Speaker 1: Pushkin ballet. It was ballet. I remember the mirrors and
Speaker 1: the little girls, and my stomach was like sort of protruding,
Speaker 1: and no one else's stomachs were protruding. And I became
Speaker 1: very self conscious of it, and I hated going to ballet,
Speaker 1: but I never really explained why. And then as I
Speaker 1: started to grow, I used to actually I would play
Speaker 1: this game as a little girl, where I would squeeze
Speaker 1: the fat on my stomach into a little ball and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, Oh, it's like a tangerine. And then
Speaker 1: I would as I got bigger, I would be like,
Speaker 1: it's like a grapefruit. And then I was like, it's
Speaker 1: like a melon. And then after that, I was like,
Speaker 1: I hate this game. I'm never playing this game again.
Speaker 1: From the time she was a little girl, Elena Baker
Speaker 1: hated her body. She thought if she could just become thin,
Speaker 1: everything in her life would be different, would be better.
Speaker 1: So she went on a mission to lose a ton
Speaker 1: of weight, and she did it. She lost close to
Speaker 1: one hundred pounds in five and a half months, and
Speaker 1: for a moment, it seemed to Elena like she was
Speaker 1: getting everything she wanted, until she started to realize she
Speaker 1: was losing herself in the process. I'm Maya Shunker and
Speaker 1: this is a slight change of plans. A show that
Speaker 1: dieds deep into the world of change and hopefully gets
Speaker 1: us to think differently at that change in our own lives.
Speaker 1: Ea Baker grew up in the nineteen eighties and a
Speaker 1: conservative Mormon family. Like I just was remembering this song.
Speaker 1: I grew up singing. This is the actual lyrics. When
Speaker 1: I grow up, I want to be a mother and
Speaker 1: have a family one little two, little three, little babies
Speaker 1: of my own, and then it keeps going. Of all
Speaker 1: the jobs for me, there is no other I'll have
Speaker 1: a family four, a little five, little six, little babies
Speaker 1: in my home, and you know, and that's like just
Speaker 1: par for the course of being Mormon. From an early age,
Speaker 1: Elena was sold on the idea that if she just
Speaker 1: looked a certain way and acted a certain way, she'd
Speaker 1: be worthy of love. I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: was media. You know. I grew up on Disney movies.
Speaker 1: I grew up on like princess stories. I was weirdly
Speaker 1: very affected by The Little Mermaid, who was my favorite movie.
Speaker 1: But Ursula was this like, you know, supposedly this this gigantic,
Speaker 1: disgusting woman. And I just remember being sold the narrative
Speaker 1: that certain women, if they looked a certain way, were
Speaker 1: invisible and would pine after men and they would never
Speaker 1: be loved. And it's so weird to me that I
Speaker 1: I attached myself to that narrative so young. I actually
Speaker 1: had a conversation with my parents recently because I was like,
Speaker 1: do you remember when I decided I was worthless because
Speaker 1: of the way I looked? And you know, as I
Speaker 1: spoke to my dad about it, you know, it was
Speaker 1: as young as eight years old that I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just one of the girls who will never be
Speaker 1: beautiful and will never be loved. Do you remember anyone
Speaker 1: ever saying anything to you about your body? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean everyone said things to me about my body.
Speaker 1: It seemed like it seemed like my body was like
Speaker 1: public domain, you know, So I have, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the memory that was I think I was. I
Speaker 1: was in fifth grade and the yearbook for a school
Speaker 1: costs like seventy dollars, so my parents didn't want to
Speaker 1: buy me and my sister both yearbooks, so we shared
Speaker 1: a yearbook, so she had the front half. I had
Speaker 1: the back half, and I would love to look through
Speaker 1: her section because she was popular, she had friends. I
Speaker 1: would like read all of the people who signed her section.
Speaker 1: And then I noticed that the two most popular boys
Speaker 1: in my grade had signed her section of the yearbook,
Speaker 1: and I thought for a second that they had just
Speaker 1: signed on the wrong side, but then it was addressed
Speaker 1: to my sister, and they didn't even know my sister.
Speaker 1: But one had written, how come you're so beautiful and
Speaker 1: your sister is so ugly? And the other had written,
Speaker 1: I wish your sister looked like you? And I was
Speaker 1: just I mean, I was devastated. I was crying. I
Speaker 1: had I had felt that I was worthless because of
Speaker 1: the way I looked. I had suspected it based on
Speaker 1: the way people would would look at me or look
Speaker 1: at my body. But I think that was like actual
Speaker 1: written confirmation looking back at it. Sorry, I'm getting emotional
Speaker 1: remembering all this. But you know, my mother saw that
Speaker 1: I was worried about my weight, and so she became
Speaker 1: heavily involved, and I you know, to her credit, I
Speaker 1: think she was just trying to help me. But that
Speaker 1: of course made it so much worse, because you know,
Speaker 1: if I went to have seconds at dinner, she would
Speaker 1: nod her head, and you know she didn't do with
Speaker 1: my brothers and sisters. She started taking me to specialist
Speaker 1: in doctors where they would, you know, make me get
Speaker 1: naked and measure me and weigh me, and you know,
Speaker 1: they were worried I had a thyroid issue. And I
Speaker 1: looked back to that time where there was all of
Speaker 1: this effort to try to understand what was wrong with Elma,
Speaker 1: and I look at pictures and I was actually totally
Speaker 1: normal sized. Like it's it doesn't it's unfortunate. It's like
Speaker 1: all the effort to prevent this thing from happening ended
Speaker 1: up being the catalyst for that thing happening. Because something
Speaker 1: happened to my mind. By the time I was sixteen,
Speaker 1: and you know, at my heaviest, at my heaviest, I
Speaker 1: was two hundred and sixty pounds, I was definitely in
Speaker 1: a place where I thought I didn't deserve to live,
Speaker 1: Like I was considering ending my life because of the
Speaker 1: way I looked. That's how that's how much I hated
Speaker 1: my body, how much I hated myself because I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like if I looked this way that I deserved
Speaker 1: any love or deserved to live. Elma continued to feel
Speaker 1: this way about herself for years. One day, when she
Speaker 1: was twenty two, it all came into full focus. She
Speaker 1: and her family took a trip to an amusement park
Speaker 1: where there was a funhouse with a hallway of mirrors.
Speaker 1: And so, as a family were walking down this hallway
Speaker 1: of mirrors and I turned the corner and the mirror
Speaker 1: in front of me, I saw this woman in it
Speaker 1: and it was me thin but proportionately thin. It wasn't
Speaker 1: one of those like where they stretch you out really
Speaker 1: really long. It was just like what I would look
Speaker 1: like if I was a different person. If I was
Speaker 1: it was a thin woman. And I mean I could
Speaker 1: not be torn away from that mirror. I mean I
Speaker 1: just stood in front of the mirror and I was like,
Speaker 1: what does thin Elma look like when she runs in place?
Speaker 1: What does thin Elma look like when she flips her hair?
Speaker 1: And I was just like flirting with myself. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was just like playing with this woman. I looked
Speaker 1: like a member of my family, Like I looked like
Speaker 1: my sisters, and I had no concept that I could
Speaker 1: look that way. And I also felt like this this
Speaker 1: person I had felt like I was, deep down inside
Speaker 1: was visually presenting itself to me in the mirror. This
Speaker 1: narrative that every fat woman has a thin woman inside
Speaker 1: of her. I felt like if I was her to
Speaker 1: the world, they would let me be the person who
Speaker 1: I wanted to be. What were those things that you
Speaker 1: wanted to be that you felt the world wasn't allowing
Speaker 1: you to be? It was free? I wanted to be free,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be loved. So you're looking at
Speaker 1: fun House mayor Elena, and she's she seems free and lighthearted,
Speaker 1: and she's she's reaching her dreams. Like that's what you
Speaker 1: saw it? Yeah, I saw someone who every door would
Speaker 1: open for Wow, And I thought, what if I became her? Like,
Speaker 1: would my life be easier? Would it actually be different?
Speaker 1: Would I get things I wanted if I did the
Speaker 1: thing I've been told my whole life to do, which
Speaker 1: is just lose weight. And so that was when I
Speaker 1: became absolutely determined that I was going to take this
Speaker 1: on and I was going to become her. What made
Speaker 1: that moment different, like what led you to actually then
Speaker 1: go and lose all this weight? I think it was
Speaker 1: just absolute determination. It was like, I could not get this.
Speaker 1: I would close my eyes and I would see that
Speaker 1: woman and I could not get her out of my head.
Speaker 1: And I thought, this is going to be the time
Speaker 1: that I do it. You lost a lot of weight
Speaker 1: in a very short amount of time. Yeah, what did
Speaker 1: you have to put yourself through to get to that point?
Speaker 1: You know? The program was, you know, you ate a
Speaker 1: very minimal amount of food. You exercised, you know, at
Speaker 1: least half an hour a day, you drank eight you
Speaker 1: drink eight glasses of water. And then you also you
Speaker 1: took fentermine and a couple other supplements. And the fentermine
Speaker 1: it's basically similar to speed. It's an emphentamine and it
Speaker 1: curbs your appetite. I was Mormon. I'd never even had
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee, so I didn't know that you
Speaker 1: could take something and it would make you act differently.
Speaker 1: And at the time, I was also very religious, so
Speaker 1: I was praying and I was asking for through the
Speaker 1: grace of Jesus, Christ helped me change this aspect of myself.
Speaker 1: And then I'd started taking speed, And so I have
Speaker 1: journals from that time period that are hilarious because the journals,
Speaker 1: I just think it's like the love of Christ is
Speaker 1: helping me. So I'm like, you know, I've never I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm totally possessed by the spirit of God.
Speaker 1: Like I've never motivated, and I'm constantly cleaning. I've never
Speaker 1: been this clean, you know, I'm just like, but in reality,
Speaker 1: I was just like totally on speed. And when I
Speaker 1: lost all of that weight, especially because I lost it
Speaker 1: quite fast, my skin was so so loose. I mean
Speaker 1: it was just like I could take it and pull
Speaker 1: it like six to eight inches off of my body.
Speaker 1: I mean I looked kind of like a melting candle.
Speaker 1: I just had so much extra skin, and you know,
Speaker 1: that was really disappointing actually, because I had thought that
Speaker 1: I would get a do over, that I would finally
Speaker 1: get that body that I had dreamed of, and instead
Speaker 1: I was just covered in loose skin. And so I
Speaker 1: had four surgeries to reconstruct my body. First I did
Speaker 1: a tummy tuck, Then I did a circumferential body lift.
Speaker 1: Then I did implants to fill in kind of the
Speaker 1: empty pockets that my breasts had once been, and then
Speaker 1: they cut up my legs. So now in my body
Speaker 1: I have running up the side of my legs. I
Speaker 1: have these like seams. I have a scar completely back
Speaker 1: to front around my waist like a belt, like as
Speaker 1: if you know, I was cut in half by a
Speaker 1: magician or something, and the process of getting those surgeries,
Speaker 1: I mean it is violent. Just a few days after
Speaker 1: the surgery, I went to go pee and as I
Speaker 1: went to sit down, I split the seam on the
Speaker 1: inside of my crotch and it just gaping hole popped open.
Speaker 1: And I called a friend and was like panicking, and
Speaker 1: she amazingly was like, I'll be there in twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: She showed up with a bottle of white wine and
Speaker 1: valium and gave me a valium. And then the doctor
Speaker 1: had said that you had to push gauze back in,
Speaker 1: like you had to pack the wound with gauze, and
Speaker 1: so she I spread my legs and she packed me up,
Speaker 1: almost like you're putting the stuffing back into a teddy bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a tremendous, tremendous amount of effort
Speaker 1: to almost try to return myself to a place that
Speaker 1: that that I felt I needed to be in as
Speaker 1: a woman in order to be sexually desirable by a man.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was why I was doing it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you used the best word. The surgery was violent.
Speaker 1: Was there ever a moment when you thought this shit's
Speaker 1: not worth it? I mean, this is so not worth it.
Speaker 1: Like I'm literally having doctors cut me into pieces in
Speaker 1: order to make this happen. Yeah, I mean it's so funny.
Speaker 1: Like I It's like I never stopped to think, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do any of this. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't actually have to do any of this to
Speaker 1: be loved. But it was like suddenly I got to
Speaker 1: play this role I had studied and dreamed of my
Speaker 1: whole life. So it was like a performance piece. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I love getting to watch like how I could
Speaker 1: affect men, you know, like because I'd never affected them before.
Speaker 1: It was delightful. I mean I remember I was walking
Speaker 1: down the street in New York and I passed like
Speaker 1: this very beautiful woman and she kind of looked me
Speaker 1: up and down and like nodded her head. And and
Speaker 1: then I would pass you know, attractive men and attractive women,
Speaker 1: and they would do this thing where they kind of
Speaker 1: look at you a nod and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, there's like a secret club for the attractive
Speaker 1: people and the nod is like their secret handshake, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'm getting like a trial membership or something,
Speaker 1: you know. And I remember being at a deli and
Speaker 1: I had put you know, the items I was planning
Speaker 1: on buying up on the counter and I didn't have
Speaker 1: enough money. I realized, you know, it's like twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: I looked at my pocket, I only had ten. So
Speaker 1: I started kind of looking at the items and I
Speaker 1: was like pulling some down and then the deli guy
Speaker 1: just like shrugged his head and he was like, just
Speaker 1: take it. And I was like what and he was like,
Speaker 1: take it. You're fine, and then he kind of smiled
Speaker 1: at me, like you know, you're a pretty girl. Take it.
Speaker 1: And so I walked out and I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: beautiful people get free stuff, Like how is this real?
Speaker 1: And then I just I wanted to know if that
Speaker 1: was a thing. So I started going to delis and
Speaker 1: I would do like I would do a bit where
Speaker 1: I would put the stuff up, they would, you know,
Speaker 1: give me the price, and I would pretend that I
Speaker 1: didn't have enough money and they would say like, you're good,
Speaker 1: take it. And that was to me. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was like this can't be real, Like you can't get
Speaker 1: this much from just looking differently. And that's where it
Speaker 1: started to shift from like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: so fun to feeling a little bit sad or jaded,
Speaker 1: where I was like this is so unfair, like the
Speaker 1: person I was when I was fat, Like I was
Speaker 1: so kind, I think partly because I couldn't just ride
Speaker 1: by on good looks. I was always like trying to
Speaker 1: be helpful, trying to be loving, you know, baking people
Speaker 1: cookies or or whatever, like doing things for people, a
Speaker 1: lot of like acts of service to be a part
Speaker 1: of people's life. And I really do feel like that
Speaker 1: woman deserved the love and attention that this sudden, like
Speaker 1: thin version of me just automatically got without doing anything.
Speaker 1: She realized that new Elma, as she was beginning to
Speaker 1: see herself, knew Elma could pretty much get anything she wanted,
Speaker 1: including boyfriends, something old Elna had only dreamed of. On
Speaker 1: one particular date, knew Ellena and a guy were eating
Speaker 1: frozen yogurt, chatting about calories. I think, you know this
Speaker 1: is gonna sound mean, but I just can't tolerate fat people.
Speaker 1: And I just remember the word choice, like tolerate, you know,
Speaker 1: like people can't tolerate lactose, but like tolerate. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to say something, but I also
Speaker 1: wanted to be in the room, Like I wanted to
Speaker 1: be there, and I wanted to be chosen by him,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to just be the pretty girl who
Speaker 1: got the guy. And so I like took his hand
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, it's hard for them because you know,
Speaker 1: they're judged based on their appearance and they might actually
Speaker 1: be very good people deep down, and you're not giving
Speaker 1: yourself a chance to see that, you know, not that
Speaker 1: I would know anything about it, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I regret not actually just standing up and saying what
Speaker 1: I really thought, but at the time, I just I
Speaker 1: didn't want to get kicked out of the club. Is
Speaker 1: that the moment you realized, oh, no, I think knew
Speaker 1: Elna might be a worse person than old Elnah. Definitely, definitely,
Speaker 1: because it was this moment where I I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the trade off, right, Like you can get
Speaker 1: what you want, but you have to give up other
Speaker 1: parts of yourself and how bad do you want this?
Speaker 1: And you know old Elena had been actually like I
Speaker 1: had been this like larger than life person. I mean
Speaker 1: I was like audacious and bold and like I was
Speaker 1: funny and like in some ways, the bigness of my
Speaker 1: body allowed for the bigness of my personality. Knew, Elma,
Speaker 1: I was embarrassed of this person I used to be, like.
Speaker 1: I wanted to erase her from the earth. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because the version of thin Elna you saw in
Speaker 1: the fun House mirror that day relied on old illness personality,
Speaker 1: like old Elena's values, right, you saw that freedom in
Speaker 1: her because she still had that mindset that you cherished
Speaker 1: about yourself and childhood, right like outspokenness, irreverence, bold, right,
Speaker 1: willing to speak up. And I guess, yeah, you just
Speaker 1: didn't expect, you you might lose that along the way,
Speaker 1: or that there would be tradeoffs involved. Totally. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: when you change, you know, you you make these compromises
Speaker 1: along the way that you end up losing the core
Speaker 1: thing that you were changing for. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment with a slight change of plans. It took
Speaker 1: Elma Baker four major surgeries and countless diet pills to
Speaker 1: transform herself into the thin woman she saw in the
Speaker 1: fun house mirror back when she was twenty two. By
Speaker 1: the time she was in her thirties, Ellena got married
Speaker 1: and was working as a producer at the radio show
Speaker 1: This American Life, and she decided to do a story
Speaker 1: about her transformation from Old Elna to New Elna. What
Speaker 1: was it like writing this deeply personal story about yourself
Speaker 1: and sharing it with the world. What what about that
Speaker 1: process made you think about yourself differently? I remember saying
Speaker 1: to myself, like, if no one were to read or
Speaker 1: hear or see this, what would I actually say? And
Speaker 1: so that's why in the story I admitted to the
Speaker 1: fact that even though I had lost eight years earlier,
Speaker 1: in order to hold on to the thinness and never
Speaker 1: go back, I had had to basically stay on diet
Speaker 1: pills for fourteen years. Sorry, by diet By diet pills,
Speaker 1: do you means speed yeah, fentermin Yeah, it was on
Speaker 1: fendermine again. And so I, you know, I confessed that.
Speaker 1: And there was also a section of the story where
Speaker 1: I was interviewing my husband and he admitted that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have loved me or been attracted to me. I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what he said. I think it was
Speaker 1: he would never have dated me if I was fat,
Speaker 1: and I secretly knew that deep down, but to have
Speaker 1: it directly affirmed was also just really really painful, really
Speaker 1: really shocking. And so the piece itself. Once that piece aired,
Speaker 1: I had been under such a deadline to finish it
Speaker 1: and put it out in the world that I hadn't
Speaker 1: really stopped to think, like what am I saying about
Speaker 1: myself out loud? I felt like it was important and
Speaker 1: that's why I did it. But Yeah, after that piece
Speaker 1: came out, I felt like I felt a little like
Speaker 1: I showed I had shown my ass to the world.
Speaker 1: Instead of feeling proud, I was a little bit mortified.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, no, everyone knows now that I
Speaker 1: have an addiction to diet pills. You know they also
Speaker 1: know that, um, you know that I have a value
Speaker 1: system that's completely out of whack, and you know that
Speaker 1: this marriage that I have is also kind of there's
Speaker 1: something really false or fake about it? Like what do you?
Speaker 1: How do you unsee these things? Because I had, unintentionally,
Speaker 1: by being so honest, I had revealed a secret that
Speaker 1: I had been trying to keep from myself. What was
Speaker 1: that secret? Just that I was really unhappy and that
Speaker 1: I was that this was all kind of a lie,
Speaker 1: you know, and if you just keep going, you just
Speaker 1: keep going, keep going, don't stop, don't think, don't think,
Speaker 1: don't think, you can outrun all of that. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: I had like put a hard stop and I basically said, like, look,
Speaker 1: you can't look away here it is. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: how a piece of art can sometimes do that right
Speaker 1: where for the first time, you're you're reading about this
Speaker 1: person Elna from with the third person perspective in mind,
Speaker 1: and suddenly things become really clear or salient that when
Speaker 1: you had the first person perspective and we're running it
Speaker 1: five hundred miles per hour, you just never had noticed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely felt like I wasn't intending to make something
Speaker 1: that would be this inconvenient. It was a real wake
Speaker 1: up call for me. So basically I felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I stood on a podium basically and announced to
Speaker 1: the world what my problem was, and now I can't
Speaker 1: not see it and I can't go back like I
Speaker 1: had forced my own hand. Basically, around this time, Ellena
Speaker 1: ran out of diet pills and couldn't find a way
Speaker 1: to get them anymore, so she went looking for an alternative.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: a therapist. I'll pretend I have ADHD and I'll just
Speaker 1: get at her all. And so I'd never been to
Speaker 1: therapy in my life ever, and I decided I would
Speaker 1: go mainly just to get adderall. So I go to
Speaker 1: this first therapy session and I'm, you know, pretending that
Speaker 1: I have all the symptoms of someone with ADHD in
Speaker 1: order to get this adderall. But he kept asking these
Speaker 1: these pretty pointed personal questions that we're pushing me to
Speaker 1: reflect on, like, Okay, actually, what is really going on
Speaker 1: with me? And I started to see that therapy was
Speaker 1: a potential option to actually get to the root of
Speaker 1: the problem. And I knew this would be much harder.
Speaker 1: This would be the hard way versus the easy way,
Speaker 1: which would just be to take pills, which is basically
Speaker 1: what I've been doing for I think at that point,
Speaker 1: like over fourteen years of my life. But I also
Speaker 1: knew that like that wasn't sustainable. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be on diet pills as an eighty year old woman,
Speaker 1: you know, that's why I decided that I would actually
Speaker 1: try to look at my mental health. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: read at this point, I think one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: self help books. I've been to group therapy. I've been
Speaker 1: to two different therapists. I am, you know, I meditate,
Speaker 1: I work with a monk, I work with shaman's, I've
Speaker 1: done psychedelic therapy. Like, I have really tried to understand
Speaker 1: the root of this this behavior and and I began
Speaker 1: to see that there was a different way to do this,
Speaker 1: and that was like by being in touch with my feelings.
Speaker 1: And you know, I would say the last several years
Speaker 1: of my life have been very much dedicated to finally
Speaker 1: learning how to feel and that it's okay to feel.
Speaker 1: You seem to be just relentlessly committed to changing yourself. Right,
Speaker 1: So maybe that your twenties were spent on physical and
Speaker 1: thirties are spent on mental. Do you see similarities between
Speaker 1: the two And do you ever think at one point
Speaker 1: do I trying to change and just be? I will say,
Speaker 1: like my neurosis is fixing myself. And I will say
Speaker 1: that for the first time in my life, for a
Speaker 1: good four month period this year, I went on sabbatical.
Speaker 1: I was living in the woods and allowing myself to
Speaker 1: like do things I did when I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: you know, like walk barefoot and grass, climb trees, play.
Speaker 1: I think that that actually brought out a side or
Speaker 1: a person in me. That is what I thought all
Speaker 1: the hard work would bring out. It just brought out
Speaker 1: like joy, and it brought out playfulness. I thought that
Speaker 1: the way to bring that person into the world was
Speaker 1: to criticize and pick at myself enough that I would
Speaker 1: be able to be perfect and then I could be free.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that like the level at which
Speaker 1: I was picking myself apart and critiquing myself made it
Speaker 1: as if like there was no fertile soil within me
Speaker 1: for anything to grow. I was poisoning myself on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. And once I stopped doing that, then just
Speaker 1: sort of naturally, I started to blossom and feel silly
Speaker 1: and free and like joy. You've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: old Elna and new Elna, and I'm wondering who you
Speaker 1: are today. I mean, I feel like my hope is
Speaker 1: I burned it to the ground enough, you know, And
Speaker 1: so the difference now is that like I don't care
Speaker 1: what you see. I care if I'm happy. I'm letting
Speaker 1: my intuition, I'm letting my body my feelings, like I'm
Speaker 1: letting that guide me in terms of like this is
Speaker 1: who I am and what I want, and I no
Speaker 1: longer care what you're telling me is right and wrong,
Speaker 1: because when I was living based on what the world
Speaker 1: told me was right and wrong, I was committing acts
Speaker 1: of violence against myself on a daily basis to fit
Speaker 1: into a system that was broken and messed up and
Speaker 1: never really created to actually benefit me. I think one
Speaker 1: potential lesson from your story for me is the reminder
Speaker 1: that when we do change one thing about ourselves, that
Speaker 1: change doesn't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes we want it to,
Speaker 1: but it can lead to so many other unexpected changes
Speaker 1: that we just can't predict, and we can control it either, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's this fallout, there are these ripple effects that
Speaker 1: basically spiral out of our control after we've made that
Speaker 1: first intentional effort to change something. Do you have any
Speaker 1: reflections on that? Yeah, I think like when I saw
Speaker 1: that woman in the mirror and I wanted to become her,
Speaker 1: and I made a commitment that I would do anything
Speaker 1: it took to become her. I did not know what
Speaker 1: I was signing up for, you know. I thought I
Speaker 1: would just get like a like almost like a wish,
Speaker 1: like I would get to step through the mirror, and
Speaker 1: I would walk out the other side as her. I
Speaker 1: would be the same person I'd always been. I would
Speaker 1: continue to act the way I'd always acted, and and
Speaker 1: I would forever get to be her. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to like diet every day for the rest of my
Speaker 1: life to stay her, and I wouldn't have to change
Speaker 1: my personality to get the things that she got. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like that nursery rhyme. There was an old
Speaker 1: woman who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she
Speaker 1: swallowed a fly. Then she swallowed the spider to get
Speaker 1: the fly that you know will insider, and then she
Speaker 1: keeps swallowing new things like that. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: change brought into my life. It just brought like new
Speaker 1: things that I had to solve or fix because I
Speaker 1: became addicted to the need that something had to change
Speaker 1: in order for me to be happy, and so I
Speaker 1: never gave myself any moment to be or relax or
Speaker 1: appreciate it because there was more to do, and then
Speaker 1: I can finally sit down and relax and appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And I think, like, if I hadn't have taken a pause,
Speaker 1: I think I probably would have done that to my deathbed,
Speaker 1: and I would have just missed my whole life. I
Speaker 1: wonder if this experience has made you more cautious about
Speaker 1: trying to change other parts of yourself because you've now
Speaker 1: seen how interconnected things are, right, and so yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: you know I wish I wish it had more cautious.
Speaker 1: You know, you need to. I just I mean I
Speaker 1: would in fact it had. I think, if anything, it
Speaker 1: made me addicted to changing right because you know, this
Speaker 1: thing had been impossible for me. I thought, there's no
Speaker 1: way I'll ever not be fat. And then when I
Speaker 1: took it on and I learned that I could change it,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I can fix anything. Then if
Speaker 1: if anything's wrong, I can apply like my full self
Speaker 1: to it and focus and change it. And you know
Speaker 1: that's far more true for something like weight, because there
Speaker 1: is like a science to it. It's how reason calories out,
Speaker 1: and it's not as true to something like I'm going
Speaker 1: to fix my mental health like it. It's just not
Speaker 1: as fixable or you know, other aspects of my life,
Speaker 1: whether it's career, you know, whether it's romance where there's
Speaker 1: other people involved, where you don't have control. I can't
Speaker 1: apply the same strategy, and yet I'm behaving as though
Speaker 1: I can, which is in and of itself like a
Speaker 1: form of insanity. Apologies for the selent metic question, but
Speaker 1: I'm interested in how your relationship with change has changed.
Speaker 1: M I am someone who has totally transformed in this lifetime,
Speaker 1: and I have lived multiple Like it's like I've been
Speaker 1: reincarnated a few times in this one life, and I
Speaker 1: appreciate everything that each of these huge transformations has given me,
Speaker 1: Like each one of them has given me a lifetime
Speaker 1: worth of lessons, and each one of them came from
Speaker 1: a really true, deep need to change. It's just that like,
Speaker 1: you won't get what you wanted. In fact, if anything like,
Speaker 1: it'll be so much harder, and you will lose so much,
Speaker 1: and you will the stability you had, but like you
Speaker 1: will grow, and for me, that ultimately is worth it. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. If you're enjoying a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: please make sure to subscribe, rate, and share the show.
Speaker 1: With friends and join me next week. When I talk
Speaker 1: with the man in his early thirties who's in the
Speaker 1: middle of treatment for stage four bone cancer, I felt
Speaker 1: like I was doing pretty much everything in my power
Speaker 1: to not get cancer, and yet here I am. It
Speaker 1: really makes you understand that you are not in control,
Speaker 1: and it's a little refreshing in a way, like you
Speaker 1: can sort of release the grip on the steering wheel
Speaker 1: a little bit and that kind of easiest tension throughout
Speaker 1: your entire body. A Slight Change of Plans is created
Speaker 1: an executive produced by me My Shunker. Big thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our producer Mola Board, associate
Speaker 1: producers David Jaw and Julia Goodman, executive producers Mia Lavelle
Speaker 1: and Justine Lange, senior editor Jan Guera, and sound design
Speaker 1: and mixed engineers Ben Talliday and Jason Gambrel. Thanks also
Speaker 1: to Louis Gara who wrote our theme song, and Ginger
Speaker 1: Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker