October 29, 2024 • 13 mins
What if you're stuck in a cycle where you feel you're on the road to recovery, yet full freedom from disordered eating remains elusive? You're not alone! In this episode, we dive into common barriers that keep you from genuine healing.
- Waiting to Be Ready: Perfectionism can delay your progress—starting imperfectly can spark meaningful change.
- Ignoring Body Image: Recovery requires addressing body image issues to heal your relationship with food.
- Lacking Support: Professional guidance is crucial. Align with knowledgeable providers who understand your journey.
- Focusing Only on Behaviors: True recovery involves mental and emotional healing, not just changing food habits.
- Not Fully Trusting Your Body: Partial recovery can leave you doubting your body’s signals, hindering full freedom.
- Fixating on Weight: Embrace your body’s natural set point for complete healing.
- Negative Recovery Mindset: Fear limits your potential—focus on the joy and freedom recovery can bring.
- Settling for “Good Enough”: Don't pause your journey too soon; aim for full recovery to eliminate lingering issues.
- Keeping Food Rules: Breaking all food rules is essential for overcoming diet mentality.
- Ignoring Exercise Issues: Balance your relationship with movement; recovery includes addressing exercise addiction.
- Avoiding Discomfort: Facing discomfort is key to emotional resilience and transformative healing.
Join us as we unpack these barriers and learn how to break free from pseudo-recovery!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Bites and Body Love.
I'm Jamie, a dietitian and bodyimage specialist.
Join me to liberate yourselffrom diets and body shame,
embracing true freedom andconfidence with food and body.
Take your place at the table onthis transformative journey
towards a life of freedom andconfidence.
Let's discuss some of thereasons, some of the barriers
(00:20):
why you may be stuck inpseudo-recovery, pseudo-recovery
from disordered eating, eatingdisorders, body image, healing
diets.
There are some very commonstuck points that I hear and I
think it would be a wonderfulthing to dive into these so you
all can raise awareness and sayis this me, is this this belief
(00:42):
that is holding me back, is thisa behavior that's holding me
back?
And understand these verycommon stuck points so that you
can then choose and make thedecision to have awareness now
with that barrier, and stilldecide okay, now that I know
this barrier, I can address itand move forward to full
(01:03):
recovery.
And I guess, before we dive in,it'd be helpful to speak on
what do I mean by pseudorecovery, quasi recovery,
halfway recovered, all of theseinterchangeable ways to describe
a place where you are maybedoing better than you once were
with your disordered eating,with your relationship with food
(01:24):
and body, but you're not quitewhere you want to go.
You know that this doesn't feellike full recovery.
You're hoping there's more.
Maybe you do believe this iswhere it ends, and that's one
thing we're going to talk about.
But what I like to call it ispseudo recovery, and it's a
topic I love to talk about.
I actually have another podcaston this, so go check it out.
(01:44):
But it's something that I loveto talk about because I'm very,
very passionate about helpingpeople to get to full recovery,
to understand that full recoveryis available for them, to
understand that, to helpmotivate and hold hope for
people who may believe that theycan't get to full recovery, to
(02:05):
help them to identify just themissing tools, the missing
things that we need to work on,the missing support that might
be needed to get to that fullrecovery and to never give up.
And that stems from a place ofmy own history where I was stuck
in this.
I definitely wasn't.
It wasn't as bad, my eatingdisorder wasn't as bad as it
used to be, but I was still verystressed out and confused and I
(02:29):
absolutely didn't have trustwith food or my body.
And you know that aids inrelapse, it takes away a lot of
a lot from your life and that'senough to keep going.
And I'm very glad I did toreally get that unwavering trust
with food in my body and thatcompassion so that I just follow
my internal compass and I dovethrough everything I needed to
(02:50):
really leave disordered eatingand negative body image behind.
So I want that for everyone.
I want everyone to get there.
I believe everyone can getthere and we work on that in my
program to help people to get tofull recovery.
So if you're interested in that, I might speak to that a little
bit more at the end, but theapplication is in the show notes
.
If you're interested in havinga community, all the resources,
(03:13):
internal hours and hours ofvideo content and lessons,
really to leave no stoneunturned to get you to that full
recovery place with thedietitian in your back pocket
and that would be me so comejoin our community if you're
interested.
It is an application processbecause we want to make sure we
are the best fit for you andyou're the best fit for us, so
excited to see thoseapplications come through.
(03:34):
But enough with that, let's moveinto today's topic, reasons why
we may be stuck in pseudorecovery.
Again, just a reminder justbecause you are stuck does not
mean that you will remain stuck.
We're going to raise awarenessbecause once you identify I mean
awareness, gosh, it's justawareness is everything.
(03:55):
If you can raise more awarenessaround your behaviors, your
thoughts, your belief, yourstuckness, the way you treat
yourself, your relationship withyourself, your behaviors, your
cycles man, your belief, yourstuckness, the way you treat
yourself, your relationship withyourself, your behaviors, your
cycles man, your history, thatis going to give you everything
to help moving in, to help youto continue to move in the
directions you need to be.
(04:16):
So always be raising awarenessand listening to this podcast is
super helpful for that too tosee how do I relate to that, how
do I identify to that.
Is this me?
Is this not me?
Am I similar?
What other maybe questions doesthis spark?
Okay, so this may.
Maybe none of this applies toyou.
Maybe all of the how manybarriers are we going to chat
(04:37):
through today?
Maybe all of the 11, 11 stuckpoints are going to resonate
with you.
So yeah, so, let's see aregoing to resonate with you.
So yeah, so let's see.
Okay, let's dive in.
So the first barrier why I hearpeople say, or why people may be
(04:57):
stuck is because they arewaiting until they are quote
unquote ready.
They're waiting until they'retotally ready to fully recover
or totally ready to dive intowork they know they should be
doing or they know that willhelp them, until they are ready
to give up behaviors.
And this is ultimately going tokeep you trapped, because the
reality is recovery isuncomfortable.
Recovery is uncomfortable andwe're not necessarily ready to
(05:20):
dive into discomfort.
As humans, we want to remaincomfortable and there's nothing
that's going to give us thishuge sign that says you're ready
now.
Now's the time.
It's just, it's just not goingto happen.
So you can't wait until you'reready and it's.
I like to explain it as almostas you think of it.
(05:43):
If you think of recovery andfull recovery and stopping some
behaviors, if you think of it asjumping into ice cold water,
you're never going to be readyto do that, like, yeah, let's go
, let's go do this uncomfortablething.
No, it's uncomfortable, soyou're never going to be ready
to do it.
And then, additionally, whenyou jump into the cold water,
(06:04):
you're not going to be ready tosit in it either.
So people might jump into thecold water but not sit long
enough in that discomfort to seeit all the way through.
So you have to know you arenever going to be ready and it's
going to be very uncomfortable,okay.
So waiting until you're ready,by expecting this right moment,
(06:24):
is absolutely going to delayyour process indefinitely.
You have to remember thatrecovery is not linear.
There's no perfect time tobegin and healing is going to
happen in messy and imperfectand complex ways.
We are never too busy to worktoward recovery and when we
think, well, let's wait untilwe're ready, by being less busy
(06:46):
in our life or being in adifferent place in our career,
or being more comfortable withsomething, what happens is when
you actually start to build yourrecovery and work towards your
recovery, that frees up time,energy, space, and so really
you're investing in somethingthat's going to give you all of
that time back.
And, yeah, so we really justhave to take the leap.
(07:07):
We have to take the leap there.
It doesn't get much trying toexpand on that, but there really
is not much more to say and weshouldn't be overthinking it and
say, well, when?
When's the best time?
There is no better time to take.
Oh, that's serious talking tome.
There's no better time to takecare of yourself and prioritize
(07:30):
yourself and prioritize yourhealing than now it starts.
Now, the more you push it, theharder it's going to it's going
to be, and the longer it's goingto take and the longer you're
delaying this wonderful outcomeof full recovery that feels so
freeing and so good.
Number two let's move on to thenext one.
So the next one is that peopleget stuck in their recovery
(07:52):
because they skip the body imagework, and oftentimes this is
not.
It can be conscious andintentional, but a lot of times
it's not conscious andunintentional.
Because body image work isreally confusing and complicated
.
How you feel about your bodyand your relationship with your
body is very it's a complexthing.
It has a lot to do with yourrelationship with yourself and
it's very entangled in yourrelationship with food.
(08:13):
So you have to work with bothtogether and you have to work
with them completely to get allthe way to the finish line with
turning over every stone in bothof those areas of food and body
image.
Because if you don't, it's, youdon't understand it completely,
you don't have full trust andyou're going to likely slip back
into some disordered behaviors.
(08:35):
And so skipping the body imagework is something I see often
and it's very confusing in oursociety because we hear all the
wrong messages about what itmeans to have good body image or
what it means to heal bodyimage.
There's a lot of misconceptionsthere and so and there's a lot
of things actually taking usfurther and further into
negative body image anddisordered eating, and so we
(08:56):
actually have to understandthose messages we get and start
to protect ourself around thosesocietal messages while we're
also doing the body image work.
So it's very confusing andsociety leads us in the wrong
way.
So if you get the wrong supportas well around what to do about
body image, it's just going toget worse.
And then, additionally, let'ssay, you do have a provider team
(09:18):
of health at every size eatingdisorder providers Wonderful,
depending on what level of careyou're in, depending on where
you're at, that body image workcan be very misunderstood.
(09:41):
We where, when you are gettinghelp, it is pushed off to hey,
the next provider will take careof it, or your next phase of
recovery.
You're going to work with bodyimage because it's, it's
confusing, even for a lot ofproviders who are not, who don't
have that education.
So it's, it's pushed off, eventhough it's this huge elephant
in the room that body image isimpacting your relationship with
food and your relationship withrecovery and your safety and
(10:02):
recovery and you wanting to moveforward in your recovery and
your relationship with yourself.
There's a lot of education andwork that needs to be done
around body image.
So if that's skipped but it'salso your core issue, that is
definitely going to be a problembecause it plays a central role
in your disordered eating.
Body image is essential tosustainable recovery.
(10:22):
Healing your relationship withfood hinges on your relationship
with body image, and body imagealso, you know, has so much to
do with your relationship withfood and your relationship with
yourself and that's why all ofthese tenants need to be
addressed and I'm so, I'm sopassionate about that because I
see so many people getting closeand I'm like close, but you're
not quite there yet, because Iknow if you can say I feel like
(10:45):
I'm solidly in recovery, if youcan't say that and feel it and
trust food a hundred percent andtrust your body a hundred
percent and understand where allthis comes from and you're
rooted in it comes from, andyou're rooted in it and you
haven't turned that corner whereyou're like, wow, nothing can
sway me.
No diet ad, no person, no hardthing that pops up in my life
(11:06):
that I need coping for.
We need to turn that cornerwhere we're so grounded, where
we are like, wow, I understandbody image, food myself, my
recovery so much and I've gottenso uncomfortable and done all
of the things that now I knowthat I am not going backwards.
I do not want to, I don't wantto go there, I don't even want
to go there.
It's kind of like, um, almostwhen you have a rough
(11:29):
relationship and there'ssomething you really don't like
in that romantic relationship,right, or that friendship
relationship, and you're like,how did I get into this
relationship with this thing I'mso attracted, unattracted to?
And then when you do the workfor something that was so maybe
you were so used to and itdidn't understand, once you
understand it, you may be like,well, I'm so clearly never
(11:50):
getting into anotherrelationship with that thing
again because I am just notinterested.
It's just not something that'sappealing.
I do not want it.
That's how it should feel.
So you should turn that corner.
So skipping the body image workis absolutely important to your
recovery and unresolved bodyimage issues can lead to relapse
(12:13):
if it's not worked onthoroughly and completely in
your recovery.
Okay, number three, the thirdreason why I see people are
unable to get to full recovery,why I see people are unable to
get to full recovery, that isbecause they're not getting the
support or they are not gettingthe correct support for them.
The specialized support, yeah,so it's not the right support.
(12:36):
It might even be really harmfulsupport.
It is extremely, extremely, Idon't want to say necessary, but
almost necessary to get supportwith your relationship, with
food and body, from someone whounderstands and someone who can
hold that hope for you and helpyou to continue moving forward,
(12:58):
because it gets very confusingwhen you're in the thick of it.
Welcome to Bites and Body Love.
I'm Jamie, a dietitian and bodyimage specialist.
Join me to liberate yourselffrom diets and body shame,
embracing true freedom andconfidence with food and body.
Take your place at the table onthis transformative journey
towards a life of freedom andconfidence.
Let's discuss some of thereasons, some of the barriers
(00:20):
why you may be stuck inpseudo-recovery, pseudo-recovery
from disordered eating, eatingdisorders, body image, healing
diets.
There are some very commonstuck points that I hear and I
think it would be a wonderfulthing to dive into these so you
all can raise awareness and sayis this me, is this this belief
(00:42):
that is holding me back, is thisa behavior that's holding me
back?
And understand these verycommon stuck points so that you
can then choose and make thedecision to have awareness now
with that barrier, and stilldecide okay, now that I know
this barrier, I can address itand move forward to full
(01:03):
recovery.
And I guess, before we dive in,it'd be helpful to speak on
what do I mean by pseudorecovery, quasi recovery,
halfway recovered, all of theseinterchangeable ways to describe
a place where you are maybedoing better than you once were
with your disordered eating,with your relationship with food
(01:24):
and body, but you're not quitewhere you want to go.
You know that this doesn't feellike full recovery.
You're hoping there's more.
Maybe you do believe this iswhere it ends, and that's one
thing we're going to talk about.
But what I like to call it ispseudo recovery, and it's a
topic I love to talk about.
I actually have another podcaston this, so go check it out.
(01:44):
But it's something that I loveto talk about because I'm very,
very passionate about helpingpeople to get to full recovery,
to understand that full recoveryis available for them, to
understand that, to helpmotivate and hold hope for
people who may believe that theycan't get to full recovery, to
(02:05):
help them to identify just themissing tools, the missing
things that we need to work on,the missing support that might
be needed to get to that fullrecovery and to never give up.
And that stems from a place ofmy own history where I was stuck
in this.
I definitely wasn't.
It wasn't as bad, my eatingdisorder wasn't as bad as it
used to be, but I was still verystressed out and confused and I
(02:29):
absolutely didn't have trustwith food or my body.
And you know that aids inrelapse, it takes away a lot of
a lot from your life and that'senough to keep going.
And I'm very glad I did toreally get that unwavering trust
with food in my body and thatcompassion so that I just follow
my internal compass and I dovethrough everything I needed to
(02:50):
really leave disordered eatingand negative body image behind.
So I want that for everyone.
I want everyone to get there.
I believe everyone can getthere and we work on that in my
program to help people to get tofull recovery.
So if you're interested in that, I might speak to that a little
bit more at the end, but theapplication is in the show notes
.
If you're interested in havinga community, all the resources,
(03:13):
internal hours and hours ofvideo content and lessons,
really to leave no stoneunturned to get you to that full
recovery place with thedietitian in your back pocket
and that would be me so comejoin our community if you're
interested.
It is an application processbecause we want to make sure we
are the best fit for you andyou're the best fit for us, so
excited to see thoseapplications come through.
(03:34):
But enough with that, let's moveinto today's topic, reasons why
we may be stuck in pseudorecovery.
Again, just a reminder justbecause you are stuck does not
mean that you will remain stuck.
We're going to raise awarenessbecause once you identify I mean
awareness, gosh, it's justawareness is everything.
(03:55):
If you can raise more awarenessaround your behaviors, your
thoughts, your belief, yourstuckness, the way you treat
yourself, your relationship withyourself, your behaviors, your
cycles man, your belief, yourstuckness, the way you treat
yourself, your relationship withyourself, your behaviors, your
cycles man, your history, thatis going to give you everything
to help moving in, to help youto continue to move in the
directions you need to be.
(04:16):
So always be raising awarenessand listening to this podcast is
super helpful for that too tosee how do I relate to that, how
do I identify to that.
Is this me?
Is this not me?
Am I similar?
What other maybe questions doesthis spark?
Okay, so this may.
Maybe none of this applies toyou.
Maybe all of the how manybarriers are we going to chat
(04:37):
through today?
Maybe all of the 11, 11 stuckpoints are going to resonate
with you.
So yeah, so, let's see aregoing to resonate with you.
So yeah, so let's see.
Okay, let's dive in.
So the first barrier why I hearpeople say, or why people may be
(04:57):
stuck is because they arewaiting until they are quote
unquote ready.
They're waiting until they'retotally ready to fully recover
or totally ready to dive intowork they know they should be
doing or they know that willhelp them, until they are ready
to give up behaviors.
And this is ultimately going tokeep you trapped, because the
reality is recovery isuncomfortable.
Recovery is uncomfortable andwe're not necessarily ready to
(05:20):
dive into discomfort.
As humans, we want to remaincomfortable and there's nothing
that's going to give us thishuge sign that says you're ready
now.
Now's the time.
It's just, it's just not goingto happen.
So you can't wait until you'reready and it's.
I like to explain it as almostas you think of it.
(05:43):
If you think of recovery andfull recovery and stopping some
behaviors, if you think of it asjumping into ice cold water,
you're never going to be readyto do that, like, yeah, let's go
, let's go do this uncomfortablething.
No, it's uncomfortable, soyou're never going to be ready
to do it.
And then, additionally, whenyou jump into the cold water,
(06:04):
you're not going to be ready tosit in it either.
So people might jump into thecold water but not sit long
enough in that discomfort to seeit all the way through.
So you have to know you arenever going to be ready and it's
going to be very uncomfortable,okay.
So waiting until you're ready,by expecting this right moment,
(06:24):
is absolutely going to delayyour process indefinitely.
You have to remember thatrecovery is not linear.
There's no perfect time tobegin and healing is going to
happen in messy and imperfectand complex ways.
We are never too busy to worktoward recovery and when we
think, well, let's wait untilwe're ready, by being less busy
(06:46):
in our life or being in adifferent place in our career,
or being more comfortable withsomething, what happens is when
you actually start to build yourrecovery and work towards your
recovery, that frees up time,energy, space, and so really
you're investing in somethingthat's going to give you all of
that time back.
And, yeah, so we really justhave to take the leap.
(07:07):
We have to take the leap there.
It doesn't get much trying toexpand on that, but there really
is not much more to say and weshouldn't be overthinking it and
say, well, when?
When's the best time?
There is no better time to take.
Oh, that's serious talking tome.
There's no better time to takecare of yourself and prioritize
(07:30):
yourself and prioritize yourhealing than now it starts.
Now, the more you push it, theharder it's going to it's going
to be, and the longer it's goingto take and the longer you're
delaying this wonderful outcomeof full recovery that feels so
freeing and so good.
Number two let's move on to thenext one.
So the next one is that peopleget stuck in their recovery
(07:52):
because they skip the body imagework, and oftentimes this is
not.
It can be conscious andintentional, but a lot of times
it's not conscious andunintentional.
Because body image work isreally confusing and complicated
.
How you feel about your bodyand your relationship with your
body is very it's a complexthing.
It has a lot to do with yourrelationship with yourself and
it's very entangled in yourrelationship with food.
(08:13):
So you have to work with bothtogether and you have to work
with them completely to get allthe way to the finish line with
turning over every stone in bothof those areas of food and body
image.
Because if you don't, it's, youdon't understand it completely,
you don't have full trust andyou're going to likely slip back
into some disordered behaviors.
(08:35):
And so skipping the body imagework is something I see often
and it's very confusing in oursociety because we hear all the
wrong messages about what itmeans to have good body image or
what it means to heal bodyimage.
There's a lot of misconceptionsthere and so and there's a lot
of things actually taking usfurther and further into
negative body image anddisordered eating, and so we
(08:56):
actually have to understandthose messages we get and start
to protect ourself around thosesocietal messages while we're
also doing the body image work.
So it's very confusing andsociety leads us in the wrong
way.
So if you get the wrong supportas well around what to do about
body image, it's just going toget worse.
And then, additionally, let'ssay, you do have a provider team
(09:18):
of health at every size eatingdisorder providers Wonderful,
depending on what level of careyou're in, depending on where
you're at, that body image workcan be very misunderstood.
(09:41):
We where, when you are gettinghelp, it is pushed off to hey,
the next provider will take careof it, or your next phase of
recovery.
You're going to work with bodyimage because it's, it's
confusing, even for a lot ofproviders who are not, who don't
have that education.
So it's, it's pushed off, eventhough it's this huge elephant
in the room that body image isimpacting your relationship with
food and your relationship withrecovery and your safety and
(10:02):
recovery and you wanting to moveforward in your recovery and
your relationship with yourself.
There's a lot of education andwork that needs to be done
around body image.
So if that's skipped but it'salso your core issue, that is
definitely going to be a problembecause it plays a central role
in your disordered eating.
Body image is essential tosustainable recovery.
(10:22):
Healing your relationship withfood hinges on your relationship
with body image, and body imagealso, you know, has so much to
do with your relationship withfood and your relationship with
yourself and that's why all ofthese tenants need to be
addressed and I'm so, I'm sopassionate about that because I
see so many people getting closeand I'm like close, but you're
not quite there yet, because Iknow if you can say I feel like
(10:45):
I'm solidly in recovery, if youcan't say that and feel it and
trust food a hundred percent andtrust your body a hundred
percent and understand where allthis comes from and you're
rooted in it comes from, andyou're rooted in it and you
haven't turned that corner whereyou're like, wow, nothing can
sway me.
No diet ad, no person, no hardthing that pops up in my life
(11:06):
that I need coping for.
We need to turn that cornerwhere we're so grounded, where
we are like, wow, I understandbody image, food myself, my
recovery so much and I've gottenso uncomfortable and done all
of the things that now I knowthat I am not going backwards.
I do not want to, I don't wantto go there, I don't even want
to go there.
It's kind of like, um, almostwhen you have a rough
(11:29):
relationship and there'ssomething you really don't like
in that romantic relationship,right, or that friendship
relationship, and you're like,how did I get into this
relationship with this thing I'mso attracted, unattracted to?
And then when you do the workfor something that was so maybe
you were so used to and itdidn't understand, once you
understand it, you may be like,well, I'm so clearly never
(11:50):
getting into anotherrelationship with that thing
again because I am just notinterested.
It's just not something that'sappealing.
I do not want it.
That's how it should feel.
So you should turn that corner.
So skipping the body image workis absolutely important to your
recovery and unresolved bodyimage issues can lead to relapse
(12:13):
if it's not worked onthoroughly and completely in
your recovery.
Okay, number three, the thirdreason why I see people are
unable to get to full recovery,why I see people are unable to
get to full recovery, that isbecause they're not getting the
support or they are not gettingthe correct support for them.
The specialized support, yeah,so it's not the right support.
(12:36):
It might even be really harmfulsupport.
It is extremely, extremely, Idon't want to say necessary, but
almost necessary to get supportwith your relationship, with
food and body, from someone whounderstands and someone who can
hold that hope for you and helpyou to continue moving forward,
(12:58):
because it gets very confusingwhen you're in the thick of it.
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