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February 8, 2025 12 mins

OUTWEIGH: Shame thrives in isolation, convincing us that we’re the only ones struggling with food, body image, or self-esteem. In this episode, Amy and Leanne explore the impact of silence and secrecy on mental health and how connection can break the cycle of shame. By opening up about your struggles, you can find support, validation, and healing.

Takeaway: You are not alone in this journey. Through vulnerability and connection, you can transform your relationship with food and your body and discover the power of shared experiences.

HOSTS:

Amy Brown // RadioAmy.com // @RadioAmy

Leanne Ellington // StresslessEating.com // @leanneellington


To learn more about re-wiring your brain to heal from the all-or-nothing diet mentality for good....but WITHOUT restricting yourself, punishing your body, (and definitely WITHOUT ever having to use words like macros, low-carb, or calorie burn) check out Leanne's FREE Stressless Eating Webinar @ www.StresslessEating.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm learning love who I.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Am, I get, I'm strong, I feel free, I know
every part of me.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
And then will always out way if you feel.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
It with your hands and there she'll some love to
the d Why have.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
There take you one day?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
And did you and die out way?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Happy Saturday? Outweigh amy here. I got my co host
Leanne Ellington by my side. We're continuing our series the
lies women believe about their bodies. Last week was part
one of this four part series. The lie is I
will be happy when and you fill in the blank.
That's a lie because a lot of times it's like
you get there and you're like, oh shoot, I'm not

(00:55):
as happy as a thought I was gonna be. So
today's lie, we're focusing on the only one who feels
this way or struggles like this. So that lie is
you're alone and your food and body struggles and no
one else can possibly understand. And Leanne and I can
both sit here and say you are not alone, and

(01:17):
we do understand.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, And it's like, I mean, I know that I
understood logically, I'm like, yeah, I know other people get it,
but like, really do they do they get it to
this extent. And the number one thing I hear from
women is that they think that they are absolutely broken,
that the way that their brain is working is actually
on the crazy side, like crazy as a word that
they think or that they that I hear a lot
and I felt that too. And it's one thing to
know that people, you know, struggle with food or struggle

(01:40):
with whatever. But I think we all think that we
are the exception, the crazy one. And the reason that
is is because of the shame. And this is also
a problem that tends to live in secrecy.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
It's not like people are out there on social media
being like, hey, this is what I struggle with. It's
actually the opposite. What we're seeing modeled is you know,
a place where people are sharing their highlight reels and
all of that. And nowadays, thankfully, you know, disordered eating
and the self image and body image that comes alongside
that and compulsive overeating and all of these things. Eating
disorders is a lot more talked about, but it's also

(02:12):
still to an extent, not really talked about, and it
hasn't been necessarily normalized, and I think especially the disordered
eating side of it. I know, for me, I was
falling through the cracks because I didn't at certain times
fit into a category of an eating disorder, and a
lot of specialists and therapists didn't necessarily know how to
help me or support me. And so I think it's

(02:32):
hard to know that other people are struggling in the
way that we are. But that's also where our self
image is doing the lying right, and so it's like, yes,
in fact, we have a struggle that if there is
shame involved, and it keeps us in secrecy and we're
not talking about it, we're not you know, sharing it
with others, and we're trying to deal with it ourselves.
We're trying to like almost diy you heal ourselves in

(02:52):
a lot of ways. And then on top of that,
you see people that are like, I have it all
together and just eat these macros and prep this meals
and do this workout and it'll all be great, and
it's it's a matter.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Of willpower and do it. Just do it. And then
you also, I know, for me, I heard a lot.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Of messages when I was growing up that it's like, well,
if you're overeating, just stop. Just don't like it was
something that again, our brain was kind of outvoting our experiences.
And so for somebody who feels like that, where you've
been to doctors or you've been to whatever, and they're like,
just do this.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
If you want it badly enough, you will. So there's
those those messages of air.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Quotes influence that are the kind of like kind of
Broie like harsh, like just do it, you know whatever.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Mixed with that it's like, no wonder, we feel like
a failure.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
No wonder, we feel like we're the only one who
struggles like this because this is what we're seeing. And
that's where I want to show you that that's like
an alternate reality and that's what perpetuates the lie.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
But in depending on who you're around, like your roommates, situation,
your mom, your your sister, Like my sister never had
any food or body image issues, so I would look
at her and be like, why can't I just be
like her when it comes to food or thinking of
my college roommates, we would go pick up food food,
like from a drive through and they would just let

(04:03):
it sit in the car. Until they got home, and
then they would put on a plate and eat it.
And I thought of this recently because on the Bobby
Bone Show, we got a call from a listener that
was saying her husband thinks it's so weird that she
always likes to eat her to go food in the car, Like,
she doesn't wait till she gets home, but she's like,
I want to eat it hot, when it's good, ready
to go, and my husband just thinks that's so weird.

(04:24):
I was instantly reminded of my college days when I
was so jealous of my roommate that could go pick
up food and not immediately start devouring it. Now, this
caller was just like a silly difference between her and
her husband. It wasn't even related to an eating disorder.
But I was so obsessed with food that I didn't
have the self control to let it sit there and

(04:46):
wait to get home and sit down and eat it properly.
Not that eating in your car is not proper. I
mean there's times we're eating on the go. That's not
what I'm talking about. It's literally you're down the street,
you go pick up to go food, and you could
wait three minutes. But I couldn't, And I always thought,
why can my roommate or how can she wait? She's
not like and I would go sometimes I go to
multiple drive throughs depending on where I was in my

(05:09):
disordered behavior, and so I kind of thought, I'm the
only one that can't, you know, sit there with a
bag of food shut in the driver's seat and wait
till I get home. And that's just a very teeny
tiny example of how you can feel very alone in
your behavior depending on who you're surrounded by.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Absolutely, And you know when I know a lot of
us listening can can relate to this. When you actually
feel like a compulsive almost addict, right, you feel like
there's this monster that comes out where it's like I
and you hear about people that can keep you to
em and MS in their cabinet and not eat the
whole bag or just you know, cut off a piece
of a browdie and not eat the rest. To me,
when I was at the height of it, I did

(05:48):
not have that you know, agency over my brain.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
It was really like.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
There was very long term fired and wired experiences where
it really was this kind of jeckyo high personality. And
when you and when I say this out loud. Is
somebody who's never experienced that, right, they would never It's
like if I skin my knee, Okay, I know the
specific pain of skinning my knee, right, But if I
burn my hand on the stove, if I've never skinned
my knee, I wouldn't know what that feels like, and

(06:14):
I couldn't compare the two pains.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
So for somebody who's never experienced what you know, any
type of disorder in their head, heart, mind, spirit, they
wouldn't know how to support somebody getting the help that
they need for a problem that they've never had and
that they don't know how to solve. And it's hard
to have that empathy now that you can meet somebody
who has a ton of empathy and a ton of compassion,
and like even my husband, like he's married to somebody
who I help. I'm in this world every single day,

(06:38):
I'm working with people all the time. He knows I
am living my walk, I'm in the recovery life.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
You know, and he gets it to the extent that
he can, and he really does seek to understand it.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
But even he living with me cannot understand a problem
that he's never had. Right where he was the skinny
kid who always just wanted to put on muscle, right,
and it's just like and he eats, you know, twelve
thousand bazillion calories a day and lose his weight, Like, yeah,
he's that, and I love them for it. But I'm
also just like, Okay, that was not my story. But
who am I to make my story mean that I'm broken,
that there's nothing wrong with me, that what I learned

(07:08):
was a shameful thing.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
And here's what I also just want to leave you with.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Okay, if you walk away from this episode and you
hear one thing or you remember one thing, who you
are or what you're struggling with right now is not
just not your fault.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
It's just a product of what you learned. Right.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
You literally just learned certain ways of being and thinking.
And it probably started with a restriction based mindset that
led you to your body, your brain taking over an
old survival circuits, thinking that you were starving, and one
day started just like essentially like hoarding food, and it
became a pattern, and your brain just stayed accidentally stuck
in this like overdrive mode essentially, and you just have

(07:46):
been practicing that, right, And so if you struggle with this,
It's just a product of cause and effect, not this
like personal flaw or failing on you. And I really
want you to separate like your brain and what your
brain is doing from like you as the human, the soul, well,
the woman that just needs love and compassion and knowing
that what she's doing and who she's being is not shameful.
And you don't have to live in secrecy because you're

(08:07):
not alone. And this is a you know, an epidemic
so to speak, that plagues millions and millions and millions
of women, and so you are so not alone. And
I really just want you to get that this is
not a personal failing.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Sharing stories is why we started out ways, so that
people wouldn't feel alone. And the tagline for outweagh is
a life without disorder, eating outweighs Everything. And when I
first came up with the idea for Outweigh, I remember
exactly where I was, what I was feeling. Called my
friend Lisa Haim, registered dietitian. She had a whole program
called fork the noise because that's what's going on in
your brain. You have to separate from the noise. Yeah, noise,

(08:43):
It is not your noise, you exactly. So that's what
Outweigh is about. And we had every day people on
sharing their stories. We had experts to join us, doctors.
It was just supposed to be a four part series
that lived on the Four Things podcast. That's it, And
now here we are five years later and every Saturday
putting up an episode. And I'm very thankful for Leanne

(09:06):
joining the Outweigh movement and being a part of offering
insight and wisdom and healing to so many of you
because I know what it's like to feel alone, and
so does Leanne. And thankfully the last several years, like
Liama is talking about, more and more people are opening
up and sharing their stories, so hopefully we feel less
alone and there's more ways to get content. You may

(09:27):
not be someone that wants to share their story online
publicly to other people, and that's okay, you don't. That's
not what vulnerability means. However, if you can find someone
you can open up to a confident the more you
talk about your story, the less shame that you will
have attached to it, and then you could be impacting
somebody else that needs to hear that they're not alone. Again,

(09:48):
this doesn't have to be in a public way. It
and be in your small circle. It could be in
a support group, it could be There's a lot of
different ways that this can show up. But I just
want to say that if you're feeling alone, I challenge
you to open up to somebody because you never know
what conversations could come from that, and if you have
you know ADHD like I do, And sometimes in social situations,

(10:09):
you just start stilling your guts to strangers and you're like, shoot,
why didn't I just do that? That's okay. Sometimes you
might find yourself spilling your whole eating disorder or your
you know, your body image issues, you know, out at
a public event and then you just go home and
you think about that over and over until you can't
fall asleep, and then it ruins your night. But I'm
here to say if you can practice talking about it

(10:31):
in a safe way, I think talking can be so
therapeutic and healing, and it can take you into conversations
with people you know, you never know what they may
share with you, and then boom, in that instant, you
are not alone and then they're not alone either. So
just wanted to kind of close with that and how
Outways started and where we are now.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, and just one quick thing, that's why we also
started sharing stories of a recovery on Outway. So if
you look over the past few months, there's actual story
and testimonies of people going through their own healing, and
they don't sugarcoat it. They share the good, the bad,
the ugly, the things that you know that was keeping
them up at night, and they share it without shame.
And I really think it's just a testament to show
what's possible. They can now talk about what used to
be really shameful just as data, just as like this

(11:14):
was my story, this was my testimony, This was something
that I needed to heal and I went and healed it.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
So just want to share that as well.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
And Leanne has these testimonies from people that have done
stressless eating with her and been on that journey, and
so that's another place where you can find Leanne's will
wrap with that information and socials.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, so if.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
You want to learn just kind of peel back the
curtain of how I the process I take my clients
through to rewire their own brain and really you know,
the circuitry, but also the self image and the stories
and the beliefs. You can head on over to Stresslessheating
dot Com and I just peel back the curtain over there.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
And then on socials at Leanne Ellington.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
I'm Leanne Ellington YEP.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
And I am at Radio Amy. We'll see y'all next time.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Bye bye

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