March 26, 2022 • 22 mins
Certified eating disorder coach Kristie Amadio is our guest today. After 14 years of battling her eating disorder and seeking treatment in both Australia and New Zealand—where she was told she was ‘chronic’ and should expect to struggle with food and body image issues for the rest of her life—Kristie flew to America for intensive treatment and made a full recovery. Kristie was stunned by the gap and unequal access to support and resources both here and overseas, so she resolved to make cost effective support available to everyone, no matter where they lived. By working online and living with people in recovery all around the world, Kristie Amadio is adding a new dimension to the platform used to treat eating disorders.
“All you need is to have the curiosity of what it would be like to not have an eating disorder in order to start your journey to recovery.” - Kristie Amadio
Learn more about Kristie’s work here:
https://www.recoveredliving.com
Kristie’s Tedx Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ut3rxb1nwc
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out be outwell everything that
I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
It's beautiful and then will always out way if you
(00:24):
feel it with yours in the air, She'll love to
the moon. I am there. Let's say good day and
did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam Amy
here and I am sitting across from Christie amadio and
I'm gonna have you give us your little bio and
a second and where you're coming to us from. But
(00:46):
I gotta say, I just got done watching Christie's ted
x talk on YouTube and I was like, well, I'm
gonna watch a little bit here and I'm trying to
do this, And the next thing you know, I'm sitting
down in front of my computer totally like into the story.
And I'm just so grateful for people like Christie that
have used their story and then taken it to others.
And I know that you're super passionate about helping people
(01:08):
anyone and everyone all across the world, So thank you
for taking the time to join us on our way today.
Thank you so much for having me so tell us
a little bit about you and your story. And obviously
people may now know that you've spoken. You have an accent.
I do have an accent. So I'm back living in
New Zealand. I'm kind of from all over. I was
born in England, my parents were from New Zealand. I
(01:30):
grew up in Australia and then I moved to New
Zealand when I was twenty four, and then after I recovered,
which i'll get into, actually moved to the States for
five years, which it's absolutely a piece of my heart.
Um So you get different accents coming out of my
mouth all the time. But in terms of my story,
it's so soulful for me to be able to talk
(01:51):
about being recovered, because it's not something that I ever
thought was on the cards to me. I struggled with
disordered eating and an eating disorder for fourteen years and
I got told in two different countries that I was
chronic and I'd never fully recover, and I got taught
to know in air quotes like manage my eating disorder.
They said, well, you can still be high functioning. You
can still you know, have a job and have relationships,
(02:13):
but you just have to manage it. And I was like, oh, okay,
if that's what I have to do, like okay. And
I was never told that I could have a better
quality of life. And so I think for so long
nobody knew I had an eating disorder because it was
so hidden by you know, I exercised that much. My
career became in the outdoors, so that I was like,
(02:33):
I could just get paid to have an eating disorder
and just exercise all the time. Great, And so I
became an outdoor guide, like working like taking people out
in the bush and taking people kayaking, And in my head,
I was like, well, that's okay because i can exercise
all the time and I'm getting paid for it, and
this is okay, right, And I kind of just kept
that up for a very long time, and everyone just
(02:53):
thought that was that's just Christie. She likes to exercise,
and you know, she's really quote unquote healthy with her food.
But deep inside, I'd wake up every morning and think
about how many hours I had to do, or what
I had to eat, or if I was going out
that night where I'd have to compensate later on, and
it just it came to a head where I think
the eating disorder, I'd like to say it was like
(03:14):
a termite, and it just chipped away and chipped away
and chipped away until one day I work up in
the house and fallen down around my years and I
was deep, deep, deep in an eating disorder and once
again being told that I'd never get better. That's a
great analogy, the termite analogy. I think that that's an
excellent way to put it, because it chips away. It's
like you don't realize there's a problem until it's no
(03:38):
longer sustainable, the until you problem. Yeah, the foundation is
about to collapse because it's being eroded away and eaten away.
And the title of your TED talk in case people
want to search it up, is it's time to do
eating disorder recovery differently. And why is it that you
(03:59):
chose to speak on that in particular. Yeah, that's such
a great question. So what happened is my termite house
fell down around my ears and I got told in
New Zealand like, hey, you know your chronic this is
going to be the pattern of your adult years. You're
going to have times of doing doing okay and you're
gonna have times where you're going to be struggling again.
And I said, I said, well, if that's the life
(04:20):
you're forecasting for me, then I don't want to live
it because it's not living. It was existing. And so
I searched online for support worldwide because I was like,
there has to be something somewhere. I just had this
thing inside of me I think that always held onto
a glimmer of hope even when it felt hopeless. And
I found this treatment center in America that talked about
being fully recovered, and I was like, well, that's nice
(04:42):
for them, but maybe I can just get a little
bit better, you know. And I called them up, and
the lady on the phone I'll always remember her and
she said, Christie said, I don't care how long you've
had meeting disorder. I don't care how many times you've
tried to recover. I don't care how sick you've been.
We absolutely believe everyone can recover. And it just it
was so foreign, but it out I was so drawn
to that concept, and long story short, I ended up
(05:05):
going to America for eating disorder treatment and it was
just a different world like I was so used to
Australia in New Zealand, which blessed their heart. I think
they're doing the very best they can with what they
know and what they have available. And America has something
that's so different. And for me, what was different was
it was a home. It wasn't a hospital. A portion
(05:25):
of the staff had had eating disorders and had recovered
every single day. It was like life in recovery. I
wasn't sitting in a room just being given food and
that that was the goal. It was like, no, we're
going to teach you how to recover. We're going to
go out to restaurants. We're going to go grocery shopping,
We're going to go to the beach, we're going to
go to the movies. It was living life in recovery
(05:47):
and negotiating all of that. And so when I left
treatment and I started to go back out in the world,
I was like, you know what, this just has to
come out to the world and I want to teach.
I want to do eating disort of treatment differently of people,
and I want to take a piece of that. And
so I started to do that myself and helping others.
And so what are the ways that you do that
(06:07):
because I mean that is I have goose bumps thinking
that getting into or finding a treatment center that believed
in you and your recovery and that it was possible
and you having that hope and then going there and
then yeah, it's not like you leave right away and
it's like oh a magic wand was waved and suddenly
you're recovered. But it changed the trajectory of your life.
(06:28):
You now felt this calling of like, I can help others.
So what is it that you've developed since you left
where you were? And um in you're you're helping others
out in the world. And I think that's such an
important thing to know. Like so often people say to me, well,
it's like you left and you just recovered, and I'm like,
I didn't. I left and I struggled and life happened
(06:49):
and I had to navigate life into the world. So
I want to say there was one hund It wasn't
like I left treatment recovered. I left treatment with hope.
I left treatment knowing what I had to do. I
left treatment with with to be recovered, Like I knew
it and I wanted it. It was like a like
an athlete going for a goal and I was like,
this is what I want. You know, it took a
couple of years after I left treatment to be recovered,
but what happened is I went back to working in
(07:12):
the outdoors, which was fantastic to have a different relationship
with food and a different relationship with exercise, and a
different relationship with my body. You know. I was back
being in the outdoors because I loved it, not because
I felt like I had to punish myself. And that
was really important to me. And I actually had an
experience where I fell off a cliff. So I was
out in the bush and I fell off a cliff
and I damaged my feet and it actually ended my
outdoor career. And I was like devastated, and it was
(07:34):
like what can I do? And I was like, well,
I can eat food and I'm good with people. And
I actually already had a therapy degree, which I just
wasn't using because I liked the outdoors. And so I
decided to go back into therapy and specialize in eating disorders.
And I wanted to do more than just traditional talk therapy,
and so I came up with this concept of for
me going from residential treatment and going back home that
(07:56):
was hard, and it was hard because I came back
to New Zealand to a country that didn't understand the
process I've been through too, and I think when we recover,
we recover into a disordered world. There's so much out
there that's in restaurants, it's in family structures, it's in beliefs,
it's in gym. So I thought, you know, for people
that either can't go to treatment because of whatever reason,
(08:18):
maybe they've got four kids and they're a single mom,
Maybe they can't afford it, maybe it's not in their country,
I was like, what if I kind of brought treatment
to people? And so I came up with this concept
of livings where I would go and live with people
in their home, and that could be once they left treatment,
or it could because they could never go. And so
I kind of I was like, I don't even know
if people would want to do that, but I would
(08:39):
have really liked that for myself. And I you know,
went on a woman a prayer to America because that
was where my I guess, my my chosen family was
my my recovery family, my community, and it just took off.
Within a couple of months. I had a year long
wait list, and I think I went to seven or
(08:59):
eight different kind trees all around the world, living with
people in their homes, and I just had the most humbling,
beautiful experiences where I got to live with people and
help them change not just within themselves, but look at
their environment. And it's like, no, no, when when you
go to the grocery store, you don't park three blocks away,
you park in the parking lot, you know, and little
(09:20):
things like that that I think never get addressed in
treatment because you can't. And just working with the family
as a whole. It was such such a gift. And
then the second kind of thread that I started was
also online because I was starting to get reach outs
from people in Israel, people in Scotland, people in Denmark,
and I was like wow, and so I started this
(09:41):
online piece. I like to say that I started online
therapy before COVID did. They got people just wanting support,
people who couldn't get the support in their own countries,
and people that wanted to work with someone that had recovered,
people that wanted someone that believed in them, and so
very quickly that got really busy as well. And so
I really like to have hold those two threads of
(10:02):
having to live in support and also having the online piece.
Where can people access the online piece? Yeah, absolutely through
the website, so recovered living dot com. Um. So now
I'm back in New Zealand. Um. I've also got five
other coaches that worked for me in America. They all
fully recovered. They're all fantastic. I love them all, and yeah,
they've We've got clients from all over the world, which
(10:23):
is fantastic to me. We're on zoom so I can
see Christie's face and it's it is pure joy bouncing
back off the computer to me. Because like when you said,
but you love the other people working with you like you,
I could tell that was very, very sincere and probably
(10:44):
the excitement you'll feel coming together collectively all if you've
got five and then including you, is that six. So
think of the amount of people y'all are able to
reach coming together for that. I just I think it's
amazing because a lot of people are familiar with recovery
from alcoholism at times and when people have inner treatment.
(11:08):
I have people in my life that have come out
of that. I never went to any residential treatment for
my eating disorder, but I am familiar with addiction to alcohol,
and you come out of that and you instantly have
all of the support and there's a a meetings and
you have a sponsor, and you have like it is
a rigorous routine because it's again an alcohol is something
(11:32):
that can be all around you, but you have your
different things that you have to do to stay the course.
And I feel like, similarly, food can be an addiction,
but we also need food to survive, right, So then
there's this's this very difficult dynamic because you can never
(11:54):
touch alcohol again and that's the goal. But food you
have to touch every single day. And even in your
TED talk, it's like it should be the first thing
you do every single day, And when you were doing
your livings with people, it's like, Nope, you wake up,
you eat breakfast. That's just what you do. Don't put
off the food, don't start the restriction, don't get busy,
don't make food the last thing on your list, because
(12:15):
the minute you start to implement that, you'll start to
see the change. But I'm kind of rambling here now,
and I just feel like what you're doing with the
livings and the online and giving people that support, the
tangible support, the change, the ongoing because it is ongoing.
I have been what I would call quote unquote in
(12:37):
recovery for two years, but I still put myself to
work every single day to combat different thoughts or old behaviors,
or when I met with other things from society, I
have to shut it down, change the channel. Just I
know some people are new and they might be listening
to this episode because they're curious to try to figure
(12:58):
out and I just wanted to share a little bit
about like some recovery comparison to other things you might
be familiar with, at least that I feel like I've
talked about more like alcoholism and a a that's integrated
into movies and storylines and different things. And we're starting
to see eating disorders show up. But the more people
share and get vulnerable and talk about things than the
(13:20):
more quote unquote normal, it will seem absolutely And I
think you touched on such an important piece there, because
it's like, you know, if you struggle with substances, it's like,
don't take the substances, like that's that's your remedy. But
I think for someone with an eating disorder, you have
to eat every single day, and so it's a different
type of recovery because you really have to heal your
relationship with food. You don't have to abstain from food,
(13:41):
you have to heal your relationship with it. And one
of my favorite quotes, it's about a tiger. And I think,
you know, for someone that's in recovery, they go and
pat the tiger every single day in the cage or
they take it for a walk when you're in recovery.
But when you're recovered, I like to say, there just
is no tiger. Like I have a completely different relationship
with food in my body today and I don't feel
like like I don't have to struggle anymore. I just
(14:04):
eat food and I live in my body and I
love my life and it's the greatest gift I can have.
And I know, and I know when I was in
my eating disorder, that just felt so impossible. It just
felt like way too much of a bridge. But I
want to say to anybody listening, you may not believe
that you can recover until you're actually there. Like it's
okay to doubt yourself and go forward anyway, you know,
And I think that's the truth is you just you
(14:25):
just have to you just have to start and you
have to dive in and take that tiger for a walk,
and one day you'll go to get the tiger and
you'll be like, oh, it's not there anymore. You said
that all you need to have, and this is something
that I have in writing from you, All you need
to have is the curiosity of what it would be
like to not have and eating disorder in order to
start your journey to recovery. Yes, like you just gave
(14:48):
me goose bumps and there with my work. But like,
I mean, that's so you don't even have to want
to recover. You know. I'm talking with clients right now
that are like, I don't even know if I want
to recover, And I'm like, that's okay, let's just be
let's start with the curiosity. Do I even want that? Like,
let's just start there. Talk about that one a little
bit more like why would someone not want to recover?
(15:08):
M hm? So many reasons. I mean for myself, Like
I put my whole life savings on the line to
go to America and I still thought it hard. I didn't.
I didn't turn up with a smile and a hug.
I turned up like I am suspicious of everybody here,
And for me, I didn't want to recover because my
eating disorder was an identity, because it was my safety.
I was like, who will I be without it? How
will I cope? Will I be okay? I couldn't envisage
(15:32):
a life without my eating disorder. And I think so
many people they're not sure they want to give up
that control because it's like, well, another thing that I
like to say is I think people's ability to recover
is directly proportional to their ability to surrender. And so
for me, I was all about the I'll recover ninety percent,
but that ten percent I am hanging onto that, and
(15:52):
I was huge about that, and it was like I
just wanted to be safe. I wanted to keep an
eye on myself. And the truth is that would have
been a termite that I didn't e write a K
and in ten years time I would have worken up
with my house around my ears again. And that last
ten percent was huge to say, I am surrendering to
my body set point. I'm surrendering to the fact that
I don't actually have control of my shoe size in
the same way that I don't have control of my
(16:13):
body shape size, body composition, all of those pieces, and
for me, that was the clincher on being recovered. When
I can surrender into that and when I let go
of that ten percent, everything else fell into place. Okay,
you said set point, So define that for people, because
I think that's an important thing. So set point A disclaimer,
I'm not a dietitian, but stet point is essentially, it's
(16:34):
like our body has a genetic weight range, weight composition,
weight size, shape that it wants to be. And you know,
in the same way we have a shoe size or
a face shape or an eye shape. We can control
it if we want to our set point, but we'll
never be truly free. And I think that's the difference
(16:56):
is because society is so constantly saying you can have
a flat stomach, can have you know, thighs like this
or shoulders like that? You can? But at what cost?
That's exactly what the thought I had in my head.
If you weren't going to say it, I was about
to say, but at what cost? Yeah, when you think
of all that you sacrifice when you're eating, disorder is
in control. I think of the relationships that suffered so
(17:20):
much of my life was ruled well, in fact, the
whole thing. When I was deep into it, everything was
centered around my eating disorder. But it was all in
my head. It's not like people knew. But like every thought,
every relationship, every dinner out, every parties that I missed,
celebrations that I didn't take part in, you know, amazing
(17:40):
food that my family cooked that I didn't eat. Nights
I stayed home alone because I was too nervous to
go out or felt gross in my body and just
didn't even want to deal with it. So yeah, I
think having a healthy perspective on what is your set
point When you're in it, you're we're like, I don't
even know because I've been manipulating for years. But once
(18:04):
you get there and you feel the joy and you're
no longer consumed by all those thoughts, or you can
walk past a mirror without having to turn and look
and assess and judge yourself, it's just freedom. You know,
it will sometimes could rear up, but when you have
the tools, then you can bust them out from your
back pocket and be like not today, not today, tigger. Absolutely.
(18:27):
And also there's this piece I think like like two things.
One having grace, like I turned thirty seven, like a
month ago, and I was like, I woke up the
one morning I was like, huh, my body's squishy and
than it used to be. And I was like, interesting,
this must happen as you get older. And it was
like there was no part of me that was like
I had to change my food after exercise more. This
isn't okay. There's this grace that my set point, my
body composition and shape, my size, that's going to change
(18:49):
over time and that's okay. And I think that came
with being recovered, and it came with time in the saddle.
And I often say that, like I feel more recovered
this year than I did last year, And that doesn't
mean I wasn't recovered last year. It just means that
I've got more time being human. And so I think
too with you know, when I was in recovery, I
was like, I don't want my body. I don't want
my body at that set point. I don't want that.
(19:10):
I don't see how I can be happy with that.
I don't see how I can live with that. And
part of recovery for me was actually living in that,
not lacking it, but doing it anyway. It's kind of
that piece of I don't know if I can recover,
but I'm going to give it a shot. And it's like,
I don't think I can live in this body. Like
there was so many times I would cry to my therapist,
I don't think I can live in this body, and
she was like, okay, but let's try. Let's let's just
(19:30):
give it a shot. And as I leaned further into recovery,
and then as I recovered, I actually started to want
the body that I had, And now I want the
body that I have because this body means I can
do all these amazing things, like this body with the
lumps and the bumps and the whatever's that I didn't
like before. This body means that I have relationships, and
this body means that I get to travel, and this
(19:51):
body means that I wake up feeling well. And I
actually want this body now, whereas when I was in recovery,
I was like, Nope, I'll recover, but I want my
eating just a lot of body. It doesn't work like that.
And so I think the message that I really want
to give is for me. When I recovered, I started
to want the body that I had, and that was
a real changing point as well. Yeah, because we've been
(20:12):
conditioned to, you know, by all the things, the media, society,
different things, that this is what the body is supposed
to look like, when really, uh, we should have had
no no conditioning there whatsoever. No one should be telling
us this is what we're striving for. But once you
build those new neuro pathways and you start to fall
in love with your body and yet then you just
(20:32):
don't even think about it. It's amazing what our brains
are capable of when, like you said, you just start
doing it. Just start doing it. It's not easy at all.
But that's why even sometimes I do that with actual
like food, I know, and the ted X talk you did,
it talked about like unloading groceries for the first time
and like all the things like even like I can't
(20:53):
remember the exact food, but the eggs and the lettuce
with the cookies, and you had pantry full of things
things and a fridge full of things. And you know,
I'll still catch myself with the grocery store sometimes being
like I'm not gonna get the cookies, and then I'm like,
don't get the cookies. I'll hear some voice, don't get
the cookies, and then you know what. I come right
back and I'm like, you know what cookies are going
in the basket now because brain don't challenge me. Now,
(21:16):
I'm going to keep buying the freaking cookies until my
brain knows that it's no big deal. If I want
the cookies, that get the cookies. If I don't want
the cookies, I don't get the cookies. But I had,
I had to build the new neuropathway. You do it
until it's not hot, and then you just keep doing
it because you want to write. Well, Christie, thank you
so much for taking the time to chat with us today,
(21:37):
and I encourage people to check out more at Recovered
Living dot com and you can see all the amazing
work that Christie and her team are doing. But again
the ted X talk is it's time to do eating
disorder recovery differently and that you are Christie or your
socials and all your stuff on Recovered living dot com. Yeah,
we have Recovered Living dot com. We also have Recovered
(21:57):
Living in z dot com, which I know in America
is pren ounce m z UM and that's a residential
eating dissert of treatment charity that I've started up in
New Zealand where opening in October, so feel free to
check that out as well. So they recovered Living m
Z dot com awesome, well, thank you so much. We
appreciate you and all of your work. Thank you,
I won't let my body out be outwell everything that
I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
It's beautiful and then will always out way if you
(00:24):
feel it with yours in the air, She'll love to
the moon. I am there. Let's say good day and
did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweigh fam Amy
here and I am sitting across from Christie amadio and
I'm gonna have you give us your little bio and
a second and where you're coming to us from. But
(00:46):
I gotta say, I just got done watching Christie's ted
x talk on YouTube and I was like, well, I'm
gonna watch a little bit here and I'm trying to
do this, And the next thing you know, I'm sitting
down in front of my computer totally like into the story.
And I'm just so grateful for people like Christie that
have used their story and then taken it to others.
And I know that you're super passionate about helping people
(01:08):
anyone and everyone all across the world, So thank you
for taking the time to join us on our way today.
Thank you so much for having me so tell us
a little bit about you and your story. And obviously
people may now know that you've spoken. You have an accent.
I do have an accent. So I'm back living in
New Zealand. I'm kind of from all over. I was
born in England, my parents were from New Zealand. I
(01:30):
grew up in Australia and then I moved to New
Zealand when I was twenty four, and then after I recovered,
which i'll get into, actually moved to the States for
five years, which it's absolutely a piece of my heart.
Um So you get different accents coming out of my
mouth all the time. But in terms of my story,
it's so soulful for me to be able to talk
(01:51):
about being recovered, because it's not something that I ever
thought was on the cards to me. I struggled with
disordered eating and an eating disorder for fourteen years and
I got told in two different countries that I was
chronic and I'd never fully recover, and I got taught
to know in air quotes like manage my eating disorder.
They said, well, you can still be high functioning. You
can still you know, have a job and have relationships,
(02:13):
but you just have to manage it. And I was like, oh, okay,
if that's what I have to do, like okay. And
I was never told that I could have a better
quality of life. And so I think for so long
nobody knew I had an eating disorder because it was
so hidden by you know, I exercised that much. My
career became in the outdoors, so that I was like,
(02:33):
I could just get paid to have an eating disorder
and just exercise all the time. Great, And so I
became an outdoor guide, like working like taking people out
in the bush and taking people kayaking, And in my head,
I was like, well, that's okay because i can exercise
all the time and I'm getting paid for it, and
this is okay, right, And I kind of just kept
that up for a very long time, and everyone just
(02:53):
thought that was that's just Christie. She likes to exercise,
and you know, she's really quote unquote healthy with her food.
But deep inside, I'd wake up every morning and think
about how many hours I had to do, or what
I had to eat, or if I was going out
that night where I'd have to compensate later on, and
it just it came to a head where I think
the eating disorder, I'd like to say it was like
(03:14):
a termite, and it just chipped away and chipped away
and chipped away until one day I work up in
the house and fallen down around my years and I
was deep, deep, deep in an eating disorder and once
again being told that I'd never get better. That's a
great analogy, the termite analogy. I think that that's an
excellent way to put it, because it chips away. It's
like you don't realize there's a problem until it's no
(03:38):
longer sustainable, the until you problem. Yeah, the foundation is
about to collapse because it's being eroded away and eaten away.
And the title of your TED talk in case people
want to search it up, is it's time to do
eating disorder recovery differently. And why is it that you
(03:59):
chose to speak on that in particular. Yeah, that's such
a great question. So what happened is my termite house
fell down around my ears and I got told in
New Zealand like, hey, you know your chronic this is
going to be the pattern of your adult years. You're
going to have times of doing doing okay and you're
gonna have times where you're going to be struggling again.
And I said, I said, well, if that's the life
(04:20):
you're forecasting for me, then I don't want to live
it because it's not living. It was existing. And so
I searched online for support worldwide because I was like,
there has to be something somewhere. I just had this
thing inside of me I think that always held onto
a glimmer of hope even when it felt hopeless. And
I found this treatment center in America that talked about
being fully recovered, and I was like, well, that's nice
(04:42):
for them, but maybe I can just get a little
bit better, you know. And I called them up, and
the lady on the phone I'll always remember her and
she said, Christie said, I don't care how long you've
had meeting disorder. I don't care how many times you've
tried to recover. I don't care how sick you've been.
We absolutely believe everyone can recover. And it just it
was so foreign, but it out I was so drawn
to that concept, and long story short, I ended up
(05:05):
going to America for eating disorder treatment and it was
just a different world like I was so used to
Australia in New Zealand, which blessed their heart. I think
they're doing the very best they can with what they
know and what they have available. And America has something
that's so different. And for me, what was different was
it was a home. It wasn't a hospital. A portion
(05:25):
of the staff had had eating disorders and had recovered
every single day. It was like life in recovery. I
wasn't sitting in a room just being given food and
that that was the goal. It was like, no, we're
going to teach you how to recover. We're going to
go out to restaurants. We're going to go grocery shopping,
We're going to go to the beach, we're going to
go to the movies. It was living life in recovery
(05:47):
and negotiating all of that. And so when I left
treatment and I started to go back out in the world,
I was like, you know what, this just has to
come out to the world and I want to teach.
I want to do eating disort of treatment differently of people,
and I want to take a piece of that. And
so I started to do that myself and helping others.
And so what are the ways that you do that
(06:07):
because I mean that is I have goose bumps thinking
that getting into or finding a treatment center that believed
in you and your recovery and that it was possible
and you having that hope and then going there and
then yeah, it's not like you leave right away and
it's like oh a magic wand was waved and suddenly
you're recovered. But it changed the trajectory of your life.
(06:28):
You now felt this calling of like, I can help others.
So what is it that you've developed since you left
where you were? And um in you're you're helping others
out in the world. And I think that's such an
important thing to know. Like so often people say to me, well,
it's like you left and you just recovered, and I'm like,
I didn't. I left and I struggled and life happened
(06:49):
and I had to navigate life into the world. So
I want to say there was one hund It wasn't
like I left treatment recovered. I left treatment with hope.
I left treatment knowing what I had to do. I
left treatment with with to be recovered, Like I knew
it and I wanted it. It was like a like
an athlete going for a goal and I was like,
this is what I want. You know, it took a
couple of years after I left treatment to be recovered,
but what happened is I went back to working in
(07:12):
the outdoors, which was fantastic to have a different relationship
with food and a different relationship with exercise, and a
different relationship with my body. You know. I was back
being in the outdoors because I loved it, not because
I felt like I had to punish myself. And that
was really important to me. And I actually had an
experience where I fell off a cliff. So I was
out in the bush and I fell off a cliff
and I damaged my feet and it actually ended my
outdoor career. And I was like devastated, and it was
(07:34):
like what can I do? And I was like, well,
I can eat food and I'm good with people. And
I actually already had a therapy degree, which I just
wasn't using because I liked the outdoors. And so I
decided to go back into therapy and specialize in eating disorders.
And I wanted to do more than just traditional talk therapy,
and so I came up with this concept of for
me going from residential treatment and going back home that
(07:56):
was hard, and it was hard because I came back
to New Zealand to a country that didn't understand the
process I've been through too, and I think when we recover,
we recover into a disordered world. There's so much out
there that's in restaurants, it's in family structures, it's in beliefs,
it's in gym. So I thought, you know, for people
that either can't go to treatment because of whatever reason,
(08:18):
maybe they've got four kids and they're a single mom,
Maybe they can't afford it, maybe it's not in their country,
I was like, what if I kind of brought treatment
to people? And so I came up with this concept
of livings where I would go and live with people
in their home, and that could be once they left treatment,
or it could because they could never go. And so
I kind of I was like, I don't even know
if people would want to do that, but I would
(08:39):
have really liked that for myself. And I you know,
went on a woman a prayer to America because that
was where my I guess, my my chosen family was
my my recovery family, my community, and it just took off.
Within a couple of months. I had a year long
wait list, and I think I went to seven or
(08:59):
eight different kind trees all around the world, living with
people in their homes, and I just had the most humbling,
beautiful experiences where I got to live with people and
help them change not just within themselves, but look at
their environment. And it's like, no, no, when when you
go to the grocery store, you don't park three blocks away,
you park in the parking lot, you know, and little
(09:20):
things like that that I think never get addressed in
treatment because you can't. And just working with the family
as a whole. It was such such a gift. And
then the second kind of thread that I started was
also online because I was starting to get reach outs
from people in Israel, people in Scotland, people in Denmark,
and I was like wow, and so I started this
(09:41):
online piece. I like to say that I started online
therapy before COVID did. They got people just wanting support,
people who couldn't get the support in their own countries,
and people that wanted to work with someone that had recovered,
people that wanted someone that believed in them, and so
very quickly that got really busy as well. And so
I really like to have hold those two threads of
(10:02):
having to live in support and also having the online piece.
Where can people access the online piece? Yeah, absolutely through
the website, so recovered living dot com. Um. So now
I'm back in New Zealand. Um. I've also got five
other coaches that worked for me in America. They all
fully recovered. They're all fantastic. I love them all, and yeah,
they've We've got clients from all over the world, which
(10:23):
is fantastic to me. We're on zoom so I can
see Christie's face and it's it is pure joy bouncing
back off the computer to me. Because like when you said,
but you love the other people working with you like you,
I could tell that was very, very sincere and probably
(10:44):
the excitement you'll feel coming together collectively all if you've
got five and then including you, is that six. So
think of the amount of people y'all are able to
reach coming together for that. I just I think it's
amazing because a lot of people are familiar with recovery
from alcoholism at times and when people have inner treatment.
(11:08):
I have people in my life that have come out
of that. I never went to any residential treatment for
my eating disorder, but I am familiar with addiction to alcohol,
and you come out of that and you instantly have
all of the support and there's a a meetings and
you have a sponsor, and you have like it is
a rigorous routine because it's again an alcohol is something
(11:32):
that can be all around you, but you have your
different things that you have to do to stay the course.
And I feel like, similarly, food can be an addiction,
but we also need food to survive, right, So then
there's this's this very difficult dynamic because you can never
(11:54):
touch alcohol again and that's the goal. But food you
have to touch every single day. And even in your
TED talk, it's like it should be the first thing
you do every single day, And when you were doing
your livings with people, it's like, Nope, you wake up,
you eat breakfast. That's just what you do. Don't put
off the food, don't start the restriction, don't get busy,
don't make food the last thing on your list, because
(12:15):
the minute you start to implement that, you'll start to
see the change. But I'm kind of rambling here now,
and I just feel like what you're doing with the
livings and the online and giving people that support, the
tangible support, the change, the ongoing because it is ongoing.
I have been what I would call quote unquote in
(12:37):
recovery for two years, but I still put myself to
work every single day to combat different thoughts or old behaviors,
or when I met with other things from society, I
have to shut it down, change the channel. Just I
know some people are new and they might be listening
to this episode because they're curious to try to figure
(12:58):
out and I just wanted to share a little bit
about like some recovery comparison to other things you might
be familiar with, at least that I feel like I've
talked about more like alcoholism and a a that's integrated
into movies and storylines and different things. And we're starting
to see eating disorders show up. But the more people
share and get vulnerable and talk about things than the
(13:20):
more quote unquote normal, it will seem absolutely And I
think you touched on such an important piece there, because
it's like, you know, if you struggle with substances, it's like,
don't take the substances, like that's that's your remedy. But
I think for someone with an eating disorder, you have
to eat every single day, and so it's a different
type of recovery because you really have to heal your
relationship with food. You don't have to abstain from food,
(13:41):
you have to heal your relationship with it. And one
of my favorite quotes, it's about a tiger. And I think,
you know, for someone that's in recovery, they go and
pat the tiger every single day in the cage or
they take it for a walk when you're in recovery.
But when you're recovered, I like to say, there just
is no tiger. Like I have a completely different relationship
with food in my body today and I don't feel
like like I don't have to struggle anymore. I just
(14:04):
eat food and I live in my body and I
love my life and it's the greatest gift I can have.
And I know, and I know when I was in
my eating disorder, that just felt so impossible. It just
felt like way too much of a bridge. But I
want to say to anybody listening, you may not believe
that you can recover until you're actually there. Like it's
okay to doubt yourself and go forward anyway, you know,
And I think that's the truth is you just you
(14:25):
just have to you just have to start and you
have to dive in and take that tiger for a walk,
and one day you'll go to get the tiger and
you'll be like, oh, it's not there anymore. You said
that all you need to have, and this is something
that I have in writing from you, All you need
to have is the curiosity of what it would be
like to not have and eating disorder in order to
start your journey to recovery. Yes, like you just gave
(14:48):
me goose bumps and there with my work. But like,
I mean, that's so you don't even have to want
to recover. You know. I'm talking with clients right now
that are like, I don't even know if I want
to recover, And I'm like, that's okay, let's just be
let's start with the curiosity. Do I even want that? Like,
let's just start there. Talk about that one a little
bit more like why would someone not want to recover?
(15:08):
M hm? So many reasons. I mean for myself, Like
I put my whole life savings on the line to
go to America and I still thought it hard. I didn't.
I didn't turn up with a smile and a hug.
I turned up like I am suspicious of everybody here,
And for me, I didn't want to recover because my
eating disorder was an identity, because it was my safety.
I was like, who will I be without it? How
will I cope? Will I be okay? I couldn't envisage
(15:32):
a life without my eating disorder. And I think so
many people they're not sure they want to give up
that control because it's like, well, another thing that I
like to say is I think people's ability to recover
is directly proportional to their ability to surrender. And so
for me, I was all about the I'll recover ninety percent,
but that ten percent I am hanging onto that, and
(15:52):
I was huge about that, and it was like I
just wanted to be safe. I wanted to keep an
eye on myself. And the truth is that would have
been a termite that I didn't e write a K
and in ten years time I would have worken up
with my house around my ears again. And that last
ten percent was huge to say, I am surrendering to
my body set point. I'm surrendering to the fact that
I don't actually have control of my shoe size in
the same way that I don't have control of my
(16:13):
body shape size, body composition, all of those pieces, and
for me, that was the clincher on being recovered. When
I can surrender into that and when I let go
of that ten percent, everything else fell into place. Okay,
you said set point, So define that for people, because
I think that's an important thing. So set point A disclaimer,
I'm not a dietitian, but stet point is essentially, it's
(16:34):
like our body has a genetic weight range, weight composition,
weight size, shape that it wants to be. And you know,
in the same way we have a shoe size or
a face shape or an eye shape. We can control
it if we want to our set point, but we'll
never be truly free. And I think that's the difference
(16:56):
is because society is so constantly saying you can have
a flat stomach, can have you know, thighs like this
or shoulders like that? You can? But at what cost?
That's exactly what the thought I had in my head.
If you weren't going to say it, I was about
to say, but at what cost? Yeah, when you think
of all that you sacrifice when you're eating, disorder is
in control. I think of the relationships that suffered so
(17:20):
much of my life was ruled well, in fact, the
whole thing. When I was deep into it, everything was
centered around my eating disorder. But it was all in
my head. It's not like people knew. But like every thought,
every relationship, every dinner out, every parties that I missed,
celebrations that I didn't take part in, you know, amazing
(17:40):
food that my family cooked that I didn't eat. Nights
I stayed home alone because I was too nervous to
go out or felt gross in my body and just
didn't even want to deal with it. So yeah, I
think having a healthy perspective on what is your set
point When you're in it, you're we're like, I don't
even know because I've been manipulating for years. But once
(18:04):
you get there and you feel the joy and you're
no longer consumed by all those thoughts, or you can
walk past a mirror without having to turn and look
and assess and judge yourself, it's just freedom. You know,
it will sometimes could rear up, but when you have
the tools, then you can bust them out from your
back pocket and be like not today, not today, tigger. Absolutely.
(18:27):
And also there's this piece I think like like two things.
One having grace, like I turned thirty seven, like a
month ago, and I was like, I woke up the
one morning I was like, huh, my body's squishy and
than it used to be. And I was like, interesting,
this must happen as you get older. And it was
like there was no part of me that was like
I had to change my food after exercise more. This
isn't okay. There's this grace that my set point, my
body composition and shape, my size, that's going to change
(18:49):
over time and that's okay. And I think that came
with being recovered, and it came with time in the saddle.
And I often say that, like I feel more recovered
this year than I did last year, And that doesn't
mean I wasn't recovered last year. It just means that
I've got more time being human. And so I think
too with you know, when I was in recovery, I
was like, I don't want my body. I don't want
my body at that set point. I don't want that.
(19:10):
I don't see how I can be happy with that.
I don't see how I can live with that. And
part of recovery for me was actually living in that,
not lacking it, but doing it anyway. It's kind of
that piece of I don't know if I can recover,
but I'm going to give it a shot. And it's like,
I don't think I can live in this body. Like
there was so many times I would cry to my therapist,
I don't think I can live in this body, and
she was like, okay, but let's try. Let's let's just
(19:30):
give it a shot. And as I leaned further into recovery,
and then as I recovered, I actually started to want
the body that I had, And now I want the
body that I have because this body means I can
do all these amazing things, like this body with the
lumps and the bumps and the whatever's that I didn't
like before. This body means that I have relationships, and
this body means that I get to travel, and this
(19:51):
body means that I wake up feeling well. And I
actually want this body now, whereas when I was in recovery,
I was like, Nope, I'll recover, but I want my
eating just a lot of body. It doesn't work like that.
And so I think the message that I really want
to give is for me. When I recovered, I started
to want the body that I had, and that was
a real changing point as well. Yeah, because we've been
(20:12):
conditioned to, you know, by all the things, the media, society,
different things, that this is what the body is supposed
to look like, when really, uh, we should have had
no no conditioning there whatsoever. No one should be telling
us this is what we're striving for. But once you
build those new neuro pathways and you start to fall
in love with your body and yet then you just
(20:32):
don't even think about it. It's amazing what our brains
are capable of when, like you said, you just start
doing it. Just start doing it. It's not easy at all.
But that's why even sometimes I do that with actual
like food, I know, and the ted X talk you did,
it talked about like unloading groceries for the first time
and like all the things like even like I can't
(20:53):
remember the exact food, but the eggs and the lettuce
with the cookies, and you had pantry full of things
things and a fridge full of things. And you know,
I'll still catch myself with the grocery store sometimes being
like I'm not gonna get the cookies, and then I'm like,
don't get the cookies. I'll hear some voice, don't get
the cookies, and then you know what. I come right
back and I'm like, you know what cookies are going
in the basket now because brain don't challenge me. Now,
(21:16):
I'm going to keep buying the freaking cookies until my
brain knows that it's no big deal. If I want
the cookies, that get the cookies. If I don't want
the cookies, I don't get the cookies. But I had,
I had to build the new neuropathway. You do it
until it's not hot, and then you just keep doing
it because you want to write. Well, Christie, thank you
so much for taking the time to chat with us today,
(21:37):
and I encourage people to check out more at Recovered
Living dot com and you can see all the amazing
work that Christie and her team are doing. But again
the ted X talk is it's time to do eating
disorder recovery differently and that you are Christie or your
socials and all your stuff on Recovered living dot com. Yeah,
we have Recovered Living dot com. We also have Recovered
(21:57):
Living in z dot com, which I know in America
is pren ounce m z UM and that's a residential
eating dissert of treatment charity that I've started up in
New Zealand where opening in October, so feel free to
check that out as well. So they recovered Living m
Z dot com awesome, well, thank you so much. We
appreciate you and all of your work. Thank you,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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