August 25, 2020 • 24 mins
This is Amy’s ‘5th Thing’ (a bonus episode) where she answers your questions every Tuesday! ‘4 Things With Amy Brown’ comes out every Thursday, but on Tuesdays Amy answers questions you’ve emailed in. On today’s episode Amy has Lisa from @thewellnecessities for an OUTWEIGH q&a about disordered eating and body image. Together they address: the difference between eating disorders and disordered eating, how to maintain physical fitness without obsessing over food, advice for standing up to diet culture and how to cope with clothes no longer fitting. OUTWEIGH is a series they released back in April - it's 4 parts and you can find it in the '4 Things WIth Amy Brown' feed. *A life without disordered eating OUTWEIGHS everything.*
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Happy Tuesday. Everybody got a special little fifth Thing episode
for you. I've got Lisa on who I did Outweigh
with the series that we did on disordered eating. She
is at the Well Necessities on Instagram. A lot of
you are following her, but if you're not, you definitely
should be. I brought her on to answer some questions
(00:25):
with me that y'all have sent in about Outweigh. If
you haven't listened to that series, it's something we put up.
It lives under the Four Things with Amy Brown podcast.
It came out in April, so you can actually go
to wherever you listen to podcasts and type in Outweigh
and the series will come up so you can listen
to it. And I know we typically start Tuesday episodes
off with a quote, and I thought, well, I'm just
(00:47):
going to quote Outweigh and why we called it out Wigh,
because honestly, that's still a question that we get because
maybe people missed it when we were talking about it.
It's a four part series, but a life without disordered
eating outweighs everything, and so that's our quote. That's why
we did Outweigh, That's what we called it out way,
and we have season two coming up later this year,
(01:08):
which we're excited about. But in the meantime we may
do a couple of different Q and a's leading up
to that, and I'm going to read the questions and
then Lisa's the expert. She has a whole program or
what do you even call Lisa? Do you call it
a program for the noise? Yeah, Forces the Noise is
more than a program, but Porcesnoise Fundamentals is a online
(01:28):
program using modern mindful eating to listen on or and
trust your body. So it is primarily for disordered eating,
not necessarily eating disorders and share your degrees and what
you've studied. And so I'm a registered dietician and a
wellness blogger. I guess I mean Instagram kind of became
the vehicle that I have the privilege to share my
(01:50):
life with so many and I think what I like
to do with it's kind of most is show how
mindfulness in general just kind of bleeds into all aspects
of our lives. And it's just basically about being awake
after kind of being asleep. And one of the ways
that we're often times asleep is being entrenched in diet
culture and living the lie that you know, there's only
(02:11):
one way to be healthy, and it only looks one
way in terms of your body and your diet, and
so yeah, that's that's kind of what I do. Well.
Lisa's tools and the way she speaks in her knowledge
and her wisdom has been a huge part of my recovery.
So I'm honored to have her as a podcast partner
(02:32):
in Outweigh and also now honored to call her friend. So, yeah,
she's on as the expert, but I feel like we
both can speak from our own personal experiences as well.
So I put up on Instagram, Hey, Sin, it's your
your questions for Outweigh, And we got a lot of
different ones, but these are ones where we saw them
popping up multiple times so and we felt like they
(02:54):
would be good to address. So, Lisa, why do we
use eating disorder and disordered eating when we're talking like
what's the difference? And you know, because we say the
outweigh is the gray area of disordered eating, but sometimes
I know we say eating disorders. So let's just clarify
some of that. So the podcast ended up being as
(03:15):
you've listened to it, The series ended up being eating
disorders like anorexia and bulimia, but we also talked about
what we call the gray area of eating disorders. So
for me personally, I never had or fit the criteria
for a clinical eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, and
so in the absence of that diagnosis or you know,
(03:36):
very clearly not being those I thought that I had
a healthy relationship to food. What I had was kind
of probably most similar to orthorexia, which is where you're
fixated on eating healthy or clean and you think that
you know, if you're eating healthy, that's not problematic. So
I personally, you know, even though Amy you talk a
lot on the podcast about binging and purging in your past,
(03:59):
which probably we falls more under eating disorder, my history
is more disordered eating, and it's a much more new
terminology that people are less familiar with, especially as information
to help and diet has become more accessible. It's very
easy to start a health quest eating right and exercising,
moving your body, and then it kind of gets warped
(04:20):
into something that's a bit more disordered of obsessive and
so forth. So helping people recognize that eating disorders are
not just anorexia or bulimia even though those are bill
just as real and important to address, was super important
to I think both of us. Amy huge not to
talk on your behalf, but you know, the behaviors more
recently that that you've participated in, I think we're kind
(04:42):
of that gray area and helping you kind of figure out, Okay, well,
what does a healthy relationship to food really look like?
Has been kind of your more recent journey of how
you found me? Yes, and you know, I still I
was still in a binge and purge cycle, but yeah,
I'm more so when I found you, I was in
recovery of that, but definitely still in diet culture, still
(05:04):
in orthorexia type behavior, consumed with body image, the wrong
things working out. Kind of would freak out if I
ate things that I deemed bad. You know, I still
was defining foods as good and bad, and you know
I did that years ago. So I was bliemic in
high school and then in college kind of set that aside,
(05:27):
but adopted other unhealthy behaviors that again didn't really have
a category. And nobody really saw having to go to
the gym every single day forever as like an unhealthy thing,
and I mean forever, but I mean like hours, and
then sitting in the sauna for like thirty minutes with
saran wrap on my stomach and you know, not normal stuff,
(05:50):
but again not something that I need to go to
the doctor about. And then that morphed into just eating
particular ways, probably for like ten years, bringing my own
food to parties, not eating stuff that my family had
cooked because I didn't know the ingredients. Stuff like that
falls under the disordered eating category. And I had no
idea that that was even a thing, and that I
(06:10):
was making people around me pretty miserable because they honestly
didn't even know how to handle it, because yeah, it
wasn't really a thing that was talked about. And now
that I'm vocal about it, my friends and family are
coming forward and sharing with me how it affected them,
and it's really been eye opening. I couldn't agree more.
And I checked so many of those similar boxes from
exercise addiction and and the thing that kind of happens is,
(06:33):
you know, as your family and friends now you you're
opening their eyes talking about what was you know, they
are also the same people, at least in my world,
that were applauding me for the discipline for the eating
clean and healthy, and we're coming to me for that
type of advice. So it's cool to kind of be
the trailblazer in your very small community to help people
really shift into seeing things more clearly after both of
(06:57):
us kind of drowning in diet culture and having our
work attached to our size or the way we love. Yeah,
but this part of the conversation makes it easy to
transition to the next question, which is how to maintain
physical fitness without obsessing over food. There was a couple
of different questions asking how to do that, so that's
a really great question. We actually had a trainer named
(07:18):
Caitlin Denay on episode three of Outweighs, So if you
go back to April and you listen to that episode,
we specifically sought out Caitlin because she is a trainer
with a history of a needing disorder who helps people
move their bodies from a place of love versus hate.
And I feel like that kind of very quickly but
accurately sums up what all of this movement is about.
(07:41):
So very oftentimes people who don't understand why it's okay
to move away from diet culture. They think that when
when we're saying you know, don't diet that we're saying
we don't have to take good care of our bodies,
when in reality, it's about shifting the focus into how
to actually honor and take good care of your body
versus hate it and treat it with punitive, punishing behaviors.
(08:04):
And you know, when you are moving your body from
the place of love, the food part also starts to
come from a place of love because you want to
nourish versus restrict and scale back, and you want to
move your body for reasons outside of just modifying your body,
and they kind of begin to go hand in hand. Amy,
have you had any kind of like ship in your
(08:24):
relationship to fitness in the last few months or years
and how kind of relates to food that part. I
have had to put in the work on. And I
will say with all of this, it's not just listening, doubt,
weigh or following Lisa on Instagram. I mean, there's tons
of other things that go into it. And Lisa and
I certainly don't want to give off the perception. And
I know if you follow Lisa's for the noise, you'll
(08:45):
know it's it's not easy. You have to really put
in the work and want better for yourself. And I
feel like for me, mind's gone in stages and the
body and working out was kind of my final piece
to the puzzle, which yes, I have seen a shift
in how it's something about my Let me try to
(09:05):
think how to put this. Like my body, I'm not
as fixated on it feeling a certain way and looking
a certain way because my perspective has shifted. My actually
my priorities have shifted. So when you free yourself from that,
you open yourself up to swimming with your kids, are
(09:26):
putting on a swimsuit, no matter how you feel like.
There would be times where I just wouldn't want to
go do something because of the way I thought in
my head, I looked because I didn't work out, And
I think so much of that is like diet culture
entrenched in our brain. And one of the things that
I do with my clients and we talked about on
a way is taking time to clarify your values. And
(09:48):
it sounds like Amy you did that like somewhere along
the way, whether it was like literally taking time to
do it or not, you know, you took a look
at your priorities versus what you were doing in reality,
and when we start to like dismantle the idea that
like there's one way to look in a swim suit,
you know, when we go to swim with our kids
and we put on a swimsuit, maybe we don't feel fantastic.
(10:09):
We're able to be like, well, this is my body,
and what I care more about is going swimming with
my kids, and we can transition out of that. Does
that feel accurate to you? Yeah? And it used to
be where I would do mirror checks or body checks
to be like, Okay, how how do I look in
this right now? And now I'll catch myself walking by
a mirror and and yes, I will look at myself
(10:31):
maybe in my swimsuit. The other day this happened and
I thought, oh man, I'm a little I feel like
I've got a little more going on right here today.
And it didn't even I just kept walking like I
noticed it, and I was like, Wow, that did not
bother me. It didn't send me into a oh I
better not eat dinner, or I better juice tomorrow all
day or any sort of punishment. It was honoring and
(10:54):
loving my body the way it looked in that moment,
and knowing that, Yeah, I enjoyed a great weekend with
my kids, having ice cream, swimming, hanging out, and that
is what I want my focus to be on because
in the past I would have missed out on a
lot of that. And I've only been a mom for
two and a half years. And so for my kids
(11:14):
who came here from Haiti and they're older, I don't
have young young kids. I mean, my daughter's thirteen and
my son is tin so they remember what it was
like when they first moved here, and I was not
the way that I am. So it's almost still a
thing when I have ice cream or I eat pizza
or do whatever with them, which now I'm trying to
make like in my brain not a big deal. It's
(11:37):
I don't want to draw attention to it, it's no
big deal, But to them it's still a big deal
because I was so not like that before. So for
me now when they do notice it, it's like a
little part in me smiles because I love that I'm
not wasting any more time worried about the wrong things,
and also like setting the right example. I feel like,
(11:58):
and I don't have kids, and you know, I think
it's I get a lot of questions on how to
raise healthy eaters. And you know, obviously I can kind
of speak without experience, so I never want to pretend
like I get it, but you know I could witness it.
I witness it around me, Like, you know, is it
why is? Why does mom eat special food? You know?
So we plant the seed very early in children's minds
about food, and the more they just see like a
(12:19):
regular consumption of food and healthy relationship to it, that's
kind of the best thing we can do. You know,
if you were actually not allowing yourself to have pizza,
they do binge on pizza, right, and then they'd see, Okay,
that's a bad food, and then they see mom diet after.
But instead they're they're seeing what a healthy relationship to
food looks like, which is, eat pizza, move on with
(12:40):
your life, not make a big deal out of it. Right.
I have noticed that they already had almost the eating
habits I wish that I had, and they kind of
came with those from Haiti. Whenever they're hungry, they eat.
If they want to eat an avocado and salad, they
eat an avocado and salad and maybe some carrots. If
they want pizza, they eat pizza they finished with their fool.
(13:00):
Luckily I didn't have them earlier to instill any of
the stuff in them, but they definitely saw a difference
in me because I know how things that I picked
up from my mom, and I don't think that any
parents or any of us mean any harm. We're just
sometimes even passing it along to them without even knowing it.
(13:21):
And I just want to like end that that note
on a like super positive one, which is just like
it's never too late to start improving your own relationship
to food which will benefit your children. Um, just so
nobody feels any sort of shame for anything they've said
or done in the past to their children. Just to
know the most important thing you can do moving forward
is work to you know, create a healthy relationship to
(13:42):
food type home, which starts with you absolutely thank you
for that. How do you stand up to diet culture?
So this is such a good question, and it's such
a big question, and I'm gonna leave it with a very,
in my opinion, kind of simple response. And I think
it starts with yourself. I think it starts at the
individual and kind of bleeds on to other people. What
(14:03):
I have witnessed is too often people try and change
the world before they've actually fully uprooted and dismantled their
own belief and that can cause kind of like burnout
and frustration going out into the world to try and
fight a fight you kind of haven't fully understood yet.
So the best thing you can do, and I kind
of feel like this comes down to really anything, is
(14:24):
invest in yourself. Give yourself time to process, un learn,
live a life free of diet culture, and begin to
have the small conversations in your local community first. And
that's that's kind of what I would say to anybody who's,
of course not a registered dietitian or some sort of
a health professional, that they have to be a lot
more proactive than their local community. Yeah, this may be
(14:45):
something we touch on more in season two. A love
that idea, so stay tuned for more on that. Leslie.
Let's just talk about how to cope with clothes not
fitting after maybe you let go of dieting and maybe
(15:09):
your body changes a little bit. Two things I just
want to lead with is Number one, that you know,
Amy and I have what the world or America considers
a thin, privileged body. So I don't want to pretend
to get that frustration when you come to my page
and see what my natural frame is. Obviously you know
what Amy looks like, and we are finn By. You
(15:29):
know all all means here. So I don't want to
pretend that I understand that on a big level, but
I have experienced close not fitting and body changing in
in my own experience and works with clients through this.
And the thing that I also just want to say
very quickly is it's really tough to deal with that
type of physical change, especially when you're doing the inner work.
(15:49):
And the most important thing I think that we can
do here is noticed your reaction and the negative voice
that surrounds this. Using mindfulness to get curious. It's about
what's coming up for you. Why does this scare you?
Rather than just immediately react to it as we oftentimes do. Okay,
I'll go back on a diet. This food freedom thing
doesn't work. Look at I'm gaining weight. I knew that
(16:12):
this would backfire, and go back to your diet. Instead,
I want you to take a breath. A breath goes
very far, and connect with your breath and connect with
your body, even possibly using I believe in like our
own feeling power, putting your hands on the place that's
getting bigger, whether it's your legs or your arms, or
your belly or somewhere else, and actually sending your own
love inwards and getting curious about why is this so
(16:35):
challenging for you? What fears are this bringing up? And
see if you could really get to the bottom of
that plate with curiosity and safety, knowing that you're kind
of holding yourself. I know that that feels like a
really big ask, but if you're willing to do it,
I would love to hear what comes up for you,
even if it's tears, which likely will come up for you.
Other things that we can kind of do to feel
more comfortable with bodies changing in general, getting bigger, smaller.
(16:59):
Flock tuating is to follow all body sizes on Instagram.
The more I expanded outside of what I thought was
health and wellness, the more comfortable I became with my
own body because I was no longer comparing myself to
what's called the thin ideal. And I think it's just
important to know that your body is going to change.
(17:21):
It would be strange if it didn't. From being thirteen
to nineteen to twenty five, twenty nine to thirty to
thirty five to forty five. It would be very silly
to think that our bodies don't fluctuate. Again, that might
being up down, change muscle mass, change whatever. And that's
part of being a human, that is going through a
(17:41):
life cycle. And sometimes growth is actually symbolized by growth
sometimes taking up space in your life. That symbolized by
taking up more physical space. From the last piece of information,
I just want to give here before Amy, I want
to hear how you deal with this is attaching your
worth to your values, like how Amy talked about going
swimming with Stevenson and Sashira, Like when you when you're
(18:03):
worth is not few. So the way you look when
you know that you bring something to society or your
home or whatever. If you know that you're just you
have value in this world outside of how you look,
changes in your body won't cause such a big trigger
to yourself because you've broken down the stigma that there's
only one body size that can be loved or worthy
or welcome in society. Absolutely, I think that depending on
(18:27):
how long you've been dieting or trying to manipulate your body,
it may take again you putting in the work. And again,
Lisa has amazing tools if you follow her to so
does everybody on the podcast that we had. You are
experts from diet visions to therapists. So there are so
many people that could do this, Yes, so many people.
(18:48):
But Lisa, it's okay. I can pump you up because
you're You're my OUTWAGH partner and I believe in you
and everything that you put out there to help people.
So I read somewhere on Instagram somebody posted thing and
it was like, your ideal size is the one in
which you can go to brunch with your girlfriends and
order whatever in it, not take anything away from your
(19:11):
girl time, from your day, nothing, like you can move
on with life. And the minute I got there, I
think maybe Jennifer Rollin posted that, which she was a
guess that we had on the podcast. And the minute
I got to where I want to be the size
where I can live my best life with my girlfriends,
my family, like doing whatever. If I'm constantly trying to
(19:32):
fit into whatever size genes that I'm fixated on because
I refuse to go up a size, then that's not
me living. So for me, it was like coming to
peace with the fact if I need to buy a
bigger size, it's no big deal, Like, just go up
a size and then I can put on my jeans
every day and go to brunch and feel great. Or
I'm using bread as an example, like you can insert
(19:54):
X y Z for whatever that looks like for you,
but you can put on your clothes and face the
day and feel confid it because you're not stressing yourself
out every time you go to the closet, but you're
not deciding to be comfortable with your natural body. And
what we have to do too, which this goes back
to the diet culture at least, and I'm glad you
said bringing up following a variety and a diverse amount
(20:17):
of Instagram accounts or wherever you spend your time online.
I think when you when you see that and you
don't want to give in too. There's diet culture and
then there's body culture or whatever you want to call it.
I don't know, but we need to normalize bodies for
whatever reason we think that we're supposed to. And maybe
I'm just speaking for me, but for so long I thought, Okay,
(20:38):
this is the desired figure and this is what women
are supposed to look like and this is the goal
and this is what I have to do, and it's
just so not true, and it's just so sad that
we've been fed that lie, or that I was fed
that life for so long, because bodies are so different,
and also online can be super deceiving. So when you
(20:59):
start fall allowing accounts that are being honest and real
and have very normal bodies just like you, then it
could kind of help you take a deep breath at
the end of the day and be like okay, like
I can do this, and then and then again you
put in the work and then eventually you get there.
And that's for me where I am. And again Lisa
put at the beginning of the whole thin privilege. Every
(21:22):
everything is relative to whatever you think, whatever your body
is versus whatever you think you should look like, because
I mean, I would see Lisa and this is just
me being super vulnerable and honest, like Lisa is smaller
than me, and I would maybe see Lisa back in
my before I was healthy days and then like, there's
no way she has an issue with food. Look at
(21:42):
her body. She was just born that way. She must
be naturally like that, Like how why in the world
would she ever have an issue with food? Why? Like,
it doesn't make sense to me. And I know for
a fact, because I've gotten emails and d m s
and notes from you listeners who are like, how can
Amy even understand what I'm talking about? She was just
born that way, she doesn't or she's that thin, she
doesn't get it. But it affects all shapes and sizes,
(22:06):
every sexuality, every race, Eating disorders, body image, disordered eating
affects anyone and everyone. So it's not like it's like
one little type of person that has to go through this.
So and I think that's that's just another big misconception.
Bigger bodies kin have eating disorders and disordered eating as well.
So I think, you know, next season about way we'll
(22:27):
have to kind of get into I think all of
that and thin privilege what that really means, and and
and really hopefully get the next works on or people
that have experienced or don't look like us to kind
of illustrate their human their their experience as a human. Yes,
And I guess well, I just want to end on
that you are not alone. Whatever you're going through, somebody
(22:48):
else out there has gone through it in some way,
shape or form, and I just want everybody to know that,
and you can send us your emails. That's why, in
that way we had different people share their stories as
we want to do from real people just like you,
and we'll continue to do that in the second series.
And then also another note I want to leave you
on is in the fourth episode of the series, we
(23:11):
had Dr Joshua on and I think he was the
one we were talking about anxiety with. It may have
come up with a couple of the guests, but what
really stuck with me was the stress and anxiety that
sometimes we cause ourselves over food and exercise. Is worse
than you know, eating the actual said food that stressed
(23:31):
you out so um like the chemicals released in your body.
So just think about that and the brain space you
take up. Like I just I want y'all to be
free from a lot of that. So thank you for
sending in your questions, thank you Lisa for helping me
answer them, thank you all for listening to me ramble
a little bit. But I'm just like sharing with you
(23:53):
all from the I think it's actually not a ramble
at all. And people who have followed you even from
I think out Way and now ken hear the growth
that you've had surrounding this topic. I'm noticing it in particular,
you know, kind of where you were and where you
are now. And I think that that's why we did
out wigh and and that's why I was positioned as
the expert, even though I've been there, and we wanted
(24:15):
you to be as candid as on your journey because
we've heard enough from you know, Oh it used to
be like this, like you sharing your story in real
time is what I think makes that way also really special. Well,
thank you Lisa for being my partner, and everybody check
her out on Instagram at the Well Necessities. And then
if you're not following me, I am at Radio Amy
(24:37):
and we'll be back with another Q and A at
some point, and then we will share details with you'all
soon about maybe some sort of a timeline for season
two of That Way
Happy Tuesday. Everybody got a special little fifth Thing episode
for you. I've got Lisa on who I did Outweigh
with the series that we did on disordered eating. She
is at the Well Necessities on Instagram. A lot of
you are following her, but if you're not, you definitely
should be. I brought her on to answer some questions
(00:25):
with me that y'all have sent in about Outweigh. If
you haven't listened to that series, it's something we put up.
It lives under the Four Things with Amy Brown podcast.
It came out in April, so you can actually go
to wherever you listen to podcasts and type in Outweigh
and the series will come up so you can listen
to it. And I know we typically start Tuesday episodes
off with a quote, and I thought, well, I'm just
(00:47):
going to quote Outweigh and why we called it out Wigh,
because honestly, that's still a question that we get because
maybe people missed it when we were talking about it.
It's a four part series, but a life without disordered
eating outweighs everything, and so that's our quote. That's why
we did Outweigh, That's what we called it out way,
and we have season two coming up later this year,
(01:08):
which we're excited about. But in the meantime we may
do a couple of different Q and a's leading up
to that, and I'm going to read the questions and
then Lisa's the expert. She has a whole program or
what do you even call Lisa? Do you call it
a program for the noise? Yeah, Forces the Noise is
more than a program, but Porcesnoise Fundamentals is a online
(01:28):
program using modern mindful eating to listen on or and
trust your body. So it is primarily for disordered eating,
not necessarily eating disorders and share your degrees and what
you've studied. And so I'm a registered dietician and a
wellness blogger. I guess I mean Instagram kind of became
the vehicle that I have the privilege to share my
(01:50):
life with so many and I think what I like
to do with it's kind of most is show how
mindfulness in general just kind of bleeds into all aspects
of our lives. And it's just basically about being awake
after kind of being asleep. And one of the ways
that we're often times asleep is being entrenched in diet
culture and living the lie that you know, there's only
(02:11):
one way to be healthy, and it only looks one
way in terms of your body and your diet, and
so yeah, that's that's kind of what I do. Well.
Lisa's tools and the way she speaks in her knowledge
and her wisdom has been a huge part of my recovery.
So I'm honored to have her as a podcast partner
(02:32):
in Outweigh and also now honored to call her friend. So, yeah,
she's on as the expert, but I feel like we
both can speak from our own personal experiences as well.
So I put up on Instagram, Hey, Sin, it's your
your questions for Outweigh, And we got a lot of
different ones, but these are ones where we saw them
popping up multiple times so and we felt like they
(02:54):
would be good to address. So, Lisa, why do we
use eating disorder and disordered eating when we're talking like
what's the difference? And you know, because we say the
outweigh is the gray area of disordered eating, but sometimes
I know we say eating disorders. So let's just clarify
some of that. So the podcast ended up being as
(03:15):
you've listened to it, The series ended up being eating
disorders like anorexia and bulimia, but we also talked about
what we call the gray area of eating disorders. So
for me personally, I never had or fit the criteria
for a clinical eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, and
so in the absence of that diagnosis or you know,
(03:36):
very clearly not being those I thought that I had
a healthy relationship to food. What I had was kind
of probably most similar to orthorexia, which is where you're
fixated on eating healthy or clean and you think that
you know, if you're eating healthy, that's not problematic. So
I personally, you know, even though Amy you talk a
lot on the podcast about binging and purging in your past,
(03:59):
which probably we falls more under eating disorder, my history
is more disordered eating, and it's a much more new
terminology that people are less familiar with, especially as information
to help and diet has become more accessible. It's very
easy to start a health quest eating right and exercising,
moving your body, and then it kind of gets warped
(04:20):
into something that's a bit more disordered of obsessive and
so forth. So helping people recognize that eating disorders are
not just anorexia or bulimia even though those are bill
just as real and important to address, was super important
to I think both of us. Amy huge not to
talk on your behalf, but you know, the behaviors more
recently that that you've participated in, I think we're kind
(04:42):
of that gray area and helping you kind of figure out, Okay, well,
what does a healthy relationship to food really look like?
Has been kind of your more recent journey of how
you found me? Yes, and you know, I still I
was still in a binge and purge cycle, but yeah,
I'm more so when I found you, I was in
recovery of that, but definitely still in diet culture, still
(05:04):
in orthorexia type behavior, consumed with body image, the wrong
things working out. Kind of would freak out if I
ate things that I deemed bad. You know, I still
was defining foods as good and bad, and you know
I did that years ago. So I was bliemic in
high school and then in college kind of set that aside,
(05:27):
but adopted other unhealthy behaviors that again didn't really have
a category. And nobody really saw having to go to
the gym every single day forever as like an unhealthy thing,
and I mean forever, but I mean like hours, and
then sitting in the sauna for like thirty minutes with
saran wrap on my stomach and you know, not normal stuff,
(05:50):
but again not something that I need to go to
the doctor about. And then that morphed into just eating
particular ways, probably for like ten years, bringing my own
food to parties, not eating stuff that my family had
cooked because I didn't know the ingredients. Stuff like that
falls under the disordered eating category. And I had no
idea that that was even a thing, and that I
(06:10):
was making people around me pretty miserable because they honestly
didn't even know how to handle it, because yeah, it
wasn't really a thing that was talked about. And now
that I'm vocal about it, my friends and family are
coming forward and sharing with me how it affected them,
and it's really been eye opening. I couldn't agree more.
And I checked so many of those similar boxes from
exercise addiction and and the thing that kind of happens is,
(06:33):
you know, as your family and friends now you you're
opening their eyes talking about what was you know, they
are also the same people, at least in my world,
that were applauding me for the discipline for the eating
clean and healthy, and we're coming to me for that
type of advice. So it's cool to kind of be
the trailblazer in your very small community to help people
really shift into seeing things more clearly after both of
(06:57):
us kind of drowning in diet culture and having our
work attached to our size or the way we love. Yeah,
but this part of the conversation makes it easy to
transition to the next question, which is how to maintain
physical fitness without obsessing over food. There was a couple
of different questions asking how to do that, so that's
a really great question. We actually had a trainer named
(07:18):
Caitlin Denay on episode three of Outweighs, So if you
go back to April and you listen to that episode,
we specifically sought out Caitlin because she is a trainer
with a history of a needing disorder who helps people
move their bodies from a place of love versus hate.
And I feel like that kind of very quickly but
accurately sums up what all of this movement is about.
(07:41):
So very oftentimes people who don't understand why it's okay
to move away from diet culture. They think that when
when we're saying you know, don't diet that we're saying
we don't have to take good care of our bodies,
when in reality, it's about shifting the focus into how
to actually honor and take good care of your body
versus hate it and treat it with punitive, punishing behaviors.
(08:04):
And you know, when you are moving your body from
the place of love, the food part also starts to
come from a place of love because you want to
nourish versus restrict and scale back, and you want to
move your body for reasons outside of just modifying your body,
and they kind of begin to go hand in hand. Amy,
have you had any kind of like ship in your
(08:24):
relationship to fitness in the last few months or years
and how kind of relates to food that part. I
have had to put in the work on. And I
will say with all of this, it's not just listening, doubt,
weigh or following Lisa on Instagram. I mean, there's tons
of other things that go into it. And Lisa and
I certainly don't want to give off the perception. And
I know if you follow Lisa's for the noise, you'll
(08:45):
know it's it's not easy. You have to really put
in the work and want better for yourself. And I
feel like for me, mind's gone in stages and the
body and working out was kind of my final piece
to the puzzle, which yes, I have seen a shift
in how it's something about my Let me try to
(09:05):
think how to put this. Like my body, I'm not
as fixated on it feeling a certain way and looking
a certain way because my perspective has shifted. My actually
my priorities have shifted. So when you free yourself from that,
you open yourself up to swimming with your kids, are
(09:26):
putting on a swimsuit, no matter how you feel like.
There would be times where I just wouldn't want to
go do something because of the way I thought in
my head, I looked because I didn't work out, And
I think so much of that is like diet culture
entrenched in our brain. And one of the things that
I do with my clients and we talked about on
a way is taking time to clarify your values. And
(09:48):
it sounds like Amy you did that like somewhere along
the way, whether it was like literally taking time to
do it or not, you know, you took a look
at your priorities versus what you were doing in reality,
and when we start to like dismantle the idea that
like there's one way to look in a swim suit,
you know, when we go to swim with our kids
and we put on a swimsuit, maybe we don't feel fantastic.
(10:09):
We're able to be like, well, this is my body,
and what I care more about is going swimming with
my kids, and we can transition out of that. Does
that feel accurate to you? Yeah? And it used to
be where I would do mirror checks or body checks
to be like, Okay, how how do I look in
this right now? And now I'll catch myself walking by
a mirror and and yes, I will look at myself
(10:31):
maybe in my swimsuit. The other day this happened and
I thought, oh man, I'm a little I feel like
I've got a little more going on right here today.
And it didn't even I just kept walking like I
noticed it, and I was like, Wow, that did not
bother me. It didn't send me into a oh I
better not eat dinner, or I better juice tomorrow all
day or any sort of punishment. It was honoring and
(10:54):
loving my body the way it looked in that moment,
and knowing that, Yeah, I enjoyed a great weekend with
my kids, having ice cream, swimming, hanging out, and that
is what I want my focus to be on because
in the past I would have missed out on a
lot of that. And I've only been a mom for
two and a half years. And so for my kids
(11:14):
who came here from Haiti and they're older, I don't
have young young kids. I mean, my daughter's thirteen and
my son is tin so they remember what it was
like when they first moved here, and I was not
the way that I am. So it's almost still a
thing when I have ice cream or I eat pizza
or do whatever with them, which now I'm trying to
make like in my brain not a big deal. It's
(11:37):
I don't want to draw attention to it, it's no
big deal, But to them it's still a big deal
because I was so not like that before. So for
me now when they do notice it, it's like a
little part in me smiles because I love that I'm
not wasting any more time worried about the wrong things,
and also like setting the right example. I feel like,
(11:58):
and I don't have kids, and you know, I think
it's I get a lot of questions on how to
raise healthy eaters. And you know, obviously I can kind
of speak without experience, so I never want to pretend
like I get it, but you know I could witness it.
I witness it around me, Like, you know, is it
why is? Why does mom eat special food? You know?
So we plant the seed very early in children's minds
about food, and the more they just see like a
(12:19):
regular consumption of food and healthy relationship to it, that's
kind of the best thing we can do. You know,
if you were actually not allowing yourself to have pizza,
they do binge on pizza, right, and then they'd see, Okay,
that's a bad food, and then they see mom diet after.
But instead they're they're seeing what a healthy relationship to
food looks like, which is, eat pizza, move on with
(12:40):
your life, not make a big deal out of it. Right.
I have noticed that they already had almost the eating
habits I wish that I had, and they kind of
came with those from Haiti. Whenever they're hungry, they eat.
If they want to eat an avocado and salad, they
eat an avocado and salad and maybe some carrots. If
they want pizza, they eat pizza they finished with their fool.
(13:00):
Luckily I didn't have them earlier to instill any of
the stuff in them, but they definitely saw a difference
in me because I know how things that I picked
up from my mom, and I don't think that any
parents or any of us mean any harm. We're just
sometimes even passing it along to them without even knowing it.
(13:21):
And I just want to like end that that note
on a like super positive one, which is just like
it's never too late to start improving your own relationship
to food which will benefit your children. Um, just so
nobody feels any sort of shame for anything they've said
or done in the past to their children. Just to
know the most important thing you can do moving forward
is work to you know, create a healthy relationship to
(13:42):
food type home, which starts with you absolutely thank you
for that. How do you stand up to diet culture?
So this is such a good question, and it's such
a big question, and I'm gonna leave it with a very,
in my opinion, kind of simple response. And I think
it starts with yourself. I think it starts at the
individual and kind of bleeds on to other people. What
(14:03):
I have witnessed is too often people try and change
the world before they've actually fully uprooted and dismantled their
own belief and that can cause kind of like burnout
and frustration going out into the world to try and
fight a fight you kind of haven't fully understood yet.
So the best thing you can do, and I kind
of feel like this comes down to really anything, is
(14:24):
invest in yourself. Give yourself time to process, un learn,
live a life free of diet culture, and begin to
have the small conversations in your local community first. And
that's that's kind of what I would say to anybody who's,
of course not a registered dietitian or some sort of
a health professional, that they have to be a lot
more proactive than their local community. Yeah, this may be
(14:45):
something we touch on more in season two. A love
that idea, so stay tuned for more on that. Leslie.
Let's just talk about how to cope with clothes not
fitting after maybe you let go of dieting and maybe
(15:09):
your body changes a little bit. Two things I just
want to lead with is Number one, that you know,
Amy and I have what the world or America considers
a thin, privileged body. So I don't want to pretend
to get that frustration when you come to my page
and see what my natural frame is. Obviously you know
what Amy looks like, and we are finn By. You
(15:29):
know all all means here. So I don't want to
pretend that I understand that on a big level, but
I have experienced close not fitting and body changing in
in my own experience and works with clients through this.
And the thing that I also just want to say
very quickly is it's really tough to deal with that
type of physical change, especially when you're doing the inner work.
(15:49):
And the most important thing I think that we can
do here is noticed your reaction and the negative voice
that surrounds this. Using mindfulness to get curious. It's about
what's coming up for you. Why does this scare you?
Rather than just immediately react to it as we oftentimes do. Okay,
I'll go back on a diet. This food freedom thing
doesn't work. Look at I'm gaining weight. I knew that
(16:12):
this would backfire, and go back to your diet. Instead,
I want you to take a breath. A breath goes
very far, and connect with your breath and connect with
your body, even possibly using I believe in like our
own feeling power, putting your hands on the place that's
getting bigger, whether it's your legs or your arms, or
your belly or somewhere else, and actually sending your own
love inwards and getting curious about why is this so
(16:35):
challenging for you? What fears are this bringing up? And
see if you could really get to the bottom of
that plate with curiosity and safety, knowing that you're kind
of holding yourself. I know that that feels like a
really big ask, but if you're willing to do it,
I would love to hear what comes up for you,
even if it's tears, which likely will come up for you.
Other things that we can kind of do to feel
more comfortable with bodies changing in general, getting bigger, smaller.
(16:59):
Flock tuating is to follow all body sizes on Instagram.
The more I expanded outside of what I thought was
health and wellness, the more comfortable I became with my
own body because I was no longer comparing myself to
what's called the thin ideal. And I think it's just
important to know that your body is going to change.
(17:21):
It would be strange if it didn't. From being thirteen
to nineteen to twenty five, twenty nine to thirty to
thirty five to forty five. It would be very silly
to think that our bodies don't fluctuate. Again, that might
being up down, change muscle mass, change whatever. And that's
part of being a human, that is going through a
(17:41):
life cycle. And sometimes growth is actually symbolized by growth
sometimes taking up space in your life. That symbolized by
taking up more physical space. From the last piece of information,
I just want to give here before Amy, I want
to hear how you deal with this is attaching your
worth to your values, like how Amy talked about going
swimming with Stevenson and Sashira, Like when you when you're
(18:03):
worth is not few. So the way you look when
you know that you bring something to society or your
home or whatever. If you know that you're just you
have value in this world outside of how you look,
changes in your body won't cause such a big trigger
to yourself because you've broken down the stigma that there's
only one body size that can be loved or worthy
or welcome in society. Absolutely, I think that depending on
(18:27):
how long you've been dieting or trying to manipulate your body,
it may take again you putting in the work. And again,
Lisa has amazing tools if you follow her to so
does everybody on the podcast that we had. You are
experts from diet visions to therapists. So there are so
many people that could do this, Yes, so many people.
(18:48):
But Lisa, it's okay. I can pump you up because
you're You're my OUTWAGH partner and I believe in you
and everything that you put out there to help people.
So I read somewhere on Instagram somebody posted thing and
it was like, your ideal size is the one in
which you can go to brunch with your girlfriends and
order whatever in it, not take anything away from your
(19:11):
girl time, from your day, nothing, like you can move
on with life. And the minute I got there, I
think maybe Jennifer Rollin posted that, which she was a
guess that we had on the podcast. And the minute
I got to where I want to be the size
where I can live my best life with my girlfriends,
my family, like doing whatever. If I'm constantly trying to
(19:32):
fit into whatever size genes that I'm fixated on because
I refuse to go up a size, then that's not
me living. So for me, it was like coming to
peace with the fact if I need to buy a
bigger size, it's no big deal, Like, just go up
a size and then I can put on my jeans
every day and go to brunch and feel great. Or
I'm using bread as an example, like you can insert
(19:54):
X y Z for whatever that looks like for you,
but you can put on your clothes and face the
day and feel confid it because you're not stressing yourself
out every time you go to the closet, but you're
not deciding to be comfortable with your natural body. And
what we have to do too, which this goes back
to the diet culture at least, and I'm glad you
said bringing up following a variety and a diverse amount
(20:17):
of Instagram accounts or wherever you spend your time online.
I think when you when you see that and you
don't want to give in too. There's diet culture and
then there's body culture or whatever you want to call it.
I don't know, but we need to normalize bodies for
whatever reason we think that we're supposed to. And maybe
I'm just speaking for me, but for so long I thought, Okay,
(20:38):
this is the desired figure and this is what women
are supposed to look like and this is the goal
and this is what I have to do, and it's
just so not true, and it's just so sad that
we've been fed that lie, or that I was fed
that life for so long, because bodies are so different,
and also online can be super deceiving. So when you
(20:59):
start fall allowing accounts that are being honest and real
and have very normal bodies just like you, then it
could kind of help you take a deep breath at
the end of the day and be like okay, like
I can do this, and then and then again you
put in the work and then eventually you get there.
And that's for me where I am. And again Lisa
put at the beginning of the whole thin privilege. Every
(21:22):
everything is relative to whatever you think, whatever your body
is versus whatever you think you should look like, because
I mean, I would see Lisa and this is just
me being super vulnerable and honest, like Lisa is smaller
than me, and I would maybe see Lisa back in
my before I was healthy days and then like, there's
no way she has an issue with food. Look at
(21:42):
her body. She was just born that way. She must
be naturally like that, Like how why in the world
would she ever have an issue with food? Why? Like,
it doesn't make sense to me. And I know for
a fact, because I've gotten emails and d m s
and notes from you listeners who are like, how can
Amy even understand what I'm talking about? She was just
born that way, she doesn't or she's that thin, she
doesn't get it. But it affects all shapes and sizes,
(22:06):
every sexuality, every race, Eating disorders, body image, disordered eating
affects anyone and everyone. So it's not like it's like
one little type of person that has to go through this.
So and I think that's that's just another big misconception.
Bigger bodies kin have eating disorders and disordered eating as well.
So I think, you know, next season about way we'll
(22:27):
have to kind of get into I think all of
that and thin privilege what that really means, and and
and really hopefully get the next works on or people
that have experienced or don't look like us to kind
of illustrate their human their their experience as a human. Yes,
And I guess well, I just want to end on
that you are not alone. Whatever you're going through, somebody
(22:48):
else out there has gone through it in some way,
shape or form, and I just want everybody to know that,
and you can send us your emails. That's why, in
that way we had different people share their stories as
we want to do from real people just like you,
and we'll continue to do that in the second series.
And then also another note I want to leave you
on is in the fourth episode of the series, we
(23:11):
had Dr Joshua on and I think he was the
one we were talking about anxiety with. It may have
come up with a couple of the guests, but what
really stuck with me was the stress and anxiety that
sometimes we cause ourselves over food and exercise. Is worse
than you know, eating the actual said food that stressed
(23:31):
you out so um like the chemicals released in your body.
So just think about that and the brain space you
take up. Like I just I want y'all to be
free from a lot of that. So thank you for
sending in your questions, thank you Lisa for helping me
answer them, thank you all for listening to me ramble
a little bit. But I'm just like sharing with you
(23:53):
all from the I think it's actually not a ramble
at all. And people who have followed you even from
I think out Way and now ken hear the growth
that you've had surrounding this topic. I'm noticing it in particular,
you know, kind of where you were and where you
are now. And I think that that's why we did
out wigh and and that's why I was positioned as
the expert, even though I've been there, and we wanted
(24:15):
you to be as candid as on your journey because
we've heard enough from you know, Oh it used to
be like this, like you sharing your story in real
time is what I think makes that way also really special. Well,
thank you Lisa for being my partner, and everybody check
her out on Instagram at the Well Necessities. And then
if you're not following me, I am at Radio Amy
(24:37):
and we'll be back with another Q and A at
some point, and then we will share details with you'all
soon about maybe some sort of a timeline for season
two of That Way
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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