August 21, 2023 • 38 mins
Warning: This episode contains conversations about eating disorders that may be triggering to some listeners so discretion is advised. If you are suffering from an eating disorder, you can visit anad.org for ways to get help.
Chiquis has a very informative and important conversation about dieting and eating disorders with Emmy-winning journalist and author Cole Kazdin. Chiquis and Cole share their past struggles with body image and losing weight, how they’ve handled those difficult situations and the different ways others can do it, too. Cole also talks about why it’s so hard to treat eating disorders, the dark side of the weight-loss industry and tells us what inspired her new book “What’s Eating Us: Women, Food, and The Epidemic of Body Anxiety.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I have dealt with my body image my entire life,
and then when I came into the television world, it
was like whoa, it was magnified.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We get these messages now about diet and health. The
word health is kind of a stand in for weight loss.
You hear it all the time, so it really is
the air we breathe.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
For me, I would go to my grandma's house and
it's like, here, eat this in this huge plate, and
if you don't eat it, you don't love me. And
it's almost like I want to say, that's kind of
where it started. Hello, my beautiful people, and welcome to
the Cheeky's and Chill Podcast. So last week, the Makutura
(00:44):
Podcast Network hosted its first live event, and guys, it
was so much fun. It was so nice seeing so
many of your faces at the iHeartRadio Theater in Burbing,
and I really enjoyed answering your questions. So for those
of you who missed the event, or for those of
you who want to experience it again, we're going to
air an episode of the live event here on my
(01:05):
podcast in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that.
I just want to give you guys, a heads up
about that, Okay, But moving on to today's episode. Today
we're going to be talking about something almost everyone thinks about,
food and dieting. We're also going to be talking about
eating disorders. So if you find any of these things triggering,
you might want to skip the episode and listen to
(01:27):
a previous episode. Okay, let's jump into today's episode. This
is Cheeky's and Chill. Sitting here with me today is
Cole Kasten. She's an award winning journalist and author of
(01:47):
the new book What's Eating Us Women, Food and the
Epidemic of Body Anxiety. In the book, Cole talks a
lot about diet culture here in America and our relationship
to food. Oh. I am so happy you're here with us.
Congratulations on publishing your first book.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you so much, and I'm so happy to be
here to you.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I thank you. No. I think this is a very
important topic, especially for women. I think men and women,
but as women were told you're not thin enough, you're
this or that, and me being in the industry. So
we'll get into all of that in a little bit.
But I want to know from you, what inspired you,
what made you say I need to write my very
(02:29):
first book and publish it about this topic.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, I had written some smaller, shorter pieces about my
personal experience with eating disorders, and I had also written
some pieces as a journalist about these issues. And I
never really wanted to write a book because I didn't
want to sit in these issues any longer than I
had to write. I wanted to talk about them, but
not too much. And then I realized that these ideas,
(02:57):
these thoughts in my head, these things I was telling
my self in my head, the trouble I was having
living what I was hoping to be like a more normal, peaceful,
balanced life. It was not changing whether I wrote about
it or not. So I became more curious. Am I
the only one that can't resolve this? Am I the
only one that doesn't feel like I'm on the other
(03:19):
side of this? After struggling for so long? And so
I decided to approach this like I would a journalist,
instead of looking at it just as a patient or
as a woman. I thought, I'm going to do this
like a journalist and talk to people, and every single
woman I interviewed for the book had some version. We
(03:40):
all come from different backgrounds, we're all different people, but
we shared so much, and so much of that was
am I crazy? Is this in my head? Is this
my fault? Same stuff over and over again. And that's
when I felt this urgency to write a book, like
let's get more information, let's get empowered from the information,
let's find out what's missing, which is a lot, and
(04:03):
let's try to fix it.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Well, thank you, first of all, thank you so much
for doing this, because I have dealt with my body
image for my entire life, and then you know, being
in the industry and being a singer, being on television,
it was even more so where I knew I was
always thicker than all the rest of the girls at school,
(04:27):
but then when I came into the television world, it
was like whoa, it was magnified and even to the
point where I feel and I saw in your book.
I read in your book that also it's almost like
those words get they get so attached to you and
you believe them so much that instead of you even
losing weight, you gain more weight. Like it's like this,
(04:48):
like I feel like that's what happened to me, you
know what I mean. And I also saw that there's
thirty million Americans that have eating disorders.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And that statistic is pre pandemic, so it's kind of
of the old statistic, like we really saw eating disorders
and hospitalizations for eating disorders just explode during the pandemic.
So those numbers, most of the researchers I spoke with
agreed that they're pretty it's a low ball.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, And what about kids, Like, how early are they
developing these eating disorders now?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, being a teenager is a really common time to
develop an eating disorder, and that's usually when we think
about eating disorders. That's what we have, that's the picture
we have in our mind of like a teenager. Right,
kids start to have these feelings sometimes around six or
seven they want to lose weight. And then women who
are eighty have eating disorders. So even though it happens,
(05:44):
you know, it's very common. But teenagers, kids that are
pretty young are starting to have these thoughts, these feelings,
and of course they are because we're all walking the
same earth, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, And where do you think they're picking this up from?
You think it's social media, families in school.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, I think it's so complex and it's all of
those things and more things, right, so we also are
just born into a world that is telling us from
the second we are born we have to be thinner.
I mean, your weight is evaluated from the second you
can step on a scale. Right, So we get these
(06:21):
messages now about diet and health too, Like the word
health is kind of a stand in for weight loss now,
so it's all very very blurry. But I think that
we have a really complex attitude about our bodies because
we get these diet messages, we get these health messages.
Doesn't everyone have someone in their family, one way or
(06:43):
another who was either on a diet, thinking about a diet,
talking about what was on their plate, talking about they
had to eat less. You hear it all the time.
So it really is the air we breathe. And then
if you add to that any sort of stress or
trauma in your life, done right. So these are very complex,
(07:05):
but it's like we have so many factors leading into
it that can put us on this course to develop
really unhealthy behaviors that can harm our bodies through restricting.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And that's what I was going to ask my next question,
what exactly does an eating disorder look like?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I mean, that is the question of the hour I'm
not doshing the question. But we know that there are
some official eating disorders, like anorexia, which is really severely
restricting your food intake until you get to a certain
very low weight where you're really restricting food. There's bolima,
where you're binging food and then purging it, and then
(07:43):
binge eating, which is eating large, large amounts of food
that the average person would probably not eat. It's kind
of not really perfectly defined, right, But those are the
three eating disorders we think of. But there's this whole
other category of eating disorders that is based on everything else.
And if you don't fit into one of those perfect
(08:05):
meat categories, then you're in the everything else category. So
I'll use myself as an example. I starved myself constantly.
I was I guess you could say anorexic because I
got very very very thin and didn't eat, But because
I didn't have a particular BMI, I would not have
(08:26):
been officially classified as anorexic. Oh wow, So it's called
a typical anorexia, which is man. I make a joke
about this in my book. It's not funny, not skinny
enough for real anorexia. Geez. So you are forcing your
body to get to a weight that's way below what
it wants to be, and that's an eating disorder, but
(08:46):
not really officially. So there are so many more disorders
than there are definitions.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And you feel that it's all it's like mental emotional,
like it's all, you know, because I wonder, I'm like,
is it emotional? I mean, I feel like I for
a long time, I was an emotional eater. Sure, if
I was really sad, it made me feel better to eat,
you know, especially after losing my mom. That's when I
feel I gained the most weight and I was holding
onto it almost as if it was like, no, this
(09:14):
is what makes me feel safe. And then I went
through a divorce and it was even worse and it's
like no matter what, like and I would just eat,
and I would eat because it made me feel better.
I mean, I know, is it both mental and emotional?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I mean A lot of the new research is pointing
to the fact that these for many people have like
a brain predisposition, like your brain may not trigger fullness
the way the average person triggers fullness, or your brain
may not register hunger the way the average person registers hunger.
So you may not have a chemical regulation. So if
(09:47):
some people tell you, oh, just kind of eat what
you want, but your brain isn't giving you the accurate
messages about hunger and what your body needs, you can't
really do that intuitive eating thing. Another thing on tip
top of that is, I mean you talk about your divorce,
you talk about losing your mother, that's trauma, that's stress.
(10:09):
So trauma sends us towards this as well. Right, So
it's very complicated. We can't just say because a lot
of people like to talk about social media, which is fair.
Social media is not helping anyone with their body image. Yeah,
but it's so much more complex than that.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I feel like some people confuse eating healthy with having
a problem with with an eating disorder. For example, if
you are eliminating carbs or fats, is that just eating healthy?
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So the research from you know, I'm not a doctor,
I'm a journalist, but the researchers I spoke with who
are doctors who do research this say that when you
eliminate one food or one food group, your brain and
starts to notice that food group more So, let's say
(11:06):
you give up bread and you're like, I'm seeing bread everywhere. Well,
that's not just you and your willpower, that's your brain.
Because like your brain doesn't care what you're wearing to
the Grammys. You know what I'm saying, Like your brain
doesn't care. She's trying to just keep you alive. So
when you say I'm giving up bread, your body's like,
we gotta find some bread.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
It's it's so true. I did. Yeah, and I did
keto for so long, which is very like high protein,
high fats, and like absolutely like no carbs, very little carbs.
And it worked, don't get me wrong. And I liked it,
and that's what I prefer most of the time. But
you're absolutely right. It's like my body was craving it
even more than when I would have it. Instead of
having a little bit, I would have a whole lot
(11:45):
of it. You know. So I've learned. I'm telling you,
it's been a journey my entire life. Now I finally
got him. Like, oh, it's portion control, you know. It's
like I can have everything, it's just having a little
bit of everything. If I deprive myself. And I say
even the word diet for me, it's been where it's
h I'm on a diet. It becomes like this negative
(12:05):
connotation where it should be it's a lifestyle. WI change.
I want to be healthy like I had. It was
a whole switch in my mind. It's like, this is
my lifestyle. I want to live longer, I want to
feel good, and in order to do that, then I
got to make these little changes. But if I want
to have a little bit of cake, I'm going to
have it, you know what I mean. It's all saying, okay,
instead of having the entire slice, I'm going to have
(12:25):
a few fork fools, you know what I mean. But
it's been it's been a journey, so I get it completely.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
But also it's hard.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
What you're talking about is really important to kind of
highlight because when we change what the goal is, which
is really really really hard. We change the goal in
our head from like I'm trying to be smaller, which look,
I understand if you're a human being in the entertainment industry,
that is hard, you know, to actually think because you
have people are If you're not thinking about your body
(12:55):
all the time, other people around you are right. But
I think if you think I want to have more energy,
I want to feel good, I want to sleep better,
whatever those goals are. If you can create goals that
are not around the size of your body, it would
serve you well. Because we can't control, especially as we
(13:17):
get older, we can control less and less with that,
so we might as well just be like, Okay, let
me see how I can set some different goals.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, for me, it was more than anything. As I'm
getting more mature, getting older, you know, I'm more of
like concerned about my poops. It's just the truth. I'm like,
I want to poop better, you know what I mean. Like,
I want to have a better digesto system. And that's
something that I've had an issue with. Again, I've been
very like constipated. I'm always looking for fiber and all
this stuff. I'm like, I need to start maybe my
day off with like a green juice. I just I
(13:46):
want to get things going and flowing. And that helped
me a lot. Is like I had to remove like
you said, I want to be thinner and to please
other people. I'm like, if that, I want to feel good.
I want to have more energy, I want to sleep better.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And all this stuff gets harder to sustain, Like as
we get older. So when I was younger, and I
was starving myself, and I would eat an apple and
throw up that apple because I was so afraid of
what that would do to me. I mean, it's sick.
It's sick. I probably could not have sustained that much
longer than I did, even though I was able to
for a long time. When you are doing behaviors that
(14:23):
are that extreme, h it happened, you go to the
hospital a second, it's not like you slowly start to
feel like you are in an ambulance, no notice, right,
So I know people don't want to talk about that
piece of it because it's like, oh, it's fine, I
just do that. It's like, we really have to talk
about that. You don't know until you know, but it
gets real fast, and so we have to start. It's
(14:46):
a practice to if we can identify that something's going on,
if we are able to seek treatment, which is really
really hard. I wish it were obvious and easier, but
it is not. That's another reason why I wrote the
book to like this this information. If you or someone
you love is struggling with this, like this is what
you have to do. You have to do a lot
of work because our culture is not set up to
(15:09):
help people get well from this unfortunately, but to set
when you're better, to you're getting better, to set different
goals around eating an exercise, just like you're talking about
and cool.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Okay, so the diet industry is a multi milli actually
billion dollar industry. What do you think about that? Do
you think that that says like what we value in
this world?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I mean, I think, yeah, we do have those values
as a culture, of course, but I also think that
these companies put more money than we could even imagine
into advertising, into selling us this, and we're being very manipulated.
(15:52):
And so that's when I talk to other people. I
want to always tell everyone it's not your fault, like
it's you know, I don't want to think about all
the money as on diets and trainers all this stuff
to make them, you know, like to change my body
and not what I was thinking about health but really
just thinking about one goal and one goal only, and
that was getting smaller. But we are being really I
(16:14):
don't want to say manipulated only because that makes it
seem like we're not smart enough to figure it out.
It's everywhere, it is everywhere, and it's not an accident.
Companies are spending billions and billions and billions and billions
of dollars to separate us from our money to lose weight. Right.
And most of the people who seek weight loss treatments,
(16:35):
weight loss programs, I'm one of them. Most people are
repeat customers. That's where diet companies get most of the business.
So if it's repeat customers, that means it's not working.
Otherwise every weightless company would go out of business. Instead,
it's a multi billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah. And I have a nutrition company, right, And obviously
I have something it's called this s guinea stick, right,
that's like it's supposed to help you like burn fat
or whatnot. But it's like, our whole thing is wellness.
It's just really wanting to be healthy and not do
it just to be physically okay, but also internally the
most importantly internally being healthy. And do you feel that
(17:19):
the body positivity movement is changing anything at all?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah? I Mean what's so tricky is this goes so deep.
So I think it's important that we see women of
different sizes. I think that's really important. I also think,
though we have to learn which I didn't know that
people who are in larger bodies can be fired from
their jobs for being in a larger body like legally,
(17:46):
I didn't know that there were not legal protections for people.
So many many years ago, a group of cocktail servers
at a casino in Atlantic City. They sued because their
boss was weighing them when they went back to work,
and if they gained way, they were told they had
to leave and come back when they lost the weight.
That's legal. The case was dismissed because there's no protection.
(18:10):
We have protections for gender, you know, sexual orientation, identity, ethnicity.
No one can fire you because you are Mexican or Italian,
but they can fire you for gaining twenty pounds.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
That's insane.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So like the laws need to change, right, Like New
York City just passed a law that will go into
effect I think next year, of making height and weight
discrimination illegal, and so those are now protected classes, but
they're not protected federally. So I know I'm getting so
knitting gritty here, but that connects to why doesn't someone
like their body? Well, they may not know that they
(18:47):
can be fired, but they can probably feel it, right,
and that affects even though these weight issues definitely affect
men to they affect women so much more, and some
affects women in the workplace in a negative way and
men sometimes in a positive way. There was a study
(19:07):
of female political candidates and women who were larger heavier
were not considered as trustworthy, and men who were larger
were considered more powerful.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Oh my gosh, that's crazy. What the heck? And I'm
going to tell you, like my personal experience now that
I've lost about sixty something pounds, sixty seven pounds, I
feel I see the difference in the industry how people
treat me people in the industry like it's now it's
kind of like and I had a whole episode on
this and it's literally, oh my gosh, now you're so beautiful.
(19:41):
And I'm like what, Like it's just like now they
want to touch you and hug you, and it's like, oh,
now you can come to dinner with us and you're
part of our group. And I'm like, no, if you
don't want me at my biggest, at my largest, at
my beautifulness, then no, I'm not gonna be your friend.
It just has to change as a whole, Like you said,
like all these companies everything, everything, like that's why with
(20:04):
even with everything that I do. I'm like, I'm going
to have a casting call for for a body shape,
and I want to bring in the real woman, the
woman with the satellite, the curvy woman, even if there
is a size six model next to you. But it's like
coming together and uniting and showing the beauty that we
can be beautiful all shapes and sizes. It could say
something has to change. We all have to be intentional
(20:25):
in doing this.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And that's the thing I mean. That was another reason
I was hoping that the book could at least inspire
this that community is the way out of all of this.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Community there you go, right.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That is the key. Like I kept coming back to that, like, yes,
there's you know, some scientific research and news studies and
there are some great people doing some great work to
help people. Yes, but community is where this is at.
That is the way out. You need other people around you,
maybe who have shared your lived experience, who you can
(20:59):
connect with, who you can say exactly what you just
said to me, Why weren't you coming up and hugging
me when I was bigger? Right? Why why didn't you
see me? Beautiful them? That has to happen, but we
can't do that alone.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, we can't. I talk about social media because I'm
in the world and I've noticed that sometimes when I'm
on you know, people's pages, you feel a little anxious
and you feel like, you know, I'm like, I had
to kind of remove myself and say I'm just gonna
post and go about my day and not stay stuck
(21:37):
on social media because a lot of these lifestyles, a
lot of these bodies, which they're beautiful, you know, it's
nice to see and look at, but it's a huge facade,
and a lot of them have the money to make
their bodies that way, and it's like it's a whole thing.
That's a whole I feel like other episode. But it
does cause a little bit of like anxiety, which is
why it's like, hey, we have to be considerate and passionate,
(22:00):
and everyone is beautiful, no matter your size, no matter
you know. It's all about wanting to I think there's
room for improvement for all of us, and wanting to
be healthier, of course, but that doesn't mean because I'm
twenty pounds heavier than you, I'm less pretty or smart,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And I'm glad you brought up anxiety too, because like
we think about eating disorders or any kind of disordered eating,
and I think the first thought I had is, you know,
I knew someone who had a heart attack. I was
researching some of the like immediate health dangers. But if
you look past that, there is an intensity of anxiety,
(22:37):
an intensity of depression. If you're feeling bad about your body,
you may be less likely to want to go outside
your house to exercise, You may not want to go
to the doctor because you kind of feel about your body.
So having other people tell you negative things about your
body or just feeling that way really increases a lot
(22:57):
of these mental health issues besides the eating part.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Right, no, no, yeah, absolutely, And in your book it
also talks about recovery and mental health. Can you talk
about some of the steps people can take to change
the way they think about food and their bodies.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's a big question. And yeah, but yeah, I mean,
I think one of the first things that people could
really do, like even right now, is start looking at
communities that they can be a part of that can
support even if they don't have an eating disorder, but
just want to start reframing the way they think about
(23:36):
food and their bodies. There are some great communities out
there for people with eating disorders who had one or
have one, or a family member might be worried. So
when they love has one, Project Heel is a great organization.
And there's an amazing group called Now Go to Positivity
Pride Oh run by this woman named Gloria Lucas, and
(23:57):
she has a support group called Stage and Spoon. It's
exclusively for BIPOC and they talk about these issues around
recovery and food and bodies. And something that Gloria does
with Ilgana is she deals a lot in harm reduction,
which is saying to someone and she's actually a separate
(24:18):
sent to talk to you. I don't want to speak
for her, but she talks a lot about how you
may be in this place where you're not being very
kind to your body, but it may be a response
to stress and trauma in your life, and no one
can expect you to just snap your fingers and get
all better. So how can we do little things harm
(24:41):
reduction to get you a little healthier, maybe support you
in other ways while you do what you need to
do to alleviate your stress. And it's a really compassionate,
beautiful approach, and so that's an area where that's a
community that I would refer people to as well.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love that. I think it is just really about
focusing inward and that's what helped me and I stopped
listening to all that negativity because it was a lot.
It's a lot being thrown at me, and I'm like,
you know what, at the end of the day, these
people don't know me. What's important is what's inside me,
my heart, who I am, you know, And I can
get rid of the extra body, you know, fat or mass,
(25:22):
you know. So I love that. The community thing I
think is great, you guys, And I think that if
you are struggling, definitely find someone a community and therapy.
And I'm a huge advocate for therapy and counseling just
because it starts there. Like you said, there's trauma. There's
things that you know, we're dealing with that sometimes we
don't even know that we're dealing with until you speak
to someone and they help you start your healing journey
(25:45):
in that way, and I feel like everything else will
just will follow, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
There's something I just I just kind of remembered. But
there was one group I spoke with called the Body
Positive there in northern California, and they had these meditations
to kind of turn inward like you were talking about,
and think about you know, your body, and look at
your body in different ways. And one of the meditations
really stood out to me. It was an ancestor meditation
(26:13):
where you close your eyes and you think about your ancestors,
and if you don't know your ancestors, to kind of
imagine one, you know, someone who just lived a long
time ago who's connected to you. And I thought of
my great grandmother for that exercise, and I thought about
her life, which was hard. She had eight children and
(26:35):
she was all alone. And if you think about her
body and my body and how we are connected. This
woman I never met because she passed away so young,
but her body was went through stuff, carried stuff, and
that is a little bit somewhere in me. And if
(26:55):
we think about our bodies in this deeper, bigger way.
I mean, look, we can't go around thinking about our
bodies like that. At every moment, we're functioning, we're going
to the gym, living our lives, right, But when we
had a quiet moment to think about where we came
from and the bodies that came before us. Yeah, Okay,
it gets deeper, it gets deeper.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
I like that. I'm gonna try that. I love meditating,
so I'm gonna try that. Okay. Cool. So I just
wanted to touch a little bit on our culture, you know,
like I feel for me, it was a lot in
like I would go to my grandma's house and it's like, here,
eat this in this huge plate of food, and if
you don't eat it, you don't love me. And it's
(27:37):
almost like I think, I want to say, that's kind
of where it started. I'm not blaming anyone, but it's
just I think it has to do with like the
portions and even living in America, and it's like everything's
big and the bigger the better, and when in reality,
we just need like a little bit to survive, you know.
And I mean growing up in a Latin household, it
was beans and rice and tortillas and a little bit
(27:59):
of protein, you know what I mean. And it's just
I think it's just the way I grew up and
almost like, oh, there's so many starving children in the world,
so you need to eat all your food, don't leave
anything on the plate. And you almost felt guilty, like
I'm wasting food. You know, it's something I still struggle with,
to be.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Honest, Yeah, I think the wasting food. I grew up
with that too.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
My mom's Italian. I grew up in a family that
was all about food as celebration. And you want food,
you want food to be that right, like food should
be about celebration. But there's also that like all or
nothing thing where like if there's food scarcy, Like I
did not grow up in a food scarcy house, but
for people with food scarcity, and if you're not eating
(28:41):
and you don't have a lot, and then there's a
big celebration so you eat like for the week at
one dinner. I'm not saying that was your experience, but
I'm just saying, like you find that, like everyone has
a different access to food. And then culturally, if food
is celebratory, it's actually you can overeat and play in
sight and it's not seen as weird or no one's
(29:02):
going to notice something's wrong. I'm not saying it is weird.
I'm saying that it's something very easy to do in
play insight, especially if culturally food is a big part
of celebrations, which it is for most cultures.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah it is, and it's a beautiful thing, don't get
me wrong. Like I love Mexican food, and it's like,
you know, I just grew up and I learned how
to eat it and how to serve myself a realistic
amount so that I don't waste food, you know, because
I did grow up in a home where we didn't
have a lot growing up, and so whatever it is
that we had, we had to be very grateful for it,
and you know, you had to finish it, and it
(29:39):
was like a huge thing, which I'm like, Okay, it
was my childhood and I had a beautiful childhood, and
I can't necessarily like complain in any way. But now
that I'm older, now I can like fix those things,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
But I also think that I didn't do this research,
but this was research I read that someone else had
done that. Other diets, like the Mexican diet, Chinese diet,
other diets are not study with the same rigor as
the Mediterranean diet, which is essentially a white European diet,
and so it's kind of viewed as the gold standard
(30:13):
for healthy eating and olive oil is great for you
and all that kind of stuff. But the other diets
are not studied with the same thoroughness and enthusiasm, and
so what I would love to see is other diets
to be as studied as the Mediterranean diet, because the
Mediterranean diet would be a great diet for people who
(30:36):
come from that part of the world.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yes, and I love Actually I went to Greece and
the food was amazing and I just felt so good.
It was fresh, and there was a lot of olive
oil everywhere, and that's one thing, Like I have a
book it was I did, like a recipe book for
keto because I wanted there to be like more Latin
flavor in my food or whatnot. And I just wanted to,
more than anything, show the Latin culture that you can
(31:01):
still eat all your favorite foods. It's just instead of
using lard, you can use all of oil. Like, making
small changes go a very long way, especially in your health. Obviously, yes,
you want to lose weight or whatnot, but at the
end of the day, it's your heart health and your
cholesterol and your blood pressure. For me, it's like, now
that I'm getting older, it's like those things are what
(31:23):
are most important to me. So okay, cool, So tell us.
Is there a cure for this?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Well, there's not a cure. It's treatable. The reason why
eating disorders, I think, have reached such epidemic proportions is
because there really isn't a standard of care. I mean,
I interviewed one of the top eating disorder researchers in
the world and I was like, what do you mean
there's no standard of care. He's like, yeah, it's really
too bad. There's no standard of care. It's like you're kidding, Like,
(31:50):
you go to the doctor you have an eating disorder,
and it's not like if you go to the doctor
and have depression and they say, oh, try therapy, try it,
anti depress it, whatever. They have stuff eating disorders kind
of the wild West. Some people are doing great work.
Some people are doing stuff that doesn't really work, but
they won't really tell you that. Some places say we'll
get you better right away, just come here. I was
(32:11):
told that was a red flag if a place tells
you that they can get you better. But that's the
battle is that there isn't a cure. There isn't a guaranteed,
consistent system that works. A lot of eating disorder treatment
is for profit, doesn't take insurance maybe hasn't even been researched.
It really is unregulated, which is why I think it's
(32:34):
important that we ask questions make sure that the providers
that we seek are not going to also put us
on a diet while they're treating our eating disorder, which
happens that we go into a physician or a therapist
that is weight inclusive, meaning they treat people of all
sizes and are not going to judge or shame people
(32:57):
for whatever weight they are at find communities in the
absence of great treatment, and there are so many amazing
grassroots communities out there that can help us educate ourselves
and support our healing. And when you see the other
women that are on the other side of it, it
is so inspiring. Like for me right now, I see
(33:20):
so many body positive fitness like I love exercise, like
I loved it too much when I was younger. I
would exercise for hours and hours and hours. But I
don't want to not exercise because I don't have anyting
disorder anymore. Right So I looked at body positive fitness
communities and I tried to figure out what's honest exercise
for me, And so now I'm doing a lot of
(33:40):
heavy lifting. And I met with this trainer. I said, Dude,
I had an eating disorder. I got a lot of
problems in my relationship with my body. I don't want
to talk about toning up or leaning out or any
of the stuff. Could we just lift heavy stuff? And
he's like, cool, So we lift.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Out a side because you're sweating and you're you're releasing
that whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
You know, this is amazing workout. It's so good for
my mental health. And I can actually set a goal
that's honest where I'm not like getting unskilled seeing checking
in where ami because that's not great for me personally
some people that works me, that's not good for it
sends me down a dangerous road. Instead, I'm like, go downstairs,
get like the big box of cat litter and I'm like.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Heck yeah, running it up the stairs.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Right. So that's something I can measure that's healthy, that
makes me feel good and powerful and so that to
me has something, But it takes a lot of trial
and error to get there, and it could be different
for each person.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And my lovely listeners, you know, I'm not saying that
any of you guys are cyberbullize or anything like that.
I think it's just being mindful every single day of
being nice, being considerate, being compassionate, because sometimes it's so easy,
especially on social media, to say oh, you're so fat,
you're so ugly, you're this or that. It's like you
never know what that person is going through and why
(34:58):
it is that perhaps they're holding onto way or not
being able to even gain weight, because sometimes some people
can't gain weight and you're like, oh, you're too skinny.
It's just like just live and let live you guys,
and be nice.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
That's such a good point. It's such a good point.
And then you think of this, this radical idea. What
if we stopped talking about women's bodies all together? What
if we stop talking about our body? What if we
stopped thinking about someone else's body? What if we even
when we compliment someone like you can catch yourself like,
oh my god, you look amazing, did you? And then
(35:29):
what you're gonna say, wool was Wait what if we
stopped it? All?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Right? Yes, it'd be great. I'd rather you tell me
I love the color of your hair. You know, my god,
what beautiful eyes you have? You know? Cold before you go?
I'd love to know where we can find your book.
Is there a website? Give me your social media, anything
and everything that you want to say right now, it
is your time girl.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Oh, thank you so much. The book is called What's
Eating Us Women, Food and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety.
You can buy it anywhere you buy books, Kendle hardcover, audiobook, Amazon, Audible,
anywhere you buy books. I'm on Instagram only and it's
at Cole Kasten col E k z d N and
(36:14):
my name is also my website. But people can find
me in any of those places.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Awesome, Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
I love this conversation and I hope this conversation helps
people because I think we have all struggled with this
in some point. Even still, I'm telling you guys, I
still it's an everyday thing for me and I just
have to remind myself what's important. So thank you so much.
And you guys know, before we go, we always have
(36:39):
a quote to start your week off on the right foot.
Hopefully here it is as you heal, you learn to
honor yourself, your feelings, and your authenticity. So that is
a quote. You guys, Thank you so much for listening Cole,
(36:59):
I appreciate you and everyone. Go out and get her book,
follow her on Instagram, check her out, and I will
hopefully talk to you soon. Do you need advice on love, relationships,
health emails? I'm so excited to share with you that
my Cheeky's and Chill podcast will have an extra episode
(37:19):
drop each week. I'll be answering all your questions. Just
leave me a voice message first one Monday. All you
have to do is go to speak pipe dot com,
slash Cheeky's and Chill podcast and record your questions. I
can't wait to hear from you. This is a production
(37:40):
of iHeartRadio and the Micaeldura podcast Network. Follow us on
Instagram at Michael Dura Podcasts and follow me Cheeky's That's
c h i q.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
U i s.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and check
us out on YouTube.
I have dealt with my body image my entire life,
and then when I came into the television world, it
was like whoa, it was magnified.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
We get these messages now about diet and health. The
word health is kind of a stand in for weight loss.
You hear it all the time, so it really is
the air we breathe.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
For me, I would go to my grandma's house and
it's like, here, eat this in this huge plate, and
if you don't eat it, you don't love me. And
it's almost like I want to say, that's kind of
where it started. Hello, my beautiful people, and welcome to
the Cheeky's and Chill Podcast. So last week, the Makutura
(00:44):
Podcast Network hosted its first live event, and guys, it
was so much fun. It was so nice seeing so
many of your faces at the iHeartRadio Theater in Burbing,
and I really enjoyed answering your questions. So for those
of you who missed the event, or for those of
you who want to experience it again, we're going to
air an episode of the live event here on my
(01:05):
podcast in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that.
I just want to give you guys, a heads up
about that, Okay, But moving on to today's episode. Today
we're going to be talking about something almost everyone thinks about,
food and dieting. We're also going to be talking about
eating disorders. So if you find any of these things triggering,
you might want to skip the episode and listen to
(01:27):
a previous episode. Okay, let's jump into today's episode. This
is Cheeky's and Chill. Sitting here with me today is
Cole Kasten. She's an award winning journalist and author of
(01:47):
the new book What's Eating Us Women, Food and the
Epidemic of Body Anxiety. In the book, Cole talks a
lot about diet culture here in America and our relationship
to food. Oh. I am so happy you're here with us.
Congratulations on publishing your first book.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Thank you so much, and I'm so happy to be
here to you.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I thank you. No. I think this is a very
important topic, especially for women. I think men and women,
but as women were told you're not thin enough, you're
this or that, and me being in the industry. So
we'll get into all of that in a little bit.
But I want to know from you, what inspired you,
what made you say I need to write my very
(02:29):
first book and publish it about this topic.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, I had written some smaller, shorter pieces about my
personal experience with eating disorders, and I had also written
some pieces as a journalist about these issues. And I
never really wanted to write a book because I didn't
want to sit in these issues any longer than I
had to write. I wanted to talk about them, but
not too much. And then I realized that these ideas,
(02:57):
these thoughts in my head, these things I was telling
my self in my head, the trouble I was having
living what I was hoping to be like a more normal, peaceful,
balanced life. It was not changing whether I wrote about
it or not. So I became more curious. Am I
the only one that can't resolve this? Am I the
only one that doesn't feel like I'm on the other
(03:19):
side of this? After struggling for so long? And so
I decided to approach this like I would a journalist,
instead of looking at it just as a patient or
as a woman. I thought, I'm going to do this
like a journalist and talk to people, and every single
woman I interviewed for the book had some version. We
(03:40):
all come from different backgrounds, we're all different people, but
we shared so much, and so much of that was
am I crazy? Is this in my head? Is this
my fault? Same stuff over and over again. And that's
when I felt this urgency to write a book, like
let's get more information, let's get empowered from the information,
let's find out what's missing, which is a lot, and
(04:03):
let's try to fix it.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Well, thank you, first of all, thank you so much
for doing this, because I have dealt with my body
image for my entire life, and then you know, being
in the industry and being a singer, being on television,
it was even more so where I knew I was
always thicker than all the rest of the girls at school,
(04:27):
but then when I came into the television world, it
was like whoa, it was magnified and even to the
point where I feel and I saw in your book.
I read in your book that also it's almost like
those words get they get so attached to you and
you believe them so much that instead of you even
losing weight, you gain more weight. Like it's like this,
(04:48):
like I feel like that's what happened to me, you
know what I mean. And I also saw that there's
thirty million Americans that have eating disorders.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And that statistic is pre pandemic, so it's kind of
of the old statistic, like we really saw eating disorders
and hospitalizations for eating disorders just explode during the pandemic.
So those numbers, most of the researchers I spoke with
agreed that they're pretty it's a low ball.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, And what about kids, Like, how early are they
developing these eating disorders now?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, being a teenager is a really common time to
develop an eating disorder, and that's usually when we think
about eating disorders. That's what we have, that's the picture
we have in our mind of like a teenager. Right,
kids start to have these feelings sometimes around six or
seven they want to lose weight. And then women who
are eighty have eating disorders. So even though it happens,
(05:44):
you know, it's very common. But teenagers, kids that are
pretty young are starting to have these thoughts, these feelings,
and of course they are because we're all walking the
same earth, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, And where do you think they're picking this up from?
You think it's social media, families in school.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, I think it's so complex and it's all of
those things and more things, right, so we also are
just born into a world that is telling us from
the second we are born we have to be thinner.
I mean, your weight is evaluated from the second you
can step on a scale. Right, So we get these
(06:21):
messages now about diet and health too, Like the word
health is kind of a stand in for weight loss now,
so it's all very very blurry. But I think that
we have a really complex attitude about our bodies because
we get these diet messages, we get these health messages.
Doesn't everyone have someone in their family, one way or
(06:43):
another who was either on a diet, thinking about a diet,
talking about what was on their plate, talking about they
had to eat less. You hear it all the time.
So it really is the air we breathe. And then
if you add to that any sort of stress or
trauma in your life, done right. So these are very complex,
(07:05):
but it's like we have so many factors leading into
it that can put us on this course to develop
really unhealthy behaviors that can harm our bodies through restricting.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And that's what I was going to ask my next question,
what exactly does an eating disorder look like?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I mean, that is the question of the hour I'm
not doshing the question. But we know that there are
some official eating disorders, like anorexia, which is really severely
restricting your food intake until you get to a certain
very low weight where you're really restricting food. There's bolima,
where you're binging food and then purging it, and then
(07:43):
binge eating, which is eating large, large amounts of food
that the average person would probably not eat. It's kind
of not really perfectly defined, right, But those are the
three eating disorders we think of. But there's this whole
other category of eating disorders that is based on everything else.
And if you don't fit into one of those perfect
(08:05):
meat categories, then you're in the everything else category. So
I'll use myself as an example. I starved myself constantly.
I was I guess you could say anorexic because I
got very very very thin and didn't eat, But because
I didn't have a particular BMI, I would not have
(08:26):
been officially classified as anorexic. Oh wow, So it's called
a typical anorexia, which is man. I make a joke
about this in my book. It's not funny, not skinny
enough for real anorexia. Geez. So you are forcing your
body to get to a weight that's way below what
it wants to be, and that's an eating disorder, but
(08:46):
not really officially. So there are so many more disorders
than there are definitions.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And you feel that it's all it's like mental emotional,
like it's all, you know, because I wonder, I'm like,
is it emotional? I mean, I feel like I for
a long time, I was an emotional eater. Sure, if
I was really sad, it made me feel better to eat,
you know, especially after losing my mom. That's when I
feel I gained the most weight and I was holding
onto it almost as if it was like, no, this
(09:14):
is what makes me feel safe. And then I went
through a divorce and it was even worse and it's
like no matter what, like and I would just eat,
and I would eat because it made me feel better.
I mean, I know, is it both mental and emotional?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I mean A lot of the new research is pointing
to the fact that these for many people have like
a brain predisposition, like your brain may not trigger fullness
the way the average person triggers fullness, or your brain
may not register hunger the way the average person registers hunger.
So you may not have a chemical regulation. So if
(09:47):
some people tell you, oh, just kind of eat what
you want, but your brain isn't giving you the accurate
messages about hunger and what your body needs, you can't
really do that intuitive eating thing. Another thing on tip
top of that is, I mean you talk about your divorce,
you talk about losing your mother, that's trauma, that's stress.
(10:09):
So trauma sends us towards this as well. Right, So
it's very complicated. We can't just say because a lot
of people like to talk about social media, which is fair.
Social media is not helping anyone with their body image. Yeah,
but it's so much more complex than that.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I feel like some people confuse eating healthy with having
a problem with with an eating disorder. For example, if
you are eliminating carbs or fats, is that just eating healthy?
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So the research from you know, I'm not a doctor,
I'm a journalist, but the researchers I spoke with who
are doctors who do research this say that when you
eliminate one food or one food group, your brain and
starts to notice that food group more So, let's say
(11:06):
you give up bread and you're like, I'm seeing bread everywhere. Well,
that's not just you and your willpower, that's your brain.
Because like your brain doesn't care what you're wearing to
the Grammys. You know what I'm saying, Like your brain
doesn't care. She's trying to just keep you alive. So
when you say I'm giving up bread, your body's like,
we gotta find some bread.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
It's it's so true. I did. Yeah, and I did
keto for so long, which is very like high protein,
high fats, and like absolutely like no carbs, very little carbs.
And it worked, don't get me wrong. And I liked it,
and that's what I prefer most of the time. But
you're absolutely right. It's like my body was craving it
even more than when I would have it. Instead of
having a little bit, I would have a whole lot
(11:45):
of it. You know. So I've learned. I'm telling you,
it's been a journey my entire life. Now I finally
got him. Like, oh, it's portion control, you know. It's
like I can have everything, it's just having a little
bit of everything. If I deprive myself. And I say
even the word diet for me, it's been where it's
h I'm on a diet. It becomes like this negative
(12:05):
connotation where it should be it's a lifestyle. WI change.
I want to be healthy like I had. It was
a whole switch in my mind. It's like, this is
my lifestyle. I want to live longer, I want to
feel good, and in order to do that, then I
got to make these little changes. But if I want
to have a little bit of cake, I'm going to
have it, you know what I mean. It's all saying, okay,
instead of having the entire slice, I'm going to have
(12:25):
a few fork fools, you know what I mean. But
it's been it's been a journey, so I get it completely.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
But also it's hard.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
What you're talking about is really important to kind of
highlight because when we change what the goal is, which
is really really really hard. We change the goal in
our head from like I'm trying to be smaller, which look,
I understand if you're a human being in the entertainment industry,
that is hard, you know, to actually think because you
have people are If you're not thinking about your body
(12:55):
all the time, other people around you are right. But
I think if you think I want to have more energy,
I want to feel good, I want to sleep better,
whatever those goals are. If you can create goals that
are not around the size of your body, it would
serve you well. Because we can't control, especially as we
(13:17):
get older, we can control less and less with that,
so we might as well just be like, Okay, let
me see how I can set some different goals.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, for me, it was more than anything. As I'm
getting more mature, getting older, you know, I'm more of
like concerned about my poops. It's just the truth. I'm like,
I want to poop better, you know what I mean. Like,
I want to have a better digesto system. And that's
something that I've had an issue with. Again, I've been
very like constipated. I'm always looking for fiber and all
this stuff. I'm like, I need to start maybe my
day off with like a green juice. I just I
(13:46):
want to get things going and flowing. And that helped
me a lot. Is like I had to remove like
you said, I want to be thinner and to please
other people. I'm like, if that, I want to feel good.
I want to have more energy, I want to sleep better.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And all this stuff gets harder to sustain, Like as
we get older. So when I was younger, and I
was starving myself, and I would eat an apple and
throw up that apple because I was so afraid of
what that would do to me. I mean, it's sick.
It's sick. I probably could not have sustained that much
longer than I did, even though I was able to
for a long time. When you are doing behaviors that
(14:23):
are that extreme, h it happened, you go to the
hospital a second, it's not like you slowly start to
feel like you are in an ambulance, no notice, right,
So I know people don't want to talk about that
piece of it because it's like, oh, it's fine, I
just do that. It's like, we really have to talk
about that. You don't know until you know, but it
gets real fast, and so we have to start. It's
(14:46):
a practice to if we can identify that something's going on,
if we are able to seek treatment, which is really
really hard. I wish it were obvious and easier, but
it is not. That's another reason why I wrote the
book to like this this information. If you or someone
you love is struggling with this, like this is what
you have to do. You have to do a lot
of work because our culture is not set up to
(15:09):
help people get well from this unfortunately, but to set
when you're better, to you're getting better, to set different
goals around eating an exercise, just like you're talking about
and cool.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Okay, so the diet industry is a multi milli actually
billion dollar industry. What do you think about that? Do
you think that that says like what we value in
this world?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I mean, I think, yeah, we do have those values
as a culture, of course, but I also think that
these companies put more money than we could even imagine
into advertising, into selling us this, and we're being very manipulated.
(15:52):
And so that's when I talk to other people. I
want to always tell everyone it's not your fault, like
it's you know, I don't want to think about all
the money as on diets and trainers all this stuff
to make them, you know, like to change my body
and not what I was thinking about health but really
just thinking about one goal and one goal only, and
that was getting smaller. But we are being really I
(16:14):
don't want to say manipulated only because that makes it
seem like we're not smart enough to figure it out.
It's everywhere, it is everywhere, and it's not an accident.
Companies are spending billions and billions and billions and billions
of dollars to separate us from our money to lose weight. Right.
And most of the people who seek weight loss treatments,
(16:35):
weight loss programs, I'm one of them. Most people are
repeat customers. That's where diet companies get most of the business.
So if it's repeat customers, that means it's not working.
Otherwise every weightless company would go out of business. Instead,
it's a multi billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah. And I have a nutrition company, right, And obviously
I have something it's called this s guinea stick, right,
that's like it's supposed to help you like burn fat
or whatnot. But it's like, our whole thing is wellness.
It's just really wanting to be healthy and not do
it just to be physically okay, but also internally the
most importantly internally being healthy. And do you feel that
(17:19):
the body positivity movement is changing anything at all?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah? I Mean what's so tricky is this goes so deep.
So I think it's important that we see women of
different sizes. I think that's really important. I also think,
though we have to learn which I didn't know that
people who are in larger bodies can be fired from
their jobs for being in a larger body like legally,
(17:46):
I didn't know that there were not legal protections for people.
So many many years ago, a group of cocktail servers
at a casino in Atlantic City. They sued because their
boss was weighing them when they went back to work,
and if they gained way, they were told they had
to leave and come back when they lost the weight.
That's legal. The case was dismissed because there's no protection.
(18:10):
We have protections for gender, you know, sexual orientation, identity, ethnicity.
No one can fire you because you are Mexican or Italian,
but they can fire you for gaining twenty pounds.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
That's insane.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So like the laws need to change, right, Like New
York City just passed a law that will go into
effect I think next year, of making height and weight
discrimination illegal, and so those are now protected classes, but
they're not protected federally. So I know I'm getting so
knitting gritty here, but that connects to why doesn't someone
like their body? Well, they may not know that they
(18:47):
can be fired, but they can probably feel it, right,
and that affects even though these weight issues definitely affect
men to they affect women so much more, and some
affects women in the workplace in a negative way and
men sometimes in a positive way. There was a study
(19:07):
of female political candidates and women who were larger heavier
were not considered as trustworthy, and men who were larger
were considered more powerful.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Oh my gosh, that's crazy. What the heck? And I'm
going to tell you, like my personal experience now that
I've lost about sixty something pounds, sixty seven pounds, I
feel I see the difference in the industry how people
treat me people in the industry like it's now it's
kind of like and I had a whole episode on
this and it's literally, oh my gosh, now you're so beautiful.
(19:41):
And I'm like what, Like it's just like now they
want to touch you and hug you, and it's like, oh,
now you can come to dinner with us and you're
part of our group. And I'm like, no, if you
don't want me at my biggest, at my largest, at
my beautifulness, then no, I'm not gonna be your friend.
It just has to change as a whole, Like you said,
like all these companies everything, everything, like that's why with
(20:04):
even with everything that I do. I'm like, I'm going
to have a casting call for for a body shape,
and I want to bring in the real woman, the
woman with the satellite, the curvy woman, even if there
is a size six model next to you. But it's like
coming together and uniting and showing the beauty that we
can be beautiful all shapes and sizes. It could say
something has to change. We all have to be intentional
(20:25):
in doing this.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And that's the thing I mean. That was another reason
I was hoping that the book could at least inspire
this that community is the way out of all of this.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Community there you go, right.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That is the key. Like I kept coming back to that, like, yes,
there's you know, some scientific research and news studies and
there are some great people doing some great work to
help people. Yes, but community is where this is at.
That is the way out. You need other people around you,
maybe who have shared your lived experience, who you can
(20:59):
connect with, who you can say exactly what you just
said to me, Why weren't you coming up and hugging
me when I was bigger? Right? Why why didn't you
see me? Beautiful them? That has to happen, but we
can't do that alone.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, we can't. I talk about social media because I'm
in the world and I've noticed that sometimes when I'm
on you know, people's pages, you feel a little anxious
and you feel like, you know, I'm like, I had
to kind of remove myself and say I'm just gonna
post and go about my day and not stay stuck
(21:37):
on social media because a lot of these lifestyles, a
lot of these bodies, which they're beautiful, you know, it's
nice to see and look at, but it's a huge facade,
and a lot of them have the money to make
their bodies that way, and it's like it's a whole thing.
That's a whole I feel like other episode. But it
does cause a little bit of like anxiety, which is
why it's like, hey, we have to be considerate and passionate,
(22:00):
and everyone is beautiful, no matter your size, no matter
you know. It's all about wanting to I think there's
room for improvement for all of us, and wanting to
be healthier, of course, but that doesn't mean because I'm
twenty pounds heavier than you, I'm less pretty or smart,
you know.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And I'm glad you brought up anxiety too, because like
we think about eating disorders or any kind of disordered eating,
and I think the first thought I had is, you know,
I knew someone who had a heart attack. I was
researching some of the like immediate health dangers. But if
you look past that, there is an intensity of anxiety,
(22:37):
an intensity of depression. If you're feeling bad about your body,
you may be less likely to want to go outside
your house to exercise, You may not want to go
to the doctor because you kind of feel about your body.
So having other people tell you negative things about your
body or just feeling that way really increases a lot
(22:57):
of these mental health issues besides the eating part.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Right, no, no, yeah, absolutely, And in your book it
also talks about recovery and mental health. Can you talk
about some of the steps people can take to change
the way they think about food and their bodies.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's a big question. And yeah, but yeah, I mean,
I think one of the first things that people could
really do, like even right now, is start looking at
communities that they can be a part of that can
support even if they don't have an eating disorder, but
just want to start reframing the way they think about
(23:36):
food and their bodies. There are some great communities out
there for people with eating disorders who had one or
have one, or a family member might be worried. So
when they love has one, Project Heel is a great organization.
And there's an amazing group called Now Go to Positivity
Pride Oh run by this woman named Gloria Lucas, and
(23:57):
she has a support group called Stage and Spoon. It's
exclusively for BIPOC and they talk about these issues around
recovery and food and bodies. And something that Gloria does
with Ilgana is she deals a lot in harm reduction,
which is saying to someone and she's actually a separate
(24:18):
sent to talk to you. I don't want to speak
for her, but she talks a lot about how you
may be in this place where you're not being very
kind to your body, but it may be a response
to stress and trauma in your life, and no one
can expect you to just snap your fingers and get
all better. So how can we do little things harm
(24:41):
reduction to get you a little healthier, maybe support you
in other ways while you do what you need to
do to alleviate your stress. And it's a really compassionate,
beautiful approach, and so that's an area where that's a
community that I would refer people to as well.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love that. I think it is just really about
focusing inward and that's what helped me and I stopped
listening to all that negativity because it was a lot.
It's a lot being thrown at me, and I'm like,
you know what, at the end of the day, these
people don't know me. What's important is what's inside me,
my heart, who I am, you know, And I can
get rid of the extra body, you know, fat or mass,
(25:22):
you know. So I love that. The community thing I
think is great, you guys, And I think that if
you are struggling, definitely find someone a community and therapy.
And I'm a huge advocate for therapy and counseling just
because it starts there. Like you said, there's trauma. There's
things that you know, we're dealing with that sometimes we
don't even know that we're dealing with until you speak
to someone and they help you start your healing journey
(25:45):
in that way, and I feel like everything else will
just will follow, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
There's something I just I just kind of remembered. But
there was one group I spoke with called the Body
Positive there in northern California, and they had these meditations
to kind of turn inward like you were talking about,
and think about you know, your body, and look at
your body in different ways. And one of the meditations
really stood out to me. It was an ancestor meditation
(26:13):
where you close your eyes and you think about your ancestors,
and if you don't know your ancestors, to kind of
imagine one, you know, someone who just lived a long
time ago who's connected to you. And I thought of
my great grandmother for that exercise, and I thought about
her life, which was hard. She had eight children and
(26:35):
she was all alone. And if you think about her
body and my body and how we are connected. This
woman I never met because she passed away so young,
but her body was went through stuff, carried stuff, and
that is a little bit somewhere in me. And if
(26:55):
we think about our bodies in this deeper, bigger way.
I mean, look, we can't go around thinking about our
bodies like that. At every moment, we're functioning, we're going
to the gym, living our lives, right, But when we
had a quiet moment to think about where we came
from and the bodies that came before us. Yeah, Okay,
it gets deeper, it gets deeper.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
I like that. I'm gonna try that. I love meditating,
so I'm gonna try that. Okay. Cool. So I just
wanted to touch a little bit on our culture, you know,
like I feel for me, it was a lot in
like I would go to my grandma's house and it's like, here,
eat this in this huge plate of food, and if
you don't eat it, you don't love me. And it's
(27:37):
almost like I think, I want to say, that's kind
of where it started. I'm not blaming anyone, but it's
just I think it has to do with like the
portions and even living in America, and it's like everything's
big and the bigger the better, and when in reality,
we just need like a little bit to survive, you know.
And I mean growing up in a Latin household, it
was beans and rice and tortillas and a little bit
(27:59):
of protein, you know what I mean. And it's just
I think it's just the way I grew up and
almost like, oh, there's so many starving children in the world,
so you need to eat all your food, don't leave
anything on the plate. And you almost felt guilty, like
I'm wasting food. You know, it's something I still struggle with,
to be.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Honest, Yeah, I think the wasting food. I grew up
with that too.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
My mom's Italian. I grew up in a family that
was all about food as celebration. And you want food,
you want food to be that right, like food should
be about celebration. But there's also that like all or
nothing thing where like if there's food scarcy, Like I
did not grow up in a food scarcy house, but
for people with food scarcity, and if you're not eating
(28:41):
and you don't have a lot, and then there's a
big celebration so you eat like for the week at
one dinner. I'm not saying that was your experience, but
I'm just saying, like you find that, like everyone has
a different access to food. And then culturally, if food
is celebratory, it's actually you can overeat and play in
sight and it's not seen as weird or no one's
(29:02):
going to notice something's wrong. I'm not saying it is weird.
I'm saying that it's something very easy to do in
play insight, especially if culturally food is a big part
of celebrations, which it is for most cultures.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah it is, and it's a beautiful thing, don't get
me wrong. Like I love Mexican food, and it's like,
you know, I just grew up and I learned how
to eat it and how to serve myself a realistic
amount so that I don't waste food, you know, because
I did grow up in a home where we didn't
have a lot growing up, and so whatever it is
that we had, we had to be very grateful for it,
and you know, you had to finish it, and it
(29:39):
was like a huge thing, which I'm like, Okay, it
was my childhood and I had a beautiful childhood, and
I can't necessarily like complain in any way. But now
that I'm older, now I can like fix those things,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
But I also think that I didn't do this research,
but this was research I read that someone else had
done that. Other diets, like the Mexican diet, Chinese diet,
other diets are not study with the same rigor as
the Mediterranean diet, which is essentially a white European diet,
and so it's kind of viewed as the gold standard
(30:13):
for healthy eating and olive oil is great for you
and all that kind of stuff. But the other diets
are not studied with the same thoroughness and enthusiasm, and
so what I would love to see is other diets
to be as studied as the Mediterranean diet, because the
Mediterranean diet would be a great diet for people who
(30:36):
come from that part of the world.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yes, and I love Actually I went to Greece and
the food was amazing and I just felt so good.
It was fresh, and there was a lot of olive
oil everywhere, and that's one thing, Like I have a
book it was I did, like a recipe book for
keto because I wanted there to be like more Latin
flavor in my food or whatnot. And I just wanted to,
more than anything, show the Latin culture that you can
(31:01):
still eat all your favorite foods. It's just instead of
using lard, you can use all of oil. Like, making
small changes go a very long way, especially in your health. Obviously, yes,
you want to lose weight or whatnot, but at the
end of the day, it's your heart health and your
cholesterol and your blood pressure. For me, it's like, now
that I'm getting older, it's like those things are what
(31:23):
are most important to me. So okay, cool, So tell us.
Is there a cure for this?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Well, there's not a cure. It's treatable. The reason why
eating disorders, I think, have reached such epidemic proportions is
because there really isn't a standard of care. I mean,
I interviewed one of the top eating disorder researchers in
the world and I was like, what do you mean
there's no standard of care. He's like, yeah, it's really
too bad. There's no standard of care. It's like you're kidding, Like,
(31:50):
you go to the doctor you have an eating disorder,
and it's not like if you go to the doctor
and have depression and they say, oh, try therapy, try it,
anti depress it, whatever. They have stuff eating disorders kind
of the wild West. Some people are doing great work.
Some people are doing stuff that doesn't really work, but
they won't really tell you that. Some places say we'll
get you better right away, just come here. I was
(32:11):
told that was a red flag if a place tells
you that they can get you better. But that's the
battle is that there isn't a cure. There isn't a guaranteed,
consistent system that works. A lot of eating disorder treatment
is for profit, doesn't take insurance maybe hasn't even been researched.
It really is unregulated, which is why I think it's
(32:34):
important that we ask questions make sure that the providers
that we seek are not going to also put us
on a diet while they're treating our eating disorder, which
happens that we go into a physician or a therapist
that is weight inclusive, meaning they treat people of all
sizes and are not going to judge or shame people
(32:57):
for whatever weight they are at find communities in the
absence of great treatment, and there are so many amazing
grassroots communities out there that can help us educate ourselves
and support our healing. And when you see the other
women that are on the other side of it, it
is so inspiring. Like for me right now, I see
(33:20):
so many body positive fitness like I love exercise, like
I loved it too much when I was younger. I
would exercise for hours and hours and hours. But I
don't want to not exercise because I don't have anyting
disorder anymore. Right So I looked at body positive fitness
communities and I tried to figure out what's honest exercise
for me, And so now I'm doing a lot of
(33:40):
heavy lifting. And I met with this trainer. I said, Dude,
I had an eating disorder. I got a lot of
problems in my relationship with my body. I don't want
to talk about toning up or leaning out or any
of the stuff. Could we just lift heavy stuff? And
he's like, cool, So we lift.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Out a side because you're sweating and you're you're releasing
that whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
You know, this is amazing workout. It's so good for
my mental health. And I can actually set a goal
that's honest where I'm not like getting unskilled seeing checking
in where ami because that's not great for me personally
some people that works me, that's not good for it
sends me down a dangerous road. Instead, I'm like, go downstairs,
get like the big box of cat litter and I'm like.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Heck yeah, running it up the stairs.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Right. So that's something I can measure that's healthy, that
makes me feel good and powerful and so that to
me has something, But it takes a lot of trial
and error to get there, and it could be different
for each person.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And my lovely listeners, you know, I'm not saying that
any of you guys are cyberbullize or anything like that.
I think it's just being mindful every single day of
being nice, being considerate, being compassionate, because sometimes it's so easy,
especially on social media, to say oh, you're so fat,
you're so ugly, you're this or that. It's like you
never know what that person is going through and why
(34:58):
it is that perhaps they're holding onto way or not
being able to even gain weight, because sometimes some people
can't gain weight and you're like, oh, you're too skinny.
It's just like just live and let live you guys,
and be nice.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
That's such a good point. It's such a good point.
And then you think of this, this radical idea. What
if we stopped talking about women's bodies all together? What
if we stop talking about our body? What if we
stopped thinking about someone else's body? What if we even
when we compliment someone like you can catch yourself like,
oh my god, you look amazing, did you? And then
(35:29):
what you're gonna say, wool was Wait what if we
stopped it? All?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Right? Yes, it'd be great. I'd rather you tell me
I love the color of your hair. You know, my god,
what beautiful eyes you have? You know? Cold before you go?
I'd love to know where we can find your book.
Is there a website? Give me your social media, anything
and everything that you want to say right now, it
is your time girl.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Oh, thank you so much. The book is called What's
Eating Us Women, Food and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety.
You can buy it anywhere you buy books, Kendle hardcover, audiobook, Amazon, Audible,
anywhere you buy books. I'm on Instagram only and it's
at Cole Kasten col E k z d N and
(36:14):
my name is also my website. But people can find
me in any of those places.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Awesome, Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
I love this conversation and I hope this conversation helps
people because I think we have all struggled with this
in some point. Even still, I'm telling you guys, I
still it's an everyday thing for me and I just
have to remind myself what's important. So thank you so much.
And you guys know, before we go, we always have
(36:39):
a quote to start your week off on the right foot.
Hopefully here it is as you heal, you learn to
honor yourself, your feelings, and your authenticity. So that is
a quote. You guys, Thank you so much for listening Cole,
(36:59):
I appreciate you and everyone. Go out and get her book,
follow her on Instagram, check her out, and I will
hopefully talk to you soon. Do you need advice on love, relationships,
health emails? I'm so excited to share with you that
my Cheeky's and Chill podcast will have an extra episode
(37:19):
drop each week. I'll be answering all your questions. Just
leave me a voice message first one Monday. All you
have to do is go to speak pipe dot com,
slash Cheeky's and Chill podcast and record your questions. I
can't wait to hear from you. This is a production
(37:40):
of iHeartRadio and the Micaeldura podcast Network. Follow us on
Instagram at Michael Dura Podcasts and follow me Cheeky's That's
c h i q.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
U i s.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and check
us out on YouTube.
Host
Chiquis
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