Food Freedom for Bone Health with Ashlee Williams, RD

This transcript is lightly edited for readability.

Edie: I am so excited to share this conversation with Ashlee Williams. Ashlee is a registered dietitian, a functional medicine practitioner, and the director of development and community support inside The OsteoCollective. The OsteoCollective is an online community founded by Dr. Doug Lucas that specializes in helping its members reverse their osteoporosis naturally.

I coach inside The OsteoCollective, and I wanted to share a really special conversation that I had with Ashlee where we dive into food freedom. This is a conversation we had inside that community, and we're talking about what food freedom means, what it looks like in real life, and how it fits into healing osteoporosis.

So many of the clients that we work with feel overwhelmed, stressed, and afraid of eating the wrong way as they do their best to support their bone health. So if food is feeling confusing or stressful, or if it's loaded with a bunch of pressure for you right now, this conversation is for you. I hope you enjoy it.

Ashlee: Hello everyone, and welcome to today's special New Year's Eve town hall. Instead of doing a live town hall — Dr. Doug is traveling and spending some good quality time with his family — we thought we would take a great opportunity to do a prerecorded session with one of our health coaches, Edie Feffer. She has joined us before in certain town halls. She does a lot of our private group coaching and leads some amazing courses.

It's such a good time of year, going into the first of the year, when a lot of us are naturally going to be inclined to do whatever fad diet is on the internet that day and hit a plan really hard, to talk about a different approach to meeting your goals — whether it's with food or your overall health — and how you can have some freedom around that and stop the yo-yo New Year's Day diet or any crazy plans.

So we are going to be talking primarily about food freedom today, and about how to best support our members in learning more about their bodies and their nutrition, and how to fuel in a way that really is for longevity and not short term. So with that, welcome, Edie.

Edie: Thanks, Ashlee. I am so happy to be here. This has been a long time in the making. Ashlee and I often chat about food freedom, and we're excited to have this time together with you today.

I thought one fun question to kick us off, Ashlee, would be to ask a little bit more about you and your background as a dietitian, and your history with food — as much as you're comfortable sharing with us.

Ashlee: Sure. This topic of food freedom is a little personal, and of course professional, for me.

My background before dietetics was in competitive gymnastics — for about 18 years. My former patients know this about me, but a lot of our members, I'm assuming, don't: I was actually homeschooled for the majority of my education, with the prioritization of gymnastics so that I could be at the gym training six, eight hours a day. In that kind of setting, the Olympics was your dream. I was actually training for a really important meet when I compound fractured my arm. So life had a different plan at that time.

But gymnastics, like a lot of other sports that are associated with disordered eating — like wrestling or dancing — is really structured. It can be very appearance focused. And while that gave me discipline and a good work ethic, it also gave me a pretty unhealthy relationship with food and with my body at a young age.

In that setting, food was fuel, but it was also control. There were good foods, there were bad foods, there were earning foods, there were restricted foods. It's kind of weird talking about it now and thinking back to how I felt in those younger years, because none of what I just mentioned was intentional. My parents and my coach never restricted me. I never had to weigh in or be a certain weight. And I think neuroscience is fascinating in that way — my thoughts and patterns were being wired without me even consciously knowing it.

So from there, you would think I chose dietetics because I wanted to go into some sort of field of disordered eating. But at that time, I had no idea that I had an unhealthy relationship with food. It wasn't until school, and studying nutritional psychology, that it hit me: whoa, this is me. I'm doing some of these things. I have some of these behaviors.

And honestly, the more education I got on the subject, the worse my relationship with food started to become. Even later in adult years, there were more rules, more numbers, more justification for restricting in the approach being taught in college. I remember thinking, this can't be the solution. I think, as a lot of our members are learning now, we sadly get it wrong quite often in that kind of textbook medicine. That was true then.

What changed everything was realizing that the people I was being taught to counsel — the more disciplined and compliant they were, most often, the more dysregulated they were, hormonally, emotionally, metabolically. And then of course, when I started working with osteoporosis patients, that pattern became impossible to ignore. These patients were doing everything right. They were eating clean, they were tracking, they were exercising, they were supplementing — and they were still losing bone, and they were still really anxious, and they were still really exhausted.

That's where my lived experience and clinical work finally met. The bone health space is what forced me to realize that food freedom is not optional, if someone really wants to heal and live out their years in health. So that's my background, and how I got to my seat in our recording today.

Edie: I just feel like we are so lucky to have you as the dietitian at The OsteoCollective, and thank you so much for sharing more of your story. I knew parts of that, Ashlee, but not this much. I think it takes vulnerability to share in the way that you did. For all of the members that we work with, I know it just makes you so much more relatable — and whether or not you have a history of disordered eating, I think there are elements of your story that we can all see in parts of our own journey. So thank you.

Ashlee: Of course. And I think what I like to highlight to our members and patients too is the part where I didn't think I had any. It was my norm. It was my baseline. Some of these behaviors were not big screaming sirens that there was a problem. It can look like anything — there's a spectrum. It can be some really serious stuff, like bulimia and anorexia, or it can be on the other side: chronic tracking, and all these rules, and all these guidelines. It's still a long spectrum of just an unhealthy relationship with our nutrition.

Edie: My hope in our conversation today is that members leave feeling more confident, more excited, and more optimistic about how possible it really is to experience food freedom as you're on a journey to reversing your osteoporosis.

Ashlee: Absolutely. So I shared my side — can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey with food, and what led you to health coaching? And even EFT. We have a lot of new members who maybe don't know what that is, or that you offer it.

Edie: Sure. My journey with food has been a very long, bumpy journey. It has certainly not been linear.

I grew up in a very high stress home environment, and from a very young age I used food as a tool to cope, to process stress, to try to feel safe, to gain a sense of control. For a long time that showed up as being very restrictive with food — trying to be perfect, trying to manage my emotions through control, trying to get it right. And even though I did work with professionals to hit some of the physical goals that were necessary, my relationship with food didn't just magically become peaceful after that. In fact, it went the other direction, where I was using food to soothe stress or overwhelm. I would turn to food anytime I felt depleted, or like I wanted some fast relief, and that would come with guilt, shame, regret, self-judgment, and a whole lot of frustration.

For nearly two decades, food was just constantly on my mind. Even though I looked fine on the outside, internally I was full of anxiety about what I should be eating, what I shouldn't be eating, whether I was doing it right — and then sitting with that disappointment.

What eventually became so crystal clear to me is that food was not the issue. Food was the portal. It was how I was processing stress, pressure, and emotions that I didn't yet have the tools for. That realization is what led me to health coaching. I wanted to understand why smart, successful, motivated people struggle so much with food, even when they care deeply about their health.

So if that's you — if food is feeling stressful, if your protocol is feeling wobbly — please hear me saying that nothing is wrong with you. This is not a character flaw. Inside The OsteoCollective, I'm not teaching on weight loss, and I'm not working specifically with members who have eating disorders, but I do share this part of my story so that you understand that I know what it's like to struggle with food. Whether that's showing up as fear around eating the wrong foods for osteoporosis, or the pressure to be perfect, or confusion from conflicting advice, or going down a research rabbit hole and feeling like it's always on your mind.

My work in this community specific to food is to help you nourish your body in a way that's actually supporting your health, instead of increasing your stress. It's one of my favorite parts of the work that I do as a health coach.

Ashlee: And so needed, especially in this space. The group of members we have, and the demographic, and their age, where they're falling into this bone health space — they've just been given the works in terms of how to eat and what to eat. I think of my generation versus my mother's. She's had a lot of different diets thrown her way, and different ways to be healthy, and there's so much confusion for her. I'm glad it's getting better.

So it's so needed that we have this coaching available, and that's what The OsteoCollective is about. It's clearing all of that confusion, and giving members a resource to search here, and not the worldwide web where it gets that much more complex.

And we have said the words "food freedom" a few times. So Edie, can you help us understand what that really means, especially in the context of osteoporosis?

Edie: I'm so glad you're asking that question, Ashlee, because I think it is one that can be misunderstood.

When we use the term food freedom, it doesn't mean eating whatever you want without intention. It definitely doesn't mean ignoring your bone health or nutrition. In the context of osteoporosis, food freedom means being able to eat in a way that supports your bones without fear, without rigidity, and without constant self-doubt.

For many people who are on a bone health journey, the struggle isn't that they don't care. What I see most often is that they care so much that food starts to feel stressful. There's this pressure to hit your protein target, be mindful of your sugar intake, think about your calcium, your supplements. And then we hear about oxalates and antinutrients, which I know we'll get into.

Food freedom, to me, is when nourishment stops feeling like a test that you might fail. It's when you're able to eat in alignment with your goal of reversing your osteoporosis without spiraling into anxiety, research rabbit holes, or extreme, all-or-nothing thinking. It really is understanding what matters most for your bones, and then letting go of this idea that we need to be perfect — that one meal could undo everything.

I'll speak briefly to what this looks like practically and emotionally, so you can really start to picture it, and then just get curious: is this what food is feeling like for me right now?

Practically, food freedom looks like eating enough protein and key nutrients to feel confident that you're nourishing your bones. It's having flexibility instead of rigid rules — if you've coached with me in the past, you know that one thing I love to say is that loose structure creates freedom. It's knowing how to course correct without guilt, because we aren't expecting ourselves to be perfect. And it's trusting yourself to be able to make supportive choices most of the time.

Emotionally, the way I recognize food freedom in a client, and the way I saw it come through in my own journey, is that food is taking up less mental space. You're not constantly questioning yourself. You're not asking, am I doing this right? It is peaceful. And it is 100% possible.

I know I shared a little bit of my own health journey with you, but the reason I became a coach is because I want every single person to have this sense of peace with food. And with bone health, we're thinking about patterns over time — not one meal, not one day, not even one week. So when I talk about food freedom, it's creating a relationship with food that feels supportive and sustainable and calm. When we're in that kind of energy with food, we're working with your nervous system, with your body, not against it.

Ashlee: I like that for every single one of our members. I have so many that I'm thinking about now who really are in the space we're talking about, and how wonderful it would be to see them on the other side.

Edie: We can help with that. I have a question for you, from your experience with patients. I know you worked with patients at OHH for over two years, seeing patients day to day. What patterns did you see most often? What would you say helped people move forward, and what held them back?

Ashlee: Everyone's so different, but those patterns were almost the same, 10 out of 10. Even though the case was very different, the biggest pattern was that their fear was sort of dressed up as discipline.

They were terrified of doing the wrong thing. They were terrified of food — of carbs, of oxalates, of lectins, of sugar, of fruit, you name it. What was holding people back wasn't their lack of effort. They were doing everything perfectly, but it was this over-control. They were white-knuckling their plan and swinging between perfection and burnout, constantly changing their plans. We would meet once a month with these people, and it was supposed to be a follow-up on what we laid out the month before, and by the time I saw them again three or four weeks later, they had done something completely different — that one wasn't working, so now I found something else, I think it's the right one.

And what really helped move people forward was really boring. Unsexy, if you will. There was no glitz and glam to what they were doing. It was just eating consistently and eating enough, letting go of food moralization, and learning how to recover from imperfection instead of completely starting over.

So often we would have gaps in their tracking too. I just did a reset weekend. I stopped everything, because I ate a bowl of rice and that was off my plan. So they would punish themselves and do this start-over and find a new plan. It was so hard to watch — but also really rewarding to remove that thought. Remove the thought of food, stop thinking about food, and let's look at what your body's needing, and what it's saying to you, and how it's communicating to you.

Once they could do that, then it got really exciting, because we saw labs improve. We saw sleep improve. We saw bone markers start to stabilize. It really was never about the food itself. It was about the thoughts and the mindset around the food.

Edie: Yes — the emotion that was driving those behaviors, which for many of the clients we work with is fear. So understandable.

On that note, one common fear that we hear often in this community is around oxalates. Can you talk about when these actually matter, and when fear goes too far?

Ashlee: Oh my gosh, the oxalates. That comes up so much. And it's back to what we're reading, what's in front of us. There's so much misinformation, and I hate that it's enough to stir the pot.

The oxalates, the lectins, the phytates — those antinutrients do exist. But dose matters. Context matters. I like to constantly remind our members that our human bodies are not fragile. They're actually quite resilient. It takes a lot of something to make a really negative impact. And so many of our members are overall eating really healthy and moving a little bit each day, which is much more than the majority of Americans can say.

An example: we had a patient — I use this one a lot — who loved buckwheat. Not in a way where it was her staple every single day; she just liked to incorporate it a few times a week here and there. When she got to the program, she said, I can't have it anymore, it's high in oxalate. So I said, oh, no ma'am, let's look at some of this data. Let's look at how much you're actually eating, and let's figure out if that is true for you.

Buckwheat, by the way, is moderate in oxalates. It's not a super high food. About a half a cup of her cooked buckwheat was 10 to 15 milligrams of oxalate. What we saw in the research and the data is that we're needing well over 100 to 200 milligrams per day to start seeing problems — and this is mostly in people with recurrent oxalate or calcium oxalate kidney stones, not necessarily in the space of bone health. So she was eating 15 milligrams twice a week, when it takes 200 milligrams a day.

Her fear was completely disproportionate to her exposure. And as soon as we showed her that, she relaxed. She said, oh my gosh, I would never eat that much — every day I'd get sick of my favorite bowl that she was making.

And then another one — this isn't as common in the bone health space — but greens and spinach and thyroid fear. I think you and I talked about this a little bit too. People were really worried about the compounds in spinach that can suppress thyroid function. But once again, that's when you would have to eat 10 to 15 cups of raw spinach every single day, and have a low iodine intake or an iodine deficiency, for that to impact your thyroid function. And no one is eating 15 cups of spinach seven days a week.

So the takeaway: these compounds existing naturally, when you're eating in a mixed, natural food environment, really is not cause for the fear and stress that we put on these particular foods. A lot of times it's just the stress from believing your food is harming you that's doing a lot more damage to your bones than the food itself.

Edie: So well put. Such a good reminder that dose matters, and that the stress that we are putting on ourselves around the food plays a role too.

Ashlee: Yeah. And it's usually just such a large dose. I love it when our members and patients see that and say, I'm nowhere near that. So just keep all of that in context when we're thinking about different foods — and listen to our bodies too. She said she started eating buckwheat because she was working on her gut health, and she didn't love it at first, but my gosh, it made her feel so good. Her gut felt better, she was less bloated, she was more regular. It was just something that made her feel good, and she stopped doing it because an article told her it was going to hurt her bones. I just hated that.

Edie: Discernment matters — being able to listen to your body, trust the messages it's sending you, and keep balance in perspective as well. I love when you share patient stories too, Ashlee. I think that helps get the message across.

Ashlee: That's what we see in the community. We're all really in the same boat. The details are different, but it can resonate with so many people, hearing other members' stories.

So when I tell you those examples, where the food isn't as dangerous as people think — do you see this happening in the mindset courses that you're doing? What do you see happen when people become really hyper-focused on "bad" foods, if you will?

Edie: Yes. There are three really predictable things that happen when we hyperfocus on "bad" foods — and if anyone's listening and not watching, I'm doing bunny ears as I say the word bad. In my mind, the food stops being the issue. The real issue is that fear is driving the decisions.

This often begins with good intentions. Maybe you're trying to make these decisions because you want to protect your bones. You hear a warning, you read a study, and then suddenly this particular food feels dangerous. As I walk you through these three, you can just check in with yourself to notice if any of them are happening for you.

One is that we start to moralize food, where foods are being tagged in the brain as good or bad, as safe or unsafe. Once food is moralized, that's when it becomes emotional — not because of the food, but because of the meaning we've attached to the food.

The second thing that happens is that it drives all-or-nothing thinking. If the food is bad, then it has to be completely avoided. We saw that with the examples Ashlee just walked us through. There's no room for context, there's no room for dose, there's no permission for flexibility. And the moment that you eat whatever the forbidden food is, even if it's unintentional, it feels like a failure.

The third thing is that it erodes our self-trust. In my opinion — and if you've worked with me, you know this — there is one thing that holds the key to everything you want and deserve, and it is self-trust. Self-trust with food, with love, with movement, with business, with money, with optimal health. It all ties back to self-trust. And if we're not feeling that with food, we will be battling ourselves on our journey to reversing our osteoporosis, and that doesn't feel fun, peaceful, pleasurable, or sustainable. So this piece really is critical.

What happens when that self-trust is gone, when we're moralizing food, is that instead of listening to your body or focusing on patterns overall, you start outsourcing your wisdom and your confidence to rules, to lists, to an app, to internet advice. The question becomes, what am I allowed to eat, not what supports me.

And paradoxically, this level of restriction actually creates more obsession. That is exhausting. The more we tell ourselves that a food is dangerous, the more mental energy it takes up — even when it's not physiologically harmful in the amounts that most people are eating, to Ashlee's point.

So over time, you get stuck in this vicious cycle of pressure, anxiety, and self-criticism — not better nutrition, even though that's what you're striving for. When we're thinking about food freedom and reversing our osteoporosis, it's about restoring proportion, context, and self-trust, so that you're able to make food choices that support your bone health without fear driving your choices.

Ashlee: Thank you so much. That is exactly the overarching goal of our discussion today.

Edie: I have a question for you, and it's one I'm sure you remember, because you and I recently had a conversation around another patient story. I'd love for you to share the one about beans and gut health.

These stories are never coming from a place of judgment. We are never judging anything you do or don't do. We understand the fear and the pressure, and we shared that in our own stories. But when you hear where another client was at, I hope it creates relief — and reminds you that you don't have to be perfect or extreme to reach your goal.

Ashlee: Of course. And thank you for reminding me. Like you said, sharing these examples or case situations is just to help you feel connected to the topic. We know that all of us, in some form or fashion, have areas that we could improve, and just feel a little bit more peaceful, less fearful, and more consistent.

I was telling Edie before we recorded today that I would love for all of our members to feel the immense amount of peace and relief that I felt three years ago, coming to work for Dr. Doug. I had been restricting dairy, because another doctor that I really respected — and we do still respect and love — is very anti-dairy. And I love dairy. It makes me feel good, makes me feel strong, makes me feel full. I don't have any issues with it, but I had totally restricted it and removed it from a functional health standpoint. When Doug showed me different data, different science, and said, and also you tolerate it really well, what are you doing? — it was such a great moment of relief. Like, oh, I can add it back. And that's what we're wanting for everyone who's watching this or doing some coaching with us.

So this particular patient — it wasn't a direct oxalate-to-bone or antinutrient-to-thyroid path. This one had a path through her gut health, which we talk a lot about in the community. We have so many members who are learning more about gut health and are interested in gut health, and I love that.

She was eating different types of beans and legumes, but then got diagnosed with osteoporosis and said, I can't do that anymore because of the antinutrients, the lectins. We talked about it a little bit, and tried to show her different preparation methods she could use — soaking, cooking, pressure cooking — that would drastically reduce those antinutrients and make her feel a little bit more safe around the food. She still wanted to completely remove them and not eat them anymore.

And even looking at phytates, not just the lectins — yes, of course, in isolation they can reduce mineral absorption, but in real life, in mixed foods, they are powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. They help with insulin-sensitizing effects. So again, not inherently harmful.

But over about three months, her fiber intake dropped significantly, because of course legumes and beans are high in fiber. And they're also a great prebiotic, a fermentable fiber. So we were starving out some good microbes, which I had anticipated could happen over time if she didn't replace that fiber intake. Her microbiome diversity likely narrowed. She started to have some pretty severe and painful complaints — bloating, constipation — and what was once normal, healthy gut function was completely reversed at that time.

And then there was more panic and fear. Is the diet that's best for my bones going to make me feel this way forever? Do I just have to deal with this to protect my bones? Which was like, oh bless. No.

We had labs done around this time, when she was also starting to feel not as well as she had coming into the program. And lo and behold, her fasting glucose, triglycerides, cholesterol, and A1C — which were all previously very normal and healthy — were elevated, because that prebiotic fiber, and fiber in general, is associated with really great glycemic control and lipid markers. And we didn't replace it; she was trying to be more carnivore-style at the time. Her C-reactive protein also increased, which fits well with reduced fiber intake and metabolic or microbiome disruption. And then following that, her CTX started to increase as well, which really upset her.

Beans and legumes don't directly control bone turnover, but it was that cascade and domino effect of inflammation, poor metabolic control, and reduced microbial byproducts. Those things are associated with increased bone resorption.

So I talked her into reintroducing some of those legumes and beans, slowly, prepared correctly. Digestion improved, tolerance improved, and she went back to feeling better. Then we used that as a learning opportunity and really talked about how that elimination at first felt productive, but it was just shrinking her resilience. That's the pattern we see quite a bit. I wanted to make her resilient to the foods that she was eating, so that her body could absorb the nutrients that her bones needed.

She did leave at the end of the 12-month program on a plan — not even a diet, just a structure of eating — that was sustainable, where she knew how to eat foods that really made her feel good without counting every single ingredient or nutrient in that food. Labs improved, bone health was improving. It was a really great success story.

Edie: So many learnings wrapped up in that one — including asking yourself the questions that I teach in every single program. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? And the third one is, do I like my choices? With this story from Ashlee, what you're feeling really matters. And communicating that with your healthcare team is such a big part of a lasting transformation.

Ashlee: She was a wonderful patient to work with, and a learning opportunity for both of us too. Maybe I shouldn't have let her learn the hard way. We teased each other — she was like, you should have just made me eat the beans. And I said, well, we all have to learn. Live and learn together.

When you work with people who are similar to that, who are really anxious about eating the wrong foods for their bones and keep swinging on and off plan — what do you typically see? I know you coached a lot of our patients at that time, when we were working together, and I loved when you would emphasize that stricter control and removing foods isn't the answer, that it doesn't solve that problem. So what does actually help?

Edie: I think that's such an important question, because what most people try first is control, and that makes total sense on the surface. When someone is afraid of eating the wrong foods for their bones, the instinct is: well, I'd better tighten up the rules. I'd better remove more foods completely. I need to ratchet down and be more disciplined.

The problem is that stricter control doesn't actually address what's driving the behavior, which is fear. When the brain feels unsafe, it's going to start looking for certainty. That's what the brain wants. It wants clear rules. It really likes black and white answers — living in the gray is very uncomfortable for a lot of clients at first. It wants to find ways to feel in control. So creating stricter rules, being extreme, can feel very calming at first, because you may have this sense of, okay, I know what I need to do. It's to cut out beans, as an example.

But it's not sustainable. Life doesn't operate with rigid rules. Your plans will change. You'll be a guest in someone's home. Your meals won't be perfect for the rest of your life. Your hunger will vary. And the moment that you step outside of this very tight, rule-bound plan, even slightly, your brain is going to interpret that as failure and start beating you up. That's when we see members swing from on plan to off plan — not because you lack willpower, but because a control-based system is fragile.

The more rigid you are, the more extreme you are, usually that equates to a stronger rebound. So with food freedom, I always say the goal isn't that the pendulum stops swinging. For anyone who's been extreme, you know what a swing looks like: I'm swinging all the way to the left and being really rule-bound and rigid, and then the body says, screw this, I can't sustain it anymore, and we swing to the other side — and then this loosey-goosey stuff doesn't feel good, so we swing back, and we're just caught in this trap. With food freedom, the pendulum doesn't stop swinging, but the swings are less drastic.

And the reason the idea of "I'm just going to remove everything and be very strict" backfires is because it increases your focus. You can think about that from when you've told yourself that something is forbidden — your brain usually ends up putting it on a pedestal and thinking about it even more. When it's labeled as bad or not allowed, it takes up more mental space, whether it's oxalates, antinutrients, beans, or sugar, even if it's not physiologically harmful in the amounts that most people are eating.

The thing that does help heal your relationship with food, and does help you reverse your osteoporosis, is self-trust. That is built through understanding what truly matters for your bone health. It is built by working with patterns over time instead of perfection. It is built with flexibility and loose structure, and again, learning how to course correct without guilt. And that is a skill. It's not a character flaw if you don't have it right now. It's a skill that is 100% possible for you to build.

The beauty of having self-trust on a healing journey — and just in life in general — is that your nervous system will feel safe enough that your food choices won't feel like high-stakes decisions. When you feel safer, you don't need those extreme rules. You can make supportive, body-loving decisions consistently. Notice that I didn't say perfectly. But it is sustainable, and that's what this is. We're in it for the long haul. It's not a quick fix to heal our osteoporosis. So this mindset work, the emotional well-being, understanding what's at the root of all of your food choices, is often where I like to start with clients.

Ashlee: That's the best place. You've got to get to the bottom of it so it can stick long term. And it's such a wonderful space when you get there and you're not thinking about food constantly.

I feel like this applies to all of those pillars of our bone health optimization pyramid that we highlight all the time — the sleep, the exercise, the nutrition, and our mindset and stress. The more we hyper-fixate on any of those pillars, the more issues we're going to have with them. I've heard patients and members say they lay in bed thinking, what if I can't sleep? What if I don't sleep? What if I wake up again at three in the morning? And oh my gosh, now you are definitely going to. So it's just finding the root of all of those, so that those foundational pillars can live in harmony together.

Edie: And it is easier said than done, because sometimes the more we know, the more stressed out we feel about our stress, because we know what it's doing to our bone health. That's why we're here. There is literally nothing you could say to me that would make me raise my eyebrows and think, uh oh, we're not going to be able to wrap our arms around this. We can. And the only thing that we need to be able to successfully do that is to understand what it is you're thinking and what it is you're feeling. None of it's a problem.

I have one more story I'd love to ask about, and it's with a tool that we often use, especially at the start of a new coaching relationship — Cronometer. I know there's a story where someone felt like they were doing everything perfectly, but labs showed otherwise. Can you share that story, just to help us keep a balanced perspective on why it's important to take a holistic approach?

Ashlee: That's a great segue into what we were just discussing — this hyper-fixation on a particular thing, whether it's a food, a bone health marker, or in this situation, a food tracking app. Cronometer can be a great tool temporarily, to identify areas that need to be filled or optimized.

But this particular patient had logged every bite she took for a year or more. Every sip of water or an electrolyte, every bite, every snack. We talked about taking breaks, but she really felt like it was an important tool to keep her consistent, or eating enough.

At one point we just looked at it: technically, within this app, your numbers are flawless. Calories were perfect. Protein was met. Micronutrients were met. Minerals were 100%. On paper, it was gold standard. But she felt terrible. She was still coming to each session with me, and with her provider within the program, completely exhausted. Over time she started having complaints of feeling cold all the time, which is a signal of thyroid function or malnourishment. She wasn't gaining bone — she started going the opposite way on her scans and her numbers. And labs started to really reflect stress and under-fueling.

There's no perfect app. Cronometer personally sets my targets well below what I feel comfortable with and what I feel good on. Even with the best technology — and it really is probably the best app in terms of nutritional tracking — if you don't have someone you're meeting with month to month, going in and adjusting those numbers, I would never tell a member doing it on their own to just trust what Cronometer says. You also have to listen to your body and how you're feeling.

I think she was seeing those numbers as perfect and then telling herself, but you feel fine, you're not tired, look at this. She was tired. She wasn't feeling great. Her energy was really low. In that situation, she was not listening to her symptoms and her body. She was listening to an app. And that's not anywhere I want our members or patients to be.

I want them to use it all as a tool, but never allow it to override hunger and fullness cues and satisfaction. That's when it becomes really disconnecting. I told her, our body doesn't respond to spreadsheets. It responds to safety and consistency. And that perfect data did not equal a nourished human body in that situation.

Edie: And we can certainly have compassion for what may have been driving that dependency — wanting that safety, craving that safety of "I'm doing it right with my food." But to Ashlee's point, we don't want to outsource our body's wisdom to an app. The app can't tell what you are experiencing. It doesn't know what this feels like in your own body.

If you're someone who has years of outsourcing that wisdom to an expert or to an app, it's okay if it's muffled right now. If you don't trust yourself right now, there are steps that we can take to help you strengthen the relationship that you have with your body. Reconnecting with your body is a skill — things like hunger, fullness, energy, how food feels in your body. Thinking about what Ashlee shared with the beans example, or with this Cronometer example: well, I shouldn't feel tired, because my numbers say I should feel like a million bucks.

The goal isn't always more data. It's learning how to trust your body versus override it.

Ashlee: Absolutely.

Edie: Food freedom is not new to me. It's something that I've been teaching and coaching on, and living, for over a decade now. Food freedom is my life's work, and I want every single member to reach their osteoporosis reversal goal with food freedom — meaning not just knowledge around food, but this quiet, calm confidence. True peace.

The way I think about your relationship with food is that it is just like any other relationship you have. It requires four things: patience, love, respect, and trust. And that can't be rushed. It is not a quick fix. That's why my group coaching program, Food Freedom Fundamentals, is 12 weeks long — because in those 12 weeks we are rewiring your relationship with food, but also your relationship with yourself.

That's why I love this work so much. So often clients come to me to help them heal their relationship with food, and we certainly do that, but you end up falling more in love with yourself, because so often a food freedom journey is not even about the food. Let that sink in for a minute. Food is the doorway, and underneath it there are things like stress, fear, a lack of self-trust, worry about doing it wrong, this pressure to be perfect, years of conditioning — to Ashlee's point, and what she shared about the programming she got as a competitive gymnast.

So when I teach food freedom, we are looking at two pillars.

The first is strategy — new strategy with nutrition. There are certain levers that we can pull to help you feel more grounded and more confident in your food choices. That includes things like blood sugar balance and meal planning, which isn't a sexy topic, I know, but the way I teach it, you will get my template and my process. You'll learn about portions and clean eating. Really simple, sustainable, repeatable structure. Loose structure creates freedom — not from a place of rigidity, but from a place of support, so that your nervous system can just get this big exhale and you'll start to have the thought of, wait a minute, I can do this. It is easier than I thought it could be.

The other pillar is the emotional side of food, and this is the side of food that most people have never received support in. We don't fight our cravings. Whatever your craving is, I will teach you how to dissect it — I do that through eight different techniques — and you'll learn how to interpret what that craving means. There's nothing wrong with you. You'll also learn the different types of hunger, and just that in and of itself will create a better understanding for yourself, and more compassion. You'll learn how to reconnect with your body. And we will be using EFT, which stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. I am an EFT practitioner, and this is one of my favorite ways to reduce stress and to help work through any emotional issues attached to food.

Ashlee: I'm so excited for this course. I offered to be in the private group chat, just because of some of the examples that we talked about today. It was really helpful to have that dietitian, numbers perspective — to teach about the food, to teach about portions. The amount matters, and the content matters. I'm happy to support members going through this course, where it looks like just some education and understanding about the food itself will help release some of that fear and anxiety around it. So this is going to be such a cool course.

Edie: Oh my gosh, when Ashlee let me know that she's available for that, it made me so happy. I hope that you all are as pumped as we are.

That's a wrap on my conversation with Ashlee. If you'd like more information on Dr. Doug Lucas, or if you're curious to learn more about reversing osteoporosis or joining The OsteoCollective, be sure to check the show notes. I have linked Dr. Doug's resources there for you.

If you enjoyed this episode, please do me a favor and rate it. Your reviews will help me help more people. And if you'd like my support in your health journey, you can head to my website at ediefeffer.com, where you can check out the different ways that we can work together. You can also come hang out with me on Instagram — I'm @ediefeffer. I will see you here next week.