Ep. 4 of OUTWEIGH: A Series Exposing the ‘Grey Area’ of Disordered Eating

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Maybe that's Lisa, and we're just two girls that want
to have a conversation with you. Dear sixteen year old Andrea,
Hey gorgeous, Dear younger Lauren. Each episode is stories from people.
I would deprive myself by myself obsessively because I was
eating healthy. I couldn't understand that I had a problem
with food. Losing my period scared me the most. My
story starts when I was around seven. That's when I

(00:24):
started to hate my body. Body image is like our
inner picture of our outer self. Healthy behaviors play a
much bigger role at all health than the actual number
on the scales. Internal dialogue could be so powerful, and
often it's super negative and critical in a way that
we wouldn't talk to other people that we care about.
When you start to share your story, that gives other

(00:44):
people the courage to share theirs. I know you would
be proud now of how far you have come in
your relationship to food, exercise, and to yourself. I felt freedom,
I've gained relationships. I've found my true sense of self worth.
There's one thing I need you to take away. You're
going to be okay. Life without disordered eating outweighs everything.

(01:08):
You're listening to episode four of Outweigh. In this series,
we will be discussing eating disorders. People who have struggled
with eating disorders or disordered eating will be sharing their
story in detail. So please be advised that this content
may not be for everybody right now, especially if you're
currently in the throes of recovery. Our goal is to
make sure that you get the best help necessary for

(01:29):
you or a loved one. This podcast should not replace
therapy or treatment. To get help, support or more resources,
head to National Eating Disorders Dot Org. Okay, so here
we are with episode for This is our final episode
of this series, and Abby, don't you go ahead and
say hi, Hello, Okay, fine, this is Abby. I'm Amy
and hello, Lisa's here. If you're just now finding this

(01:52):
series for some reason, I would encourage you to go
back to the beginning. There's four episodes, and I guess
they can be listened to out of order, but just
know that there's episodes before this one. Abby was someone
that we brought in to help. She answers the phones
on the Bobby Bone Show, and so I was like, hey,
would you be looking for some extra work because Lisa
and I were putting together this series, and I just

(02:13):
really need to make sure I've got someone that is
monitoring if everything is being recorded correctly and saving the
files and getting all the experts on and the phones.
Like there's a lot to do. And so he was like, sure,
I'll do it. And I had no idea that you
would even really be dialed into what we were saying,
or if you'd be paying attention. And then we're about

(02:35):
to wrap everything and we were just having lunch and
Abby just sat down and was like, wow, will you
you say you say what you said? I just said everything.
I let everything else. Now I was just saying I can.
I could relate to almost everything you were saying, starting
with you know, like diet and how I do get
guilty when I because I have my set foods you
know that I eat that are healthy. I'm super healthy eater,

(02:57):
and so if I stray off of that, I feel
guilty and it stresses me out. You know that I'm
I'm not on track. Also as far as exercise, I mean,
I I still struggle with it, but I am obsessed
with exercising and being active and always moving. And so
I just realized how much that really is a big
part of my life and that it's maybe an issue
you know, that really opened my eyes to me. Abby

(03:18):
opening up and sharing that with Lisa and myself was
another good reminder of we really don't ever know what
people's internal dialogue is with themselves or what the struggle is.
Because again, I I've worked alongside Abby, I see her
every morning and this has just never come up. And
I would never put her in that box. Some people

(03:41):
might not put me in that box, but here I am,
and that I was in there, and so Abby, thank
you for opening up and sharing that. Yeah, and thank
you for hopping in Like I literally said, okay, well
come then we're gonna we're gonna take the final episode.
And I think you're you're sharing that is relatable because
we maybe have had and people that, like you, have
been listening to the whole thing and then being like,

(04:03):
oh man, that wait, I do that, and I do that,
and I do that, and maybe not really knowing that
there is freedom from that, knowing that that's how you are.
Like are you at a place where you're like, Okay,
well I just thought this is how life is and
I would just keep living this way, or do you
think that you could find some freedom from it. I mean,

(04:24):
I've been like this for so long, pretty much my
whole life, you know, and I'm obviously not happy and
I know there's there's problems with it, and I know
I can't continue this. It's just very it's not healthy,
you know, for my mind or or anyway, you know,
my social life, not going out with friends because I
don't want to you know, eat or drink too much.
So um, I definitely know that something needs to be done.

(04:44):
I can't just keep going on this path. Well, just
know that there is freedom, and it does take work,
and I think for less work than you think, though
less work than you think. But I don't want to
mislead anybody thinking that it's just you know, you've listened
to this podcast and you're good to go, because that
is definitely not the case. And the unlearning is kind

(05:05):
of so liberating. I think that's what I mean I
mean by less work, because when you learn that all
the things that have been keeping you in control are
actually keeping you in captivity, yes, it's actually right, you
can just it's almost like I feel like that it's fine,
like that the control that you were looking for is

(05:26):
found without the control techniques because you're peaceful, but you
have to be willing and you have to That's the
one trait that I say you need because it will
propel you forward and forward and forward. And then having
an understanding two of outer wisdom, which we've touched on
before and I think we should talk about again just

(05:46):
to clarify, because there's outer wisdom and then there's inner wisdom.
So I'm gonna have Lisa. Yeah. So this is just
part of my philosophy and my technique of how I
help people learn to listen to their body. There's plenty
of ways to do it, but this is what I
have found successful for people like me that needed what
I needed. So outer wisdom is just the knowledge of food, nutrition, cooking,

(06:09):
and dietary needs in general. In our wisdom is what
your body specifically needs. So when we were born as
babies or children or adolescents even somewhere it gets a
little murky there, we knew what we wanted, how much
we wanted, and when we wanted it. We didn't question it,
right Like, think about as early as being a baby.
We cried when we were hungry, stopped when we were full,
didn't matter how delicious the piece of cake was, right,

(06:32):
Like it was just simple. Right. I feel like my
twelve year old daughter. I see that in my children,
and even I've only and I've had them for we
adopted them. I've had them for two years, and for
that first year I was majorly struggling, Like I was
all kinds of a hot mess, and people probably had
no idea, but it was so hard, and I used

(06:52):
to even look at them and be like, oh, why
can't or can't I be like them? My daughter when
if she's hungry she eats, she's not hungry, she doesn't eat.
If she's full, she's tops. And I just was so
envious of And when I'm with my niece who's six,
you know, I'm like, I want to go get ice cream.
She's like, nah, Like what do you mean you don't
want to get ice cream? Right? Are you a sick child? Yeah? Okay,

(07:14):
so along those lines, you can keep going. I just thought, yeah,
so children are amazing. But at some point it switches, right,
and we fully switched gears, and we're told that our
bodies are unruly. If we allow our bodies to be
in command, we think that we will end up blah
blah blah, you fill in the blank. They're sick, unwell, fat, big, whatever.
All these negative words are that we've learned to view

(07:37):
as negative. So getting to know your body, your inner
wisdom is the part that's pushed down. And so while
you were you thought you were struggling with outer wisdom.
Maybe we we came to realize that inner wisdom is
the part that you're struggling with. I almost have too
much outer wisdom, yes, But I think the example of
you telling me that kl makes you sick is a
great example of inner wisdom because you used to eat

(07:59):
a lot of Kaleh my gosh, I ate kale like
it was because it was like it was saying it
was kale, and we're supposed to eat kale, and everybody
was eating kale. And I didn't know my body had
an aversion to it because I was just I thought
that's how I felt, and that's what I was doing.
It wasn't until I eliminated kale for six weeks or so,

(08:19):
just because I was doing I was eliminating stuff to
see how I felt, and I added kale back in
and my stomach hurt so bad. I added other foods
back in and it didn't change. I felt fine, But
when I added the kale, I was like, well, this
is interesting, and so now I don't eat kale, Which
is you're a confident eater to say no to kale,

(08:40):
because exactly so, when I say fork the noise, it's
all about using outer an inner wisdom to help you
figure out what to eat with flexibility. Of course, when
you take time like you literally took time. You took
six weeks to figure out what you like, and we're
what your body likes, you are no longer drowning in
the noise of kale. So good for you. Eat kale,

(09:00):
eat all the kale, because you know that Amy knows
that kale doesn't work for her. So the most powerful
thing we can do is give the microphone back to
our body. That doesn't mean that we ignore outer wisdom,
so it's not That doesn't mean that we ignore that
fiber is good for digestion, that fat is good to
make hormones and vitamins in the body, or that carbohydrates
are good for exercise. So I say for the noise

(09:24):
a lot of the times in my online courses, that's
the name of them. But what it really means is
in or and outer wisdom allow us to notice the
noise and pivot away from it. So when diet industry
is saying kale so good for you, kale, so good
for you, that becomes noise because it's actually not good
for you, Amy right. So having the knowledge that you
and taking the time to get to know what you

(09:46):
need gives you the ability to literally just see that
as noise and keep on eating spinach or rugula or
whatever works for your body. Okay, I'm going to throw
another one at you, because I feel like kale still
falls in the category of nutritious food that is nourishing
to the body. Whereas what if it were because Abby
and I were talking about this when we were having lunch,

(10:06):
what if it were fried chicken. So my outer wisdom,
the world, everything I know, my knowledge, would tell me
that fried isn't going to be the best for my body,
just because that's what I hear all the time, whether
true or not, that's what's out there. That's that wisdom.
But if I if that was the only thing offered,

(10:28):
like Abby and I are at a party and there's
no grilled chicken, which is on our approved list, or whatever.
If we had one and then that there was only
the fried chicken. If I'm in a good place with
it all, then my inner wisdom would tell me, if
I'm hungry, I eat the fried chicken and I move
on with my day. It is not the end of

(10:48):
the world. That's your rational voice speaking. And I think
whether you eat that fried chicken just means you take
a moment to consult with yourself. Does that chicken look good?
Part of this process is learning what foods attract like
we are we are. Fried chicken looks good to me,
Fried chicken looks good to you, and you're hungry at
the party, it seems to me it makes sense for
you to eat the fried chicken. Okay, right, Well that's

(11:11):
that seems like such a simple statement, But that's a
lot for somebody to grasp. You're asking me, I mean,
and I've been I've been doing I've been working on it,
and I'm not saying just eat fried chicken this one
day and then you can never have it again for
the rest of your life. When you give permission to
eat a food, all the powers taken away. And you
might find that while you thought eight pieces of fried

(11:32):
chicken is what you would eat because you just love
fried chicken. You might find that it's all it is
is three pieces that are actually enough for you. Because
you've turned off that guilt alarm in your head that
says this is a special food, I can't ever have
this food, and you're listening to the feedback, you might
end up with eight pieces too. So it's really important,
like Abby and I were speaking about, to understand and

(11:52):
neutralize foods and not see them as good or bad. Sure,
maybe the fact that it's fried makes it a little
bit less nutritious, but that doesn't mean that it leads
to illness, right, or that it leads to weight gain.
The fear around food is what gets in the way
of our ability to listen to our body, to over
consume what our bodies needs to feel like it becomes
a binge. Okay, and if fried chicken was a thing

(12:14):
we were scared of, you may prescribe me an abbey
to eat the fried chicken every day for seven days
and see how we feel, and then, okay, this is
what I'm clarifying with you. So then would my my
inner wisdom, my outer one was in my inner wisdom,
would come together and be like I need a vegetable,
I need some fruit, like I need some not fried food,

(12:36):
like my body. Body tell me right, it's not even
calling on any wisdom. It it'll happen because our bodies
are incredibly wise and they need a variety of different nutrients.
We're not meant to eat one food, even if it
was just kale for every meal for seven days. Like
it starts to ask for the things that we that
we need. And so if you are somebody that just

(12:58):
feels like you cannot eat a food, sometimes the advice
will be to give yourself radical permission to have it.
Other times, what I was saying to Abbey is a
little bit more of a softer approach that I use
with clients that is can be equally effective, which is
just neutralizing the foods that you think are bad and
adding them to your existing plate of foods that you
think are good, so allowing yourself to have I'm just

(13:21):
gonna stick with the fried chicken example here is if
you're safe food is a salad, maybe you're having fried
chicken with that salad now and you're starting to see
how they can go together, and that you're also not
giving them a lot of times when people eat foods
that are bad, they feel like they need to save
their calories, and so they go into the meal incredibly hungry,
only to end up eating a large amount of that food,

(13:42):
and then they blame themselves for having no self control,
when really the problem was the fact that they went
in at zero. So we go in at zero, we're
gonna end at ten, meaning we're so so so full.
But when we go into a meal at a four,
we end up at a six because we're better in
tune with noticing our fullness in our sotiety. That makes sense,

(14:03):
it does. And since Abby's still in here, another thing
we're talking about. When we were eating lunch and this
just came up, and feel like, thank you Abby for
sharing so much. She brought up a good point of
how she was an athlete younger in life, and she
was running all of the time because that was your sport, right,
and so it kept your body in a certain way.
And as you get older and your life changes and

(14:24):
you move and you get a career and you're no
longer an athlete, things started to change. Yeah, for sure,
I started to gain weight, and that right there, just
it's not I've always been been. You know, I was
a stick. That was a stick. I didn't have muscle
or anything. But when I even feel the slightest amount
of that, like I go into this, I have to
go the gym more. I have to start working out more.

(14:45):
I have to watch when I eat. And it's just
like you know in your head, you know, and you
know you're physically here next to me right now, and
you're you're pitching your body showing me no I know,
but it's it's indicative of the behavior of the body
pinching or the body checking things that we constantly do
to say, oh my gosh, I need to do more
or I need to eat less, you know, whatever that
whatever that is. And when I hear this, I think

(15:07):
of the thin ideal internalization, and it's this idea that
a thin body is associated with positive outcomes, with being confident,
with being healthy, with being happy, And the more exposed
we are to the thin ideal, the more we're psychologically affected.
That makes sense, and so most of us do have

(15:27):
a thin ideal internalization, which is why the reason of
being healthy oftentimes ends up being a proxy of guys
for actually still controlling our weight. So when we think
about the thin ideal. It usually underlies our behaviors, and
so we're kind of peeling back the layers to how
we got here. And thin ideal internalization is a pretty

(15:49):
pervasive feeling because it says you only belong, you're only
worthy if you are that stick skinny person that you
were in high school, which is just a fake thing, right,
Like you are worthy as you are Abbey and Abbeys
of the world. Yeah, I think I sent you a
note at least the other day. I was feeling a
certain way and you shot back some encouragement to me,
and you're like, you know what. I put on a

(16:11):
pair of jeans and my love handles were hanging over
and I kind of felt them looked at him check
them out, and it's like, you know what, but I'm awesome.
I really did, you know? And if we talked about
these affirmations a lot, and I think people when they
hear that, they think affirmations are just like made up things.
But like, I genuinely know I'm awesome, and I know
that I'm not here. I used to think that my

(16:32):
my worth here on this world was to be super
thin and have the best body in the entire world
and blah blah blah, because I'm a registered dietitian and
all that stuff. But I've really come to understand that
my secret sauce comes from within. And when I feel
shaken or okay, like what is what are those things
over over my pants, it's like I could recognize that

(16:52):
I've been subject to thin ideal internalization, and I can
question that initial thought that pops into my head that
says that's not right, because the only thing not right
about that is the fact that I'm spending time noticing
that when I put a pair of pants on that
hits into my skin, that skin would fall over or
that fat would would come over. Whatever it is. Yeah,
and I think that quick really, like you're able to

(17:15):
quickly react to it until that inner critic, you know,
that helps to kind of start to notice the devil
voice and the goddess voice, which was an episode one
if you missed that episode one or two episode. We've
been talking so much the last few days. I was
about to reference Taylor Swift again now, and I was like, shoot,
and some some of the stuff we recorded hasn't made
the cut, Like we've been like, oh, we're not going

(17:35):
to use that, and so I'm like, how many it was?
Are this podcast? This series could be a drinking game,
like how many times does Amy reference Chick fil A
or Taylor Swift take a shot? But no, it whenever
she was opening up about her gray area, her disordered eating,
what was happening with her where she was not eating
and over working out, and just felt like the struggle

(17:56):
to that she was supposed to be this size and
have that control, and um, she would get praised for it.
She was like, Okay, this feels good, and you know
now when those thoughts come back in she shuts them down.
She's like, not going there today, shut it down, like nope,
not going their brain. And that's I think similar to
what you do if you feel that and you look

(18:17):
down and be like, Okay, I'm awesome, then my thoughts.
I mean, that's you know, really what it's about is
observing our thoughts and detaching from them to recognize that
we are not our thoughts. Also, another thing was opposed
you put up, but you were trying on genes and
I think we also to not only do we get
attached to what size we were at what point in

(18:38):
our life. And that's what we're supposed to be or
like Abby was saying, she was a runner, so she
was a small but as we evolve, it's people were
not always going to be the athletes and we need
to be okay with that. And you were trying on
genes and you really like you to put on whatever
size you are, and you like the genes, but they
didn't really fit, not even close, and they're my normal
size Jens right for me, I'll excuse me. As an

(19:00):
example that would throw me. I'd be like, well, forget it.
I'm not getting these genes because I'm not sizing up.
But you were, like, you know what, I sized up
two sizes, bought the jeans, love them, called it today.
And I mean important to know that a if you
actually do gain weight from this process, that there are
healthy coping mechanisms to have. But oftentimes sizing is just different.
And so to allow an arbitrary situation kind of like

(19:23):
the scale to affect your entire mood or not to
not get the pair of clothing that you like a silly.
I had a bathing suit once and I have a
post from it from like two thousand sixteen, same thing
pretty much, and I just had to size up like
three or four sizes in the bathing suit. And I
remember sitting in the dressing room and being like, before
I put this bathing suit on, I was really fine
with my body. So the fact that I'm, you know,

(19:44):
even questioning it for a second that I'm not fine
means something's up with society, first of all. But maybe
just get the size bathing suit that fits and get
over it. Right, so we're clothing that fits. Don't go
by the size sometimes it's inaccurate. And if your body
is changing refluctuating, give grace to the fact that you're
here to do so much more. Yeah, there really is
the things that you gain if you do gain weight,

(20:07):
the relationships, the French everything, yeah, the community, um, the fellowship,
the memories. What's hard for people to graphs though, is
that there is this ideal weight that's put out there,
this pressure to be this look or be this size,
and we have to diversify that, like get rid of it. Like, yes,

(20:30):
look at the variety of people that are out there
and be accepting of it all. And there's like this
wait stigma and it's awful, right, And I think that
like that's why we're also excited about Lizzo, Like because
Lizzo came out there and she's never like you could
just it doesn't feel like she's ever doubted herself. She
just comes out with real confidence. She's not leaning into

(20:51):
body positivity or her body size because it's trendy. You
can tell that she wastes zero time thinking about her
body and all of it into her talent and her
perform moments. And she's also just a great example of
how health is not defined by b m I, meaning
somebody who may classify as overweight or obese does not
necessarily mean that they're unhealthy, because there are plenty of

(21:12):
people at healthy weights, so to speak, um on the
b m I scale that would not be able to
rock a concert like Lizzo can, like that takes some
cardiovascular training. And that's what so eye opening about Lizzo
in especially when we are on a learning everything that
we've been told. We can celebrate this woman because of

(21:34):
her body and because of her talent and because of
all these things. So our expert today, Dr Joshua Woolrick,
He's gonna be on in a second talking about how
as a doctor he's fighting wait stigma and Lisa I
know you have a book over there. What's the book called.
It's a great book. It's called Body Respect by Linda
Bacon and Lucy after More. Yeah, and this is along

(21:55):
the lines of like the Lizzo conversation and body size
and shape, and even in the thin ideal. Internalization that
we've been talking about here is that we, as a
result of the idea that only thin bodies can be healthy,
we are not properly giving all bodies the proper medical
care that they need. So in this book, for example,

(22:18):
it just says that it's true that not everyone is
at a weight optimal for their health. Whereas both thinner
and heavier people get joint pain. For instance, depending on
the cause of the problem, joint pain may be exacerbated
by weight and heavier people. However, given what we know
about dieting, the last things such people need is to
pursue weight loss. Instead, they should be offered investigation that
may lead to diagnosis, as well as an appropriate support

(22:41):
for pain management and increased mobility, in the same way
that thinner people with joint pain would expect their needs
for investigation, pain management, and mobility issues to be taken seriously.
So break that down, meaning somebody has arthritis that's a
joint problem not caused by weight. But if a heavier
person or somebody who falls on the B M I
scale as a higher weight as overweight or obese comes

(23:01):
in and says, oh my like hurt, a doctor is
more likely to say, Okay, you just need to lose
weight to make the pain go away, whereas if a
thinner body comes in, they do the proper investigation to
find out what it is. We're saying that's all doctors,
but part of the wait stigma. When we see bigger bodies,
we assume that they're unhealthy just because they're bigger, and
that can often do a disservice to bigger bodies. Okay,

(23:22):
and we're going to get into that with Dr josh
So here is our chat with him. We are so
excited to have doctor Joshua will Rich here with us,
all the way from the u K where he works
as a surgical doctor at the n h S. Hey,
josh you're all about fighting weight stigma, which is awesome.
And if people want to find you on Instagram at

(23:44):
Dr Joshua or Rich w O L R I c H,
you will not be dissy. I just I just laughed
because of the way you said NHS, that was all.
Did I say it wrong? And anyone say slowly before
such a common phrase? Here you say, well, we are
so excited to have you here. Thanks for your time.

(24:05):
I know we've got quite the time difference going on here.
I found you over Instagram. I have no idea how
I've started a few months ago. And it's always a
treat because you question everything we've been told, so sometimes
get in trouble for it. But it's more fun that way,

(24:25):
of course, and that's what I love about you. You
have more than passion. You have the confidence to speak
for what you believe in without worrying about the haters.
For lack of a better word, I feel like you're
one of those people that never says, oh, well, what
will happen if I say this? You just say it.
But it's with conviction and most importantly, with evidence behind it.

(24:49):
I want to be fair. I do hold back on
quite a lot of stuff. You probably just don't see it,
but yeah, no, I agree. There's I think I'm less
afraid to speak out about stuff than a lot of
people are. I'm not entirely entirely sure why, And I
will probably get myself in trouble for it at some point,
but I'd rather get myself in trouble for doing something

(25:09):
like that than kind of just sit by and watch
it will happen. Really well, Josh, we wanted to specifically,
have you wanted to talk about weight and how it
is not equal health and we'll just fire off some
questions to you and then you can give us your answer. Yeah. So,
I mean, you're always talking about weight stigma, and this

(25:30):
is a brand new series. It's not a topic that
we've spoken about before. So could you actually just define
for everybody what weight stigma is. It's it's discrimination of
someone based on their size, and that can go and
buy the way. It can be due to someone having
a higher body weight or due to someone having a
lower body weight, but more typically it tends to be
the format. So it tends to be assumptions and discrimination

(25:53):
because of somebody at a higher body weight, usually without
any good basis behind it, but just purely because of size.
And what are the dangers of weight stigma on our
actual health? So I guess you know, starting with the
bigger body, which you're saying gets discriminated. So this. This
was something that at one point obviously was new to
me as well. It wasn't something I've ever thought about.

(26:15):
But it's the more I looked into it, the more
kind of concerned I was about just how much of
an impact it does have, not just on the mental
side of things, things which would be the more would
would be the more obvious things to think about, you know,
the whole psychological impact of people discriminating against you, but
it's also the physical side. So we know that the

(26:38):
people's physical health actually ends up worse off after they've
been subject to discrimination for a period of time. It
is quite all encompassing, and it's quite concerning, especially when
you look at the fact that it's it's often completely ignored,
and so just how much of an impact it's having
on someone's health. It's really really hard to define. But
we know that it's nothing but negative. Right. So one

(27:00):
of the things you know, I'm a registered dietitian, and
one of the things that I've had to unlearn over
the past few years is that most people, most Americans,
I could at least confidently say, think that higher weight
means you will get disease, and therefore it is your
life's purpose, your duty to lose weight so that you

(27:22):
don't have disease. So what would be a more correct
way to talk about weight in a way that propels
us to help people actually achieve better health. So one
of the things, and I just wanted to clarify, that's
the UK as well, by the way, it's not not
just the US. But one of the things that I've

(27:42):
kind of heard a bit more recently that struck a
chord with me that I thought was really interesting was
somebody kind of comparing it to age. So if you
if you take somebody's age, as we get older, we're
more at risk of certain things right where you know,
we're we're more at risk of getting cancer as we
get older. We're more risk of getting our thritis as
we get older. And that's just a risk that we acknowledge,

(28:04):
and we we put certain things in place to try
and minimize that risk, or to try and kind of
pick up on on certain health conditions, so for example,
screening programs, increasing frequencies we get older, and things like that.
And I found it really interesting thinking about weight in
a similar way. So not not pretending that there is

(28:24):
no potential health consequences from being at a higher body weight,
just like there are at being in a much lower
body weight as well, But it's more the manner in
which we talk about them and the manner in which
we think about whether they're actually changeable or whether they're
just something that we need to be aware of and
need to improve our health care around. And a lot

(28:45):
of that is around whether or not deliberate weight loss
is actually sustainable and whether or not the process of
deliberate dieting is actually overall positive or negative for our health,
and I'd argue it's the latter. I'd argue that for
the majority of people going on diets and deliberately restricting
calories for the purpose of losing weight tends to end

(29:07):
up as a as a net negative effect on their health.
And so instead of just treating somebody of a higher
body weight and saying, well, you're at risk of disease,
you need to lose weight, it's more a case of
looking and treating those people with compassion, but also with
knowledge of how just how unsuccessful deliberate weight loss is,

(29:29):
and therefore not stigmatizing, but in fact looking at ways
of supporting and helping, just like we would in healthcare
with anything else. I just think we've we've completely started
from the wrong angle when it comes to weight. So, Josh,
I saw something that you posted on Instagram. But I
don't normally advocate burning books, but I think we should
make an exception for one's written by medical doctors claiming

(29:52):
to have discovered the perfect diet. Whatever you do, don't
regift them. And then in your caption you go at
actually accurate diet advice isn't sexy. It doesn't really sell
books despite being pretty straightforward. And you said, prioritize vegetables
and fruit, prioritize complex carbohydrates, prioritize polly unsaturated fat, prioritize

(30:13):
lean sources of meat, get plenty of fiber, and so
you want to expand on that just for a second,
because I mean, I'm sure people like it's this weird.
We're in this place. So we want to tell people, Okay,
don't join this diet culture and don't be a part
of this world. But there may be someone genuinely listening.
What if a patient is coming to and they do

(30:35):
need to lose weight, Like, is this how you would
handle that? The thing that flags in my mind and
I really want to hear your response, Joshua is the
what I'm learning, right, is like, they need to lose weight,
but what is the behavior that they need to change?
Because weight laws is not a behavior, right, So we've
been telling people to do something that's not a behavior.

(30:58):
But how can we better commune a key to get
them to where they need to go? Which is essentially
I think Amy's questions, Yes, there are kind of two
questions there. I would go start with that second one.
So I firstly, I just challenged the statement of somebody
needs to lose weight. I challenge that statement at the
beginning because I think what people actually mean when they
say that is people need to improve their health or

(31:21):
people are wanting to improve their health. And the issue
is that we put all of that down to weight,
when actually there's a lot of evidence that healthy behaviors
play a much bigger role in our health than the
actual number on the scales. And so when we've got
this attitude from the from the get go of you know, well,
this patient needs to lose weight, how can I actually

(31:42):
kind of approach this in a in a more compassionate manner.
I think actually we need to start reframing that conversation
going Okay, well, this patient is coming in and my
job as a doctor is to help them get healthier.
So how can I actually advise them to do certain
things that I know are guarantees for their health? And
so you know, when when I'm when I work in

(32:02):
the hospital, at the moment, I don't actually I can't
think of the last time I actually told a patient
that they needed to lose weight, because I don't actually
think that that's particularly relevant or helpful advice to be
giving people. Instead, it's those behaviors such as improving the
frequency of exercise, improving sleep, improving their intake of nutritious

(32:23):
fruit and veg and food in general, like you talked
about one of my posts earlier, Having that kind of
advice to people is not only obviously depending on on
privilege and ability to do so, and not only relatively achievable,
but they're not damaging and they're not harmful. If somebody
attempts to exercise more frequently, the odds of that actually

(32:44):
being harmful for them is very low. Whereas if you
tell somebody they need to lose weight, not only if
they actually end up doing so, not only is that
not guaranteed to improve their health, but the potential for
that actually leading to them, you know, ending up with
a disordered eating, ending up with a worst body image.
All of that kind of stuff is very is very true,
and it's very real. And so just personally, I would

(33:06):
just challenge that that first statement of a patient comes
needing to lose weight. I would always ask, well, why,
what what what do you mean by needs to lose weight?
Does that make sense? That kind of And it's the
perfect example of how language matters. Yes. And one of
the things that I've I've been so astounded to learn,
which of course you know, is that weight stigma is
an independent risk factor for disease. And one of the

(33:30):
things that I think you say is that weight is
We're not saying, okay, weight has nothing to do with
your health, just like age has nothing to do with
you know, getting risk of disease. But what we've oversimplified,
shrunk down, you know, boiled it down to is that
weight equals disease. Higher weight equals disease. Whereas there's it's

(33:51):
it's correlated, but it's not caused by So what are
the other factors that we can break down, like feeling
shameful and having the stigma of how you're being perceived
or having your doctor tell you that you're losing weight
is actually backfiring, which is like, oh my god, I'm gosh,
I'm terrified because doctors one of the things that they

(34:14):
don't have again this in the US, is time with
their patients. So oh same here, it's so being able
to tell them to eat you know, polly unsaturated fatty acid?
What's a polyunsaturated fatty acid? Telling him to eat? What? What? Veg? Right?
It's a lot easier to say all you gotta do
is lose weight, and your your hemoglobe and a want
to see your blood sugar your marker for diabetes will

(34:35):
just you know, go go down easier. But but it doesn't.
It doesn't work. So as you know, there's no point
doing the easier thing if the outcome isn't going to
be successful, you know, And it doesn't have to be
that complicated, like I don't talk to people about polyunsaturated fats.
I talked to people about you know, where they're getting
their sources of fat from, so fish, olive oil. It
doesn't have to be fancy. That's not my role either.

(34:58):
I'm not a dietitian, right, So if I start going
into the actual kind of fancy, in depth details of nutrition,
I'm starting I'm stepping out my bounds in the first place,
which is one of the reasons why I said about
burning books on diet written by doctors, because they're just
not helpful. We're not the experts in this stuff in
because to specific nutrition advice, and we need to stop

(35:19):
pretending that we are. But there are some very basic
things that we can advise on, especially when we just
stop blaming everything and weight. So, actually, this next conversation
here is how does the way doctors have been educated
about weight carry into the patient experience and how do
you fight against this in the work you do. I
assume you're up against a lot every day. Yeah, I

(35:40):
mean so, I I remember back at medical school not
being taught about wait stigma in any way, shape or form.
So not not being taught about the negative health effects
of stigmatizing people for their weight, even though as far
as I'm concerned, it's incredibly relevant in pretty much all
specialties and all practices being out in the community or

(36:01):
be that in the hospital, And so we get taught
about the risk factors, but without any of the caution
of how the manner in which we approach it or
the way we talk about it can have from a
negative side of things on the patient. So I don't
think personally that that doctors necessarily mean badly when they're

(36:22):
when they're saying these things. I think that actually we're
you know, and I'd say this from personal experience as well.
You know, we we think that it's the correct advice
to be giving or the correct way to be speaking,
because without without thinking about it in a slightly novel way,
to a way we haven't thought about it before, it
makes sense to advise weight loss if you don't think

(36:42):
about the success rate of all of it. We we
have been taught an awful lot about how way equals health,
and I think we need to start on learning some
of it. And it does, I remember what you said,
So it does. It does massively negatively affect the patient experience.
Doctors and medical students have some of the bigh rates
of wait stigma when they're when they're polled and when

(37:03):
they're kind of questioned about whether or not they assume
so for example, one way that wait stigma shows itself
is by assuming that somebody who's over a certain body
weight is lazy, you know. So it's a it's an assumption,
and it leads to all sorts of things that leads
to lower hiring rates of people of a larger size
because employers think they're not going to do their job properly.
It goes far and beyond the actual kind of health

(37:27):
fare specifically, but looking at it in terms of the
doctor's office, it means that there are other things that
also come up. So doctors assume that somebody is going
to be more lazy. Doctors assume that if they say
they're doing something they may not be. They assume that
they're not eating fruit and veg even though that's not
necessarily true. You know. They assume that they're not exercising,

(37:48):
although again that may not be true either. So there's
a lot of assumptions that take place, and when you
have such a short time for a consultation, those assumptions
unfortunately end up sticking because you don't necessarily have the
time to answer to kind of check every single assumption,
even though you should do um So it does it
massively negatively impacts the kind of advice that gets given

(38:09):
and the kind of care that people receive. And on
top of that, it also impacts people's willingness to come back.
So unless that weight stigma is internalized, which you know,
we can talk about it a bit if you want,
the actual impact on the patient who goes in for
something unrelated to their weight and yet again gets told
that they should lose weight means that they're not going

(38:29):
to want to come back again, and it leads to
lower seeking, lower rates of care seeking by patients, And
it just adds to that whole reduced care for people
of a higher body size because they end up not
going back to their doctor as quickly as they should
do for other medical health problems that in itself is
a real is a real, real problem. Just something you

(38:50):
said triggered a memory in me where there's been times
in my life that I have avoided going to the
doctor or the O, B, g U I in or
wherever be simply because I did not want to step
on a scale and I was terrified to see what
I weighed because I wasn't weighing myself at home and
I didn't want to, or maybe even if I was,

(39:12):
I just didn't want their scale to be different than
my scale at home and it be higher and then
send me into some weird thing just because of the
number I saw on the scale. The doctor like, and
there's probably people listening that have had that same exact fear,
and so do you have any thoughts on that for people? Yeah,
well so I get messages like that all the time

(39:33):
on my Instagram. It is it's quite heartbreaking some of
them because people are going into quite extensive detail about
some of the harm that they've come to it because
they haven't gone soon enough for certain things and they
just haven't wanted to go to the doctor. And the
difficulty is because doctors in general don't really have an
understanding of this impact of not just stigma, but the

(39:56):
impact psychologically the people's the image has. It means that
there's no real there's no real second thought. You know,
there's a tick box on on some of the on
some of the forms that's just you know, well, what's
the patient's weight? Pipe it in tick box. I will
tell them to his weight, And it means that there's
there's just no there's no thought process there. That's the

(40:16):
stuff that needs to change. I get people and I'm
assuming this is kind of the question you're asking as well.
I get people ask me, well, what can I do
because I don't want to avoid my doctor because I
have things that I need to get checked out, But
I can't bring myself to go because I know, yet again,
there are going to be they're going to weigh me,
or they're going to tell me to lose weight, or
they're going to blame my my symptoms on my weight.

(40:37):
And the thing that I tend to advise not and
again not that I'm the necessarily the expert on this,
but this just tends to be something that I feel
would have prompted me to to to take more thought
before I before I ever started looking to some of
this stuff. Is actually just having a conversation right at
the beginning about again if it's true about disordered eating,

(40:58):
and just saying, look, I have quite harmful thoughts to
me psychologically about my my body image, about my weight.
The impact of dieting attempted dieting in the past has
led to me having quite disordered eating behaviors, and because
of that, I really don't want to have discussions around
my weight today. And I really feel uncomfortable being weighed

(41:22):
because I feel like that would actually be quite detrimental
to me psychologically, and so I'm just wondering whether we
could avoid that today and having that conversation. I know,
I know that so no one, no one's ever said
that to me ever, not and I hadn't been a
doctor very long before I started looking into this kind
of stuff. But I would still argue that for the

(41:43):
majority of doctors, they will never have had anyone say
that to them, and that would if somebody had said
that to me, that would have you know, the doctors
do have an element of compassion in and that's the point,
and that would have been something that really would have
taken me aback and gone like, hang on a second,
what what what is this here? Like that's that's quite

(42:03):
a big deal. And I know that that's probably also
quite a big deal for people to say and for
people to bring up the courage to say that kind
of stuff, But that kind of comes under the the
whole element of advocating for yourself when other people can't,
And that would have brought up so many questions for
me that I would have googled, looked into, had conversation
with my colleagues about and for a doctor to after

(42:25):
you said that to them for a doctor to then go, yeah,
I don't care, get on the scale. I think that's
a that's a pretty good reason to find a different
doctor if you've actually said that to them and they
still completely ignore you. Whereas up until then, it's more
of this learned behavior that is that is just commonplace
in medical practice. Whereas once you once you say that

(42:46):
to them, if they ignore you, then then that's no
longer you can't you can no longer blame that on
learn behavior. That's then them not listening to the patient.
And you don't want to be seeing a doctor that's
not listening to you. And I think that's like a
really good point, and I'm all about really trying to
recognize that things aren't generalization, So not like, oh, all
doctors suck. Are all Western doctors suck, you know, because
they don't. Whatever your point there is that like anybody

(43:09):
who went through the training to become a doctor is
a compassionate, kind human being who cares about others more
than they care about themselves. That being said, they're also
very analytical and taught to find what is wrong, to
find the diagnosis. So I think oftentimes they come into
the room kind of like on a scavenger hunt, right,
like looking for what the problem is and lose the

(43:32):
compassion element because they're so driven to find the problem.
But when the patient comes in and says, hey, I'm
a patient, I'm a human, I have these feelings, I
think that the patient actually has incredible power to bring
them back to human and have themselves advocate to be
heard better louder clear, Yeah, And that that compassionate thing
is really important because I've seen I've seen people being

(43:54):
given advice around just take this piece of paper in
and give it to the doctor, and you know it
says in this paper, you know I refuse to be weighed.
Would you would you give this advice to a thin person?
And all of those things are valid questions, but they
start personally, they start off on the wrong foot. Exact
it would I know, yeah, I know it would make
me feel like, you know, I'm I'm not really being

(44:16):
asked my opinion. I'm not really here as a doctor.
I'm just being used to get something at that point.
And it and it it's that compassion element. It's it's
not forgetting that they are human too and they actually
want to help. It just sometimes they go about it
in the wrong way. We're in the midst of a
big change right now. I don't know if it's only
happening in my tiny corner of the internet, but I

(44:38):
can't help but see how social media becomes the real
world and we are talking about these things. So for
women and men that are afraid of the doctor to
recognize that, I think we're in the middle of a change.
So don't get so frustrated. If you find a doctor
that doesn't hear you, then it's time to find another
doctor that may better be able to listen to to

(45:00):
your needs. Yeah, and I know not everyone can do that,
but but for people that can, I think that's quite
a good plumb line to have. If you've had that
conversation with them and they still ignore you, I think
it's time to It's time to perhaps find somebody who's
willing to listen to you, because otherwise, you know, listening
to you on that and they don't have to agree
with you, right, So it's not that you say this

(45:20):
and they suddenly go, oh, you're right weight, it's got
nothing to do with you know. Way, it should never
be mentioned in a consultation because that kind of stuff
is going to take time, but it's if they listen
to you and they understand the frustrations and the concerns
that you have. That's a start, and that's something that
can trigger more thoughts from them, and you may actually
even end up preventing the same kind of behavior with

(45:41):
other patients. Josh, I want to shift to a little
bit of a different topic and another thing that I
saw you post about. I would definitely just encourage you
for to check you out on Instagram, because you do
put up stuff that's very thought provoking and for me
has been good to see that this is a post
from back into some where. I'm assuming these are your words.

(46:03):
You can correct me if I'm wrong, but you said
shortsighted idiots. If everyone exercised in an attempt to undo
the food they ate, the population would die of starvation.
We need food to stay alive and function. We need
food for health. The use of grossly inaccurate exercise calorie
labels to encourage the earning of food only serves to

(46:23):
encourage eating disorder behaviors. It's so blanking stupid, it's unreal.
Exercises a celebration of what you can do, not a
punishment for what you ate. Yeah, I think everything, but
that last sentence was mine. I think I've heard that
last sentence before. But well, you did highlight that. You
highlighted that part in yellow, so maybe you credited it somewhere.

(46:46):
But yeah, I mean, but for me, I had never
you know, those words exercises a celebration of what you
can do, not a punishment for what you ate. And
I think for a lot of us, just that mentality
of having to relearn. I feel like it's just a
part of life, and it's very natural to be like, oh,
well I'm gonna eat this, I better go work out,
or I ate that, I better go for a run,

(47:07):
or if I'm going to go to that dinner, I'm
going to work out beforehand, or worse, I can't eat
that because then I'd have to work out. Yeah, so
it's like, yeah, or I haven't been to the gym today,
so therefore I should change why I've eaten for dinner.
And and Amy and I always we have these conversations
about food and movement, right like they're the two things
that were meant to eat, we're meant to have relationships with.

(47:30):
We need food to survive, and we're inherently made to move.
We're not changing our relationship to not eat or to
not move, but how can we shift the relationship for
the positive so that food is not earned and that
exercise movement is a celebration. Such an important conversation to
be having. The reason I posted that in December because

(47:51):
I think there was some talk in the UK at
least around the potential of changing the calorie labels on
food items to exercise labels. Instead of just having written
on the packet how many calories was in a food item,
it actually had written on the packet, you know how
many minutes of running it would take. And just for me,
that was just so so shortsighted. It was unbelievable, just

(48:14):
how damaging some government person and probably person well, but
I mean seriously, whether it's implemented at a government level,
I mean there's still damaging stuff just on social media,
Like when it's Halloween time and people are trick or treating,
all kinds of articles come out of like if you
eat ah, you know, fun sized KitKat, If you do

(48:35):
you know three hundred jumping Jack's and ten burpies, you
burned it off, So like then there I mean, and
they do it for all. It's a standard conversation, isn't it.
It's it's it's rife. And the only reason that they
even considered it with the food labels is because the
fact that it's such a common thing for people to
talk about. Remember, all these people that make these decisions

(48:56):
are human too, and they're all subject to the same
damaging rhetoric that that just it's insidious. It just happens,
and people don't think twice about it, and I just
the frustration for me is that when you start treating
exercise is just something to undo food. You know, we
we know that that food and activity are intrinsically linked.

(49:18):
We know that we know that, you know, if you're
an elite athlete, you're you know, having a having a
nutritionus or a dietician work with you and and you know,
prep your food and it's going to make you, you know,
run faster or jump further. Like we we know that
those two are intrinsically linked. But unless you're a professional athlete,
always linking the two becomes really harmful psychologically because it

(49:41):
means that you are just spending your whole time worrying
about whether you've earned something, and when you when you
put something in that bracket, it leads to a feeling
of guilt and shame because if you eat and you
don't think you've earned it, then you feel guilty straightaway,
right if you if you do something that you don't
think you've earned, you feel shame that you've that you
haven't earned it. You so you've done the wrong thing.

(50:03):
And it just it creates this moralistic attitude around food
where it's it's a bit like and it's on the
same vein of when I talk about labeling foods good
and bad, which I think is really really unhealthy and
unhelpful as well. It means that you start thinking that
you're a bad person if you've done the wrong thing.
And it's all of these rules that we start instigating

(50:25):
and implementing on ourselves because we see other people doing
it and we see people talking about it in that way.
It's just, I mean, I can't really put into words
how frustrating it is when I see it, and how
damaging I feel that it that it ends up being,
and also just how unfair it is to what exercise
actually is and what exercise can actually do, and how

(50:46):
how good exercise can be and how important exercise is
for our health. It just ruins the whole flipping thing,
not just when you make it about food. It becomes unsustainable.
It's like the first week, the first the second week
of living that way of seeing your food as you know, okay,
well I'm going to the gym more, I'm being healthy.
It starts as like this inner motivation, and then it

(51:08):
fizzles because on the day that you can't get to
the gym that day. Now what it's like, it starts
on this that builds the morality and I'm good because
I'm good, because I'm okay, because I'm okay because and
then the day the cycle pivots, which it will because
life you're faced with yourself and a negative relationship to
food and exercise. So we need to not don't give

(51:29):
yourself flexibility like you know, exercise should be flexible. There
are going to be certain weeks that you can exercise more.
There are going to be certain weeks that you can't.
There are gonna be certain times in your life where
something is going on and you get and you get
too busy to be able to actually have regular activity
in your life, And there are going to be weeks
when you have loads of time to do it, and
if if everything has to be so rigid and so structured,

(51:51):
that flexibility is lost and it and it makes you
feel really bad that you can't do it quickly. Just
before we wrapped, being that your doctor that's on here,
and I feel that gives you some credibility and at
least is touched on this too. But even when it
comes to working out or burning off the calories, since
we're on that topic, which I think we'll dig into
it some more later, but it's not even accurate. So

(52:12):
can you touch on what Like we're getting these food labels.
I don't know what it's like in the UK, but
in the US it's like, okay, you just say this,
it's a hundred calories and twenty three carbs and you
know this is what you need to do to burn
it or track it or whatever. But all of our
bodies are so different, Like I'm not breaking food down
the way you're breaking food down. No, no, no, there's
I mean, you know, you know there's more, probably more

(52:34):
than I do. But the actual amount of av energy
that we absorbed from food is going to vary from
person to person it's going to vary based on how
that food is prepared. It's going to vary on all
sorts of things. Not only is the actual kind of
measurement of of how much energy we burn when we
exercise going to be so vastly different from person to

(52:55):
person because of their size and how intense they do
the activity and all sorts of things. But whether or
not it's it's relevant at all, or how people then
implement it when it comes to food is so off anyway.
So you've just got two completely inaccurate things that you're
putting together and then judging your entire well being and
how good you feel that day and how proud you

(53:15):
are of yourself, and you're judging all of it on
something that is just nonsense, and it's it's a recipe
for disaster. And there's no wonder that all of this
fails time and time again, and no wonder that people
hate the thought of cardio and hate the thought of
exercise because it's just so frustrating, And no wonder people
hate that the thought of having you know, the wrong

(53:37):
in quotes, meal at the wrong in quotes time of day,
because then they've got to go and work out and
figure out I was that correct, and they've probably got
to do more than it says on their watch because
it didn't work last time. And it's just it's a
spiral of nonsense. And so if we can start, if
we can start just talking about exercise in terms of
well it's going to improve your health. Forget food, forget

(54:00):
calories for a second, go and go and lift some
weights and get stronger. It's a really really cool achievement
to be able to do a pull up that you
couldn't do, Like I know this. I could never do
a pull up and now I can. And it's like
one of the coolest feelings in the world. Like, you know,
that's got nothing to do with my food or your
or your self worth. It might build yourself, but it
makes you feel good and strong. Yeah, I forget my

(54:23):
self worth, but it but it you know, but it's
a good it's a good way of knowing that actually
I have objectively become healthier because I have become stronger.
It's got nothing to do with with anything that is
so spirits as well, I've changed one point on the
BMI scale and now I'm in a different bracket and
so I can stop now like I'm good, Like it's

(54:44):
it's just it just makes no sense. Well, thank you
so much for coming on. I think we learned so much.
I think, well, we have a better ability to communicate
with our doctors and remember that we can and should
continue to see our doctors even if it comes with
some fear, because they truly are compassionate people that want
the best for us. Yeah, thank you josh for coming on.

(55:06):
Follow him at doctor Joshua wal Rich and thanks for
coming on. We're so happy we got to speak with you.
Thank you. So I'm glad we had doctor josh on
because it's really not anything I had ever paid much
attention to. It's important. Yeah, I think as we begin to,
you know, we wanted to go into this podcast kind

(55:27):
of slow, but as we start, it feels like an
US issue, like we feel we're the problem because we
have this relationship to food. Then we start to realize
that we all have this problem, and then we start
to realize that it's a society problem. And then we
realized that it goes beyond the food, that the desire
to be thin and to be judgmental creates discrimination in

(55:48):
a sense, not being better people by acting this way right,
and that our bodies are just unique and different and
wonderfully made. And it makes you think of Dimmi Lovado.
I can't remember if this was her on Ellen or
maybe Ashley Graham's podcast, but she was talking about how

(56:08):
she just realized there was a point in her career
where she was like, you know what, I don't have
to be on stage in a leod tard, Like why
was I doing that to myself? This is what I
got from her was that that's not how she used naturally.
So for her to be in whatever outfit her management
team or her team thought was appropriate for her to
be out there as a pop star in required her

(56:30):
to be at the gym three times a day, or
she thought that it did right because we see Lizzo
somebody in a bigger Buddy rock and what she wants true,
But for her, she didn't. That's what she felt and
where she felt comfortable. Yes, she could get out there
and do but for her, she felt that pressure and
she's like, I was just tired of living that way.
And you know, even for her being in the public
eye and having that pressure to look a certain way

(56:51):
from her team, you know, she said for years she
didn't even have a birthday cake, like she had watermelon cake,
watermelon cake with fat free whip cream. And now she
has new management. She's with Screwtle Braun and this last
year was the first year that she's like in Screwed,
it doesn't wanting thing for me. She's like, so it's cold.
It's finally to be with the team that just loves
me for me and who I am. And I had

(57:12):
a real cake and I mean it was amazing she
had that freedom to eat the cake. And it stands
for more. It stands for we hired you, where we
signed with you, whatever the right word is, because of
your talents, not how you look. It's pretty incredible, but
the pressure is real and it's out there for you
may not be a pop star, but somewhere in your

(57:35):
line of work it may affect you with how you look.
I know, we're gonna have two stories coming up from
two girls, Caroline and Caitlin, and Caroline's going to touch
on some of that in her story, just being in
the public eye and trying to feel like we have yeah,
Caitlin to looking perfect and being a certain way, so
you know, a setback and just ruin your day, and

(57:57):
we don't want any of you all to feel that way.
And again for sharing these personal stories from people, because
again we want to reiterate over and over and over
again that you are not alone. So right now we'll
get into first the story from Caroline and the letter
to herself, and then a story from Caitlin and the
letter to herself. Hey, Caroline Hobby here. When I was

(58:20):
in high school, I started dabbling around with bulimia a
little bit. I would just like binge eat and then
I would make myself throw up. And I didn't do
it all the time. I just would do it sometimes,
and it really had a hold on me. I felt
trapped by it. I felt like I didn't know how
to eat junk food. I felt like junk food was

(58:40):
the enemy. I didn't know how to do anything in moderation.
So I would feel like I need to eat really
healthy and not eat very much at all, and then
I would binge eat and throw up and it was
just a bad, vicious cycle. It wasn't regular enough to
be something that I would have considered a full time
eating disorder, but it definitely was frequent enough sperience that

(59:00):
it really was exhausting to live with that, and it
was overwhelming. And I also took some prescription diet pills
and I would take those during the week and I
would try to just work out a lot and not
eat very many calories and eat very lean and work
out hard, and then I would like give myself a
binge day, and it just was terrible. And I kind

(59:22):
of got stuck in that cycle all of high school
and early college, because then you go to college and
oh my gosh, you got the cafeteria and people are,
you know, staying up late and eating junk food and
drinking beer, and it's just I couldn't get a grip
on it. And so I continued to struggle with diet
pills and a little bit of bliemia here and there.
But then I finally just was like, I am done

(59:43):
with this. I cannot live like this anymore. And that's
when I started going to therapy, and I started talking
to a therapist about it and trying to get a
hold of why I was doing this and what my
fears were, why a number on a scale meant so
much to me, And I think it all just got
back to I wanted to be perfect, and I think

(01:00:04):
a lot of a struggle that I want to be perfect.
I wanted I had this image in my head based
on media, based on whatever I saw out there in
the world, that I thought was the standard I needed
to keep up with, and I wanted to be that.
I wanted to look perfect, be perfect. I wanted this
perfect image and whateveryone to think I was perfect. And
you can't keep that up. That comes crashing down, and
you definitely can't keeping up keep it up with an
eating disorder. So like on a day that I would

(01:00:27):
have it eating disorder, I would take the dip pills
during the week, work out, not eat very much, weigh
myself every day, stay at a certain number, make sure
I was there, and then I would binge on the
day I decided that I was gonna really have a
day and I eat anything I wanted, and then I
would make myself throw up, and then the next day
or the next few days getting that number on the
scale back down to where it needed to be. And

(01:00:47):
it just was an obsession and a vicious cycle, and
it was awful, like really nothing was fun about it.
Even though I was quote unquote skinny at times, oftentimes
I was more bloated than skinny, because it makes you
blow and when you're eating like that and making yourself
throw up, and and also I didn't feel good. I
felt bad about myself and I wasn't happy, so it
really wasn't worth it. My life struggling with an eating

(01:01:12):
disorder that I kept undercover, I would say was in bondage.
And now that I am free from it and done
the work to heal myself and have a happy relationship
with food, I eat anything I want any time I wanted.
I just don't over eat, and I don't make anything
the enemy. I would say, my life is free now.
I value health and I value feeling good over being

(01:01:32):
skinny and looking good. That is my number one value. Now.
That is what has changed. Letter to my younger self,
Deer Caroline, I'm sorry that you got confused on what
being worthy and beautiful really means. If I could change
one thing, I would really want you to know that
perfection is unattainable, and health and loving your body and

(01:01:55):
feeling active and alive and good about yourself within is
really all that matters. I can clearly see that you
were just looking to matter, and that you just needed
to be validated, and you wanted to be important, and
you thought being perfect was the only way that you
could be special, and that people would think that you
were good enough, and that's just a big fat lie.

(01:02:16):
My younger self would be super proud that I took
the lessons and the trials that I attempted when I
was younger, and I learned from them. I kept growing,
and now I've turned into a woman who has depth,
who has understanding of my worth, who loves my little
child who was just trying to be perfect because she

(01:02:39):
thought that's what would make her special and matter, and
myself now would be very grateful that I have realized
that I mattered just for being who I am, and
for acknowledging that I'm a child of God, and then
I'm important just for showing up and living my life
to the fullest as the person I was created to be.
I love my little self. You tried so hard. I
love you. My story is a story about seeking acceptance, belonging,

(01:03:03):
and ultimately worth, And for so long I saw those
things outside of myself, specifically trying to control and quote
unquote perfect how I looked. Around puberty, when my body
started changing and growing up really, that's when the critical
self talk started. I wanted my legs thinner, nose, straighter,
skin tanner, and these things became my ultimate priority and

(01:03:26):
dictator of how happy I was each day. If I
felt like I looked good, I had a great day.
If I didn't like what I perceived in the mirror,
my mood and day was ruined. I wouldn't define my
behaviors of working out and eating as a traditional eating disorder,
but I know they were not healthy for me. I
did not have a healthy relationship with food, exercise, or myself. Really,

(01:03:47):
what I would eat and when I would work out
were constant, obsessive thoughts. I had a strict meal plan
and workout schedule set by each Sunday night, which I
learned from following never ending online fitness and bikini challenges.
And if something came up in my day that changed
my and I would feel a huge stress and immediately
try to figure out a plan B to make sure
I got my workout in or how to wave canceling
out the unhealthy foods I would be eating at whatever

(01:04:09):
event came up. I was on a hamster wheel, completely
controlling what I did with my time, my mood and
my ability to connect with people around me, and I
was completely blind to how misaligned this was from what
my heart really wanted to live, a rich life full
of moments, connecting with my friends, my family, feeling accepted, loved,
and alive. Without being aware of it, the center of

(01:04:30):
my life had become fixated on how I looked. It
drove almost all of my decisions, It dictated my happiness,
and it really wasn't until an unexpected surgery last year
that forced me to slow down and stop the hamster
wheel of over exercising and those never ending bikini challenge
food plans. That's when I realized what my life had become,
and it wasn't what I wanted for myself at all.

(01:04:52):
I'm still very much figuring out how to combat the
negative thoughts when they come in, but the time I
spent healing from surgery gifted me such a strong band
us of what I really want out of life and
that my attempt to control my out our appearance was
never really about food or to be fit or healthy,
but a need for love and feeling valuable. And I
know now the only way to get that is by
giving it to myself with zero conditions. If I could

(01:05:14):
tell my younger self one thing, it would be that
all the love, acceptance, and worth you seek can only
be fulfilled by you giving that to yourself, and that
this is your one life. There's no place to get to,
nobody to attain or achievement to make where it's all
going to feel all right, this is it. You're living
it right now and you're not gonna want to waste it. Okay.

(01:05:37):
So another thing before we close out this series, it's
hard to believe we're here at the end of episode four,
but as we want to make sure it's clear on
you ending the Black and White Food Rules, which is
it's hard, but you can do it. And Lisa has
had to course that. I'm not sure if it will

(01:05:59):
be out by the time the airs yet, but regardless,
you're going to get early access to it for free
just by listening, because you're here to do the work
and I want to help you do the work. So
it's called Fork the Food Rules, and it's going to
help you assess what your food rules are. So like
I was encouraging Abby to do personally, is to get
to know what foods she views as bad or which
foods are scari or which foods caused guilt. I'm going

(01:06:21):
to provide you with the same opportunity to get to
know yours and a plan of action to start to
neutralize them so that food just becomes food. So you
can go to fork the Noise dot com forward slash
food Rules and you will have access to that little course.
Thank you for offering that to our outweigh people. Yeah,
outweigh Yeah, shout out hashtag outweigh. This has been a

(01:06:44):
lot of fun making this for you guys, and my
daughter recently designed a shirt that says empowered women, Empower women.
Lisa's actually wearing the cropped hoodie right now. We have
three versions of it. I just can't help but think
of that when we do us and I know that
there might be men listening, So you know, we just
don't have this in a min shirt, but I'm sure

(01:07:04):
we could make one empowered men, empower men. This is
not to leave you out, but I just know that
a majority of girls, and a lot of our experts
and all of our stories were from females. And just
know that Lisa is someone that empowers me, and I'm
thankful that she came on to help empower all of you.

(01:07:26):
And I hope that you feel empowered after listening to
this series and know that there is freedom I mean,
and I am empowered by you, Amy, because you see
a problem and you step into solve it. I don't
know about solve it, but thank you for make change
in the world. I picked this phone and I called
you about this and I didn't know where it was

(01:07:47):
going to go that December day, but here we are now,
and so thank you for coming alongside, Thank you for
me for this. Who are listeners. I could not do
it without you and listeners. You're who were doing it
for So thank you for listening. And if you happen
to want and an Empowered Women shirt or pull over

(01:08:07):
v neck or they've got we even have kid ones,
you can go to the shop forward dot com. Forward
slash Women and proceeds are going to help single women
with children that were affected by the tornadoes in Nashville
and coronavirus most recently, just being able to support them
and empower them until they can get back on their feet.

(01:08:29):
And we're working through Home Street Home for that which
they're an amazing organization based out of Nashville. So just
know that maybe you even grab one to wear and
then where that is a reminder that you are a
strong woman and you can accomplish anything you put your
mind to and surround yourself with good people that help
you do that. Right, you are more than what you weigh,

(01:08:52):
Yes you, Yes, You're so much more than what you weigh.
I think that's an important That's what outweigh is about.
That is what outweighs about. So thank you Lisa, Thank
you everybody for listening. Don't forget about the special food rules.
That's the Noise dot Com Forward slush food rules. And
I'm at Radio Amy and I'm at the Well Necessities,

(01:09:13):
so we hope to connect with you on Instagram and
thank you for listening. Okay, now it is time for
the additional ending. Uh. If you've listened to the other
the episodes, you know I've been coming on after the
ending that Lisa and I did to say goodbye one
last time, but with something coronavirus related. Since things have

(01:09:33):
really picked up since Lisa and I recorded, I just
want to leave you with them some encouragement given the
times that we're in right now. So I decided to
pull something up from Brenna's account, which she was one
of our experts that came on her instagram is at
the Wellful. Hopefully a lot of you are following her
by now if you heard that episode, but maybe some
of you episode four is your first episode that you

(01:09:55):
decided to listen to for outweigh. I highly encourage you
to go back and listen to episodes one, two, and three,
so that way you'll get the complete series and you
can hear the different stories that were shared and the
different experts that we're on. And we would so appreciate
your feedback and you can send us d M. S.

(01:10:15):
Lisa is at the well Necessities. I'm at Radio Amy.
My email for this podcast is four Things with Amy
Brown at gmail dot com. So I'd love to hear
from you if you'll have any feedback, we'll we'll be
discussing if we're going to do another series again. Uh
like season two of this, I think that it's been
received well, but we just want to make sure if

(01:10:36):
we do another round of this, that we do it right.
So we want to hear from you all. Okay, here
is what I pulled from the well Fall Instagram Brenna's
which I thought was some good encouragement and reminders for
the current situation that we're in control around food and
our bodies can be really appealing, especially right now when
so many things are out of our control. Coupled with

(01:10:59):
the strong culture message we've all received that dieting, restricting
losing weight means that things are better and more in control.
Think about how often you see that narrative movie characters
that are struggling and then they lose weight and suddenly
they get promoted or fall in love, or magazines circling
an actress's stomach and saying they've let themselves go go

(01:11:24):
where asked Brenna, Or the constant talk of needing to
get back on track with diets that made that track
really hard to stay on in the first place. It
makes sense that dieting can be coming up more right
now since we link diets with control and like controlling
the chaos, which is what we're in. But a lot

(01:11:44):
of the time that attempt for control comes with other
things like increased food body thoughts, distraction from the present,
which can feel like a positive distraction, and a distraction
that keeps you from experiencing and being here now can
also lead to increased anxiety, not actually giving that control.
Diet culture promises, etcetera. So we're trying to control it

(01:12:08):
maybe with the diet type stuff, but really you're not
going to be able to control it because diets do
that to us, they mess us up. So I just
thought that that was a great post that she put
up and perfect for the time. Hopefully somebody maybe needed
to hear that in the moment. I know for me,
I've been looking for other ways to feel in control

(01:12:31):
while things are totally out of control, and I am
thankful that I haven't leaned into old habits with food again.
The reason why I wanted to do this series is
I have such freedom in that I have more time
to focus on other things. I was even talking to
my therapist about this. If I were to be obsessing
with food, I wouldn't have time to get a lot

(01:12:53):
of stuff done that I need to get done. And
I feel so much more accomplished. My days feel pretty
good right now. I was at a place for a
long time where my days ruled me. I didn't rule
my days, and I feel like I'm going to emerge
from this whole coronavirus situation a more structured person, which
I think is going to be my positive that came
out of this because I needed that. And it's like

(01:13:16):
pressing pause and giving myself that right now because it
takes a minute to get in the groove. But because
we're stuck at home, we're nowhere to go. I'm given
all the time in the world to get in the
groove of this schedule thing because I've resisted a schedule
for a very, very very long time. But I've realized
I've come at a point in my life where I
do need that, and I feel so much better and

(01:13:37):
now and I've had the time at home to adjust
to figure out how do we do this? How do
I learn how to be a person with a schedule
and I don't have events interrupting me or random curveballs
throwing my way in my day because I'm at the
office and something comes up. So that's been a blessing.
And I was telling my therapist that if I was

(01:13:59):
asessed with food right now, or tracking my food or
worried about my food or kind of like I don't
even know where in my day I would put that,
I just don't have time for that. And it just
feels so nice, like I love just being able to breathe. Which,
speaking of breathing, I'll leave you all with that too.
If you've had any moments where you need to just
stop and breathe, I highly recommend a breathing exercise that

(01:14:22):
we're doing at my house. And I've talked about this
on the podcast a ton, But maybe you're just an
OUTWEG listener and you don't know me at all. But
my son's doing it. And I actually got this one
out of a book that we're reading for him just
because we adopted and he's got some trauma and there's
just different ways that you need to approach things, and
in this book it talked about the breathing, which is

(01:14:44):
just like the breathing that one of my best friends
Mary is doing for her t MJ. So it really
can be helpful for a lot of different things. But
you breathe in for four, you hold for seven, and
then out for eight, So it's the four seven Nate
breathing for four, hold for seven, out for eight, and
do that like five times and you will feel better,

(01:15:07):
at least I do. So there's a little tip for
you all. Okay, uh, I kind of been rambling on
because I can't believe that this is the end end
of this series Outweigh the first four episodes, so again,
don't really know where we're going to go from here,
but we would love to hear from you all, and
we appreciate each of you that has joined us on
this little journey as we try to figure out how

(01:15:29):
to break the stigma of people feeling shame with their
disordered eating or their eating disorder, because there's no shame
and you are not alone, and there is this gray
area and there's parts that people don't talk about, and
we want to open that up. I want you to
feel safe and I want you feel free. That's really

(01:15:49):
just the gist of it. So thank you. If you
want to keep listening to my podcast, I'll see you.
I guess it's Saturday. Coming up Tuesday, I have a
Q and A episode that I will load up, and
then next Thursday, on the four Things episode, I'm going
to have Lisa on to recap the Outweigh series, so
make sure you download that episode as well. We'll go

(01:16:10):
through kind of our thoughts and feelings now that outweighs
out there and our stories and everybody's stories. Okay, talk
to you later by

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 4 of OUTWEIGH: A Series Exposing the ‘Grey Area’ of Disordered Eating