Speaker 1: I won't let my body out way outweigh everything that
Speaker 1: I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
Speaker 1: I'm learning to love who I am again. I'm strong,
Speaker 1: I feel free and know who every part of me.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and I will always outway if you feel
Speaker 1: it with joys and the Here she's love to the
Speaker 1: boom by a day. Let's say good day and time
Speaker 1: did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh Amy. Here
Speaker 1: and I am joined by Cat Defada, licensed therapist. She
Speaker 1: co hosts The Fifth Thing with Me and she's also
Speaker 1: the host of her own podcast called You Need Therapy
Speaker 1: and Cat and bring you on Outweigh Today. Because I
Speaker 1: got an email that's to both of us. It's a
Speaker 1: listener she must listen to four Things, Fifth Thing and Outweigh.
Speaker 1: And her name's Abby and she's thirteen years old. And
Speaker 1: I thought this was the sweetest note ever. So here
Speaker 1: it is. Hey, Amy, my name is Abby and I
Speaker 1: am thirteen. As of a few weeks ago, I am
Speaker 1: somewhat of a new listener and I absolutely love your show.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, how do I know if I have
Speaker 1: a neating disorder? Do I actually have to talk to
Speaker 1: a professional or is there a way I can find
Speaker 1: out for myself. I also want to say that you're
Speaker 1: so brave for sharing your story. I haven't been able
Speaker 1: to benefit from it, but I know there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of people out there that have gotten good results
Speaker 1: out of your podcast. You and Cat are a blessing.
Speaker 1: I like to listen to you while I do chores,
Speaker 1: and I love all the recommendations you make, whether it's
Speaker 1: about food or clothes or TV. I most likely won't
Speaker 1: be able to make it to your live podcasts because
Speaker 1: of school, even though I would love to come. Once again,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you and Kat for everything you do.
Speaker 1: Your friend Abby smiley face. I love that she's so smart.
Speaker 1: She does chores, she has chores, she listens to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Why she has chores basically us Yeah, And so this
Speaker 1: is outweigh. I feel like when we do the fifth thing,
Speaker 1: we talk about all kinds of things, but we'll focus
Speaker 1: on the question that she had in there. And this
Speaker 1: is for someone listening whether you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
Speaker 1: years old or you're sixty, sixty five, seventy years old,
Speaker 1: because I've heard from listeners that age range having curiosity
Speaker 1: about disordered eating behaviors, and so Kat, being the licensed therapist,
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw it over to you. How does
Speaker 1: someone know they have an eating disorder? And then should
Speaker 1: they actually talk to a professional to find out or
Speaker 1: diagnose themselves in a way or can we find out
Speaker 1: on our own? So I like that we're addressing this piece.
Speaker 1: I think this is a question that comes up a lot,
Speaker 1: especially because there's not just one eating disorder. It's not
Speaker 1: like you have eating disorder. There's like a million, not
Speaker 1: really a million, but there's a lot of ways that
Speaker 1: it can be a diagnose. And then it looks how
Speaker 1: I feel about this. I think this bleeds from professional
Speaker 1: to even how I think as a human. The real
Speaker 1: issue when it comes down to people asking the question,
Speaker 1: how do I know if I have eating disorder? Isn't
Speaker 1: so much do you have this eating disorder that according
Speaker 1: to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual that we can diagnose you
Speaker 1: and write this in your medical chart. The real issue
Speaker 1: is your relationship to food, or your body, or exercise
Speaker 1: or a combination of those. Are any of those affecting
Speaker 1: your quality of life? Are any of those things keeping
Speaker 1: you from doing the things you want to do, or
Speaker 1: being the kind of person you want to be, or
Speaker 1: experiencing the things in life you want to experience. That
Speaker 1: then is enough to say that, Okay, this is an
Speaker 1: issue for you, and there is hope and there are
Speaker 1: other ways to live outside of that box you're in
Speaker 1: right now. So rather than looking do I have all
Speaker 1: of the things that meet the criteria, it does my
Speaker 1: relationship to any of these things affect my quality of life.
Speaker 1: I know you did a recent episode about this because
Speaker 1: we actually talked about it last Saturday, And by we,
Speaker 1: I mean I did with my listeners. I feel as
Speaker 1: though anyone listening it's a wee. So because it was
Speaker 1: need a week and you had your Monday episode on
Speaker 1: Unique Therapy, but then your Wednesday episode is your Couch Talks,
Speaker 1: you pretty much answered this question along with others, and
Speaker 1: that's what I encouraged people to go listen to if
Speaker 1: they have that. I was on Nita's website and then
Speaker 1: that got me thinking about all the other different resources
Speaker 1: out there, and I started clicking around to different things,
Speaker 1: and it was in the show notes last week that
Speaker 1: I linked it, and it was questions you can ask yourself,
Speaker 1: like like you were saying, Okay, do I have an
Speaker 1: unhealthy relationship? Or is this getting in the way of
Speaker 1: my life? And sometimes it's even hard to tell that.
Speaker 1: And so that questionnaire or other questionnaires, if you were
Speaker 1: to search some up might just get It's like a prompt.
Speaker 1: It can help you flore how you really feel, because
Speaker 1: I feel like there was times in my eating disorder
Speaker 1: where it just seemed like, Okay, I thought, kind of,
Speaker 1: this is just how life is, so I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was a red flag. Yeah, especial everybody probably feels
Speaker 1: this way, right, yeah, or well, there's definitely some thoughts
Speaker 1: I had where I was like, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: could never share this thought that I just have because
Speaker 1: it's so crazy, or I can't believe this behavior I
Speaker 1: just did. Oh, like I had so much shame around it.
Speaker 1: And then thankfully other people started to share their story
Speaker 1: for their stories, and I was like, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not alone in hiding food. I remember kale Junkie, that's
Speaker 1: her handle on Instagram, but she started talking about her
Speaker 1: Binge eating disorder and like when she really had a
Speaker 1: feeling like, Okay, this is out of control. I need
Speaker 1: to get some help. He was either her boyfriend at
Speaker 1: the time or her husband. But he came home and
Speaker 1: she had like hidden bread in her bed. He walked
Speaker 1: in and she was like, oh my god. She didn't
Speaker 1: want him seeing her devouring a loaf bread because she
Speaker 1: thought she was going to be alone. And that was
Speaker 1: a moment where she thought, oh, I mean there were
Speaker 1: several other things she had done, her just getting vulnerable
Speaker 1: and sharing that one story where she had so much shame.
Speaker 1: It was very embarrassed for her significant other, her partner,
Speaker 1: to see her in this light, and then how she
Speaker 1: was able to eventually open up to him and how
Speaker 1: supportive he was of what she was going through. That
Speaker 1: story stuck with me is oh, okay, I'm not alone
Speaker 1: in some of the things that I've done. So anyway,
Speaker 1: little tangent there about the different thoughts, but wondering if
Speaker 1: your thoughts are normal or thinking is this a needing
Speaker 1: disorder thought or is this a disordered behavior? We don't
Speaker 1: know because sometimes society even tells us working out this
Speaker 1: much or dieting this much is not disordered, So it's
Speaker 1: hard to decipher. I was going to say, I remember
Speaker 1: a specific experience where I went to lunch with my
Speaker 1: family it was me, my grandma, my mom, and my sister,
Speaker 1: and they chose to go to chilies, which back then
Speaker 1: I loved chilies. But I had an internal breakdown where
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm not gonna be able to eat anything,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna be able to get food, and
Speaker 1: then when's the next time I'm gonna be able to eat?
Speaker 1: And there's not gonna be anything on this menu. And
Speaker 1: I remember ordering a salad without any of the stuff
Speaker 1: that came on it. It was I think, just lettuce
Speaker 1: and chicken something like that, and I remember my sister
Speaker 1: saying something to me. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 1: but I had this very like aha moment of everybody
Speaker 1: else is enjoying themselves except me, and I'm actually impacting
Speaker 1: their ability to enjoy their meal right now because I'm
Speaker 1: so worried about what I'm going to eat. And that
Speaker 1: was very helpful for me to see. Wait, all these
Speaker 1: behaviors that I thought were going to help me, they
Speaker 1: are keeping me from having conversation. At this lunch with
Speaker 1: my grandma was in town to visit. I could not
Speaker 1: focus on anything else than what I was going to
Speaker 1: eat and then what I was going to do about
Speaker 1: what I was going to eat, and so I share
Speaker 1: that example kind of similar to what you just said,
Speaker 1: and that was like when I had already been I mean,
Speaker 1: I was in the value of all of it. And
Speaker 1: one thing that is really helpful, and I like that
Speaker 1: this listener is asking this question now. Is one of
Speaker 1: the most helpful things we can do is get help before,
Speaker 1: like get ahead of it. So when we notice, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this might be something that I
Speaker 1: should be doing, or I don't know if my relationship
Speaker 1: is healthy or unhealthy, I don't I don't really know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm missing out on stuff, if
Speaker 1: I'm even wandering those questions, get ahead of it, go
Speaker 1: reach out for help. And if you don't have a
Speaker 1: neating disorder or disorder eating, great, well, now you have
Speaker 1: a relationship with a therapist and you can work on
Speaker 1: other things. But if you do great, now you can
Speaker 1: kind of get help and work on the things that
Speaker 1: you need to work on before you're in the bottom
Speaker 1: of the pit where it's going to be even more
Speaker 1: hard or harder or more challenging to reach out and
Speaker 1: ask for help and change behaviors. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's times where so far down in a hole that
Speaker 1: I was trying to climb my way out and it
Speaker 1: seemed daunting and overwhelming and not doable. But the good
Speaker 1: news is there is hope, there are sources. It is doable.
Speaker 1: And earlier I mentioned just getting the prompts or taking
Speaker 1: online like if some of these online resources that are
Speaker 1: dedicated to eating disorder, you can take that as a
Speaker 1: prompt or take the quiz or whatever, but look at
Speaker 1: some of those questions and then maybe journal through them.
Speaker 1: And something I did was four days in a row,
Speaker 1: journaled about different questions but they were all sort of
Speaker 1: the same in the same vein. But it was an exercise.
Speaker 1: And then I went back and was supposed to go
Speaker 1: through and circle the words that kept showing up over
Speaker 1: and over. And it was bizarre because by day four
Speaker 1: I'm journaling, I didn't really honestly remember everything I had
Speaker 1: written at day one, and they were different questions, but
Speaker 1: I was parallel. If you would do that with food
Speaker 1: back in the day, you would be able to circle
Speaker 1: some things that would have been like WHOA, yes, who
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that this always is in my head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you mentioning not being able to connect around the
Speaker 1: table at Chili's, or enjoy that time, and that's what
Speaker 1: Britney Spencer. She sings the theme song at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this, and it's you know, I won't let my
Speaker 1: body outweigh outweigh everything that I'm made of. I won't
Speaker 1: spend my life trying to change. I'm learning to love
Speaker 1: who I am. That's part of the I guess there's
Speaker 1: a chorus, but the verse is missing out on family
Speaker 1: meals around the table because what Grandma made is bad,
Speaker 1: So I'm not able, and I missed out on so
Speaker 1: many family meals because yeah, my brain was somewhere else
Speaker 1: thinking about all the things, Oh, if I eat that,
Speaker 1: I don't have to go work out, or if I
Speaker 1: eat that, or or not enjoying what everybody else is having,
Speaker 1: and bringing my own plates like to a family meal,
Speaker 1: my own function and my own tup aware are going
Speaker 1: to the store so I could control everything, and then
Speaker 1: also then trying to force everybody else to eat it.
Speaker 1: When they're like, no, I'm good, they're like don't. I
Speaker 1: don't want that. I don't want that. So abby, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for the note. You're very brave at
Speaker 1: thirteen to send a note and to be curious. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the big guess things that we
Speaker 1: can do in life when it comes to all things
Speaker 1: is be curious. And you're curious. You don't know where
Speaker 1: you are, but I think it's super cool that you're
Speaker 1: asking and continue to do that in all areas of
Speaker 1: your life. And if you have access to a professional amazing,
Speaker 1: absolutely do it. I don't know what your relationship is
Speaker 1: like with your parents, but that might be a good
Speaker 1: place to start to see if you can have some
Speaker 1: resources or talk with other friends, or if you have
Speaker 1: cool aunt in your life. Sometimes it's easier to talk
Speaker 1: to someone that's not our mom or a dad, even
Speaker 1: if you do have a good relationship. I found that
Speaker 1: to be true. One time. My mom's best friend took
Speaker 1: me out to lunch and I really looked up to
Speaker 1: this person. I thought it was so cool and I
Speaker 1: was I was able to open up to her way
Speaker 1: more than I did my mom. And it's not because
Speaker 1: my mom did anything wrong, just the way it is. Okay.
Speaker 1: I hope y'all are having the day that you need
Speaker 1: to have. That's what Cat loves to say, and definitely
Speaker 1: check out. You need therapy. Podcast, especially last week's Nita episodes,
Speaker 1: which I guess for this Saturday would be not the
Speaker 1: last week that we just had, but the one before.
Speaker 1: But all of Cat's episodes are good, all of them. Download,
Speaker 1: subscribe single, like and subscribe. Also like and subscribe to
Speaker 1: Outway too while you're at it. Okay, all right, bye
Speaker 1: bye