked, that's what she does. And so she cooked every single
[00:47:22] Dalia Kinsey: day. And everybody just
[00:47:23] Dr. Jill Baker: got jealous. And then when she left, I was like, I'm sorry, I can cook for you all, but I'm not, I can't cook, but then it was another.
[00:47:32] Dr. Jill Baker: Thing that kind of like her reinforcement, the kids had to, people in their family who cooked and loved it and enjoyed it. And so that just helped spark another fire for the twins. So it just took their cooking to another level. And that's
[00:47:47] Dalia Kinsey: a beautiful thing. And one of the most insidious things about how racism plays out for a lot of people of color in the States is our communities are compromised.
[00:47:57] Dalia Kinsey: So a lot of people don't have access to a lot of intergenerational community anymore. But if you have the bandwidth, you can decide to change that. You can seek out other families who want connection. You can, there are programs, I know they're not everywhere, but I love those programs that basically match little kids with.
[00:48:22] Dalia Kinsey: Oh, yes. I love those. Oh my gosh. I think people get so much out of that. Generations get so much out of that. You don't have to raise your kids alone. That's not the way our ancestors did it. We always raised children in community. And that isn't just something that happened a lot of times I hear people attribute everything to slavery.
[00:48:42] Dalia Kinsey: No. There's a lot of cultural traditions that survived. through enslavement. And that is one of them. It isn't just something we do because, people are getting incarcerated at elevated rates because they're being targeted and it's a coping tool. No, it's also just part of the culture. You don't have to raise kids alone.
[00:49:04] Dalia Kinsey: That's a lot to ask of two human beings or one human being.
[00:49:09] Dr. Jill Baker: Period. And yeah, so I'm hoping that I've said to a lot of my friends, I'm like maybe Gavin and Gemma will do some cooking classes or do something because I have a lot of friends who are like can you, can they teach my kids how to cook?
[00:49:19] Dr. Jill Baker: I'm like, surely. Oh,
[00:49:21] Dalia Kinsey: that would be
[00:49:22] Dr. Jill Baker: awesome. Yeah. Let's do it. Why not?
[00:49:25] Dalia Kinsey: I love that. Even if they want to do something short, cause people cooking skills on Tik TOK too.
[00:49:31] Dr. Jill Baker: Yeah, I post some of their stuff on Instagram and we always get a lot of views. But so now it's become a, now we all cook in the house together and we meal prep together, come up with the meal plan for the week, which I got from my friend Alicia and my husband.
[00:49:46] Dr. Jill Baker: My husband who's you need to meal prep, just, it's going to make our lives easier.
[00:49:51] Dalia Kinsey: And there's five of us. Yeah, exactly. That's one of those things that like it's work, but it saves you effort. I'm like, it does. Finding the stuff like that and finding ways to make it more fun and involve everybody.
[00:50:01] Dalia Kinsey: I think that's usually the key to sustainability. Is it fun or is it a burden or a chore that we have put on one person in the house?
[00:50:10] Dr. Jill Baker: And that person was me for a while. And then I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want
[00:50:17] Dalia Kinsey: my mom had a cooking schedule of a, she put us, I feel like this is totally a West Indian thing. They're like, stop standing there and do something useful. They'll say that to a four year old. Yeah. So we were in there trying to make ourselves useful way before we could be useful. But it's very helpful because you learn so much more quickly when you're a child that sure you can learn when you're older.
[00:50:42] Dalia Kinsey: But if you have the bandwidth and the patience to let your kid make a mess. Spill stuff. Do whatever. And they will. They will learn so much faster than they will if you wait until they're like 19 and then you're trying to tell them at the last minute. It will be too
[00:50:58] Dr. Jill Baker: late at that point. It would be too late.
[00:51:00] Dr. Jill Baker: It would be too late. And then the other part of it is, wanting them to be able to take care of themselves. Yeah. And be healthier.
[00:51:07] Dalia Kinsey: And to make food a source of joy. Something with community. And we
[00:51:11] Dr. Jill Baker: have so much fun to be cooked together. And then, so now what we do. It's because everybody, has their day of cooking now.
[00:51:19] Dr. Jill Baker: We critique each other's meals. It's hilarious. And we rate each other's food. It's fun. And it's so funny. And it's fun. It's
[00:51:29] Dalia Kinsey: a lot of fun. I love the idea. Yeah, whatever's fun for your family. Because some people, if you can gamify it, they'll be way more into it. And then we're
[00:51:38] Dr. Jill Baker: all now competitive.
[00:51:39] Dr. Jill Baker: Because now it's okay, we all are cooking on the same. level. So now it's become a little bit competitive
[00:51:44] Dalia Kinsey: now. Oh, I love that idea. I think that would have gotten really ugly in my childhood home.
[00:51:52] Dalia Kinsey: But it does sound
[00:51:53] Dr. Jill Baker: fun. It's Oh, Gavin, you're Sam. We also Gavin makes salmon all the time is actually really good. His thing is a lot using lime, but he overdoes it with the lime and we tell him that you haven't put too much man too much But that's his thing really helpful.
[00:52:08] Dalia Kinsey: That's gonna be really helpful for him over time Yeah, that's exactly that's the beauty of what food can be like yeah, a lot of us have a really ruptured or damaged relationship with food because it was always presented as a way to just Control the size of the body, or it's something you just have to do to survive when food can actually be a source of pleasure.
[00:52:29] Dalia Kinsey: It could be a way to celebrate your own culture, your food culture. It can be a way to build stronger connections between the generations. You really can reclaim it and make it your own and turn it into something that supports you rather than something that stresses you out. We
[00:52:48] Dr. Jill Baker: absolutely. But yeah, but I would say to anyone who wants their kids to cook, it's doable.
[00:52:53] Dr. Jill Baker: Start them as early as possible because then it's not when they have their own opinions and they're like, no, I don't want to do that. And they're doing other things start as early as possible and don't be scared to have them in the kitchen. There's always something that. They can do.
[00:53:10] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah. And even that feeling.
[00:53:12] Dalia Kinsey: It cracks me up how excited now I work in a school system. And so I could work more with the high schoolers, but who wants to do that? No, elementary schoolers and the preschoolers and they want to help. Yes, they do. They want to be useful. They want to contribute. And the way they get so excited, if you tell them like, Oh, I need you to hold this.
[00:53:38] Dalia Kinsey: I need you to carry this. It doesn't matter how small the contribution is. If you frame it as important, it really helps them understand, like the role in the family is important. Oh, I think a lot of. It's very easy, especially depending on birth order. If you're the middle kid, you usually feel invisible.
[00:53:57] Dalia Kinsey: You're the youngest and there's a little bit of a gap. You feel like you're past and people are always telling you to go away. It's easy to feel like you don't belong in your own house as a child, even if you're being the sweetest, kindest adult. It's so easy because the kids are, they've taken in everything you're saying, every face you're making and making it mean something because they're growing.
[00:54:19] Dalia Kinsey: Learning their place in the world. And this is another opportunity to remind them your contributions are valid, doesn't matter how little you are, you're important. What you do is important.
[00:54:30] Dr. Jill Baker: Yeah. Cause we went through that where Amari is five and a half. And so even with him, I'm like, okay, so now it's.
[00:54:37] Dr. Jill Baker: Time for him to start, start learning too. And he wants, he's whatever I can do, he wants to help. He's can I pour, the flour in the pot? Can I help with the noodles? And my husband made eggs the other day on, over the weekend and. Amari, he wanted to help and my husband was like, Oh, it's easier.
[00:54:55] Dr. Jill Baker: It's faster if I do it myself. And I said, we can say that about anything. And I said, no, we have to slow down and teach him or he's not going to learn. And so my husband was like, yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're right. And amari
[00:55:09] Dalia Kinsey: helped him with that, especially people raised in the eighties and nineties. I think a lot of us got that message that if you couldn't do it quickly, if you couldn't do it if you weren't the fastest, don't do it.
[00:55:19] Dalia Kinsey: Don't do it right away. And that hasn't served us well in adulthood. No, it has
[00:55:26] Dr. Jill Baker: not.
[00:55:29] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah, of course you can do it faster if you don't have to show some little person with no dexterity. You don't have good dexterity as a child. That's just how human development works. You're gonna drop stuff.
[00:55:40] Dr. Jill Baker: And like you said, because he's the youngest, I'm trying to make sure that doesn't mean that he's gonna be less self sufficient.
[00:55:48] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah no. Yeah. Maybe one day people will say, Oh, I can't even tell you're the youngest.
[00:55:57] Dr. Jill Baker: I hope we get there.
[00:56:01] Dalia Kinsey: It's 20. It's a journey. I am so impressed by the amount of work people do who are called to be a parent. Cause I didn't get the call. So I didn't answer right. But
[00:56:14] Dr. Jill Baker: you're still working with children. There you go. Yeah.
[00:56:17] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah. I'm here as a support, but under no circumstances would I do the amount of labor constantly doing.
[00:56:24] Dr. Jill Baker: And that's why, yeah. And a lot of people are like, how did you even do, yeah. I'm not saying like what I did is for everyone. But I knew ultimately that, as you said, and as we talked about, Dahlia, self care. I knew that ultimately, for my own self care, my own well being, because I was the primary cook for so long.
[00:56:45] Dr. Jill Baker: If I don't teach these children how to cook, I'm going to be a very angry
[00:56:50] Dalia Kinsey: mother. Oh yeah, that's a good point too. You're putting in the work up front to save yourself. A lot of work. A lot
[00:56:57] Dr. Jill Baker: of work. And then what happens? The pandemic hits and we're home. And we are cooking and what happened? My kids cook.
[00:57:04] Dr. Jill Baker: It was nothing. My kids cook anyway. So it wasn't, it was like, Oh my gosh, this skill that I put into my children is saving my family right now.
[00:57:15] Dalia Kinsey: Oh, that's a beautiful thing. And then y'all have also found ways to make it fun.
[00:57:19] Dr. Jill Baker: And now because it's not survival, right? Yeah. Cause I took a little bit of, I honestly, after the pandemic, I took a little bit of a break with cooking.
[00:57:28] Dr. Jill Baker: I have to be honest. Yeah. Just because we were just, in cooking for survival mode, yeah. And then I lost my, my, my own kind of personal passion a little bit. But then I think my kids helped me to
[00:57:41] Dalia Kinsey: bring it, get it back. Now that's a beautiful thing. I do see that it goes both ways, how people grow and change with their children.
[00:57:49] Dalia Kinsey: So almost everything you're doing for them is also for you. It's family unit. It's for the generation before and the generation after it's really. It's amazing to watch, but that's valid too. When you slow down, when you do less, when you don't do all the things and other people doing more and you compare yourself, there's no one way to do anything and there's certainly no one way to be a parent.
[00:58:14] Dalia Kinsey: And we've, we all have parents and some of them, there were definitely times in our lives where we thought they were perfect. By the time we get to adulthood, obviously everybody knows better than that. They're people and they. Did the best they could with whatever they had and that's the only obligation That's all you can ask from anybody and that's all we should ask from ourselves, right?
[00:58:39] Dalia Kinsey: And I would also say maybe you don't have to do the best you can every day That's just like in general. You don't have to be at a hundred percent, right?
[00:58:49] Dr. Jill Baker: Yeah, so this was just so great before we part for this, going to have continuous conversations on this show and on your show for anyone listening out there who may be, and I would say it's a lot of people struggling with incorporating self care into their lives.
[00:59:09] Dr. Jill Baker: What guidance would you give to folks in that place right now who are really struggling with. self
[00:59:17] Dalia Kinsey: care to try and give yourself compassion. And if sometimes it's hard to even think, what would it look like to be kind to myself? Think of what you would say to someone you love. Honestly, sometimes like a child that you love, whether it's a relative's child, a friend's child who was having trouble being kind or patient with themselves.
[00:59:44] Dalia Kinsey: How would you ask them to take a day off? What would you engage them in? If you see this child having a hard time. You would think about the things that they do that always makes them laugh or makes them look like so content or safe or nurtured and say, Hey, how about we do that today? For some people, self care is laying in bed, watching cartoons, cuddling with a pet, cuddling with their children.
[01:00:10] Dalia Kinsey: It could be locking yourself in the room and telling everybody to figure out their own meals. It could be anything. It could be dancing. It could be, Going out and doing something really luxurious, or it could just be meditating for 20 minutes. Yeah. Getting a stretch in, driving that extra 10 minutes to get that snack you want, but you never bother to do it for yourself.
[01:00:36] Dalia Kinsey: You only get it when you pick it up for somebody else. It can literally be anything that makes you feel loved and taken care of. And the more you can love on yourself. The more bandwidth you have to radiate love out to everybody around you. Ooh, I love
[01:00:56] Dr. Jill Baker: that right there. That really stuck with me. I think a lot of people can relate
[01:01:00] Dalia Kinsey: to that.
[01:01:03] Dalia Kinsey: Yeah. It's tough sometimes to be nice to yourself. Cause I know most of us weren't taught that was even a thing we should do. It's like we were modeled tough love for yourself, give yourself harsh goals and then beat yourself up when you don't need them and strive to always be excellent. But I am inviting everybody.
[01:01:23] Dalia Kinsey: To have some regular shmegular days
[01:01:26] Dr. Jill Baker: and be regular sometimes, be regular.
[01:01:31] Dalia Kinsey: Exactly, because you are enough no matter what you're doing. You don't have to produce, you don't have to do anything to be valuable. You exist, you are valuable, period, end of story.
[01:01:40] Dr. Jill Baker: And it doesn't mean that you still can feel however you feel about yourself.
[01:01:47] Dr. Jill Baker: But sometimes it's not always worth it to go the extra distance for everything.
[01:01:53] Dalia Kinsey: Amen.
[01:01:54] Dr. Jill Baker: There we go. We're going to end on that note. I love that. So thank you all for tuning in this week. I'd like to thank my guest Dalia Kinsey once more for joining us today. Dalia, can you let the listeners know how they can find you or connect with you on social?
[01:02:16] Dalia Kinsey: Yes. The only social media I'm actively using is LinkedIn. Like an elderly person, but no, if you want to check out my work, or if you want to get, I have a really short to the point guide on understanding your hunger and trying to work through binge eating. And it is on the main page of my website. So that's Dahlia Kinsey.
[01:02:43] Dalia Kinsey: com. And you can grab that for free and jump on the mailing list and keep in touch that way. And
[01:02:50] Dr. Jill Baker: let them know also where they can find your book.
[01:02:53] Dalia Kinsey: Oh, exactly. So anywhere books are sold and there's also a hyperlink on the website, but it's decolonizing wellness and it's really, it's a keeper it's. It's short because I know not everybody has a ton of time to work on healing work.
[01:03:10] Dalia Kinsey: And so it's concise and to the point and it has tangible activities that you can do when you feel like you don't even know where to start to try and feel better about the body that you're in and the food that you take in to nourish you.
[01:03:27] Dr. Jill Baker: Dahlia, thanks once again for being on the show today. For everyone else, you can find the Maternal Health 9 1 1 podcast on all platforms where you listen to podcasts.
[01:03:40] Dr. Jill Baker: And you can also follow me, your host dr. Jill baker on instagram And twitter and tiktok, with handle at dr. Jill baker Feel free to dm me with your questions and thoughts and to share your fertility and or maternal health story for more information on your Beautiful and smart podcast host visit www.
[01:04:09] Dr. Jill Baker: drjillbaker. com. Also, please feel free to rate the show and I do welcome the feedback. Peace and blessings everyone. Thanks for listening.
[01:04:25] Dr. Jill Baker: Thank you for listening to this episode of Maternal Health 911. Please follow the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Feel free to DM me with your questions and thoughts, or to share your infertility, fertility, and maternal health story. For more information on this podcast and your host, visit www.
[01:04:46] Dr. Jill Baker: drjoebaker. com. Listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review it. It really helps the show, and the feedback is welcome.
During our conversation with Dalia Kinsey, we explored the concept of wellness and how it relates to our daily lives as mothers. Dalia emphasized the importance of building positive relationships with food and incorporating them into family activities. She believes that wellness is not just about physical health, but also about mental and emotional well-being.
Here are some key takeaways from our discussion:
Dalia is a QTBIPOC Dietician and an advocate for a non-diet culture. Dalia believes that everyone should have access to healthcare and wellness services, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
Dalia emphasized the importance of building a positive relationship with food, which she defines as "food freedom." This involves letting go of restrictive diets and allowing yourself to enjoy a variety of foods without guilt or shame.
Dalia also talked about the importance of self-care, which she defines as "any activity that we do intentionally to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health." This can include things like meditation, exercise, and spending time with loved ones.
As mothers, Dalia encouraged us to model healthy behaviors for our children. This includes eating a variety of foods, listening to our bodies, and practicing self-care.
Finally, Dalia reminded us that wellness is a journey, not a destination. It's important to be patient with ourselves and to celebrate our progress, no matter how small.
Overall, our conversation with Dalia Kinsey was both inspiring and informative. We learned about the importance of building positive relationships with food, practicing self-care, and modeling healthy behaviors for our children. We hope that our listeners will take away some valuable insights from our discussion and apply them to their own lives.
Guest Bio:
Dalia Kinsey is a queer Black Registered Dietitian, keynote speaker, the creator of the Body Liberation for All podcast, and author of Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body Liberation. On a mission to spread joy, reduce suffering, and eliminate health disparities in the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community, Dalia rejects diet culture and teaches people to use nutrition as a self-care and personal empowerment tool to counter the damage of systemic oppression. Dalia works at the intersection of holistic wellness and social justice, continually creating wellness tools and resources that center the most vulnerable, individuals that hold multiple marginalized identities. Dalia’s writing can be found daliakinsey.com
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