June 7, 2022 • 38 mins
It can seem impossible to break out of the cycle of dieting and binging, but health coach Isabel Foxen Duke found the key at the end of what she calls her “final binge.” And the answer isn’t more dieting! Virgie and Isabel talk about “radical hopelessness,” why Nutella is the ultimate anti-diet food, and why dieting - not binging - is the real coping mechanism.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm a big fan of just nut butters of all kinds,
but nutella is obviously like the holy Grail of nut butters.
You know, it's the best. I've always relive the word.
The phrase nut butter just sounds so a little bit illicit,
and I love that nuts. You know, nuts are a
little sexual. From Transmitter Media, this is Rebel Eaters Club
(00:34):
and I'm your host, Virgie Tobar. Today we'll be eating
nutella with a really good friend of mine, Isabel Box
and Duke. I've known Isabel for almost a decade. We're
neighbors now, and on a nice San Francisco day, you
can find us walking around in the park discussing Pemma Showdred.
We both talk with our hands and are known to
(00:56):
fling a crumb or two while eating treats and talking
loudly about how much we hate diet culture. Beyond being
my friend, Isabella is kind of a big deal. She's
a health coach who helps her clients break out of
cycles of binging and restricting so they can finally make
peace with food. I am so thrilled to talk with
(01:16):
her today. Now let's get back to the nutella. I
went to the I walked down to like the little
coop down the street, and they have like that they
had just gotten the bread delivery. So I got this
like sweet, warm baby loaf of it's called like Duca.
It's like a Duca bread and it's got seeds all
(01:37):
over it, and it was like so dense and delicious.
So I got that. I cut it up into I
really love cutting my own bread into like really fat slices.
Oh that's amazing. Yeah, and the war is like the spongy,
warm fluffy bread. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like spongy and
dense and I love that. And then it's got like
(02:00):
a nice crunch, which we're gonna I'm gonna crunch it
in a minute. But also yeah, I just slathered nutella
on it and then cut up some banana put that
on top, and it was just oh so good. Should
we share a bite together? Normally? I come down, Okay,
let's do it. Okay, Okay, here we go, okay three
(02:21):
two one, no, no, okay, here we go. Oh glo, okay,
where'd you get the full? Mmm? I like that right,
very good. So tell us about why we're eating nutella.
(02:42):
I always just thought that nutella was like the ultimate
symbol of like bad foods that people like avoid in
diet culture. You know, it was like the holy grail
of that. It was the ultimate creamy, fatty sugar. Are
you know everything that was villainized in diet culture like
(03:04):
felt to be embodied by nutella. So yeah, so it's
the best obviously, yes. Yeah. So the first time you
encounter nutella, I want to go back to that moment
or the first time you remember. I remember really discovering
I went to France one summer I did like a
(03:24):
teen tour in France when I was thirteen. I remember
going to France and it being everywhere and thinking like
this is the best food that ever existed. I was
definitely attached to this really happy memory of just being
like a free kid running around like being almost spoiled, right,
(03:49):
I mean really, I'm like in France, I'm thirteen years
old and I'm eating nutella creeps. I mean, you know,
it's like really the ultimate decadent experience. That food represents
that whole trip, that whole experience of my life. And
I had loves in France. I had my thirteen year
old love in France. I think I had my first
(04:11):
kids in France that summer, maybe my first like real
like makeout, you know, French frenched, and so there's just
a lot and so there was just a lot of
really positive, you know, feelings about that trip. I do
remember coming back though, and freaking out that I had
(04:31):
gained weight, and I remember thinking like, well, it's because
of all the nutella that I ate. The villainization of
nutella was like very quickly attached to the joy of nutella, right,
I don't I don't really remember ever thinking the nutella
was really okay because by that age, by the age
where I really discovered nutella, I was already pretty entrenched
(04:53):
in diet culture. I was probably already I think I
had like a full blown eating disorder at that point already,
but I I yeah, so there was no time where
I really felt nutella was a safe food. But I
remember always thinking it was the fucking best food, you know.
My first encounter with nutella was also abroad. I was
(05:13):
sixteen years old. I was visiting extended family. It was
like kind of you know, my grandmother had been waiting
until I was sixteen to sort of take me on
an identity pilgrimage to Mexico. So that I could meet
our extended family. So I was in the town where
my grandfather grew up, which is called San Luis Potosi
in Mexico, and my we like, I don't know if
(05:36):
he was my uncle or what he was like some
kind of relation, and he brought home a jar of
nutella as sort of just a hospitality gesture, and I remember,
you know, I was like, what is this right? And
then I put a spoon in it and it was
like fireworks are going off. It's like the scene in
a movie where you're like you see your first love
(05:58):
and you're like, oh my god, it's happening in my mouth.
And I ate the whole jar that day. Like they
were like you know that. I think the next one.
They were like where the new tela go? And I'm like, whoops, um,
So it was yeah, and then I have one, so
I hadn't. I mean, I think that also what's interesting
when you're talking about going to France, like my next
(06:19):
my next chapter of nutella history, you know, novel or
whatever is. I'm studying abroad in Italy and I have
decided to turn this short term study abroad into a diet, right,
Like I think that I was so drawn in by
the idea that you could go overseas and then after
like a few weeks or a few months, come back
(06:40):
and be completely transformed, you know, like to the to
the point that no one can even recognize. You're like
your friends and your family are like, who's that, and
You're like, it's me, um and um and Italy every summer,
like every summer break, every it was. It was always
that fantasy, every single time you were going to be
like a way and then you'd come back a new person. Yeah, right,
(07:03):
and it never happened, as we know, as diet cultures
always always be disappointing us, right totally. But I'm like
in Italy literally basically starving myself. Some friends are like,
I don't know if this is a good idea, and
I'm like, you're just jealous. I'm in capable. I'm like
completely completely in like I don't know, I'm in like
(07:24):
the sunken place with my fat phobia, right, and I
cannot understand these people's gestures of care as anything but jealousy.
But then, you know, we're in Italy. People like the
other people in the house I'm sharing with, you know,
eighteen years old, We're sharing a house like eight people
or something, and someone always had new Tela in the
you know, in like the kitchen, And of course in
(07:46):
my moments where I would like, you know, could not
just starve myself endlessly, I would just find the jar
of new I would like sniff it out like a
trouble pig, and like I would just eat. I would
just eat as much and sometimes a whole jar and
um yeah, and then like being called and then somebody
being like, did someone eat my new Tela? And everyone
(08:07):
knowing that it was me because I was like doing
all this wild insane food restrictions, and then pretending that
it wasn't me, and then finally caving out of shame
and being like, I did eat it. I'm sorry, I'll
replace your new Tela, and it all started over again.
It's about like it was like a horrible it was
like that horrible cycle. And I think, right like, and
(08:28):
this kind of is starting to pivot into what you do,
right Like, of course we have this sense that we're
monsters that were terrible, but then you know, we realize
that this kind of behavior is actually completely in line
with what dieting and food restriction does to a person. Yeah. Completely,
I want to get into that more in a second. Um,
(08:49):
we we've known each other for a long time, but
you've never told me. We've never had that moment where
you tell me what your relationship to diet culture was, like,
how you ended up the have to becoming a health
coach who works with people who are recovering from chronic
restriction or disordered eating. So, I, you know, had been
(09:11):
a sort of classic diet in cycler. I was put
on my first diet by my pediatrician when I was three,
and I remember my mom lovingly refers to this diet
as the broccoli and skim milk diet. I was like
high on the BABYBMI scale. I was like, you know whatever,
and the pediatrician said, oh, you gotta watch your weight,
you gotta be careful. And so I don't have a
(09:32):
memory of not being on a diet as far back
as I have consciousness. I always just had this experience
of myself as somebody who wanted more than I was
supposed to have, and I loved food too much, and
my desires around food were not good, and I had
to actively sit on my hands and try not to
eat because you know, if I ate what I really wanted,
(09:55):
I would be fat. We all got this message. You
didn't have to have a p fat phobic pediatrician to
get the message that this was bad. It wasn't just
about health, come on, I mean, it was lovability issue.
It was a social issue. I remember I did have
this feeling of like, if I was thinner, I'd be
more popular and more people would love me. I'd get
the boys to like me. And I had crushes going
(10:17):
back to like the age of five, and I thought
that thinness was the thing that was missing in my
life as sort of like this like white, upper middle
class girl that seemed like the only thing that maybe
was the problem. Like it's like, well, yeah, if I'm thin,
I'm just gonna have everything. Life would be perfect when
I was thin, right, I would get everything, I'd have
all the attention, I'd have everything that I wanted. And that, fundamentally,
(10:41):
my body and my appetite, right was my biggest problem.
And so I spent my entire childhood into my adolescence
trying to control my appetite but not being able to,
then hating myself for not being able to, then trying harder.
The next day, and then not being falling again even
more intensely. The more I would restrict, the more I
(11:04):
would binge, the more I would hate myself, the more
I would try to restrict, until eventually you do get
into like real clinical eating disorder behaviors. I mean, I
remember being so desperate, right, I mean I was. I
think I was throwing up my food by age ten
or eleven, and so this went on throughout my whole
(11:24):
childhood and adolescence, through high school and college. And then
I remember so even at some point I discovered stimulants, right,
appetite suppressants, cocaine, adderall, and that really was the only
time I was ever able to actually lose a significant
amount of weight and quote unquote stick to my diet
(11:46):
was when I was using drugs, and that very quickly
landed me into rehab. So I was nineteen when I
went to rehab for an eating disorder, and eating disorder
slash cocaine whatever, it was really just basically needing disorder,
and I was like, this is so great. I'm going
(12:06):
to go to treatment and they're going to teach me
how to not binge without drugs. I remember being in
the intake and I said, if you can teach me
how to control my weight without coke, I'll quit tomorrow.
I will have I will give up drugs tomorrow if
you can teach me how to control my weight without it.
(12:28):
And they said, yep, we can do that. And when
I was in treatment, and this was like a fancy,
rich girl rehab, right, I mean, this was like the
highest level luxury healthcare you could be getting. I think
my parents, my mother spent one hundred thousand dollars on
treatments for me that year. And and what I got
(12:51):
was I mean, I got clean, right, I mean I
was in an environment where I couldn't do drugs, so
I did get clean. But you know, functionally, what they
were doing with food is they just put me on
a meal plan that was less food than my body
actually needed. Because the meal plan was designed to keep
me in the BMI range right, right, not to heal you,
but to keep you in the range, to keep me
in the BMI range, right. There was no real rehab.
(13:14):
There was no like you know, we had group therapy
where we would talk about our feelings, but then we'd
have to go eat our meal plan calorie allotment. And
that was the treatment. And I remember, you know, kind
of coming out of rehab and I was like, what's
you know, what's the aftercare plan? And they would say,
go to OA, go to Overreaters Anonymous, and stick to
(13:36):
your meal plan and you know, work with a nutritionist
or whatever, you know, like have a nutritionist watch over
your meal plan essentially right. Like, So I came back
and I was working with the nutritionist. And when I
worked with the nutritionist is the same thing. It was
all about. She would weigh me every week and like adjust.
We'd talk about what I was eating and we would
adjust the food to keep me in the weight range.
(13:56):
It was all about keeping me in the weight range.
So I, again very quickly after getting out of rehab,
could not stick to any kind of meal plan. I
had the same problem. Nothing changed. I wasn't doing drugs,
which was good, but I could not stick to my
meal plan. And I realized, I think, like I remember
(14:20):
being in an Overreader's Anonymous meeting and I met someone
who is, like to this day, one of my best
friends in the entire world. And she somehow came across
a Janine Roth book. I don't know if you are
you familiar with Genine Roth. Yes, yes, yeah, So she
came across a Janine Roth book, and this was my
first introduction to the concept of intuitive eating. This was
my first introduction to the concept that you have hunger signals,
(14:43):
that you have a body that gives you information about
what it needs. I didn't know that. I thought that
what your body needs is whatever it needs to stay
in the weight range. The idea that I was supposed
to listen to my hunger on food, that that was
like important, was pretty new. The idea was, if you're
listening to your hunger signals correctly, right, if you're really
(15:06):
waiting until you're hungry and really stopping when you're full,
you will be thin. That was the message. So this
is what I call the intuitive eating diet, or the
hunger and fullness diet. And I became totally, like, you know,
pretty obsessed with the hunger and fullness diet. But I
would fall off of it. I couldn't stick to the
hunger and fullness diet either. Sure, No, I would eat
way past the point of full in quotes, and I
(15:29):
would eat when I quote unquote wasn't hungry whatever that
means all the time, right, So I couldn't stick to
the Hunger and Fullness diet. And then I mean I
went through many different iterations of the hunger and Fullness diet.
At one point I was involved with the Way Down Diet,
really super very intense Christian group, this church that basically
(15:50):
it's a lot of like pray to God to not
eat when you're not hungry, because when you want to
you when you're not hungry, it's like a spiritual malady, right,
And so I was even like a weight lost church.
It's a wait losch church. Yeah it's church. Yeah, Yeah,
it's it's there's a documentary about this. It's actually quite disturbing.
It's a pretty much it's a cult. I didn't realize
(16:11):
how culty it was when I was doing it because
I wasn't actively in the church. I was just you know,
buying all the programs and reading all the books, you know.
And I remember you're supposed to wait until you have
a growl in your stomach to eat, and if you
eat before you have a growl in your stomach, that's
a sin. Wow wow wow, very intense. I mean I
was starving myself. It's a starvation program. And I remember
(16:34):
having a huge binge eating episode. I was like, couldn't
hang on any longer, binged my face off. It was
like four days in the fetal position, could barely, very
physically uncomfortable, like low bottom binge eating, where I like
call had to call in sick from work because I
(16:57):
was so full and stuffed that I just could not
really breathe or move. I felt like I was in
the depths of hell. I'm sitting there, like sweating, so full,
so uncomfortable, calling and sick from work, and I'm just
like I call it like my final, my final binge.
(17:18):
I'm just not in control of my food. I can't
do it. I can't get up and try again tomorrow.
I can't. It was like a surrender moment of like
perhaps I'm just a person who's going to have a
jar of nutella and I can't do anything about it
because every time I try, I end up here and
I can't be here anymore. I cannot be like face
(17:42):
down in my bed hating myself because I fell off
the wagon. I don't have the energy to keep trying
to control my food, and so I just gave up.
I gave up. I was like, screw it. If I
gain weight. I gain weight if I eat whatever I eat. What.
I can't think about this anymore. I can't have my
(18:03):
life revolve around this anymore. I'm just gonna let myself
just eat and whatever my weight will be will be.
And the magical thing that happened was I ate. I
gained weight, But I never had a four day bender
(18:24):
where I just wanted to die ever again after that,
you know, like it was like the really intense binge
eating episodes that the hardcore diet inch cyclers have experienced.
And if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.
That never happened to me again. Did I have days
where I had a jar of nutella? Absolutely? I could
(18:46):
still have that day. You know, Stabilized, normalized food doesn't
look like what diet culture tells you it's gonna look
like right right right. And I feel like you and
I have talked about this. I don't know if you've
quite called it radical hopeless, yes, but I think there
is a rocket of hopelessness, the gift of he does Yeah,
(19:09):
giving up was the best thing that ever happened to me.
That was the healing, giving up the hope of dieting
will ever work for me, I kind of want to
(19:30):
talk a little bit about some of the points on
the journey, like one of them being I mean, right,
you can be eating in a way that where you
do not feel controlled by food, and that could look
a lot of different ways. Some days it can look
like the drive to tell us. Some days it looks
like whatever. Some days, you know, I mean, it can
look a lot of different ways. The other thing is
(19:50):
at the end of you know, creating a relationship with
food that is peaceful and not adversarial, or that like
it is as joyful and peaceful as possible, like in
the context of such an anxiety written food phobic culture.
At the end of that, there is no guarantee of
what kind of body you're going to have. At the
(20:11):
end of that, that can be complete. You can have
this beautiful, wonderful I would use the word healthy relationship
to food. And you could be a thin person, you
could be a fat person. It's like all over that
there's no guarantees on this, And I think that that's
really scary for a lot of people, and I think
for a lot of people it can be really liberating
and normal. I think for me it felt really liberated like, oh,
(20:33):
this is the body I'm supposed to have. Yeah, And
I think going back to sort of radical hopelessness can
look like that moment, you know, where you're in the
fetal position and you have to call out of work.
It can also be the moment where you sort of
have to come to terms with the fact that you
ultimately can't control the size of your body pretty much
(20:54):
unless you want to, unless you want this to run
your entire life, right, And I'm curious about you, know,
as a coach, I know you have brought people to
the gift of hopelessness or help them usshered them to
their And I'm curious, like, what is that like for people?
Is that something I mean talk about the gift of hopelessness.
I mean, the gift of hopelessness is the most it
(21:16):
is the core of my teaching. I really think that. Like,
if you're like number one goal is I just don't
want to have an eating disorder anymore, Like I don't
want to have this like crazy relationship with food anymore.
Once you really get to the point where you're like,
I just can't diet. I am hopeless on dieting. I
am hopeless on trying to control my food, trying to
control my body. That's when the real healing comes with food, right, Like,
(21:39):
that's when you're like, Okay, food's just gonna be food.
It's gonna be what it's going to be. This is
what we call acceptance body acceptance. I can still struggle
with my body image. I can still struggle with fat
phobia on any number of levels. But fundamentally, if you
are hopeless on dieting saving you from that pain, that's
(22:00):
your food is just going to be your food. Right now.
Here's the problem I think with hopelessness is that hope
grows back. If I'm really struggling with my body image,
if I'm having pain around my body related trauma in
some way, all of the sudden dieting seems like maybe
it's a good idea. Maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe
(22:21):
if I just do this, well, I'm not going to
go back to that crazy dieting. I'm just gonna be
like a little dieting or I'm just gonna be like
you know, like yeah, right, dieting is the real coping mechanism. Right.
People talk a big game about emotional bleating or whatever,
like you want to know what's really hard giving up
dieting when you're in pain about your body, when you're
(22:41):
having emotional pain about your body related trauma. This is
the thing, and this is what I've been trying to
you know, more and more tell people as I'm like,
you know, Isabel, like you're using the word hope, I
might use the word you're triggered. Right. We think of
dieting as like healthful behavior. We think of that moment
when we want to get thin as optimization. I'm like, no,
(23:01):
it's all just you being triggered when you restrict. It's
it's a reaction. It's what you've been taught to do
to cope when you are triggered. To your point around
the pain that you have been taught that something's wrong
with your body, something's wrong with how you eat. So,
I mean, I think you know, and there's a reason
for that. There's a biological reason for that. Actually, So
(23:22):
when we are in fight or flight, when we are anxious,
when we are in trauma's response, we literally our brains
start to look for how do I get out of
this pain? Right? What can I get control over? Biologically,
part of what that is is you start to develop
something called threat bias, which means you're looking for problems
to solve. What can I control, What can I, you know,
(23:44):
do to make myself safer? And so dieting is like,
in the absence of an obvious solution to my problem,
dieting is just this like always there in this corner
of like, oh, this is something you can control, right, well,
there's a little weight, you know, why you're bodying your
body is always something you can try to control, right
(24:05):
It's just kind of like I'm having difficult feelings and
I'm just in them, and there's really nothing to be
done about it other than just be with my feelings.
If I'm trying to escape those difficult feelings, but I
don't really have a real solution to that problem. All
of a sudden, like any control mechanism out there will
start to look feel like a good idea. And sometimes
(24:25):
this could this could be you know, the pain might
come from like actual fatphobia in the world. But you know,
even if you're just an anxious person, right, it's this
projection of all of my anxiety onto my body as
the thing to control to take me out of this
pain that I'm in. Does that kind of make sass
of course. Yeah. Absolutely, It's like, you know, it feels
(24:46):
unsafe to be in my body. What can I do
to escape from this, get a sense of control over
this feeling which feels very overwhelming. I mean absolutely, And
I think again, there's this idea that you talk about
this a lot, the idea of a lot of people
think of an eating disorder as something that is sort
of self contained, like there is something wrong with me,
(25:08):
there is something wrong with my relationship to food or
my relationship to my body, without understanding this is happening
in an ecosystem where all of these things end up
becoming inevitable for a certain percentage of the population. Yeah,
I mean, I would say that every diet of dieters
by definition, are dealing with this up and down. This
(25:28):
is most people's experience in some way or another, right.
I think some people have more severe ups and downs,
and they usually just match the degree to which we're
restricting or making ourselves wrong or being perfectionistic with food
or whatever. I call it. Diep In cycling physics, the
farther I pull the bow back on the bow and
arrow the farther it's going to fly in the other direction.
In the second I let it go, and then it's like,
oh shit, it flew in the other direction. Let mela
(25:52):
blah blah blah, myself back right, and then it just
keeps happening. And this is this is diep in cycling
classically defined, and most people are experiencing this. The small
group of people who are not experiencing this, who are
successfully sitting on their hands and really you know, holding
it down for years on end, that's when you start
(26:14):
to really see symptoms of clinically restrict of eating disorders
like anorexia. So you know, I always am like, I
do not feel jealous anymore. I did I used to do.
I used to feel jealous of people that could restrict,
that had the capacity restrict. I'd be like, I would
what's wrong with me? I never I never thought I
had an eating disorder because I wasn't capable of maintaining restriction,
(26:37):
and I would be jealous similar soime too, Now I realize,
actually the folks who are really capable of long term
restriction are often in more pain than anyone else because that,
I mean, there's no relief. It's constant self denial and
self harm with zero relief. Binges are fundamentally relieving, they
(26:59):
are medicis and all. They're actually a healthy response to deprivation. Yes,
thank God for my binges because they kept me alive,
they kept me out of the hospital, And I mean
I can feel that in my whole body. What you're
talking about is binging is healthy responses, normal responses, self
care in some way. You know. I think it's so
(27:20):
it's so difficult in this moment to understand things like
something like quote unquote binging, which is so deeply shamed
and mythologized in our culture, to actually sort of see
it as like, you know, as an act of self care.
Is your body sort of coming in and taking over
and helping you survive. And I don't think we have
(27:41):
the space right now to even think of how amazing
that is. It's a I mean, yeah, I have an
enormous amount of gratitude now for that. And you know,
really it's a massive shift of consciousness to think that
my desires for food are good, that my desires for
food are healthy and keep alive, that my desires food
(28:02):
are fundamentally safety mechanisms. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I mean
I've just been thinking. I mean, for me, I you know,
I'm I'm always like, I don't like the quote unquote
healthy quote unquote unhealthy eating binary. I'm like, anything fundamentally
right when we're talking about the bare minimum, anything that
(28:24):
is there to help you survive, that's going to keep
you alive, I would say, is in the healthy camp, right, Like, yeah,
you're absolutely not eating right. I'm like, and so I think, um, yeah,
I mean I always have trouble with those kinds of binaries.
But you know, let's let's talk a little bit about
um sort of fat phobia and what that looks like.
You know, when you're working with a client who maybe
(28:45):
is a thin bodied person versus a larger bodied person.
You know, like a thin person can have an extremely
high level of body dysmorphia, which is very unpleasant, but
may not be dealing with you know, likely is not
dealing with structural cultural fat phobia. I'm just thinking about, like,
when you're working with a thin client versus a fat
(29:07):
client who might be facing fat phobia. I mean, what, like,
what's the difference in those two trajectories. I mean, obviously,
the challenges that a fat person is facing in terms
of externalized or institutional or interpersonal fat phobia are just
going to be structurally and fundamentally different. They're just dealing
with you know. So if you think about like fat
(29:28):
phobia can be broken down into institutional, interpersonal, and intra personal. Right,
if a thin person is not dealing with institutional fat phobia,
they just do not. They're completely they have the privilege
which is never having to deal with that particular set
of challenges. The interpersonal fat phobia that they're dealing with
is also probably quite reduced. That being said, I think
what's complicated for thin people is that even thin people
(29:51):
are not necessarily immune from having had fat phobic experiences
in childhood and also witness fat phobia and seeing how
people get treated differently on the basis of body size.
It's like thin people still like see that and they
like kind of internalize the fear of fat, even if
(30:12):
they're not experiencing the fat phobia. So it is undoubtedly
clear that larger people are dealing with way more shit
than thin people in terms of the challenges that they
need to overcome, because they're also potentially also dealing with
the anxiety. That's the other thing about you know, living
in a fat body, you're dealing with all of the
(30:32):
institutional fatphobia, all the introversonal faphobia, all the stuff, and
you may also have trauma and anxiety and things that
predispose you to disordered eating even if you weren't in
a fat body, right, so it's like a triple action
threat potentially happening. But yeah, it just gets like really murky,
like where the line is I guess between am I
(30:54):
totally projecting something irrational onto my body? Is this like, oh,
you have an eating disorder because it's really about something else.
It's not really about fat phobia. It's just you know,
you're projecting you know, your anxiety and your trauma onto
your body. Or does having had experience of fat phobia
and childhood or having a mother who was a diet
or who was constantly you know, put putting yourself down,
(31:16):
or having a mother who constantly put you down even
if you were in a you know, thin body. I mean,
it's just the line starts to get really weird in
terms of what's caused by quote unquote active external fat
phobia and what's an anxious or trauma response projection, And
like making a distinction between those two is really hard
(31:38):
to do because no matter what body you live and
you still live in a fatphobia culture, some kind of
makes sense absolutely. I mean that's the thing where I
use the I use them. I often use the metaphor
of like breaking up and diet culture as your ex
and I'm like, I think what's hard about diet culture,
unlike a lot of other types of trauma, is that
(31:59):
you know, some trauma is safely in your rear view mirror.
You can deal with it, and you can kind of
tell yourself, I'm never going to be like if it
happened as a kid, I'm never gonna be five years
old that you know, I'm never gonna be dependent on
my parents that exact same way. But with that phobia
and working through food issues and body anxiety, it's like
running into your X every damn day, Like everywhere you go,
(32:24):
your X is like there, and so you're trying to
heal while also actively running into them when you're grocery shopping,
when you're going to get coffee, when you're going to
get your new tela, when you're trying to go on
a date with someone else. Right, like right, I think
exactly of the that's what's that's one of the biggest
challenges I think right about the recovery is that the trauma.
(32:47):
It's like my friend, my friend once told me, you
can forgive someone who has slapped you in the past,
but you cannot forgive someone who is still slapping you. Yes,
this what's so hard. It's like we're still getting slapped.
It's really hard to forgive, right solves, let alone anything
(33:07):
right when we're still actively in this place where we're
getting lambasted all the time, you know. Right. So this
is where I mean a good portion of my work,
and this is you know, with people of all body sizes, right,
A good portion of my work is when it comes
to just dealing with the culture. Right, is where can
I realistically protect myself? Are there boundaries that I can
(33:29):
realistically input to keep to protect myself from the culture, Right,
Like maybe I don't talk to my faphobic mother, maybe
I don't you know, follow the Kardashians on Instagram, Right, Like,
there are what can I actively do? What is a
realistic thing that I can do to divorce myself and
take myself out of that kind of violent environment. But
then realistically you're going to come up short there, right,
(33:52):
So then what's the game plan then, And I mean
I would argue probably, you know, a big part of
it is like repair, right, like being able to like
self soothe and like, you know, how can I self
care after I'm harmed when harm is not avoidable. I
have a lot of clients whose spouses are really fat
phobic spouses who are you know, basically threatening them with
(34:15):
you know, I need you to be losing weight. I
mean that's a really different way of children you have
a family. I mean that is a heartbreaking situation. It's
like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Right, So,
you know, working with people around you know, what are
the boundaries that you personally feel comfortable setting, Like what
are your lines in the sand where you can remove
(34:36):
yourself from toxicity and where you know, for whatever reason,
you may be deciding to stay in an environment that
may be fat phobic because of these other things. Right,
it just gets really it's a lot. But yeah, what
can I do to change my environment? Where can I
set boundaries and my environment? And where do I need
to like how can I take care of myself when
(34:58):
I am exposed to fat phobia in a way that
harms me? Yeah, Okay, So actually I've just have one
last question for you, Isabel. Are you ready, Yes, let's
do it. Okay. I want you to pretend that you're traveling.
You're in the future. If you're I don't know how
long in the future, but it's a time when you
can look back at what we're all living through around
diet culture and food and bodies. It's you're safely that's
(35:22):
safely in the past. We're no longer doing that. What
is your future self saying about this very moment, like
twenty twenty two that we're living in now when it
comes to like how we deal with food and body
and diet culture, you know, I think that honestly, I
just have so much compassion. Like when I think about that,
when I think about like looking back on history and
(35:43):
thinking about that must have been so hard and so painful,
and it makes me so sad, and I just it's
like my heart breaks, and but there's like a real
it's just compassion. Like I just feel so much compassion,
and that's like one of the most important tools you
could have, I think in this process on this journey
(36:03):
is just really looking at your diet recovery journey through
the lens of compassion, you know, looking at your body
image challenges through the lens of compassion, of like, none
of this is your fault. How can you just really
like love yourself and be compassionate towards yourself through this
like violence that we're experiencing as a collective. M Yes,
(36:30):
I mean I absolutely love that. I absolutely agree, Isabel.
Thank you for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thank you
for having me. This is so special. I'm like, I
feel like such a special kinship with you, and it's
like it's just a treat. It's really a treat. Ah.
Same same, And thank you for sharing some new tele
(36:50):
banana business with me anytime you want to share a
new telebanana. Wow. Okay, let's take a moment to contemplate
(37:17):
radical hopelessness. Yes, that moment when you understand that dieting
just doesn't work, that it will never work, that it's
not your fault, and your body will just be the
way that it wants to be. That is a moment
of power. As Isabel just taught us, dieting is the
real coping mechanism. Most of us need help coping. How
(37:38):
can we trade out dieting for something that doesn't eat
our souls, though, I personally recommend thrifting watercolors and perfecting
your heckling skills. If you have thoughts on the conversation
you just heard, or even if you just want to
say hi, reach out via social media. DM me at
Virgie Tovar, DM the show's producers at Transmitter Pods, or
(38:00):
shoot us a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail
dot com. Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by
Transmitter Media. This episode was produced by showshe shol Events.
(38:21):
Sarah Knicks is Transmitters executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our
managing producer, and Greta Cohen is our executive producer. And
I'm your host Virgie Tobar. Rick Kwan is our mixed engineer.
And thanks to Taka Yazawa who wrote some of the
music we use in the show. If you love Rubbel
Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by
writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See you
(38:41):
next week
I'm a big fan of just nut butters of all kinds,
but nutella is obviously like the holy Grail of nut butters.
You know, it's the best. I've always relive the word.
The phrase nut butter just sounds so a little bit illicit,
and I love that nuts. You know, nuts are a
little sexual. From Transmitter Media, this is Rebel Eaters Club
(00:34):
and I'm your host, Virgie Tobar. Today we'll be eating
nutella with a really good friend of mine, Isabel Box
and Duke. I've known Isabel for almost a decade. We're
neighbors now, and on a nice San Francisco day, you
can find us walking around in the park discussing Pemma Showdred.
We both talk with our hands and are known to
(00:56):
fling a crumb or two while eating treats and talking
loudly about how much we hate diet culture. Beyond being
my friend, Isabella is kind of a big deal. She's
a health coach who helps her clients break out of
cycles of binging and restricting so they can finally make
peace with food. I am so thrilled to talk with
(01:16):
her today. Now let's get back to the nutella. I
went to the I walked down to like the little
coop down the street, and they have like that they
had just gotten the bread delivery. So I got this
like sweet, warm baby loaf of it's called like Duca.
It's like a Duca bread and it's got seeds all
(01:37):
over it, and it was like so dense and delicious.
So I got that. I cut it up into I
really love cutting my own bread into like really fat slices.
Oh that's amazing. Yeah, and the war is like the spongy,
warm fluffy bread. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like spongy and
dense and I love that. And then it's got like
(02:00):
a nice crunch, which we're gonna I'm gonna crunch it
in a minute. But also yeah, I just slathered nutella
on it and then cut up some banana put that
on top, and it was just oh so good. Should
we share a bite together? Normally? I come down, Okay,
let's do it. Okay, Okay, here we go, okay three
(02:21):
two one, no, no, okay, here we go. Oh glo, okay,
where'd you get the full? Mmm? I like that right,
very good. So tell us about why we're eating nutella.
(02:42):
I always just thought that nutella was like the ultimate
symbol of like bad foods that people like avoid in
diet culture. You know, it was like the holy grail
of that. It was the ultimate creamy, fatty sugar. Are
you know everything that was villainized in diet culture like
(03:04):
felt to be embodied by nutella. So yeah, so it's
the best obviously, yes. Yeah. So the first time you
encounter nutella, I want to go back to that moment
or the first time you remember. I remember really discovering
I went to France one summer I did like a
(03:24):
teen tour in France when I was thirteen. I remember
going to France and it being everywhere and thinking like
this is the best food that ever existed. I was
definitely attached to this really happy memory of just being
like a free kid running around like being almost spoiled, right,
(03:49):
I mean really, I'm like in France, I'm thirteen years
old and I'm eating nutella creeps. I mean, you know,
it's like really the ultimate decadent experience. That food represents
that whole trip, that whole experience of my life. And
I had loves in France. I had my thirteen year
old love in France. I think I had my first
(04:11):
kids in France that summer, maybe my first like real
like makeout, you know, French frenched, and so there's just
a lot and so there was just a lot of
really positive, you know, feelings about that trip. I do
remember coming back though, and freaking out that I had
(04:31):
gained weight, and I remember thinking like, well, it's because
of all the nutella that I ate. The villainization of
nutella was like very quickly attached to the joy of nutella, right,
I don't I don't really remember ever thinking the nutella
was really okay because by that age, by the age
where I really discovered nutella, I was already pretty entrenched
(04:53):
in diet culture. I was probably already I think I
had like a full blown eating disorder at that point already,
but I I yeah, so there was no time where
I really felt nutella was a safe food. But I
remember always thinking it was the fucking best food, you know.
My first encounter with nutella was also abroad. I was
(05:13):
sixteen years old. I was visiting extended family. It was
like kind of you know, my grandmother had been waiting
until I was sixteen to sort of take me on
an identity pilgrimage to Mexico. So that I could meet
our extended family. So I was in the town where
my grandfather grew up, which is called San Luis Potosi
in Mexico, and my we like, I don't know if
(05:36):
he was my uncle or what he was like some
kind of relation, and he brought home a jar of
nutella as sort of just a hospitality gesture, and I remember,
you know, I was like, what is this right? And
then I put a spoon in it and it was
like fireworks are going off. It's like the scene in
a movie where you're like you see your first love
(05:58):
and you're like, oh my god, it's happening in my mouth.
And I ate the whole jar that day. Like they
were like you know that. I think the next one.
They were like where the new tela go? And I'm like, whoops, um,
So it was yeah, and then I have one, so
I hadn't. I mean, I think that also what's interesting
when you're talking about going to France, like my next
(06:19):
my next chapter of nutella history, you know, novel or
whatever is. I'm studying abroad in Italy and I have
decided to turn this short term study abroad into a diet, right,
Like I think that I was so drawn in by
the idea that you could go overseas and then after
like a few weeks or a few months, come back
(06:40):
and be completely transformed, you know, like to the to
the point that no one can even recognize. You're like
your friends and your family are like, who's that, and
You're like, it's me, um and um and Italy every summer,
like every summer break, every it was. It was always
that fantasy, every single time you were going to be
like a way and then you'd come back a new person. Yeah, right,
(07:03):
and it never happened, as we know, as diet cultures
always always be disappointing us, right totally. But I'm like
in Italy literally basically starving myself. Some friends are like,
I don't know if this is a good idea, and
I'm like, you're just jealous. I'm in capable. I'm like
completely completely in like I don't know, I'm in like
(07:24):
the sunken place with my fat phobia, right, and I
cannot understand these people's gestures of care as anything but jealousy.
But then, you know, we're in Italy. People like the
other people in the house I'm sharing with, you know,
eighteen years old, We're sharing a house like eight people
or something, and someone always had new Tela in the
you know, in like the kitchen, And of course in
(07:46):
my moments where I would like, you know, could not
just starve myself endlessly, I would just find the jar
of new I would like sniff it out like a
trouble pig, and like I would just eat. I would
just eat as much and sometimes a whole jar and
um yeah, and then like being called and then somebody
being like, did someone eat my new Tela? And everyone
(08:07):
knowing that it was me because I was like doing
all this wild insane food restrictions, and then pretending that
it wasn't me, and then finally caving out of shame
and being like, I did eat it. I'm sorry, I'll
replace your new Tela, and it all started over again.
It's about like it was like a horrible it was
like that horrible cycle. And I think, right like, and
(08:28):
this kind of is starting to pivot into what you do,
right Like, of course we have this sense that we're
monsters that were terrible, but then you know, we realize
that this kind of behavior is actually completely in line
with what dieting and food restriction does to a person. Yeah. Completely,
I want to get into that more in a second. Um,
(08:49):
we we've known each other for a long time, but
you've never told me. We've never had that moment where
you tell me what your relationship to diet culture was, like,
how you ended up the have to becoming a health
coach who works with people who are recovering from chronic
restriction or disordered eating. So, I, you know, had been
(09:11):
a sort of classic diet in cycler. I was put
on my first diet by my pediatrician when I was three,
and I remember my mom lovingly refers to this diet
as the broccoli and skim milk diet. I was like
high on the BABYBMI scale. I was like, you know whatever,
and the pediatrician said, oh, you gotta watch your weight,
you gotta be careful. And so I don't have a
(09:32):
memory of not being on a diet as far back
as I have consciousness. I always just had this experience
of myself as somebody who wanted more than I was
supposed to have, and I loved food too much, and
my desires around food were not good, and I had
to actively sit on my hands and try not to
eat because you know, if I ate what I really wanted,
(09:55):
I would be fat. We all got this message. You
didn't have to have a p fat phobic pediatrician to
get the message that this was bad. It wasn't just
about health, come on, I mean, it was lovability issue.
It was a social issue. I remember I did have
this feeling of like, if I was thinner, I'd be
more popular and more people would love me. I'd get
the boys to like me. And I had crushes going
(10:17):
back to like the age of five, and I thought
that thinness was the thing that was missing in my
life as sort of like this like white, upper middle
class girl that seemed like the only thing that maybe
was the problem. Like it's like, well, yeah, if I'm thin,
I'm just gonna have everything. Life would be perfect when
I was thin, right, I would get everything, I'd have
all the attention, I'd have everything that I wanted. And that, fundamentally,
(10:41):
my body and my appetite, right was my biggest problem.
And so I spent my entire childhood into my adolescence
trying to control my appetite but not being able to,
then hating myself for not being able to, then trying harder.
The next day, and then not being falling again even
more intensely. The more I would restrict, the more I
(11:04):
would binge, the more I would hate myself, the more
I would try to restrict, until eventually you do get
into like real clinical eating disorder behaviors. I mean, I
remember being so desperate, right, I mean I was. I
think I was throwing up my food by age ten
or eleven, and so this went on throughout my whole
(11:24):
childhood and adolescence, through high school and college. And then
I remember so even at some point I discovered stimulants, right,
appetite suppressants, cocaine, adderall, and that really was the only
time I was ever able to actually lose a significant
amount of weight and quote unquote stick to my diet
(11:46):
was when I was using drugs, and that very quickly
landed me into rehab. So I was nineteen when I
went to rehab for an eating disorder, and eating disorder
slash cocaine whatever, it was really just basically needing disorder,
and I was like, this is so great. I'm going
(12:06):
to go to treatment and they're going to teach me
how to not binge without drugs. I remember being in
the intake and I said, if you can teach me
how to control my weight without coke, I'll quit tomorrow.
I will have I will give up drugs tomorrow if
you can teach me how to control my weight without it.
(12:28):
And they said, yep, we can do that. And when
I was in treatment, and this was like a fancy,
rich girl rehab, right, I mean, this was like the
highest level luxury healthcare you could be getting. I think
my parents, my mother spent one hundred thousand dollars on
treatments for me that year. And and what I got
(12:51):
was I mean, I got clean, right, I mean I
was in an environment where I couldn't do drugs, so
I did get clean. But you know, functionally, what they
were doing with food is they just put me on
a meal plan that was less food than my body
actually needed. Because the meal plan was designed to keep
me in the BMI range right, right, not to heal you,
but to keep you in the range, to keep me
in the BMI range, right. There was no real rehab.
(13:14):
There was no like you know, we had group therapy
where we would talk about our feelings, but then we'd
have to go eat our meal plan calorie allotment. And
that was the treatment. And I remember, you know, kind
of coming out of rehab and I was like, what's
you know, what's the aftercare plan? And they would say,
go to OA, go to Overreaters Anonymous, and stick to
(13:36):
your meal plan and you know, work with a nutritionist
or whatever, you know, like have a nutritionist watch over
your meal plan essentially right. Like, So I came back
and I was working with the nutritionist. And when I
worked with the nutritionist is the same thing. It was
all about. She would weigh me every week and like adjust.
We'd talk about what I was eating and we would
adjust the food to keep me in the weight range.
(13:56):
It was all about keeping me in the weight range.
So I, again very quickly after getting out of rehab,
could not stick to any kind of meal plan. I
had the same problem. Nothing changed. I wasn't doing drugs,
which was good, but I could not stick to my
meal plan. And I realized, I think, like I remember
(14:20):
being in an Overreader's Anonymous meeting and I met someone
who is, like to this day, one of my best
friends in the entire world. And she somehow came across
a Janine Roth book. I don't know if you are
you familiar with Genine Roth. Yes, yes, yeah, So she
came across a Janine Roth book, and this was my
first introduction to the concept of intuitive eating. This was
my first introduction to the concept that you have hunger signals,
(14:43):
that you have a body that gives you information about
what it needs. I didn't know that. I thought that
what your body needs is whatever it needs to stay
in the weight range. The idea that I was supposed
to listen to my hunger on food, that that was
like important, was pretty new. The idea was, if you're
listening to your hunger signals correctly, right, if you're really
(15:06):
waiting until you're hungry and really stopping when you're full,
you will be thin. That was the message. So this
is what I call the intuitive eating diet, or the
hunger and fullness diet. And I became totally, like, you know,
pretty obsessed with the hunger and fullness diet. But I
would fall off of it. I couldn't stick to the
hunger and fullness diet either. Sure, No, I would eat
way past the point of full in quotes, and I
(15:29):
would eat when I quote unquote wasn't hungry whatever that
means all the time, right, So I couldn't stick to
the Hunger and Fullness diet. And then I mean I
went through many different iterations of the hunger and Fullness diet.
At one point I was involved with the Way Down Diet,
really super very intense Christian group, this church that basically
(15:50):
it's a lot of like pray to God to not
eat when you're not hungry, because when you want to
you when you're not hungry, it's like a spiritual malady, right,
And so I was even like a weight lost church.
It's a wait losch church. Yeah it's church. Yeah, Yeah,
it's it's there's a documentary about this. It's actually quite disturbing.
It's a pretty much it's a cult. I didn't realize
(16:11):
how culty it was when I was doing it because
I wasn't actively in the church. I was just you know,
buying all the programs and reading all the books, you know.
And I remember you're supposed to wait until you have
a growl in your stomach to eat, and if you
eat before you have a growl in your stomach, that's
a sin. Wow wow wow, very intense. I mean I
was starving myself. It's a starvation program. And I remember
(16:34):
having a huge binge eating episode. I was like, couldn't
hang on any longer, binged my face off. It was
like four days in the fetal position, could barely, very
physically uncomfortable, like low bottom binge eating, where I like
call had to call in sick from work because I
(16:57):
was so full and stuffed that I just could not
really breathe or move. I felt like I was in
the depths of hell. I'm sitting there, like sweating, so full,
so uncomfortable, calling and sick from work, and I'm just
like I call it like my final, my final binge.
(17:18):
I'm just not in control of my food. I can't
do it. I can't get up and try again tomorrow.
I can't. It was like a surrender moment of like
perhaps I'm just a person who's going to have a
jar of nutella and I can't do anything about it
because every time I try, I end up here and
I can't be here anymore. I cannot be like face
(17:42):
down in my bed hating myself because I fell off
the wagon. I don't have the energy to keep trying
to control my food, and so I just gave up.
I gave up. I was like, screw it. If I
gain weight. I gain weight if I eat whatever I eat. What.
I can't think about this anymore. I can't have my
(18:03):
life revolve around this anymore. I'm just gonna let myself
just eat and whatever my weight will be will be.
And the magical thing that happened was I ate. I
gained weight, But I never had a four day bender
(18:24):
where I just wanted to die ever again after that,
you know, like it was like the really intense binge
eating episodes that the hardcore diet inch cyclers have experienced.
And if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.
That never happened to me again. Did I have days
where I had a jar of nutella? Absolutely? I could
(18:46):
still have that day. You know, Stabilized, normalized food doesn't
look like what diet culture tells you it's gonna look
like right right right. And I feel like you and
I have talked about this. I don't know if you've
quite called it radical hopeless, yes, but I think there
is a rocket of hopelessness, the gift of he does Yeah,
(19:09):
giving up was the best thing that ever happened to me.
That was the healing, giving up the hope of dieting
will ever work for me, I kind of want to
(19:30):
talk a little bit about some of the points on
the journey, like one of them being I mean, right,
you can be eating in a way that where you
do not feel controlled by food, and that could look
a lot of different ways. Some days it can look
like the drive to tell us. Some days it looks
like whatever. Some days, you know, I mean, it can
look a lot of different ways. The other thing is
(19:50):
at the end of you know, creating a relationship with
food that is peaceful and not adversarial, or that like
it is as joyful and peaceful as possible, like in
the context of such an anxiety written food phobic culture.
At the end of that, there is no guarantee of
what kind of body you're going to have. At the
(20:11):
end of that, that can be complete. You can have
this beautiful, wonderful I would use the word healthy relationship
to food. And you could be a thin person, you
could be a fat person. It's like all over that
there's no guarantees on this, And I think that that's
really scary for a lot of people, and I think
for a lot of people it can be really liberating
and normal. I think for me it felt really liberated like, oh,
(20:33):
this is the body I'm supposed to have. Yeah, And
I think going back to sort of radical hopelessness can
look like that moment, you know, where you're in the
fetal position and you have to call out of work.
It can also be the moment where you sort of
have to come to terms with the fact that you
ultimately can't control the size of your body pretty much
(20:54):
unless you want to, unless you want this to run
your entire life, right, And I'm curious about you, know,
as a coach, I know you have brought people to
the gift of hopelessness or help them usshered them to
their And I'm curious, like, what is that like for people?
Is that something I mean talk about the gift of hopelessness.
I mean, the gift of hopelessness is the most it
(21:16):
is the core of my teaching. I really think that. Like,
if you're like number one goal is I just don't
want to have an eating disorder anymore, Like I don't
want to have this like crazy relationship with food anymore.
Once you really get to the point where you're like,
I just can't diet. I am hopeless on dieting. I
am hopeless on trying to control my food, trying to
control my body. That's when the real healing comes with food, right, Like,
(21:39):
that's when you're like, Okay, food's just gonna be food.
It's gonna be what it's going to be. This is
what we call acceptance body acceptance. I can still struggle
with my body image. I can still struggle with fat
phobia on any number of levels. But fundamentally, if you
are hopeless on dieting saving you from that pain, that's
(22:00):
your food is just going to be your food. Right now.
Here's the problem I think with hopelessness is that hope
grows back. If I'm really struggling with my body image,
if I'm having pain around my body related trauma in
some way, all of the sudden dieting seems like maybe
it's a good idea. Maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe
(22:21):
if I just do this, well, I'm not going to
go back to that crazy dieting. I'm just gonna be
like a little dieting or I'm just gonna be like
you know, like yeah, right, dieting is the real coping mechanism. Right.
People talk a big game about emotional bleating or whatever,
like you want to know what's really hard giving up
dieting when you're in pain about your body, when you're
(22:41):
having emotional pain about your body related trauma. This is
the thing, and this is what I've been trying to
you know, more and more tell people as I'm like,
you know, Isabel, like you're using the word hope, I
might use the word you're triggered. Right. We think of
dieting as like healthful behavior. We think of that moment
when we want to get thin as optimization. I'm like, no,
(23:01):
it's all just you being triggered when you restrict. It's
it's a reaction. It's what you've been taught to do
to cope when you are triggered. To your point around
the pain that you have been taught that something's wrong
with your body, something's wrong with how you eat. So,
I mean, I think you know, and there's a reason
for that. There's a biological reason for that. Actually, So
(23:22):
when we are in fight or flight, when we are anxious,
when we are in trauma's response, we literally our brains
start to look for how do I get out of
this pain? Right? What can I get control over? Biologically,
part of what that is is you start to develop
something called threat bias, which means you're looking for problems
to solve. What can I control, What can I, you know,
(23:44):
do to make myself safer? And so dieting is like,
in the absence of an obvious solution to my problem,
dieting is just this like always there in this corner
of like, oh, this is something you can control, right, well,
there's a little weight, you know, why you're bodying your
body is always something you can try to control, right
(24:05):
It's just kind of like I'm having difficult feelings and
I'm just in them, and there's really nothing to be
done about it other than just be with my feelings.
If I'm trying to escape those difficult feelings, but I
don't really have a real solution to that problem. All
of a sudden, like any control mechanism out there will
start to look feel like a good idea. And sometimes
(24:25):
this could this could be you know, the pain might
come from like actual fatphobia in the world. But you know,
even if you're just an anxious person, right, it's this
projection of all of my anxiety onto my body as
the thing to control to take me out of this
pain that I'm in. Does that kind of make sass
of course. Yeah. Absolutely, It's like, you know, it feels
(24:46):
unsafe to be in my body. What can I do
to escape from this, get a sense of control over
this feeling which feels very overwhelming. I mean absolutely, And
I think again, there's this idea that you talk about
this a lot, the idea of a lot of people
think of an eating disorder as something that is sort
of self contained, like there is something wrong with me,
(25:08):
there is something wrong with my relationship to food or
my relationship to my body, without understanding this is happening
in an ecosystem where all of these things end up
becoming inevitable for a certain percentage of the population. Yeah,
I mean, I would say that every diet of dieters
by definition, are dealing with this up and down. This
(25:28):
is most people's experience in some way or another, right.
I think some people have more severe ups and downs,
and they usually just match the degree to which we're
restricting or making ourselves wrong or being perfectionistic with food
or whatever. I call it. Diep In cycling physics, the
farther I pull the bow back on the bow and
arrow the farther it's going to fly in the other direction.
In the second I let it go, and then it's like,
oh shit, it flew in the other direction. Let mela
(25:52):
blah blah blah, myself back right, and then it just
keeps happening. And this is this is diep in cycling
classically defined, and most people are experiencing this. The small
group of people who are not experiencing this, who are
successfully sitting on their hands and really you know, holding
it down for years on end, that's when you start
(26:14):
to really see symptoms of clinically restrict of eating disorders
like anorexia. So you know, I always am like, I
do not feel jealous anymore. I did I used to do.
I used to feel jealous of people that could restrict,
that had the capacity restrict. I'd be like, I would
what's wrong with me? I never I never thought I
had an eating disorder because I wasn't capable of maintaining restriction,
(26:37):
and I would be jealous similar soime too, Now I realize,
actually the folks who are really capable of long term
restriction are often in more pain than anyone else because that,
I mean, there's no relief. It's constant self denial and
self harm with zero relief. Binges are fundamentally relieving, they
(26:59):
are medicis and all. They're actually a healthy response to deprivation. Yes,
thank God for my binges because they kept me alive,
they kept me out of the hospital, And I mean
I can feel that in my whole body. What you're
talking about is binging is healthy responses, normal responses, self
care in some way. You know. I think it's so
(27:20):
it's so difficult in this moment to understand things like
something like quote unquote binging, which is so deeply shamed
and mythologized in our culture, to actually sort of see
it as like, you know, as an act of self care.
Is your body sort of coming in and taking over
and helping you survive. And I don't think we have
(27:41):
the space right now to even think of how amazing
that is. It's a I mean, yeah, I have an
enormous amount of gratitude now for that. And you know,
really it's a massive shift of consciousness to think that
my desires for food are good, that my desires for
food are healthy and keep alive, that my desires food
(28:02):
are fundamentally safety mechanisms. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I mean
I've just been thinking. I mean, for me, I you know,
I'm I'm always like, I don't like the quote unquote
healthy quote unquote unhealthy eating binary. I'm like, anything fundamentally
right when we're talking about the bare minimum, anything that
(28:24):
is there to help you survive, that's going to keep
you alive, I would say, is in the healthy camp, right, Like, yeah,
you're absolutely not eating right. I'm like, and so I think, um, yeah,
I mean I always have trouble with those kinds of binaries.
But you know, let's let's talk a little bit about
um sort of fat phobia and what that looks like.
You know, when you're working with a client who maybe
(28:45):
is a thin bodied person versus a larger bodied person.
You know, like a thin person can have an extremely
high level of body dysmorphia, which is very unpleasant, but
may not be dealing with you know, likely is not
dealing with structural cultural fat phobia. I'm just thinking about, like,
when you're working with a thin client versus a fat
(29:07):
client who might be facing fat phobia. I mean, what, like,
what's the difference in those two trajectories. I mean, obviously,
the challenges that a fat person is facing in terms
of externalized or institutional or interpersonal fat phobia are just
going to be structurally and fundamentally different. They're just dealing
with you know. So if you think about like fat
(29:28):
phobia can be broken down into institutional, interpersonal, and intra personal. Right,
if a thin person is not dealing with institutional fat phobia,
they just do not. They're completely they have the privilege
which is never having to deal with that particular set
of challenges. The interpersonal fat phobia that they're dealing with
is also probably quite reduced. That being said, I think
what's complicated for thin people is that even thin people
(29:51):
are not necessarily immune from having had fat phobic experiences
in childhood and also witness fat phobia and seeing how
people get treated differently on the basis of body size.
It's like thin people still like see that and they
like kind of internalize the fear of fat, even if
(30:12):
they're not experiencing the fat phobia. So it is undoubtedly
clear that larger people are dealing with way more shit
than thin people in terms of the challenges that they
need to overcome, because they're also potentially also dealing with
the anxiety. That's the other thing about you know, living
in a fat body, you're dealing with all of the
(30:32):
institutional fatphobia, all the introversonal faphobia, all the stuff, and
you may also have trauma and anxiety and things that
predispose you to disordered eating even if you weren't in
a fat body, right, so it's like a triple action
threat potentially happening. But yeah, it just gets like really murky,
like where the line is I guess between am I
(30:54):
totally projecting something irrational onto my body? Is this like, oh,
you have an eating disorder because it's really about something else.
It's not really about fat phobia. It's just you know,
you're projecting you know, your anxiety and your trauma onto
your body. Or does having had experience of fat phobia
and childhood or having a mother who was a diet
or who was constantly you know, put putting yourself down,
(31:16):
or having a mother who constantly put you down even
if you were in a you know, thin body. I mean,
it's just the line starts to get really weird in
terms of what's caused by quote unquote active external fat
phobia and what's an anxious or trauma response projection, And
like making a distinction between those two is really hard
(31:38):
to do because no matter what body you live and
you still live in a fatphobia culture, some kind of
makes sense absolutely. I mean that's the thing where I
use the I use them. I often use the metaphor
of like breaking up and diet culture as your ex
and I'm like, I think what's hard about diet culture,
unlike a lot of other types of trauma, is that
(31:59):
you know, some trauma is safely in your rear view mirror.
You can deal with it, and you can kind of
tell yourself, I'm never going to be like if it
happened as a kid, I'm never gonna be five years
old that you know, I'm never gonna be dependent on
my parents that exact same way. But with that phobia
and working through food issues and body anxiety, it's like
running into your X every damn day, Like everywhere you go,
(32:24):
your X is like there, and so you're trying to
heal while also actively running into them when you're grocery shopping,
when you're going to get coffee, when you're going to
get your new tela, when you're trying to go on
a date with someone else. Right, like right, I think
exactly of the that's what's that's one of the biggest
challenges I think right about the recovery is that the trauma.
(32:47):
It's like my friend, my friend once told me, you
can forgive someone who has slapped you in the past,
but you cannot forgive someone who is still slapping you. Yes,
this what's so hard. It's like we're still getting slapped.
It's really hard to forgive, right solves, let alone anything
(33:07):
right when we're still actively in this place where we're
getting lambasted all the time, you know. Right. So this
is where I mean a good portion of my work,
and this is you know, with people of all body sizes, right,
A good portion of my work is when it comes
to just dealing with the culture. Right, is where can
I realistically protect myself? Are there boundaries that I can
(33:29):
realistically input to keep to protect myself from the culture, Right,
Like maybe I don't talk to my faphobic mother, maybe
I don't you know, follow the Kardashians on Instagram, Right, Like,
there are what can I actively do? What is a
realistic thing that I can do to divorce myself and
take myself out of that kind of violent environment. But
then realistically you're going to come up short there, right,
(33:52):
So then what's the game plan then, And I mean
I would argue probably, you know, a big part of
it is like repair, right, like being able to like
self soothe and like, you know, how can I self
care after I'm harmed when harm is not avoidable. I
have a lot of clients whose spouses are really fat
phobic spouses who are you know, basically threatening them with
(34:15):
you know, I need you to be losing weight. I
mean that's a really different way of children you have
a family. I mean that is a heartbreaking situation. It's
like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Right, So,
you know, working with people around you know, what are
the boundaries that you personally feel comfortable setting, Like what
are your lines in the sand where you can remove
(34:36):
yourself from toxicity and where you know, for whatever reason,
you may be deciding to stay in an environment that
may be fat phobic because of these other things. Right,
it just gets really it's a lot. But yeah, what
can I do to change my environment? Where can I
set boundaries and my environment? And where do I need
to like how can I take care of myself when
(34:58):
I am exposed to fat phobia in a way that
harms me? Yeah, Okay, So actually I've just have one
last question for you, Isabel. Are you ready, Yes, let's
do it. Okay. I want you to pretend that you're traveling.
You're in the future. If you're I don't know how
long in the future, but it's a time when you
can look back at what we're all living through around
diet culture and food and bodies. It's you're safely that's
(35:22):
safely in the past. We're no longer doing that. What
is your future self saying about this very moment, like
twenty twenty two that we're living in now when it
comes to like how we deal with food and body
and diet culture, you know, I think that honestly, I
just have so much compassion. Like when I think about that,
when I think about like looking back on history and
(35:43):
thinking about that must have been so hard and so painful,
and it makes me so sad, and I just it's
like my heart breaks, and but there's like a real
it's just compassion. Like I just feel so much compassion,
and that's like one of the most important tools you
could have, I think in this process on this journey
(36:03):
is just really looking at your diet recovery journey through
the lens of compassion, you know, looking at your body
image challenges through the lens of compassion, of like, none
of this is your fault. How can you just really
like love yourself and be compassionate towards yourself through this
like violence that we're experiencing as a collective. M Yes,
(36:30):
I mean I absolutely love that. I absolutely agree, Isabel.
Thank you for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thank you
for having me. This is so special. I'm like, I
feel like such a special kinship with you, and it's
like it's just a treat. It's really a treat. Ah.
Same same, And thank you for sharing some new tele
(36:50):
banana business with me anytime you want to share a
new telebanana. Wow. Okay, let's take a moment to contemplate
(37:17):
radical hopelessness. Yes, that moment when you understand that dieting
just doesn't work, that it will never work, that it's
not your fault, and your body will just be the
way that it wants to be. That is a moment
of power. As Isabel just taught us, dieting is the
real coping mechanism. Most of us need help coping. How
(37:38):
can we trade out dieting for something that doesn't eat
our souls, though, I personally recommend thrifting watercolors and perfecting
your heckling skills. If you have thoughts on the conversation
you just heard, or even if you just want to
say hi, reach out via social media. DM me at
Virgie Tovar, DM the show's producers at Transmitter Pods, or
(38:00):
shoot us a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail
dot com. Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by
Transmitter Media. This episode was produced by showshe shol Events.
(38:21):
Sarah Knicks is Transmitters executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our
managing producer, and Greta Cohen is our executive producer. And
I'm your host Virgie Tobar. Rick Kwan is our mixed engineer.
And thanks to Taka Yazawa who wrote some of the
music we use in the show. If you love Rubbel
Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by
writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See you
(38:41):
next week
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.