Speaker 1: I won't let my body out outwait everything that I'm made,
Speaker 1: don't won't spend my life trying to change.
Speaker 2: I'm learning to love who I am.
Speaker 3: A gat I'm strong, I feel.
Speaker 2: Free, I know every part of me.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then will always out way if you feel.
Speaker 2: It, but you are, She'll some love to the food.
Speaker 3: Why have there take you one day?
Speaker 2: Nita?
Speaker 1: Did you and die?
Speaker 3: Out way? Happy Saturday? Outweigh.
Speaker 4: I'm Amy Brown and I'm Leanne Ellington, And this is
Speaker 4: part four of a series we're calling two things can
Speaker 4: be true at the same time, and today we are
Speaker 4: focusing on well, three things being true at the same time.
Speaker 3: You can heal from.
Speaker 4: Your disordered eating and have a healthy relationship with food
Speaker 4: and still love food, love, sugar, fine, pleasure and joy
Speaker 4: and food and still have food stuff that you're continually
Speaker 4: working through.
Speaker 3: All of these things can be true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all at the same time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think this is a big one because
Speaker 1: we think that we need to or at least I died,
Speaker 1: you know when I started my healing journey, and this
Speaker 1: was a product of the extremism of you know, still
Speaker 1: thinking that there was good and bad, right and wrong
Speaker 1: or that I couldn't even imagine a version of myself
Speaker 1: that could trust myself around these foods that I typically
Speaker 1: associated with pleasure. And then of course I had been
Speaker 1: hearing that like sugar is the enemy, sugar is the devil,
Speaker 1: all these things. So we're being programmed and it's so confusing.
Speaker 1: So we think that, at least I did, and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of my clients have this perception as
Speaker 1: well that when their air quotes healed, they're never going
Speaker 1: to have sugar, or they're never going to want sugar,
Speaker 1: or and maybe it's not sugar, maybe it's you know,
Speaker 1: salty and savory and all of that. But I know
Speaker 1: for me, I had this perception of what it was
Speaker 1: going to look like, and so I didn't even have
Speaker 1: the awareness to have the awareness that all of these
Speaker 1: things could be true at the same time. So having
Speaker 1: a healed relationship with food, finding joy and fun and
Speaker 1: pleasure in food, which we'll talk about, but then also
Speaker 1: be aware that I'm here and I'm at peace, but
Speaker 1: there's also the next level of freedom and peace that
Speaker 1: I might be working on, and giving yourself permission to
Speaker 1: be on that journey as well. So starting with the
Speaker 1: first thing, which is finding that freedom and that peace,
Speaker 1: And like we talked about on the first episode of
Speaker 1: this series, is this concept of really being mindful. And
Speaker 1: in my opinion, I do believe you have to take
Speaker 1: a sabbatical from the weight loss mentality and the typical
Speaker 1: goal setting mentality and really go heal this. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about having a healthy relationship with food, it
Speaker 1: denotes that if you've learned and practiced many years of
Speaker 1: an unhealthy or a disordered behavior relationship with food, that
Speaker 1: it denotes that you're going to go through a period
Speaker 1: of healing. And again it's not always linear, it takes time.
Speaker 1: But coming from this place of having a more balanced
Speaker 1: and peaceful driven relationship with food, where does the topic
Speaker 1: of enjoying food come into play?
Speaker 2: Because that's the thing it's demonized.
Speaker 1: You know. Again, we talked about sugar being labeled as
Speaker 1: bad and evil and addictive and all of these things,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't leave space for food being part of
Speaker 1: connection and pleasure and fun and family and culture and
Speaker 1: all of these things. So how can we have both?
Speaker 1: And another distinction that comes to mind around this is
Speaker 1: when you're living in a reality that coexists with the
Speaker 1: binge restrict cycle. So that bine restrict cycle is the
Speaker 1: restriction takes over at one point where you're like, I
Speaker 1: can't have that, not allowed to have that, that's bad,
Speaker 1: that's wrong, and then you abstain or you control or
Speaker 1: you restrict to the point in my case, when I
Speaker 1: couldn't take it any longer and I switched to the opposite.
Speaker 1: So when I wasn't playing my inner food police, I
Speaker 1: was carefree, abandonment, eat everything in sight, and trying to
Speaker 1: you know, air quotes, get it in before I knew
Speaker 1: that the flip would be switched, the switch would be
Speaker 1: flipped again.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, That's how I spent much of my life, right,
Speaker 4: So in that paradigm, there's no room for having food
Speaker 4: for pleasure because it's not about that, right.
Speaker 2: But when you have.
Speaker 1: This relationship with food where it's just food and you
Speaker 1: you can like use it for sustenance and feeding your
Speaker 1: body and fueling your body, it also creates a space
Speaker 1: where you can be like, Wow, that chocolate chip cookie
Speaker 1: with like real sugar, real butter, real eggs, real chocolate
Speaker 1: was delicious. And it doesn't mean that I don't like
Speaker 1: my you know, protein cookie that I put cookie that
Speaker 1: I put protein powder, and you know, egg whites and
Speaker 1: stevia chips in isn't also good.
Speaker 3: Sure, but there is a right there's.
Speaker 2: A disorder that comes with that.
Speaker 3: No, I think that that's totally okay. I'm with you
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 4: I will say, though, when I finally flipped the switch
Speaker 4: to like being able to enjoy food, and I realized
Speaker 4: some of the food I used to find so enjoyable,
Speaker 4: or at least I convinced myself I did. I've gone
Speaker 4: back to eating it at times because it was all
Speaker 4: I had access to, or like, there was this particular
Speaker 4: type of bar, for example, that I used to get
Speaker 4: because it had no sugar in it whatsoever. I don't
Speaker 4: even know how they make it sweet though, don't ask me,
Speaker 4: but I ate them all the time, and I thought
Speaker 4: that they were amazing.
Speaker 3: And then I had one the other day.
Speaker 4: Because again it's all I had access to, and I
Speaker 4: was like, this is disgusting. Yeah, how did I eat
Speaker 4: this all the time? Absolutely, for years I eat it.
Speaker 4: And then now that everything's changed, Yep, I'm a different person. Yep.
Speaker 3: I can't go back to that now.
Speaker 4: Some stuff to your point, like you may still enjoy
Speaker 4: that particular type of cookie and there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 4: black bean brownies or whatever. Although when I was starting
Speaker 4: that recovery, I swung all the way to where it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: only bad brownies or bust because I don't care about
Speaker 4: anything exactly. And now I'm in a place where I
Speaker 4: could be like, oh, black bean brownies, that makes sense
Speaker 4: right now because I would love to get in the
Speaker 4: extra fiber absolutely. Or now I see even blueberries in
Speaker 4: a different way. I used to see them as like, Okay,
Speaker 4: that's a low sugar fruit that I'm gonna try to
Speaker 4: you know, be quote unquote healthy with. And now I'm like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: I get to enjoy an abundance of blueberries right now,
Speaker 4: and my brain is going to be so excited for
Speaker 4: this absolutely, Like I see it more for what it's
Speaker 4: actually doing for my body then that it's just on
Speaker 4: this list of foods that I need to eat because
Speaker 4: they're allowed totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bring up such a good point, and that's
Speaker 1: where I where it was saying, like, when you're in it,
Speaker 1: you don't even see that this is possible, But once
Speaker 1: you're in the healing side.
Speaker 2: Of it, it creates space for it.
Speaker 1: Because let's be honest, when I was at the height
Speaker 1: of my disordered eating and even like the orthorexia side
Speaker 1: of it, I could and then swaying to the binging
Speaker 1: side of it. You better believe if even if I was,
Speaker 1: you know, air quotes judging myself, if it wasn't a
Speaker 1: black bean brownie, I would binge an entire batch of
Speaker 1: black bean brownies. I didn't discriminate, right, So the pendulum
Speaker 1: swings all directions, whether it's an air quotes healthy thing
Speaker 1: or not. But part of it is like, that's where
Speaker 1: I want to invite you all and kind of sets
Speaker 1: you up for the expectation now that when you do
Speaker 1: have a healed relationship with food, because part of it,
Speaker 1: too is it's a product of being in that cycle.
Speaker 1: You're probably very desensitized or disconnected from what is hunger?
Speaker 1: What is fullness? What is pleasure? And where am I
Speaker 1: feeding a hole in my emotional self? Where am I actually,
Speaker 1: you know, enjoying this or where is it a coping
Speaker 1: mechanism when I'm lonely stressed at our board. So we
Speaker 1: become desensitized to it. We don't trust ourselves. Often one
Speaker 1: of my clients was, like, my ticker's broken like she
Speaker 1: doesn't trust herself, she doesn't know what she likes and
Speaker 1: what she wants. So that's where I want to set
Speaker 1: you all up for now, the possibility that once you
Speaker 1: do have this, and I put it in air quotes
Speaker 1: normal relationship with food. But whatever you dictate, you want
Speaker 1: your new normal to be a healthy, healed relationship. Like
Speaker 1: whatever your new normal is that you picture where you
Speaker 1: feel healthy and at ease with food, I also want
Speaker 1: you to invite you into the space where it can coexist,
Speaker 1: where you can also enter into a conversation where food
Speaker 1: is fun, it's pleasurable. You know, you could have a
Speaker 1: list of restaurants that you want to visit. You could
Speaker 1: have a page on Instagram that you follow because you
Speaker 1: love their delicacies. Like, it doesn't have to be such
Speaker 1: a threat, but when you're in it, you might not
Speaker 1: even know that that's possible.
Speaker 4: And I think too, it's important to remember that it's
Speaker 4: you're going to evolve the more you grow in this area,
Speaker 4: because I think of things you know that even just
Speaker 4: last year that let me see how I could put this, Like,
Speaker 4: I guess it's it's like permission to maybe not feel
Speaker 4: a certain way about a food for the rest of
Speaker 4: your life. Yeah, even in healing, even in recovery, your
Speaker 4: taste might change, your thoughts about something might change. And
Speaker 4: that's the best part. My favorite things is like if
Speaker 4: we're not evolving, we're dead. And so your desire for
Speaker 4: certain fooddes are going to evolve and change as you're
Speaker 4: on this journey. And just because in the first parts
Speaker 4: of your healing you were like, oh, this is really
Speaker 4: the bread that I'm into, and then suddenly you're not,
Speaker 4: Like that doesn't mean anything. You just don't put your
Speaker 4: pressure on yourself to have like Okay, now that I'm
Speaker 4: in this lane, it's this way or the highway, Like
Speaker 4: there's just some stuff for me that has flowed floan,
Speaker 4: flowed loan and flowed flowed in and out of my
Speaker 4: life and it's like I'm breezy with it. Yeahs like Okay,
Speaker 4: one day I'm I'm wanting that and I ate that
Speaker 4: and it's like, okay, no big deal. But we love
Speaker 4: to bring up that pendulum swinging, Like there was times
Speaker 4: where it's like, oh, I want all of this stuff
Speaker 4: and that's totally okay. But if I go back over
Speaker 4: here and only want this type of thing, that's also
Speaker 4: okay too.
Speaker 1: I love how you said breezy too, because it denotes
Speaker 1: this care free energy, which is the opposite of extremism
Speaker 1: and putting yourself in a box and having to be
Speaker 1: one way, and yeah, giving yourself permission to change your
Speaker 1: mind and change your beliefs and change your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I know for me, you know, ten years ago, I
Speaker 2: was like.
Speaker 3: Oh, official sweeteners or the devil, And.
Speaker 2: I mean I was on that bandwagon.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, Like it's different for everyone, like
Speaker 1: people have different But there's now talk about the evidence
Speaker 1: based science world.
Speaker 2: There's study after study after.
Speaker 1: Study proving that you know, even aspartain, which is the
Speaker 1: one that is like gotten a lot of flack, is
Speaker 1: really not harmful in high doses, not everybody, or sorry,
Speaker 1: in normal doses that people would intake. Now, not everybody
Speaker 1: is feels their best when they're drinking artificial sweeteners. But
Speaker 1: even things like that, like being open to new research
Speaker 1: coming out and being open to the fact that like
Speaker 1: maybe you're not the same person you were ten years
Speaker 1: ago or five years ago, and giving yourself that breezy
Speaker 1: attitude to be able to change your mind and leave
Speaker 1: space for it, and that is the third thing of
Speaker 1: the two things that can be true at the same time,
Speaker 1: like your relationship with food, your body, yourself.
Speaker 2: Is always evolving.
Speaker 1: So I remember times when I couldn't keep peanut butter
Speaker 1: in the house because it was a trigger for me.
Speaker 1: I would you know, binge it. It didn't have to
Speaker 1: be actual sugar, right, And then it was the next
Speaker 1: level of like, oh I can actually keep peanut butter
Speaker 1: in my house. And then it was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: can actually keep something that has actual sugar in my house.
Speaker 1: And it's like giving yourself permission to let it be
Speaker 1: the next level, the next level, the next level, but
Speaker 1: find that pendulum in the middle where you can also
Speaker 1: give yourself permission to be human about food and pleasure
Speaker 1: and cravings and all of the things.
Speaker 3: Do you watch Friends?
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes me think of that episode with Monica
Speaker 4: where she's like, I'm breezy, yes, and Monica is the
Speaker 4: most uptight of c not breezy person, but she's breezy
Speaker 4: convinced yes that she's breezy.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, so get.
Speaker 2: Your inner Monica.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah you are, you are breezy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I even journaled this morning about my breeziness. Because
Speaker 4: I really wasn't being very breezy about something yesterday. So
Speaker 4: and I know you and I talk about a lot
Speaker 4: about acting as if, and I was like, you know what,
Speaker 4: I really do think that that was circumstantial and I
Speaker 4: am breezy and I'm easy to.
Speaker 3: Get along with in this area.
Speaker 4: It was something with my ex husband, and I was
Speaker 4: not being breezy at all, and I see it today. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to celebrate the fact that I'm aware
Speaker 4: of it totally. I'm aware that I wasn't breezy. And
Speaker 4: then I journaled through how I'm going to be breezy,
Speaker 4: and I see myself in the future being so breezy
Speaker 4: next time. I'm already so breezy. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I can't even see you. You flew by so
Speaker 2: quickly because you're so breezy, so breezy.
Speaker 4: And so that might be how you know, maybe listening
Speaker 4: right now, you're not breezy about a certain thing, but
Speaker 4: journal through it, picture yourself being breezy. Yeah, And how
Speaker 4: does it feel being able to be breezy about it?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so much lighter.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I love how you you created that picture, because
Speaker 1: that's today's episode is a little bit harder to grasp
Speaker 1: if you've never experienced it. It's one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things for my clients are like, I don't even understand
Speaker 1: what it would be like to not feel so crazy
Speaker 1: around food. I don't know what it would feel like
Speaker 1: to have peace around food, but to also not feel
Speaker 1: like a chigarataqae Like it's hard for them to grasp.
Speaker 1: So I think, if anything, if we're giving that weekly
Speaker 1: dose of encouragement today, knowing that it is possible to
Speaker 1: find peace with food and find pleasure in it, but
Speaker 1: without it being this rabbit hole where it becomes almost
Speaker 1: like a drug like pole, so to speak, or a
Speaker 1: feeling like an addict, Like there is that space for
Speaker 1: them to coexist even if you don't believe it's possible
Speaker 1: yet just giving you that encouragement that it is.
Speaker 4: It is, it's totally possible. Because I had those exact
Speaker 4: same thoughts for decades. Yeah, and I was in a
Speaker 4: place of acceptance of this is just how this is
Speaker 4: my life, this is how it's going to be, and
Speaker 4: this is how we operate, and so.
Speaker 2: Let's get used to it, right, Yeah, And then becomes
Speaker 2: yourself image and identity.
Speaker 4: And it's just so not the case. So I know
Speaker 4: that if I'm able to be in a different place
Speaker 4: with it, and it just expands your world, it frees
Speaker 4: your brain up. I mean, they have that saying of like,
Speaker 4: this sort of stuff is just living in your brain
Speaker 4: rent free and.
Speaker 3: You deserve better. Yeah, and it's totally possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's why little conversations like this are helpful
Speaker 4: because if you're having those thoughts. I also remember thinking,
Speaker 4: am I the only person in the world with these thoughts?
Speaker 4: Because nobody when I was in my teens twenties, like, okay,
Speaker 4: so in the nineties and early two thousands, nobody was
Speaker 4: talking about binge eating. I thought, literally I was the
Speaker 4: only person and there was so much shame around it.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to talk about it. And I'm like,
Speaker 4: why in the world did I just eat all of that?
Speaker 4: And who do I even tell? And I'm so messed up,
Speaker 4: something's wrong with me. And then now we know that
Speaker 4: there's so many people that have that, But it was
Speaker 4: coming from a place of my times of restriction, and
Speaker 4: it was this pattern.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's so isolating, and it makes us think that
Speaker 1: we're the only one that struggles the way that we are.
Speaker 1: And then a lot of the thoughts that came up
Speaker 1: for me and for my clients are like, if only
Speaker 1: they knew how crazy I was, messed up, broken, fill
Speaker 1: on the blank. And that's another I think really import
Speaker 1: and part of today's episode is really just letting you know, like,
Speaker 1: you're not alone, you're not crazy, you're not messed up,
Speaker 1: you're not broken, you're not too far gone. You learned
Speaker 1: what we learned, and there's a way to unlearn it
Speaker 1: and relearn something new that sets you free but also
Speaker 1: coexists in a world where you can enjoy life and
Speaker 1: socializing and friends and family and food and all the
Speaker 1: things that come alongside it. And the journey can be
Speaker 1: a dot dot dot, never ending, always evolving thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So to recap, you can heal from your disordered
Speaker 4: eating and have a healthy relationship with food, and you
Speaker 4: can still love food, love sugar, find pleasure and joy
Speaker 4: and food and still have food stuff that you're continually
Speaker 4: working through. It can all be true. Absolutely, boom Leanne.
Speaker 4: Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Absolutely to talk more about this, learn more about this,
Speaker 1: you can head on over to stressless eeating dot com.
Speaker 2: There's some resources over there for you to learn more.
Speaker 4: And I am at Radio Amy on Instagram and we're
Speaker 4: going to be taking a break from this series. We
Speaker 4: did four in a row. Two Things can be True
Speaker 4: at the same time, and Lane's got some cool interviews
Speaker 4: coming up that she's going to be sharing every Saturday
Speaker 4: for the next few weeks, and then we'll come back
Speaker 4: yep with another four parts. Yep, So five, six, seven,
Speaker 4: and eight. Yep, there's eight total. Do you want to
Speaker 4: share who you potentially are interviewing or do we want
Speaker 4: yeah to that?
Speaker 1: So our first two things Can be True at the
Speaker 1: same time was about you can you know, be on
Speaker 1: this journey of healing and health and loving yourself and
Speaker 1: peace and all of the good stuff that we all
Speaker 1: want more of and have goals and still you know,
Speaker 1: want to take your health to the next level. So
Speaker 1: I shared a little bit about how I drew a
Speaker 1: line in the sand and decided to figure out how
Speaker 1: two things could be true in my own life around
Speaker 1: that after ten years of not not knowing what that
Speaker 1: looked like. So the woman that I worked with, and
Speaker 1: she's a friend and a mentor, will be sharing some
Speaker 1: awesomeness about all of that and how we can really
Speaker 1: bridge the gap between you know, the typical health and
Speaker 1: fitness world, but also the mental emotional health and how
Speaker 1: to really heal from this. She's had her own testimony
Speaker 1: and experiences with eating disorders and disordered eating and body
Speaker 1: dysmorphia and all of that stuff, so she'll definitely share
Speaker 1: her own testimony and then we'll be talking about some
Speaker 1: cool stuff in relation to that.
Speaker 4: Okay, so interview time coming up the next few weeks,
Speaker 4: and then Leanna and I.
Speaker 3: Will be back together.
Speaker 4: But hope y'all are having the day that you need
Speaker 4: to have and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: Bye bye