Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Episode #34 Losing the shame, with Lyndi Cohen aka The Nude Nutritionist
To celebrate the launch of TJI’s Body Image Series ‘Every Body’, Tami and Dash speak to Dietitian, Nutritionist, Author, Podcaster, Ted X Speaker, TV Personality and Influencer Lyndi Cohen. Lyndi discusses her experience growing up as a South African migrant in Sydney's Jewish community and how cultural norms and expectations shaped her relationship with body image and dieting. Together, they unpack the link between diet culture and intergenerational trauma in Jewish communities and Lyndi shares practical tips for breaking free from these harmful cycles.
Articles relevant to this episode:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/how-do-you-ladies-stay-so-slim
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/beyond-body-shaming
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/under-the-sheitel
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/my-experience-of-my-body-has-radically-shifted
Email your feedback and voice memos here: ashamed@thejewishindependent.com.au
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Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia, the Middle East and the world at large? But a little bit ashamed that you're barely keeping up to date.
Speaker 2:Well, you've come to the right place. I'm Dash Lawrence and, in this podcast series, your third cousin, tammy Sussman, and I call on experts and each other to address all the ignorant questions that you might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. Ashamed to Admit. Hello everyone, I'm Dash Lawrence, executive Director here at the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 1:And I'm Tammy, Don't do so well with small talk. Sussman, Do I Dash?
Speaker 2:No, no, you don't.
Speaker 1:It's one of the things I've picked up about you over the time we've been working together. Yeah, I like to get straight into it, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know, I know you actually might be. You might be Finnish. You know the Finns, they don't care much for small talk.
Speaker 3:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. It's a cultural idiosyncrasy of the Finns particularity of being Finnish. You just want to get straight to the heart of the matter. No small talk.
Speaker 1:Taboos are my jam, they're my plum povidal.
Speaker 2:Speaking of taboos, you've curated a TJI series, which has just been published, it's called Everybody series, which has just been published, it's called Every Body. And over the next six weeks, tammy, I understand our readers will get to read some fascinating pieces from Australian writers covering a range of issues relevant to the taboo topic of body image, from body dysmorphia to body acceptance or neutrality. Tell me, tammy, how did the idea for Everybody come about?
Speaker 1:Back in September of 2024, I was at Alana Benjamin's cookbook launch in conjunction with the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 2:This is the one about Australian Indian Jewish cooking right. Correct.
Speaker 1:So Ilana Benjamin was in conversation with Lisa Goldberg from the Monday Morning Cooking Club, high-profile Jewish influencer.
Speaker 2:Bala Booster right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bala Booster and they were having this fascinating conversation. Here were two smart, brilliant, talented, articulate women. It was such a great launch. And then it came to question time and there's always that awkward kind of silence at the beginning of question time when people are deciding whether or not they'll raise their hand. And then, finally, a woman in the audience raised her hand and she would have been in her 60s and she says Alana, I'm just wondering how you managed to stay so slim when you do all that cooking.
Speaker 1:I could feel my jaw drop to the ground and I was looking around the room to kind of see if I was the only person having this reaction, and I have been accused of being a highly sensitive person. So there was a part of me that thought you know, maybe I'm just overthinking it. So at the end of the launch, alana and Lisa were still hanging around and I went over and I said hello and I wanted to get a sense from them how they felt about the question. I said did you find that question off-putting? But she wasn't surprised, because she has done lots of events with the other women that make up the Monday Morning Cooking Club and she said that people have commented on their shapes and their weight before.
Speaker 1:So I just said as a throwaway comment hey, maybe there's a TJI series in this. I said, lisa, do you think you'd want to write something? And she said no, I don't think I'm ready to open that can of worms. So I left it. But then some time passed and I reached out to Lisa again and I said I'm going to pitch this to TJI and just wanted to just check quickly before I do. Do you think you have a piece in you about this? And she got back to me and she said actually, yes, I do have something to say.
Speaker 2:You've also included the voice of community mover and shaker, Speedy Shatari.
Speaker 1:I did, and their piece is fantastic too. I interviewed a bunch of blokes for this series as well Sephardi, mizrahi, ashkenazi men. I spoke to secular, modern, orthodox and Orthodox women about hair covering and dressing modestly and how that impacts their body image. I spoke to a body image therapist who facilitates workshops and retreats to help people enjoy a positive relationship with their body and improve self-esteem and mental health.
Speaker 2:And full disclosure. That happens to be your sister, lana Sussman Davis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that one is going to be published as a conversation because we had a really at times funny chat. We spoke a lot about our upbringing in a tight-knit Jewish community as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, really excited about this one Tammy To celebrate the launch of the Everybody series. Today, on A Shame to Admit, we're going to interview Lindy Cohen. We're going to interview Lindy Cohen.
Speaker 1:Lindy Cohen is a dietician nutritionist, author, podcaster, tedx speaker, tv personality and influencer otherwise known as the nude nutritionist. She's also the loveliest person and it's a privilege to have her with us today, lindy Cohen, otherwise known as the nude nutritionist. Welcome to A Shame to Admit, gosh, it's good to be here.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Lindy, tell us a little bit about your upbringing. I understand that you're from Sydney's east. Tell us a little bit about that and your early relationship with food and with eating.
Speaker 3:Well, I was actually born in South Africa, as many of us Australian Jews seem to be. I came over in one of the big exoduses. In 1994, when I was four years old, arrived on my birthday, lost a birthday, not bitter about it at all and I actually moved into the North, not the East. I went to Masada College. I was very much a North girl, riding my bicycle around the leafy green suburbs of St Ives and loved it. It was a great place to grow up.
Speaker 3:The challenge is, though, is quite early on. I was five years old when I was first noticing the fact that I was bigger than the other girls. They had these straight up and down bodies. I had a little tummy, I had little thighs that touched, and I already knew at five years old that this wasn't right. It wasn't until I was 11 years old that I went on my first diet, and what that looked like is my parents took me to see a nutritionist, and the nutritionist she pinky promised me that she wasn't going to put me on a diet, and yet she told me you need to weigh out all your food, you need to count all these calories, you need to log them into your diary, and then you need to come back in a week so I can see how you have improved. She also noted at the time you are well within your healthy weight range on the BMI. However, I do appreciate that you probably would like to be thin, and I said, yes, yes, I would. And so she told me how to do that, and that was with a diet of 1200 calories, which is about as many calories as a toddler needs, not a busy that. And that was with a diet of 1,200 calories, which is about as many calories as a toddler needs, not a busy teenager. And I was such a good girl, my goodness, I was a good girl. I stuck to the calories. I tried to impress everyone, to show everyone that actually I could become the picture that they all wanted me to be.
Speaker 3:But it wasn't long before this level of restriction turned into an obsession, a compulsion, and then morphed into a binge eating response. So while I was willing to self-starve myself, my body had other plans, and so, in moments where I felt depleted or tired, I'd get home after school, after walking to school, walking home from school, just to burn enough calories and then, having basically existed on, a snack might be an apple, lunch might be a chicken salad, and I'd get home and I was ravenously hungry and I would devour any food I can get my hands on, and my binge eating didn't discriminate. I'd binge on carrots, I'd binge on yogurt or fruit, I'd also binge on chocolate and cereal and pasta and all the things I was depriving my body of, which was calories, carbohydrates, energy. My body was starving and the binge eating was such a normal response for me. And so, by the age of 16, I had now this incredibly disordered relationship with food. I loathed my body even more than I had when I had been a child, and more than that, I had also gained weight as a response of doing this.
Speaker 3:And by the age of 21, I got to the point where I go. Oh my goodness. It's been a decade of dieting, of obsessing over everything I eat, of trying to be the good girl, of going for these weigh-ins tracking everything I eat. I've seen multiple nutritionists and dietitians by this point, and it has not worked. I am so unhealthy, I hate my body and I am now morbidly obese. This has not worked. This sucks. What are we going to do about it?
Speaker 3:And I decided, in what was felt like a really brave move to say I'm not going to keep doing these diets. I've followed the rules for so long. I even went to a doctor and the doctor said you know, maybe you should try this diet my wife is having good success with. As a 21 year old, I stared him in the face and I wanted to yell at him. I've tried, I have tried all the things for so many years. I have listened and that was really. It was a life-changing moment for me because it was my decision to go. I don't want to keep doing this approach to food that had been handed down from me, handed down to me and had been taught to me because it felt intrinsically wrong.
Speaker 3:And bear in mind at this point, I was a dietitian. I graduated because at 16, in my dietitian's office, I had looked at it going. What a great profession. I know this is a brilliant profession for someone who's obsessed with food. I can get paid to make other people thin. How wonderful. That was the thinking. It was incredibly disordered. So, by 21, I graduated going gosh, I drank the Kool-Aid and now it's left me here and now this is my profession and now I have to start treating patients. But dare I start treating them the way that I had been raised and taught, and that's when I had a moment of going. I have to fix my relationship with food. I need to become the type of nutritionist that I would have loved to have been sent to when I was 11 years old, and I think that's what I try and do nowadays. Wow, shkoya, thanks, that was a lot.
Speaker 2:When it comes to food and eating, a lot of it comes down to the way that we were raised, our relationship to food, as passed on by our parents, our intimate family members. So, lindy, I'm wondering what was the relationship that your parents and your family had with food and eating?
Speaker 3:So I mentioned that I'm South African and that's a very important detail to add into this, in addition to being Jewish, and this kind of creates in some ways, a perfect storm for certain degree of disordered eating.
Speaker 3:I don't have the statistics to back it up, but I'm an eating disordered dietitian essentially and I speak to a lot of people about how they eat and what they eat and what I noticed is coming from a South African background. It's an incredibly patriarchal society. Men are king, women serve men. A woman's job, from what I was raised to kind of think, is to be beautiful and be appreciative and raise the family and feed the family, and the man is, you know, the breadwinner. And so, growing up in this, that was kind of the messaging I was receiving from everyone around me beyond just my family that I needed to be pretty in order to be worthy. My parents certainly were a result of the culture around them as well, and so my parents were exceptional and in no way hateful towards other people's bodies. They were just a reflection of the culture and what was around.
Speaker 3:And what I came to realize is my mom certainly didn't have a healthy relationship with food growing up, and the issue is that had been passed down to her from her mother. So she would talk to me about when I was growing up. My mom issue is that had been passed down to her from her mother, so she would talk to me about when I was growing up. My mom would make these comments about my body, about my weight Should you really be eating that? Do you really need to have seconds? You're getting a little bit fat. And you know what Her mother had said the exact same things to her.
Speaker 3:What I realized is that we have been passing down disordered eating for generations and generations, primarily amongst women, and I decided that it needed to stop. With my generation, my mom, my dad, they were just victims of the same diet culture that I was and their parents before them, but there certainly was a culture of it's okay to restrict, to obsess, to diet. In fact, it's far better to be disordered around food than it is to weigh a little bit more all of your content and all of what you're putting out into the world.
Speaker 2:I get the distinct impression that it is as much about you sharing with others the tools and the strategies that you yourself have learned along the way, because you weren't necessarily given those tools and strategies when you were in your teens and twenties.
Speaker 3:I certainly think and this is perhaps a bizarre thing to say that one of my superpowers is being able to accept the fact that I am imperfect and share that imperfection before I feel like I have fully developed and formed. So, for example, I'm able to talk about the fact that I was struggling with anxiety and I talked through all the things that were working for me. In a way, I kind of felt that I was more useful when I was in the thick of it. For example, one of the things that makes me fantastic at what I do is the fact that I've been through binge eating, that I totally understand that experience. It's almost like you had an oncologist who'd also had cancer. You'd go, wow, that's really. It would be super useful in a way, because you think they really understand me, and so I do not ever preach from some kind of like perfect position and I kind of see that as my imperfection is my strength and my superpower, and being able to talk about it is therapeutic for me.
Speaker 3:Of course, I think there are some influencers who would probably use social media as a journal, as like, instead of a psychologist or a counselor.
Speaker 3:That's not what I'm doing here, so you're not just using people to therapize yourself. But I read the book the Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown early in my career and it fundamentally changed the way I acted and I started to share more honestly about what was happening. And I started to notice how seeing other people sharing their perfect moments only how it was messing with my mental health. And I thought, once you are willing to turn up as you are in perfect, I think it helps everyone else sigh in relief because finally we have permission to be ourselves and instead of making people dislike you, it actually brings people closer to you. And I think perhaps something that we have in our culture is this idea of if I put my best foot forward, if I show you only the good bits, if I am perfectly behaved in public and all those things, people will like me more, and I think it's a misconception that I'd love us to fix in our culture.
Speaker 1:It feels to me that you have this really healthy relationship with not just imperfection but with shame.
Speaker 3:I'd say, that's true.
Speaker 1:How did you overcome that, beyond the Brene Browns, these influencers? They talk about the work. You need to do the work. What did the work look like to you?
Speaker 3:So I lean more heavily into science. I'm a dietitian, nutritionist You'd expect that and so exposure therapy for me is particularly interesting, and I think it's been very useful for me in the way that I've dealt with shame, For example, when an influencer might say do the work. What that looks like for me in terms of body image and learning to not loathe every part of myself is exposing myself to situations that make me feel a bit uncomfortable and then building. For example, I remember walking in a crop top when I was young and not feeling like I had a body that was worthy of wearing a crop top. A young boy made a comment being like you should put a t-shirt on until you have a flat stomach in order to wear this, and it stuck with me. I think so many people have a shame story similar to this that you remember, at a certain age, someone making a comment about your cellulite or a roll or a mole on your face, and then you kind of forget it, and so one option I could have had was to go.
Speaker 3:I'm never wearing a crop top again, but the option I chose was the exposure therapy. I thought you know what? Honestly, I'm not going to have a flat stomach. I really have tried. I had a decade of total dedication to it. It didn't work for me. So either I can choose never to wear a crop top in my life again and feel hot and sticky at the gym, or I simply say let me just wear a crop top before my body is perfectly ready, before it's flat, and see what the repercussions are. So what's really going to happen? What's the worst case scenario? So I turn up to my gym and people might stare at me, so what. And so I put myself in these situations where I started to test okay, what is the outcome if I do this hard, scary thing? And I noticed there wasn't actually any repercussions for it. People didn't gawk, no one came up to me and made rude comments because they weren't a 17 year old boy anymore. People didn't gawk, no one came up to me and made rude comments because they weren't a 17-year-old boy anymore. And I felt like, oh, you know what? I actually do have the right body to wear a crop top, because anyone really can. And so for me, doing the work is these little moments of exposure. It is doing things before you feel ready. Feeling that discomfort and realizing it's actually the world won't end as a result of it.
Speaker 3:And, in addition to exposure therapy, I think I often use humor a lot to cope with shame. So, for example, my body has never been acceptable to anyone. At the same time, let's say you know, when I was going through my disordered eating, I'd lose weight. I'd run into people that you're too skinny now I can't believe you've lost so much weight. And I'd run into people who say you look amazing or I gain weight, and then I'd be too fat to people. And do you know, I just can't win. And I've accepted that and that's very therapeutic in itself.
Speaker 3:But the other week the algorithm spat me out into the wrong side of the internet and my content, which is all about helping women not sacrifice their one precious life for something like as silly as a stomach roll. I got into the wrong side of the internet and all these men mostly men really came after me in the comment section, created incredibly long, convoluted videos calling me fat and awful and ugly and just like mocking my body, and really it just escalated. And for me I think you know I don't take it too seriously because I think these sad little people no one wants to listen to these people in real life. So now they've gone on social media so that they can be heard by someone else and I have like a lightness in it where I kind of see the sense of humor in it. I don't take them too seriously and I think that's kind of healthy. So what?
Speaker 1:you've got to have your little South African mum voice when you see those videos and say, oh shame. Look at that nebish or rahmones over there making fun of lindy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, shame oh, my goodness, I can't believe they're so embarrassing. Yeah, no, totally, and so that's been a really helpful thing for me. I mean, mind you, not to say I don't have moments of shame, but I also think like it's being willing to share your shame with the right people. I, you know, I wouldn't take if I had really tender shame. I'm not taking that to the internet and sharing it with anyone who can take that shame and do whatever they want with it. I am protecting myself. Certainly, I do share a lot of my imperfections, but I am in no way, as I said, just putting out all my inner thoughts and my darkness for the entire world to pull apart.
Speaker 1:I think shame is a huge theme in the Jewish community. It's one of the reasons why we called this podcast Ashamed. To Admit, I've been wanting to have you on the show for some time, but we waited until the release of the Jewish Independence Body Image series and in that series I interviewed a wide variety of Australian Jews, and pretty much every person I spoke to mentioned diet culture, body shaming, high standards, before we started recording. Dash, who lives in Melbourne, mentioned Sydney specifically as perhaps a potential hotspot for issues with body image or diet culture, because we're such a beach-focused, perhaps, society. So one of the questions that I asked almost all of the people that I interviewed were what are some of the red flags that you see in the Jewish community in Australia when it comes to these high standards and these challenges with body image?
Speaker 3:I think, as Jews, we have a complicated relationship with food. You know, you have your Baba telling you to eat enough a serving. It's delicious, and at the same time you have this implicit messaging to say that you need to stay thin because that is what is needed from you. So I think one of the red flags for me is this constant push pull that we feel to eat as much as our community requires and to, as women, particularly if I'm hosting, the right amount of food, if you're Jewish, is too much food, but don't you dare eat it. Right, make delicious stuff, but don't you dare touch it. Or not where everyone can see you, you must eat it, but don't let it show that you've actually eaten food. And I think that, polar opposite of concepts, it feels like a really red flag for me.
Speaker 3:I think there is a real normalization of disordered eating in our community where we think it's standard practice. And that is how my parents got to the point that they thought I can send my 11-year-old to the nutritionist to help her be thin, because everyone else was doing it. It was normal, in fact. Not only that, it was really encouraged, as I'll be doing the best thing for my child by doing this and my parents genuinely thought they were helping me. They didn't want me to have to go through a life of weight stigma and issues struggling with food, so they really were trying to do the best thing for me, and so it's that normalization of just thinking well, this is how we are with food and that's the way it is.
Speaker 1:So my sister and I were discussing our grandparents who were Holocaust survivors and the impact that that had on us. We often talk about how these survivors came out of the camps, emaciated, and then it was celebrated when they put on the weight, but not too much, because there were still cultural norms that they had to adhere to. And Lana put forward this idea which I'd never thought about before, and that was they'd had this history of being othered and of being portrayed as less than, or disgusting, or unwanted, and so, as part of their assimilation, perhaps, they needed to strict to the societal norms.
Speaker 3:I think you raise such an important point that could help to explain why Jews are the way we are when it comes to food and why we have this association with disordered eating. You have a people who have been intermittently starved throughout our centuries, and we know from new and updated research that the body holds onto trauma and it's passed down through generations and generations, so actually stored in the body, which I think could explain why we know there's a genetic link towards having an eating disorder, but more from a cultural perspective, something like binge eating disorder, which is the largest eating disorder by a landslide an absolute landslide, just for a bit of perspective. I think anorexia nervosa is around 2%, binge eating is around 50%. Binge eating is a response to starvation. Essentially it's a protective behavior to prevent you from depleting yourself, and so it's a very normal response that you would have a people who had been starved who would then result in a degree of emotional eating or binge eating.
Speaker 3:A way of feeding their body and dealing with stress through food as a way to soothe their soul, because it was something that they felt like they were not allowed. I think you also then have this intergenerational play where you have a survivor who had been starved, who has a real pressure about going. I cannot leave food on my plate. Therefore, my children must finish everything on their plate. Therefore, the raised children who learn how to ignore their hunger and fullness cues and are driven to eat for emotional gains or reasons far outside of hunger and appetite, which is what we know we should be aiming for, and so I think it's really built into our biology, in addition to our culture, and I think that's probably what's driving it.
Speaker 2:Lindy, I'm curious whether you see any other commonalities across your clients Like. Is there something particular about the migrant experience? More generally, that means that people are perhaps more vulnerable to disordered eating.
Speaker 3:Now in my clinical work I see this. When we start to see intergenerational dieting, that is when I see people emerging with disordered eating They'll tell me stories about. I went to Weight Watchers with my mum when I was eight years old. It was the one thing my mum and I could bond over. We could drive in the car and perhaps we didn't know what else to talk about. We always had calories, or we had this snack or I've lost this much weight, and so I think we can't ignore the fact that for generations women have been connecting over food. It's been our way of. Dieting is a hobby, if you must, and sometimes when people let go of dieting, they're also letting go of that hobby that they have. Is there a connection I've noticed between certain cultures, the cultures where I think food is a predominant feature? So Indian culture, I think, is quite similar to us, is about food and family. I think there is a degree of that, but I don't think I see as high a disordered eating rates has a very public face.
Speaker 2:I'm wondering whether you have been more conscious of your Jewishness since this sort of recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks and I'm wondering how you're sort of reckoning with all of that, given that you do speak to the wider Australian public quite regularly.
Speaker 3:So my social media account has been mostly apolitical. There have been certain things that I have jumped on board with to help promote, whether it's something like the yes Vote, for example, but generally pretty apolitical. And with the recent rise in antisemitism, I started to notice a thing where I saw all my jewish friends posting in an echo chamber of jews to jews. Can you believe this is happening? And I know these people, I know you don't have that many people who aren't jewish who are following you, and then I could look at my following and I could see do you know what I, who I have? I probably have, you know, 30 to 50 year old-old women, australian women predominantly certainly big, in the US too who aren't Jewish, and I could see no one's talking about anti-Semitism beyond the Jews. Why is this? And I had this gut feeling that I don't think they don't care. I just don't think they don't know. They don't know a Jewish person, they're not connected to us. Therefore, it's hard to care when we've got so much that's going on in the world and so much that's awful. I don't think they see it in their newsfeed, I just don't think it's coming up, and so part of me felt as though it was a sense of like, never again is now in that this really starts to feel very reminiscent of what was happening pre-Holocaust days and I thought well, I do happen to have this platform and I can reach a whole bunch of people who I think would understand what it would be like to take your children to school and feel genuinely scared about dropping them at the gate and to feel like it's normal that we would have a Jewish event and that you wouldn't know where it's actually going to be located until a few hours before the fact. The fact that it's normal for us to go to an event and have be interrogated about who we are and what we are, and to go through a security scanner to check that there's no weapons this is normal stuff for us.
Speaker 3:But I knew that this was not something that anyone outside of our community really understood, and so I have done a few series of sharing about it a few times, and most of the outpouring has been we had no idea this is happening. This wasn't that we don't care, it's just that we didn't know, and I'm so sorry, and this isn't the Australia that we want to live in. And that was 98% of the responses and it was so nice. Actually, it was a lot of responses from Germany and the Germans just being like completely outraged that this is happening. There certainly was a 2% of people who were essentially like yeah, let me explain to you why everyone hates the Jews, which was an instant block and delete. Obviously, as you can imagine, I'm not going to try and win those people over. You don't deserve to have my free content, so see you later. Bye, but I think that was kind of an interesting thing.
Speaker 3:It felt incredibly scary to do posts like that. I hate that. I felt really scared. My heart rate was going out of control, I swear like I had like hot sweats. I really did plan out how I was going to tell the story as well. It wasn't just a flat dash. I'm just going to post this. I knew it had to be done and it had to be done in a way that helped people understand what it would be like to be a person in Australia right now. Who's Jewish?
Speaker 1:How many followers did you lose?
Speaker 3:A few hundred, several hundred, I'd say probably 1, thousand by the end of it, and that was to be expected. But for most people, I think it was also this idea of you don't know a Jewish person and if you might like me, then I might be the only Jewish person You're like. Oh, I like her and she's Jewish. So it was also just from a thing of going yeah, Jews aren't bad when we're contributors.
Speaker 1:Thank you for doing that. I know that there are a lot of people in your situation who would not do that for fear of losing followers or influence. In inverted commas Was there a fear that maybe the today show wouldn't have you back on once they knew?
Speaker 3:certainly there absolutely was. A lot of the producers follow me. A lot of the producers saw that I got a lot of messages from people in the media. So the producers on today show saying I can't believe, I'm so sorry this is happening for you. This isn't the Australia that I know, so I also have a lot of media contacts who are also kind of like witness to this and shared an experience, but I certainly did have that fear of going. I know there will be repercussions for this. The story in my mind would be like this will be posted in some Facebook groups and there will be a boycott of some description and attacking and there certainly was a whole bunch of really nasty messages that were being sent. They didn't talk about Israel, hamas. It really was a conversation around antisemitism in Australia.
Speaker 2:It's pretty astounding, isn't it, that you can talk about your personal experience, talk about the fear and insecurity that people in your community feel. Not mention politics, not mention a war. Really keep it to your personal experience, and for some people that's too much and that provokes them into saying all kinds of hateful things. It's a sad reflection, I think, lindy, of both the power but also some of the pernicious elements of social media, which is the thing that has given you such a big profile and is a big part of your success. The flip side of it is it also brings out the worst in people.
Speaker 3:I guess. So I've got to say, though there were countless Muslims who wrote to me in response to that, saying I'm so sorry this is happening, palestinians who wrote to me saying I'm so sorry this is happening to you.
Speaker 3:And yet what I found really interesting is the people who were writing me awful messages justifying Jewish hate were people who were neither Jewish, nor Muslim, nor Palestinian. They were white Australians for all intents purposes, who had no skin in the game, but felt like they were really informed and they'd done their research, apparently in the you know, watching enough videos on social media to think that they had a really clear stance and I thought that was kind of an interesting take on it.
Speaker 1:Interesting observation.
Speaker 2:So you shared your like eating diary with the Daily Mail five years ago.
Speaker 1:The really reputable-.
Speaker 2:The reputable Daily Mail wanted to know about what you'd eaten for two weeks, I think.
Speaker 3:Day on a plate.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that on day one, your first meal, do you remember what you noted on that first day of the diary? That you had your coffee cappuccino with shavings of lint chocolate on top.
Speaker 3:Just because no one was expecting that.
Speaker 2:You obviously have chocolate from time to time in your morning coffee, is that right?
Speaker 3:It's not just time to time, it is an integrated and an essential part of how I stay healthy. And I know for some people going well, that doesn't really make sense. What are you talking about? Chocolate helps you stay healthy. For me, if I do not integrate chocolate into my diet in a mindful way, I will go and I will go and binge eat on it and it will become an emotional crux. And there are people who say, well, I can't just have a few squares of chocolate, I just binge eat the entire packet. And I would say, well, try integrating it in a way that makes sense. Am I going to binge on the linch shavings of my cappuccino? No, I can't. But it sends a message to my brain saying chocolate is allowed, we include it. Nothing is off the limits to you and part of my recovery.
Speaker 3:A really key part of it was, you know, what's so common is that we eat perfectly healthily when we're, when we're in front of other people, but when we're at home, that's when we do all the you know quote unquote almost the naughty eating.
Speaker 3:We eat the foods that we don't think we're allowed to eat, and I encourage the. The exact opposite I would like you when you are out with your friends, that's the time to have ice cream, that's the time to share the pizza, that's the time to eat all those yummy, delicious foods, so that when you're at home, that's not binge on all the junk food that no one can see. That's a very unhealthy relationship with food, and so for me, it's that active pursuit of eating those foods, including them in a mindful way. You know what? I don't fall with the bandwagon anymore. I don't have to start from scratch every Monday. I'm not an all-or-nothing eater. I'm incredibly consistent with my eating. Yes, I eat chocolate, probably more than I did when I was in my restrictive eating day, certainly more than during my restrictive eating days, but I'm much healthier as a result of it.
Speaker 1:Dash, I thought you were going to take that question in a really different direction. I thought you were going to take that question in a really different direction. I thought you were going to say I love that, lindy. When you said you have your morning coffee. You have it with a pickle on the side.
Speaker 2:No, I'm a real sweet tooth, so this is great.
Speaker 1:Eye-opening.
Speaker 2:This is the message I need to hear.
Speaker 1:Lindy, we ask all our interviewees. Is there anything you're ashamed to admit? Just in general, like not related to your line of work, not related to being Jewish.
Speaker 3:One of the shames I have is that I cannot put my washing away, and so I basically build these pyramids of clothing in my study. So it's kind of where I'm filming the podcast. But the rest of my house is pretty like clean and immaculate, but then I basically have these sections in my house where it's kind of like you know what?
Speaker 1:That's okay, that's fine. Thank you for making me feel seen for the hundredth time today. I'm sure many of our listeners will relate. You have been an absolute dream guest, so generous with your time. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Lovely to meet you, Lindy. Thank you.
Speaker 1:That was our conversation with Lindy Cohen, the nude nutritionist, and that's it for today. You've been listening to Aamed to Admit with me Tammy Sussman and executive director of the Jewish Independent, dr Dashiell Lawrence.
Speaker 2:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King and theme music by Donovan Jenks.
Speaker 1:If you like the podcast, then leave a positive review. It helps other people find the show.
Speaker 2:You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website or by emailing ashamed at thejewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 1:As always. Thanks so much for your support. Go eat something delicious and look out for us next week.