March 25, 2023 • 22 mins
OUTWEIGH: Certified eating disorder coach Kristie Amadio is our guest today. After 14 years of battling her eating disorder and seeking treatment in both Australia and New Zealand—where she was told she was ‘chronic’ and should expect to struggle with food and body image issues for the rest of her life—Kristie flew to America for intensive treatment and made a full recovery. Kristie was stunned by the gap and unequal access to support and resources both here and overseas, so she resolved to make cost effective support available to everyone, no matter where they lived. By working online and living with people in recovery all around the world, Kristie Amadio is adding a new dimension to the platform used to treat eating disorders.
“All you need is to have the curiosity of what it would be like to not have an eating disorder in order to start your journey to recovery.” - Kristie Amadio
Learn more about Kristie’s work here:
https://www.recoveredliving.com
Kristie’s Tedx Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ut3rxb1nwc
Best places to find more about Amy: RadioAmy.com + @RadioAmy
To contact Amy about Outweigh: hello@outweighpodcast.com
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This podcast was edited by Houston Tilley
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body outway outwey everything that I'm
made do, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free, I know who every part of me. It's
beautiful and then will always outwait if you feel it
(00:24):
with your hands and the Here, she's some love to
the mood. I am dad. Let's say good day and
time did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam
amy here and I am sitting across from Christy amadio
and I'm gonna have you give us your little bio
and a second and where you're coming to us from.
(00:45):
But I gotta say, I just got done watching Christie's
ted X talk on YouTube and I was like, well,
I'm gonna watch a little bit here and I'm trying
to do this, and the next thing you know, I'm
sitting down in front of my computer totally like into
the story. And I'm just so grateful for people like
Christie that have used their story and then taken it
to others. And I know that you're super passionate about
(01:07):
helping people anyone and everyone all across the world, So
thank you for taking the time to join us on
our way today. Thank you so much for having me
so tell us a little bit about you and your story.
And obviously people may now know that you've spoken. You
have an accent. I do have an accent. So I'm
back living in New Zealand. I'm kind of from all over.
(01:28):
I was born in England, my parents were from New Zealand.
I grew up in Australia and then I moved to
New Zealand when I was twenty four, and then after
I recovered, which i'll get into, actually moved to the
States for five years, which it's absolutely a piece of
my heart. So you get different accents coming out of
my mouth all the time. But in terms of my story,
it's so soulful for me to be able to talk
(01:51):
about being recovered, because it's not something that I ever
thought was on the cards to me. I struggled with
disordered eating in an eating disorder for fourteen years, and
I got told in two different countries that I was
chronic and I'd never fully recover. And I got taught to,
you know, in air quotes, like manage my eating disorder.
They said, well, you can still be high functioning. You
can still you know, have a job and have relationships,
(02:13):
but you just have to manage it. And I was like, oh, okay,
if that's what I have to do, like okay. And
I was never told that I could have a better
quality of life. And so I think for so long
nobody knew I had an eating disorder because it was
so hidden by you know, I exercised that much. My
career became in the outdoors, so that I was like,
(02:33):
I could just get paid to have an eating disorder
and just exercise all the time. Great, And so I
became an outdoor guide, like working like taking people out
in the bush and taking people kayaking, And in my head,
I was like, well that's okay because i can exercise
all the time and I'm getting paid for it, and
this is okay, right, And I kind of just kept
that up for a very long time, and everyone just
(02:53):
thought that was that's just Christy. She likes to exercise,
and you know, she's really quote unquote like healthy with
her food. But deep inside, I'd wake up every morning
and think about how many hours I had to do,
or what I had to eat, or if I was
going out that night where I'd have to compensate later on,
and it just it came to a head where I
think the eating disorder, I'd like to say it was
(03:14):
like a termite and it just chipped away and chipped
away and chipped away until one day I woke up
in the house and fallen down around my years and
I was deep, deep, deep in an eating disorder and
once again being told that I'd never get better. That's
a great analogy, the termite analogy. I think that that's
an excellent way to put it, because it chips away.
It's like you don't realize there's a problem until it's
(03:38):
no longer sustainable. Then you's a problem. Yeah, the foundation
is about to collapse because it's being eroded away and
eaten away. And the title of your ted talk, in
case people want to search it up, is it's time
to do eating disorder recovery differently. And why is it
(03:59):
that you chose to speak on that in particular? Yeah,
that's such a great question. So what happened is my
termite house fell down around my ears and I got
told in New Zealand like, hey, you know your chronic
this is going to be the pattern of your adult years.
You're going to have times of doing okay, and you're
gonna have times where you're going to be struggling again.
And I said, I said, well, if that's the life
(04:20):
you're forecasting for me, then I don't want to live
it because it's not living. It was existing. And so
I searched online for support worldwide because I was like,
there has to be something somewhere. I just had this
thing inside of me. I think that always held onto
a glimmer of hope even when it felt hopeless. And
I found this treatment center in America that talked about
being fully recovered, and I was like, well, that's nice
(04:42):
to them, but maybe I can just get a little
bit better, you know. And I called them up, and
the lady on the phone I'll always remember her and
she said, Christie said, I don't care how long you've
had a meeting disorder. I don't care how many times
you've tried to recover. I don't care how sick you've been.
We absolutely believe everyone can recover. And it was so foreign,
but I was so drawn to that concept, and long
(05:04):
story short, I ended up going to America for eating
disorder treatment and it was just a different world. Like
I was so used to Australia in New Zealand, which
blessed their heart. I think they're doing the very best
they can with what they'd know and what they have available.
And America has something that's so different. And for me,
what was different was it was a home. It wasn't
a hospital. A portion of the staff it had eating
(05:26):
disorders and had recovered every single day. It was like
life in recovery. I wasn't sitting in a room just
being given food and that that was the goal. It
was like, no, we're going to teach you how to recover.
We're going to go out to restaurants. We're going to
go grocery shopping, We're going to go to the beach,
we're going to go to the movies. It was living
life in recovery and negotiating all of that. And so
(05:49):
when I left treatment and I started to go back
out in the world, I was like, you know what,
this just has to come out to the world and
I want to tea I want to do eating disorder
treatment differently people and I want to take a piece
of that. And so I started to do that myself
in helping others. And so, what are the ways that
you do that, because I mean that is I've goosebumps
(06:09):
thinking that getting into or finding a treatment center that
believed in you and your recovery and that it was
possible and you having that hope and then going there
and then yeah, it's not like you leave right away
and it's like oh a magic wand was waived and
suddenly you're recovered. But it changed the trajectory of your life.
You now felt this calling of like, I can help others.
(06:31):
So what is it that you've developed since you left
where you were and you're helping others out in the
world one hundred percent? And I think that's such an
important thing to know. Like so often people say to me, well,
it's like you left and you just recovered, and I'm like,
I didn't. I left and I struggled and life happened
and I had to navigate life into a world. So
(06:51):
I want to say there was one hund It wasn't
like I left treatment recovered. I left treatment with hope.
I left treatment knowing what I had to do. I
left treatment to be recovered, like I knew it and
I wanted it. It was like an athlete going for
a goal and I was like this is what I want.
You know. It took a couple of years after I
left treatment to be recovered, but what happened is I
went back to working in the outdoors, which was fantastic
(07:13):
to have a different relationship with food and a different
relationship with exercise, and a different relationship with my body.
You know. I was back being in the outdoors because
I loved it, not because I felt like I had
to punish myself. And that was really important to me.
And I actually had an experience where I fell off
a cliff. So I was out in the bush and
I fell off a cliff and I damaged my feet
and it actually ended my outdoor career. And I was
like devastated, and it was like, well what can I do?
(07:35):
And I was like, well, I can eat food and
I'm good with people. And I actually already had a
therapy degree, which I just wasn't using because I liked
the outdoors. And so I decided to go back into
therapy and specialize in eating disorders. And I wanted to
do more than just traditional talk therapy, and so I
came up with this concept of for me, going from
residential treatment and going back home. That was hard and
(07:57):
it was hard because I came back to New Zealand
to a country that didn't understand the process I'd been
through too. And I think when we recover, we recover
into a disordered world. There's so much out there that's
in restaurants, it's in family structures, it's in beliefs, it's
in gym. So I thought, you know, for people that
either can't go to treatment because of whatever reason, maybe
(08:18):
they've got four kids and they're a single mom, maybe
they can't afford it, maybe it's not in their country,
I was like, what if I kind of bought treatment
to people? And so I came up with this concept
of live ins where I would go and live with
people in their home, and that could be once they
left treatment, or it could because they could never go.
And so I kind of I was like, I don't
even know if people would want to do that, but
(08:38):
I would have really liked that for myself. And I
you know, went on a woman a prayer to America
because that was where I guess my chosen family was,
my my recovery family, my community, and it just took
off within a couple of months. I had a year
long wait list and I think I went to seven
(08:59):
or eight different trees all around the world, living with
people in their homes, and I just had the most humbling,
beautiful experiences where I got to live with people and
help them change not just within themselves, but look at
their environment. And it's like, no, no, when you go
to the grocery store, you don't park three blocks away,
you park in the parking lot, you know, and little
(09:20):
things like that that I think never get addressed in
treatment because you can't. And just working with the family
as a whole. It was such such a gift. And
then the second kind of thread that I started was
also online, because I was starting to get reach outs
from people in Israel, people in Scotland, people in Denmark,
and I was like wow, and so I started this
(09:41):
online piece. I like to say that I started online
therapy before COVID did. They got people just wanting support,
people who couldn't get the support in their own countries,
and people that wanted to work with someone that had recovered,
people that wanted someone that believed in them, and so
very quickly that got really busy as well. So I
really like to have hold those two threads of having
(10:03):
the live in support and also having the online piece.
Where can people access the online piece? Yeah, absolutely through
the website, so recovered Living dot com. So now I'm
back in New Zealand. I've also got five other coaches
that work for me in America. They're all fully recovered.
They're all fantastic. I love them all, and yeah, they've
We've got clients from all over the world, which is
(10:23):
fantastic to me. We're on zoom, so I can see
Christie's face and it is pure joy bouncing back off
the computer to me because like when you said, but
you love the other people working with you like you,
I could tell that was very, very sincere and probably
(10:44):
the excitement y'all feel coming together collectively. All. If you've
got five and then including you, is that six. Yeah,
So think of the amount of people y'all are able
to reach coming together for that. I just I think
it's amazing because a lot of people are familiar with
recovery from alcoholism at times and when people have innered treatment.
(11:07):
I have people in my life that have come out
of that. I never went to any residential treatment for
my eating disorder, but I am familiar with addiction to
alcohol and you come out of that and you instantly
have all of the support and there's AA meetings and
you have a sponsor, and you have like it is
a rigorous routine because it's again an alcohol is something
(11:32):
that can be all around you, but you have your
different things that you have to do to stay the course.
And I feel like similarly, food can be an addiction,
but we also need food to survive, right, So then
there's this very difficult dynamic because you can never touch
(11:54):
alcohol again and that's the goal. But food you have
to touch every single day. And even in your TED
talk it's like it should be the first thing you
do every single day, and when you were doing your
livings with people, it's like, nope, you wake up, you
eat breakfast. That's just what you do. Don't put off
the food, don't start the restriction, don't get busy, don't
make food the last thing on your list, because the
(12:16):
minute you start to implement that, you'll start to see
the change. But I'm kind of rambling here now, and
I just feel like what you're doing with the livins
and the online and giving people that support, the tangible support,
the change, the ongoing because it is ongoing. I have
been what I would call quote unquote in recovery for
(12:38):
two years, but I still put myself to work every
single day to combat different thoughts or old behaviors, or
when I met with other things from society, I have
to shut it down, change the channel. Just I know
some people are new and they might be listening to
this episode because they're curious to try to figure out.
(12:59):
And I just wanted to share a little bit about
like some recovery comparison to other things you might be
familiar with, at least that I feel like you're talked
about more like alcoholism in AA that's integrated into movies
and storylines and different things. And we're starting to see
eating disorders show up. But the more people share and
get vulnerable and talk about things, then the more quote
(13:21):
unquote normal it will seem absolutely And I think you
touched on such an important piece there, because it's like,
you know, if you struggle with substances, it's like, don't
take the substances like that that's your remedy. But I
think for someone with an eating disorder, you have to
eat every single day, and so it's a different type
of recovery because you really have to heal your relationship
with food. You don't have to abstain from food, you
(13:41):
have to heal your relationship with it. And one of
my favorite quotes, it's about a tiger. And I think,
you know, for someone that's in recovery, they go and
pat the tiger every single day in the cage or
they take it for a walk when you're in recovery.
But when you're recovered, I like to say, there just
is no tiger. Like I have a completely different relationship
with food in my body today and I don't feel
like like I don't have to struggle anymore. I just
(14:04):
eat food and I live in my body and I
love my life and it's the greatest gift I can have.
And I know, and I know when I was in
my eating disorder, that just felt so impossible. It just
felt like way too much of a bridge. But I
want to say to anybody listening, you may not believe
that you can recover until you're actually there. Like it's
okay to doubt yourself and go forwards anyway, you know,
And I think that's the truth is you just have
(14:25):
to You just have to start, and you have to
dive in and take that tiger for a walk and
one day you'll go to get the tiger and you'll
be like, oh, it's not there anymore. You said that
all you need to have, and this is something that
I have in writing from you. All you need to
have is the curiosity of what it would be like
to not have and eating disorder in order to start
your journey to recovery. Yes, like you just gave me
(14:48):
goose bumps and there with my work. But like, I mean,
that's so you don't even have to want to recover.
You know. I'm talking with clients right now that are like,
I don't even know if I want to recover, And
I'm like, that's okay, let's just be let's start with
the curiosity. Do I even want that? Like, let's just
start there. Talk about that one a little bit more,
like why would someone not want to recover? So many reasons?
(15:10):
I mean for myself, Like I put my whole life
savings on the line to go to America and I
still thought it hard. Didn't. I didn't turn up with
a smile and a hug. I turned up like I
am suspicious of everybody here. And for me, I didn't
want to recover because my eating disorder was an identity
because it was my safety. I was like, who will
I be without it? How will I cope? Will I
be okay? I couldn't envisage a life without my eating disorder.
(15:33):
And I think so many people they're not sure they
want to give up that control because it's like, well,
another thing that I like to say is I think
people's ability to recover is directly proportional to their ability
to surrender. And so for me, I was all about
the ninety percent. Oh, I'll recover a ninety percent, but
that ten percent, I am hanging on to that, and
I was huge about that, and it was like, I
just wanted to be safe. I wanted to keep an
(15:55):
eye on myself. And the truth is that would have
been a termite that I didn't write, and in ten
years time I would have woken up with my house
around my ears again. And that last ten percent was
huge to say, I am surrendering to my body set point.
I'm surrendering to the fact that I don't actually have
control of my shoe size in the same way that
I don't have control of my body shape, size, body composition,
(16:15):
all of those pieces. And for me, that was the
clincher on being recovered. When I can surrender into that,
and when I let go of that ten percent, everything
else fell into place. Okay, you said set point, So
define that for people, because I think that's an important thing.
So set point A disclaimer, I'm not a dietician, but
set point is essentially, it's like our body has a
(16:35):
genetic weight range, weight composition, weight size shape that it
wants to be. And in the same way we have
a shoe size or a face shape or an eye shape.
We can control it if we want to our set point,
but we'll never be truly free. And I think that's
the difference is because society is so constantly saying you
(16:58):
can have a flat stomach, can have you know, thighs
like this or shoulders like that? You can? But at
what cost? That's exactly what the thought I had in
my head. If you weren't going to say it, I
was about to say, but at what cost? Yeah, when
you think of all that you sacrifice when you're eating,
disorder is in control. I think of the relationships that suffered.
(17:20):
So much of my life was ruled well, in fact,
the whole thing. When I was deep into it, everything
was centered around my eating disorder. But it was all
in my head. It's not like people knew. But like
every thought, every relationship, every dinner out, every parties that
I miss, celebrations that I didn't take part in, you know,
amazing food that my family cooked that I didn't eat.
(17:43):
Nights I stayed home alone because I was too nervous
to go out or felt gross in my body and
just didn't even want to deal with it. So yeah,
I think having a healthy perspective on what is your
set point? When you're in it, You're like, I don't
even know because I've been manipulating for years. But once
(18:04):
you get there and you feel the joy and you're
no longer consumed by all those thoughts, or you can
walk past a mirror without having to turn and look
and assess and judge yourself. Ah, it's just freedom. You know.
It will sometimes could rear up, but when you have
the tools then you can bust them out from your
back pocket and be like not today, not today, tagger absolutely.
(18:27):
And also this is piece I think, like like two things.
One having grace. Like I turned thirty seven like a
month ago, and I was like I woke up the
one morning I was like, huh, my body's squishy and
then it used to be and I was like, interesting,
this must happen as you get older. And it was
like there was no part of me that was like
I had to change my food after exercise more. This
isn't okay. There's this grace that my set point, my
body composition, my shape, my size, that's going to change
(18:49):
over time and that's okay. And I think that came
with being recovered, and it came with time in the saddle.
And I often say that, like I feel more recovered
this year than I did last year, And that doesn't
mean I wasn't recovered last year. It just means that
I've got more time being human. And so I think
too with you know, when I was in recovery, I
was like, I don't want my body. I don't want
my body at that set point. I don't want that.
(19:10):
I don't see how I can be happy with that.
I don't see how I can live with that. And
part of recovery for me was actually living in that,
not liking it, but doing it anyway. It's kind of
that piece of I don't know if I can recover,
but I'm going to give it a shot, and it's like,
I don't think I can live in this body. Like
there was so many times I would cry to my therapist,
I don't think I can live in this body, and
she was like, okay, but let's try. Let's just give
(19:31):
it a shot. And as I leaned further into recovery,
and then as I recovered, I actually started to want
the body that I had, And now I want the
body that I have because this body means I can
do all these amazing things, like this body with the
lumps and the bumps and the whatevers that I didn't
like before. This body means that I have relationships, and
this body means that I get to travel, and this
(19:51):
body means that I wake up feeling well. And I
actually want this body now, whereas when I was in recovery,
I was like, Nope, I'll recover, but I want my
eating just a lot of body. It doesn't work like that.
And so I think the message that I really want
to give is well for me. When I recovered, I
started to want the body that I had, and that
was a real turning point as well. Yeah, well, because
(20:11):
we've been conditioned to, you know, by all the things
the media, society, different things that this is what the
body is supposed to look like, when really, uh, we
should have had no conditioning there whatsoever. No one should
be telling us this is what we're striving for. But
once you build those new neuro pathways and you start
to fall in love with your body, and yet then
(20:32):
you just don't even think about it. It's amazing what
our brains are capable of when, like you said, you
just start doing it. Just start doing it. It's not
easy at all. But that's why. Even sometimes I do
that with actual like food. I know in the ted
X talk you did it it talked about like unloading
groceries for the first time and like all the things
like even like I can't remember the exact food, but
(20:54):
the eggs and the lettuce with the cookies, and you
had pantry full of things and a fridge full of things.
And you know, I'll still catch myself at the grocery
store sometimes being like, uh, I'm not going to get
the cookies. And then I'm like, don't get the cookies.
I'll hear some voice, don't get the cookies, and then
you know what, I come right back and I'm like,
you know what, cookies are going in the basket now
because brain don't challenge me. Now, I'm going to keep
(21:17):
buying the freaking cookies until my brain knows that it's
no big deal. If I want the cookies, I get
the cookies. If I don't want the cookies, it don't
get the cookies. But I had to build the new neuropathway.
You do it until it's not hot, and then you
just keep doing it because you want to. Right. Well, Christie,
thank you so much for taking the time to chat
with us today, and I encourage people to check out
(21:38):
more at Recoveredliving dot com and you can see all
the amazing work that Christie and her team are doing.
But again the ted X talk is it's time to
do eating disorder recovery differently, and that you are Christie
or your socials and all your stuff on Recovered Living
dot com. Yeah, so we have Recovered Living dot com.
We also have Recovered Living in z dot com, which
(21:59):
I know in America's prenus m Z and that's a
residential eating disort of treatment charity that I've started up
in New Zealand. We're opening in October, so feel free
to check that out as well. So recovered Living nz
dot com awesome. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate
you and all of your work. Thank ye
I won't let my body outway outwey everything that I'm
made do, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free, I know who every part of me. It's
beautiful and then will always outwait if you feel it
(00:24):
with your hands and the Here, she's some love to
the mood. I am dad. Let's say good day and
time did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam
amy here and I am sitting across from Christy amadio
and I'm gonna have you give us your little bio
and a second and where you're coming to us from.
(00:45):
But I gotta say, I just got done watching Christie's
ted X talk on YouTube and I was like, well,
I'm gonna watch a little bit here and I'm trying
to do this, and the next thing you know, I'm
sitting down in front of my computer totally like into
the story. And I'm just so grateful for people like
Christie that have used their story and then taken it
to others. And I know that you're super passionate about
(01:07):
helping people anyone and everyone all across the world, So
thank you for taking the time to join us on
our way today. Thank you so much for having me
so tell us a little bit about you and your story.
And obviously people may now know that you've spoken. You
have an accent. I do have an accent. So I'm
back living in New Zealand. I'm kind of from all over.
(01:28):
I was born in England, my parents were from New Zealand.
I grew up in Australia and then I moved to
New Zealand when I was twenty four, and then after
I recovered, which i'll get into, actually moved to the
States for five years, which it's absolutely a piece of
my heart. So you get different accents coming out of
my mouth all the time. But in terms of my story,
it's so soulful for me to be able to talk
(01:51):
about being recovered, because it's not something that I ever
thought was on the cards to me. I struggled with
disordered eating in an eating disorder for fourteen years, and
I got told in two different countries that I was
chronic and I'd never fully recover. And I got taught to,
you know, in air quotes, like manage my eating disorder.
They said, well, you can still be high functioning. You
can still you know, have a job and have relationships,
(02:13):
but you just have to manage it. And I was like, oh, okay,
if that's what I have to do, like okay. And
I was never told that I could have a better
quality of life. And so I think for so long
nobody knew I had an eating disorder because it was
so hidden by you know, I exercised that much. My
career became in the outdoors, so that I was like,
(02:33):
I could just get paid to have an eating disorder
and just exercise all the time. Great, And so I
became an outdoor guide, like working like taking people out
in the bush and taking people kayaking, And in my head,
I was like, well that's okay because i can exercise
all the time and I'm getting paid for it, and
this is okay, right, And I kind of just kept
that up for a very long time, and everyone just
(02:53):
thought that was that's just Christy. She likes to exercise,
and you know, she's really quote unquote like healthy with
her food. But deep inside, I'd wake up every morning
and think about how many hours I had to do,
or what I had to eat, or if I was
going out that night where I'd have to compensate later on,
and it just it came to a head where I
think the eating disorder, I'd like to say it was
(03:14):
like a termite and it just chipped away and chipped
away and chipped away until one day I woke up
in the house and fallen down around my years and
I was deep, deep, deep in an eating disorder and
once again being told that I'd never get better. That's
a great analogy, the termite analogy. I think that that's
an excellent way to put it, because it chips away.
It's like you don't realize there's a problem until it's
(03:38):
no longer sustainable. Then you's a problem. Yeah, the foundation
is about to collapse because it's being eroded away and
eaten away. And the title of your ted talk, in
case people want to search it up, is it's time
to do eating disorder recovery differently. And why is it
(03:59):
that you chose to speak on that in particular? Yeah,
that's such a great question. So what happened is my
termite house fell down around my ears and I got
told in New Zealand like, hey, you know your chronic
this is going to be the pattern of your adult years.
You're going to have times of doing okay, and you're
gonna have times where you're going to be struggling again.
And I said, I said, well, if that's the life
(04:20):
you're forecasting for me, then I don't want to live
it because it's not living. It was existing. And so
I searched online for support worldwide because I was like,
there has to be something somewhere. I just had this
thing inside of me. I think that always held onto
a glimmer of hope even when it felt hopeless. And
I found this treatment center in America that talked about
being fully recovered, and I was like, well, that's nice
(04:42):
to them, but maybe I can just get a little
bit better, you know. And I called them up, and
the lady on the phone I'll always remember her and
she said, Christie said, I don't care how long you've
had a meeting disorder. I don't care how many times
you've tried to recover. I don't care how sick you've been.
We absolutely believe everyone can recover. And it was so foreign,
but I was so drawn to that concept, and long
(05:04):
story short, I ended up going to America for eating
disorder treatment and it was just a different world. Like
I was so used to Australia in New Zealand, which
blessed their heart. I think they're doing the very best
they can with what they'd know and what they have available.
And America has something that's so different. And for me,
what was different was it was a home. It wasn't
a hospital. A portion of the staff it had eating
(05:26):
disorders and had recovered every single day. It was like
life in recovery. I wasn't sitting in a room just
being given food and that that was the goal. It
was like, no, we're going to teach you how to recover.
We're going to go out to restaurants. We're going to
go grocery shopping, We're going to go to the beach,
we're going to go to the movies. It was living
life in recovery and negotiating all of that. And so
(05:49):
when I left treatment and I started to go back
out in the world, I was like, you know what,
this just has to come out to the world and
I want to tea I want to do eating disorder
treatment differently people and I want to take a piece
of that. And so I started to do that myself
in helping others. And so, what are the ways that
you do that, because I mean that is I've goosebumps
(06:09):
thinking that getting into or finding a treatment center that
believed in you and your recovery and that it was
possible and you having that hope and then going there
and then yeah, it's not like you leave right away
and it's like oh a magic wand was waived and
suddenly you're recovered. But it changed the trajectory of your life.
You now felt this calling of like, I can help others.
(06:31):
So what is it that you've developed since you left
where you were and you're helping others out in the
world one hundred percent? And I think that's such an
important thing to know. Like so often people say to me, well,
it's like you left and you just recovered, and I'm like,
I didn't. I left and I struggled and life happened
and I had to navigate life into a world. So
(06:51):
I want to say there was one hund It wasn't
like I left treatment recovered. I left treatment with hope.
I left treatment knowing what I had to do. I
left treatment to be recovered, like I knew it and
I wanted it. It was like an athlete going for
a goal and I was like this is what I want.
You know. It took a couple of years after I
left treatment to be recovered, but what happened is I
went back to working in the outdoors, which was fantastic
(07:13):
to have a different relationship with food and a different
relationship with exercise, and a different relationship with my body.
You know. I was back being in the outdoors because
I loved it, not because I felt like I had
to punish myself. And that was really important to me.
And I actually had an experience where I fell off
a cliff. So I was out in the bush and
I fell off a cliff and I damaged my feet
and it actually ended my outdoor career. And I was
like devastated, and it was like, well what can I do?
(07:35):
And I was like, well, I can eat food and
I'm good with people. And I actually already had a
therapy degree, which I just wasn't using because I liked
the outdoors. And so I decided to go back into
therapy and specialize in eating disorders. And I wanted to
do more than just traditional talk therapy, and so I
came up with this concept of for me, going from
residential treatment and going back home. That was hard and
(07:57):
it was hard because I came back to New Zealand
to a country that didn't understand the process I'd been
through too. And I think when we recover, we recover
into a disordered world. There's so much out there that's
in restaurants, it's in family structures, it's in beliefs, it's
in gym. So I thought, you know, for people that
either can't go to treatment because of whatever reason, maybe
(08:18):
they've got four kids and they're a single mom, maybe
they can't afford it, maybe it's not in their country,
I was like, what if I kind of bought treatment
to people? And so I came up with this concept
of live ins where I would go and live with
people in their home, and that could be once they
left treatment, or it could because they could never go.
And so I kind of I was like, I don't
even know if people would want to do that, but
(08:38):
I would have really liked that for myself. And I
you know, went on a woman a prayer to America
because that was where I guess my chosen family was,
my my recovery family, my community, and it just took
off within a couple of months. I had a year
long wait list and I think I went to seven
(08:59):
or eight different trees all around the world, living with
people in their homes, and I just had the most humbling,
beautiful experiences where I got to live with people and
help them change not just within themselves, but look at
their environment. And it's like, no, no, when you go
to the grocery store, you don't park three blocks away,
you park in the parking lot, you know, and little
(09:20):
things like that that I think never get addressed in
treatment because you can't. And just working with the family
as a whole. It was such such a gift. And
then the second kind of thread that I started was
also online, because I was starting to get reach outs
from people in Israel, people in Scotland, people in Denmark,
and I was like wow, and so I started this
(09:41):
online piece. I like to say that I started online
therapy before COVID did. They got people just wanting support,
people who couldn't get the support in their own countries,
and people that wanted to work with someone that had recovered,
people that wanted someone that believed in them, and so
very quickly that got really busy as well. So I
really like to have hold those two threads of having
(10:03):
the live in support and also having the online piece.
Where can people access the online piece? Yeah, absolutely through
the website, so recovered Living dot com. So now I'm
back in New Zealand. I've also got five other coaches
that work for me in America. They're all fully recovered.
They're all fantastic. I love them all, and yeah, they've
We've got clients from all over the world, which is
(10:23):
fantastic to me. We're on zoom, so I can see
Christie's face and it is pure joy bouncing back off
the computer to me because like when you said, but
you love the other people working with you like you,
I could tell that was very, very sincere and probably
(10:44):
the excitement y'all feel coming together collectively. All. If you've
got five and then including you, is that six. Yeah,
So think of the amount of people y'all are able
to reach coming together for that. I just I think
it's amazing because a lot of people are familiar with
recovery from alcoholism at times and when people have innered treatment.
(11:07):
I have people in my life that have come out
of that. I never went to any residential treatment for
my eating disorder, but I am familiar with addiction to
alcohol and you come out of that and you instantly
have all of the support and there's AA meetings and
you have a sponsor, and you have like it is
a rigorous routine because it's again an alcohol is something
(11:32):
that can be all around you, but you have your
different things that you have to do to stay the course.
And I feel like similarly, food can be an addiction,
but we also need food to survive, right, So then
there's this very difficult dynamic because you can never touch
(11:54):
alcohol again and that's the goal. But food you have
to touch every single day. And even in your TED
talk it's like it should be the first thing you
do every single day, and when you were doing your
livings with people, it's like, nope, you wake up, you
eat breakfast. That's just what you do. Don't put off
the food, don't start the restriction, don't get busy, don't
make food the last thing on your list, because the
(12:16):
minute you start to implement that, you'll start to see
the change. But I'm kind of rambling here now, and
I just feel like what you're doing with the livins
and the online and giving people that support, the tangible support,
the change, the ongoing because it is ongoing. I have
been what I would call quote unquote in recovery for
(12:38):
two years, but I still put myself to work every
single day to combat different thoughts or old behaviors, or
when I met with other things from society, I have
to shut it down, change the channel. Just I know
some people are new and they might be listening to
this episode because they're curious to try to figure out.
(12:59):
And I just wanted to share a little bit about
like some recovery comparison to other things you might be
familiar with, at least that I feel like you're talked
about more like alcoholism in AA that's integrated into movies
and storylines and different things. And we're starting to see
eating disorders show up. But the more people share and
get vulnerable and talk about things, then the more quote
(13:21):
unquote normal it will seem absolutely And I think you
touched on such an important piece there, because it's like,
you know, if you struggle with substances, it's like, don't
take the substances like that that's your remedy. But I
think for someone with an eating disorder, you have to
eat every single day, and so it's a different type
of recovery because you really have to heal your relationship
with food. You don't have to abstain from food, you
(13:41):
have to heal your relationship with it. And one of
my favorite quotes, it's about a tiger. And I think,
you know, for someone that's in recovery, they go and
pat the tiger every single day in the cage or
they take it for a walk when you're in recovery.
But when you're recovered, I like to say, there just
is no tiger. Like I have a completely different relationship
with food in my body today and I don't feel
like like I don't have to struggle anymore. I just
(14:04):
eat food and I live in my body and I
love my life and it's the greatest gift I can have.
And I know, and I know when I was in
my eating disorder, that just felt so impossible. It just
felt like way too much of a bridge. But I
want to say to anybody listening, you may not believe
that you can recover until you're actually there. Like it's
okay to doubt yourself and go forwards anyway, you know,
And I think that's the truth is you just have
(14:25):
to You just have to start, and you have to
dive in and take that tiger for a walk and
one day you'll go to get the tiger and you'll
be like, oh, it's not there anymore. You said that
all you need to have, and this is something that
I have in writing from you. All you need to
have is the curiosity of what it would be like
to not have and eating disorder in order to start
your journey to recovery. Yes, like you just gave me
(14:48):
goose bumps and there with my work. But like, I mean,
that's so you don't even have to want to recover.
You know. I'm talking with clients right now that are like,
I don't even know if I want to recover, And
I'm like, that's okay, let's just be let's start with
the curiosity. Do I even want that? Like, let's just
start there. Talk about that one a little bit more,
like why would someone not want to recover? So many reasons?
(15:10):
I mean for myself, Like I put my whole life
savings on the line to go to America and I
still thought it hard. Didn't. I didn't turn up with
a smile and a hug. I turned up like I
am suspicious of everybody here. And for me, I didn't
want to recover because my eating disorder was an identity
because it was my safety. I was like, who will
I be without it? How will I cope? Will I
be okay? I couldn't envisage a life without my eating disorder.
(15:33):
And I think so many people they're not sure they
want to give up that control because it's like, well,
another thing that I like to say is I think
people's ability to recover is directly proportional to their ability
to surrender. And so for me, I was all about
the ninety percent. Oh, I'll recover a ninety percent, but
that ten percent, I am hanging on to that, and
I was huge about that, and it was like, I
just wanted to be safe. I wanted to keep an
(15:55):
eye on myself. And the truth is that would have
been a termite that I didn't write, and in ten
years time I would have woken up with my house
around my ears again. And that last ten percent was
huge to say, I am surrendering to my body set point.
I'm surrendering to the fact that I don't actually have
control of my shoe size in the same way that
I don't have control of my body shape, size, body composition,
(16:15):
all of those pieces. And for me, that was the
clincher on being recovered. When I can surrender into that,
and when I let go of that ten percent, everything
else fell into place. Okay, you said set point, So
define that for people, because I think that's an important thing.
So set point A disclaimer, I'm not a dietician, but
set point is essentially, it's like our body has a
(16:35):
genetic weight range, weight composition, weight size shape that it
wants to be. And in the same way we have
a shoe size or a face shape or an eye shape.
We can control it if we want to our set point,
but we'll never be truly free. And I think that's
the difference is because society is so constantly saying you
(16:58):
can have a flat stomach, can have you know, thighs
like this or shoulders like that? You can? But at
what cost? That's exactly what the thought I had in
my head. If you weren't going to say it, I
was about to say, but at what cost? Yeah, when
you think of all that you sacrifice when you're eating,
disorder is in control. I think of the relationships that suffered.
(17:20):
So much of my life was ruled well, in fact,
the whole thing. When I was deep into it, everything
was centered around my eating disorder. But it was all
in my head. It's not like people knew. But like
every thought, every relationship, every dinner out, every parties that
I miss, celebrations that I didn't take part in, you know,
amazing food that my family cooked that I didn't eat.
(17:43):
Nights I stayed home alone because I was too nervous
to go out or felt gross in my body and
just didn't even want to deal with it. So yeah,
I think having a healthy perspective on what is your
set point? When you're in it, You're like, I don't
even know because I've been manipulating for years. But once
(18:04):
you get there and you feel the joy and you're
no longer consumed by all those thoughts, or you can
walk past a mirror without having to turn and look
and assess and judge yourself. Ah, it's just freedom. You know.
It will sometimes could rear up, but when you have
the tools then you can bust them out from your
back pocket and be like not today, not today, tagger absolutely.
(18:27):
And also this is piece I think, like like two things.
One having grace. Like I turned thirty seven like a
month ago, and I was like I woke up the
one morning I was like, huh, my body's squishy and
then it used to be and I was like, interesting,
this must happen as you get older. And it was
like there was no part of me that was like
I had to change my food after exercise more. This
isn't okay. There's this grace that my set point, my
body composition, my shape, my size, that's going to change
(18:49):
over time and that's okay. And I think that came
with being recovered, and it came with time in the saddle.
And I often say that, like I feel more recovered
this year than I did last year, And that doesn't
mean I wasn't recovered last year. It just means that
I've got more time being human. And so I think
too with you know, when I was in recovery, I
was like, I don't want my body. I don't want
my body at that set point. I don't want that.
(19:10):
I don't see how I can be happy with that.
I don't see how I can live with that. And
part of recovery for me was actually living in that,
not liking it, but doing it anyway. It's kind of
that piece of I don't know if I can recover,
but I'm going to give it a shot, and it's like,
I don't think I can live in this body. Like
there was so many times I would cry to my therapist,
I don't think I can live in this body, and
she was like, okay, but let's try. Let's just give
(19:31):
it a shot. And as I leaned further into recovery,
and then as I recovered, I actually started to want
the body that I had, And now I want the
body that I have because this body means I can
do all these amazing things, like this body with the
lumps and the bumps and the whatevers that I didn't
like before. This body means that I have relationships, and
this body means that I get to travel, and this
(19:51):
body means that I wake up feeling well. And I
actually want this body now, whereas when I was in recovery,
I was like, Nope, I'll recover, but I want my
eating just a lot of body. It doesn't work like that.
And so I think the message that I really want
to give is well for me. When I recovered, I
started to want the body that I had, and that
was a real turning point as well. Yeah, well, because
(20:11):
we've been conditioned to, you know, by all the things
the media, society, different things that this is what the
body is supposed to look like, when really, uh, we
should have had no conditioning there whatsoever. No one should
be telling us this is what we're striving for. But
once you build those new neuro pathways and you start
to fall in love with your body, and yet then
(20:32):
you just don't even think about it. It's amazing what
our brains are capable of when, like you said, you
just start doing it. Just start doing it. It's not
easy at all. But that's why. Even sometimes I do
that with actual like food. I know in the ted
X talk you did it it talked about like unloading
groceries for the first time and like all the things
like even like I can't remember the exact food, but
(20:54):
the eggs and the lettuce with the cookies, and you
had pantry full of things and a fridge full of things.
And you know, I'll still catch myself at the grocery
store sometimes being like, uh, I'm not going to get
the cookies. And then I'm like, don't get the cookies.
I'll hear some voice, don't get the cookies, and then
you know what, I come right back and I'm like,
you know what, cookies are going in the basket now
because brain don't challenge me. Now, I'm going to keep
(21:17):
buying the freaking cookies until my brain knows that it's
no big deal. If I want the cookies, I get
the cookies. If I don't want the cookies, it don't
get the cookies. But I had to build the new neuropathway.
You do it until it's not hot, and then you
just keep doing it because you want to. Right. Well, Christie,
thank you so much for taking the time to chat
with us today, and I encourage people to check out
(21:38):
more at Recoveredliving dot com and you can see all
the amazing work that Christie and her team are doing.
But again the ted X talk is it's time to
do eating disorder recovery differently, and that you are Christie
or your socials and all your stuff on Recovered Living
dot com. Yeah, so we have Recovered Living dot com.
We also have Recovered Living in z dot com, which
(21:59):
I know in America's prenus m Z and that's a
residential eating disort of treatment charity that I've started up
in New Zealand. We're opening in October, so feel free
to check that out as well. So recovered Living nz
dot com awesome. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate
you and all of your work. Thank ye
Hosts And Creators
Amy Brown
Leanne Ellington
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