Ep. 3 of OUTWEIGH: A Series Exposing the 'Grey Area' of Disordered Eating

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

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

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

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

(01:30):
or a loved one. This podcast should not replace therapy
or treatment. To get help, support or more resources, head
to National Eating Disorders dot Org. Okay, welcome to episode
three of Outweigh. I'm Amy, that's Lisa, and we're going
to get right into a guest here in a second,
which is a trainer personal trainer work out that has

(01:51):
a history with eating disorder. And I feel like it's
such a weird space to be in if you're recovering,
and Lisa, I know that part of your story is
you were addicted to exercising or that exercise was a
form of purging for you and even for me, you know,
I work out with the trainer from time to time,
and it's like I need to make sure I'm communicating

(02:12):
with my trainer on what I need so that nothing's
going to be a trigger for me. And then for you,
if that was your something you did to purge, Like,
how do you now exercise and know that it's you're
doing it for the right reasons instead of the wrong. Yeah.
So for me, Um, I mean specifically, I go back
to um junior year of college where I went six

(02:35):
months without missing one day of exercise. And it didn't
have to be intense or like, it didn't have to
be strength training end cardio, but I had to get
thirty minutes in of even if it was just a walk.
And it became a little obsessive, it became a little compulsive,
and then it became okay, well now I can't break
the streak because all I am is this streak. Like

(02:56):
and I began to attach myself to the streak, and
I was being applauded, I mean, you know, and I
would tell people that I haven't missed a gym in
in six months. It was an applause or wow, you
have so much discipline, and it continued to bolster myself
worth that was built on Lisa the healthy girl, but
really it was not healthy because not only does the
body need need rest? But it became a way for

(03:19):
me to give myself permission to eat. So if I
ate too much, I found that moving my body could
erase some of that. At the time, I wouldn't have
called that purging. I can only look back now and
say that that was exercise purging, and I saw exercise
of a way to cancel what I ate, or had
to exercise to earn what I ate. And the truth

(03:40):
is they're really two separate things, and it's only something
that I've learned now, and I learned it very beautifully. Actually,
when I was addicted to exercise, I had to force
myself to get there every single day. I was like
pulling teeth because I was resisting myself. And you know,
everybody always makes a big deal like, oh, I have
to go to the gym, right, like everybody rolls their

(04:01):
eyes all I have to go to the gym to
the point where you start to believe that the gym
sucks and that it should be hard or pain from
working out as miserable and working out as miserable. And
then I remember one day being on the StairMaster, which
is like my all time favorite thing in the entire
world listening to pit Bull. You know, you gotta do
it your way. And I remember like dancing on the
treadmill and a light bulb went off of the stair master.

(04:22):
Yeah this Sorry what I said the treadmill, Sorry, I
want to say the StairMaster. I'm stepping on the steps,
I'm dancing at the same time, and I'm thinking, oh
my gosh, this feels good. Why do I dread this?
And I realized that I dreaded because I forced myself
to go and oftentimes I'm doing things that don't feel
good on my body and I don't give myself permission
to rest. And from that day on, I realized that

(04:46):
I could rest, that my body would want to come here,
that it's not a chore, and if I could find
the movement that feels good, even if it wasn't intensive,
that that is okay. And the more I began I
went to grad school for exercise, physio algy as well
as nutrition, I realized the importance of rest and having
that permission to rest actually allowed me to see that

(05:09):
I'm not stepping backwards by allowing the body to heal,
and I could actually have a beautiful relationship to exercise,
which is what humans are meant to do, so it
actually could be a step forward in your whatever your
goals are for and even if there's no goals, like
even if there's no goal, yeah, there's no step backwards.
Like I think that rest days were so hard for

(05:30):
me to comprehend. And of course I partook in plans
or diets or whatever that would have a rest day,
but it was also a cheat day, so it wasn't
just that you brought that up. So it was a
certain workout and meal plan was days one through six,
and then whatever that day seven was, you didn't work out,

(05:54):
you got to eat whatever you wanted. So it was
it was a crazy day. And my husband and I
would one who's doing together, And we even look back
on those days and we're like, what put yourself to
put yourself through that pain? Like you don't need to
put yourself through that physical pain that you put yourself through.
And so I really feel like that's the only time
I enjoyed arrest days because I was also getting to

(06:16):
eat whatever I wanted balance that out. But if I
wasn't again, that was just one of the many diets
or plans that I had as well, so I'm glad
you brought that up. Yeah, And but so there's others
where I was just sort of more so restricting, but
definitely working out every single day, and so I wouldn't
dare miss a day because that wasn't part of the

(06:40):
and it was so black and white, right, and you
were good or you were bad, that was it, and
just eliminating that good and bad from our cheat day
mindset to whatever non cheating. Yeah, cheat days. I know
so many people listening either they could be in it
now or they judgment. It's not judge you, it's I've

(07:04):
been there. I get it. Yeah, Like I'm looking my
myself because I know how I already had an unhealthy
relationship with food, and that just gave me permission to
eat as much as what it feels like to feel
like you need that one day in order to stay
on track. That's what I hear the most, Like I
need that if I need to stay on track, because
I like those foods. And I just want to say,

(07:26):
if you're willing to hear it, that the problem is
not the cheap day. The problem is the idea that
there's a track. There is no track, there's no good
track or falling off the wagon. People will say there's
no wagon if you allow yourself to feel yourself and
take feedback from your body for what it wants. Your
body doesn't lie, and your body has your back, but

(07:47):
it's up to you to learn to trust it, and
that means giving it a chance. Yeah, one of our
other experts. On today's episodes, we'll have Caitlin who's a trainer,
but then we have Alexis who's a registered dietician, but
she also owns a restaurant, and she shares something in
our talk which you'll hear later about a bagel sandwich

(08:08):
or a bagel on a Tuesday, And so I want
you all to wait for that. Based on what we
were kind of just saying is tea days are not
necessary if you give yourself the freedom to have whatever
whenever you want it, and you'll find that balance of
you're not going to want that all day, every day,
all the time. That's the beauty of it, really, it
really is. Today we have on Caitlin Wozniak, who is

(08:30):
a fitness instructor and has her own history of an
eating disorder. So I think that that makes you super
unique and i'd love to hear how you transitioned away
from your eating disorder and into celebrating your body on
the daily and teaching others to do so too. So
I was thirteen when I actually I started dieting, and

(08:51):
a fourteen when I was diagnosed with my eating disorder.
And at the time I had been a dancer for
many years. I was a high school athlete, and and
the dieting very quickly spiraled out of control. And so
with my diagnosis of anorexia, I also had a compulsive
exercise element to that as well, and part of my
recovery was ultimately completely eliminating exercise and eventually gradually adding

(09:18):
that back in um. And it certainly wasn't that easy there.
It came with a lot of trial and error and
a lot of self awareness. But I studied psychology and college,
and I really truly believed that I was going to
go into eating disorder counseling and maybe even a registered dietitian.

(09:38):
But I ultimately found a new found love of exercise
and movement and decided to take my skill set into
helping women reevaluate the way that they see exercise and
reshape their relationship with it. So how do you train
people without contributing to their disordered eating or eating disorder.

(10:00):
Maybe if you spot that when your clients has that
going on, which I feel like as I talked to
more and more people and like, this is probably more
prevalent than we think. And then you're already in that
world and people are coming to you for for a reason.
They're coming to you because they're like, hey, I want
to help with this, But then how do you help
reshape what they're actually coming to you for? Yeah, I

(10:22):
mean that's really a multilayered answer. I try really hard
to market my services as a weight neutral trainer to
begin with, so I don't really advertise myself as like
a weight lost coach. However, you know, I think that
inherently is a goal when it comes to fitness and
in sparking the fitness journey for a lot of people.
So I try to really monitor the language that I use,

(10:46):
and for me now it's kind of second nature, but
it's something I work with a lot of trainers and coaches.
I'm mentor to help them use really inclusive and weight
inclusive language and their sessions. But I never prescribed me
a plan, and I really don't leave with weet loss
as my end goal. I really try to encourage my
clients to train, to move better, to minimize pain, to

(11:08):
learn and understand their bodies. So I try to educate
during that hour that I'm training people so that they're
not just coming in and moving mindlessly. They're moving and
learning about their body and the process. And you know,
I think that educational component helps us to have a
much deeper appreciation for what we do and how we
do it in the gym. So interesting that you, um,

(11:31):
you know, said that you're a trainer that doesn't help
with weight loss, because when I became a registered dietitian,
believe it or not, weight loss is not are the
primary thing that we learn. We learned about disease states,
we learn about like medical nutrition, therapy. And yet the
second I tell anybody I'm a registered dietitian, the first
question is, oh, how do I lose weight? And it's like,
you think that most people believe that a dietitians soul

(11:54):
job is to help people lose weight, and they believe
that a trainer's soul job is to help people lose weight,
and the truth is that's not our job at all.
Both of our jobs are kind of the same, and
it's to help people understand their bodies and how they
communicate better. That's our true jobs totally. And you know,
there's so much research out there now that shows that

(12:15):
weight loss as a primary goal a backfires every time.
And I think if we start with those behavior changes,
and if if weight loss happened to be a side effect,
well that's cool. But I think going about the behavior
change element leads to a lot more continued in long
term success for our clients. I think the thought that
has to change or behavior change has to be that

(12:38):
we have to burn what we eat or earn our food.
And I think all three of us have been at
that state where we have felt we haven't deserved something
because we didn't work hard enough, or if we were
going to go eat something, we had to go to
the gym and burn it all off. Or I think
back to when I was in college a kid. You
not I would drink a cappuccino. I've heard slim fast

(13:01):
because it had caffeine included in it, and I actually
would get a kick from it, but that would and
I would probably have that. That would be my breakfast
and lunch one slim fast because I would have it
at like I don't know, ten or eleven, and then
I would go to the gym for two hours, and
then I would sit in the sauna with saran wrap

(13:22):
on my stomach for thirty minutes and sweat it all
out because I had gone out the night before and
probably drank too much or had jack in the box
or whatever it is I did. That was my punishment
the next day at the gym. I totally relate to that.
I mean that that almost sounds identical to my experience
in college. And I was reflecting earlier about a big

(13:45):
part of my journey getting back into fitness was my
probably my first two years in college. I was on
my own for the first time. I wasn't in therapy anymore,
and I would go to the college Jim and run
on the treadmill until the calorie count hit a number
I was satisfied with. And I'm sure we can all

(14:07):
get a little laugh at that, because there was never
good enough, right like it's it's never good enough, and that,
you know, the ironic part of of having those goals
that are set on a physical appearance or a number,
because we never reach it. We can reach the goal way,
we can reach the calorie burn, but we still when
we're that fixated on what we look like, are those

(14:28):
those external values. It's we can get there, but it's
still not good enough. And so I really try to
encourage my clients to find more powerful and impactful goals
when it comes to their training, and I also really
try to work with other instructors and trainers to steer
away from what I call lazy coaching, because it really

(14:50):
does start with us. And I look back and the
introduction I had to fitness was around, well, you know,
summertimes coming, you better burn an x amount or make
sure that your body looks right for bikini body season,
And that, to me is lazy coaching. And we need
to really re evaluate the way that we hold space

(15:11):
for people in the fitness world and encourage people to
have bigger motivators, more powerful and impactful motivators. What are
some fitness goals that people can have where it's not
about their weight or a body ideal. For me, I
think about moving well, minimizing pain. Confidence. There's so much

(15:34):
to be said for the way that we gain confidence
just in realizing how strong we can be. And I
know that not everybody enjoys lifting weights, but strength comes
in so many forms in the gym. Maybe it's dancing
for you know, an extra thirty seconds and you did
the day before, or you know, being able to play

(15:56):
with your kids for an extra ten fifteen minutes. There's
so much strength to be found in a variety of ways.
So I always go back to those things because those
are things that all of us can relate to, especially
as we get older. Moving better and being pain free
and being able to keep up with the demands of
day to day life are really important. And things that
they don't go away is as time goes on. Those

(16:18):
are things we carry with us from year to year,
and and there are things that we can work into
an exercise program really steamlessly and find fun ways to
do that. How can you spot obsessive behavior around exercise?
A big one is pushing through pain. I see this
a lot especially, and I'm not calling out a huge demographic.
It's not where I'm going here, but a lot of

(16:39):
times my running clients are are A big culprit of
this is uh, pushing through pain. And I see it
a little bit less now because I think we're as
a culture where we are generating a lot of dialogue
around this topic, and that's really really cool to see.
But pushing through pain is a big one. Nobody should
ever work through pain or in jury. UM. Learning to

(17:01):
take time to rest and heal allows us to move
long term. Also, canceling plans to exercise, so if you're
brushing off plans with your friends or family because you
didn't get to go to the gym and women lost
the instruation is a huge red flag. And it's something
that is also a part of what we call the
female athlete triad, which also includes low bone density, which

(17:27):
can go hand in hand with increased risk of injury.
And another thing too, is this like preoccupation with like
PRS or personal records UM or other gym language, just
kind of being really wrapped up in that space and
not being able to see beyond the gym that and
it's not exclusively a bad thing. Yeah, well, like yeah,

(17:49):
you said, like if that's all you're focusing on, you know,
that becomes that becomes a little bit of a problem.
Of course, there are some people that are hitting their
personal records and they maybe show no signs of disordered
eating or issues with body image or stuff like that. Yeah,
but I can become something that someone's fixated on and
where it's not healthy. Yeah, this isn't a blanket statement

(18:11):
for all and all all, just in case anybody's listening
and they're like, oh, shoot, like I've canceled plans or
it's ruined by like, I will speak up. That is
totally even me. I have opted to work out by
myself instead of being with other people in building community
and nourishing friendships and relationships. I have been on vacation

(18:32):
and just like made it a point that I have
to get my workout in or I'm not going to
enjoy the day instead of like just being on vacation
and enjoying the day. It's not this intense thing where
you have to work out all the time. There still
could be this lingering, well I didn't I didn't move today.
I've got to move like and having this pressure, but

(18:52):
rest can be equally as important. What's a sign that
our body is telling us besides like an injury, but
like it we're just legit not feeling the workout that
day and it's not going to serve us. Like, do
you think we're better off just letting it go. It's
so hard it is, Yeah, you know, I've had I
think a lot of that comes of personal experiences. Even

(19:14):
as a fitness professional, it's taken me a long time
to to say, okay, I mean there's so many, so
many things in the fitness industry that that could be
answered this way too, But being able to a look
at the motivator behind why we're moving. If it seems
compulsive or rigid, then it's really important to draw that

(19:34):
line in the sand and say today I need to
rest and not listen to that nagging voice in my
head that says I have to do this to be
worthy of something. But also you know, like if you're exhausted,
like maybe you've got I don't know, I'm a new mom.
Like if I got three hours of sleep last night,
it's not really worth it for my body to go
and go to the gym because I'm not gonna perform optimally.

(19:58):
And if you've really worked out extremely hard for three
days in a row, maybe it's time to take a rest.
And like even if that means going to yoga or
just taking the dog for a walk and doing really
low impact or even mobility work. You know, I think
a lot of people get really scared at the idea
of rest days. I often kind of prescribed, for lack

(20:18):
of a better term, to rest days with my clients,
and they look at me like I've asked them to
just sit on the couch all day. And really, there's
so many ways to move that are just really gentle
and and also take care of our joint health, and
the body really needs rest. It's something that I learned
in in grad school and my master's in nutrition and

(20:39):
exercise physiology. And when I learned about rest, I realized
that not resting actually competes with most people's goals, whether
that be weight loss or muscle growth or strength. The
body actually needs to repair, the muscles need to come
back together, recruit and in order to grow um and

(20:59):
when it comes to weight, the most interesting thing that
I've come to learn understand and really just has helped
me honor the body is the fact that exercises is
actually produces cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and so
often times and and the stress hormone is how we
hold too much of the stress hormone at all times
is how we hold on to weight, and so giving

(21:20):
yourself permission to rest is how your body resets and
gets back to baseline. And so oftentimes waking up at
four am in order to get a workout and because
you want to lose weight or do whatever you want
to do, is actually competing with the goal because you're
now super tired and you're you're creating more cortisol by
way of the workout, whereas rest not have allowed you

(21:41):
to replenish, reset your hormones, and let your body function optimally.
And you mentioned something just because I want to remember
to touch on this, but baseline what I think we
need to keep in mind in Caitlin. I'm sure in
your world you have a variety of clients of all
shapes and sizes, and everybody's base s line is different.
But for some reason, well I know why media and

(22:05):
society has painted whatever that baseline is for the moment,
and it's almost like it's just not if that's not
your baseline, it's not attainable. And then we end up,
you know, wrecking ourselves for something that just is not
our baseline. And I even for so long didn't know
what my baseline was because I was constantly manipulating it,

(22:28):
playing with it. Never never just listening to my body
constantly restricting, binging, purging, whether it was literally throwing up
or working out at the gym, because that can be
a purge. You don't have to throw up to purge.
You can eat a bunch of food and then feel
like you're going to purge it by going to the
gym and exercising for hours and hours until you feel

(22:50):
like you've adequately burned it off. Is that something you
have to revisit with your clients, and like, this is
your body and that's another thing I need to address that,
And then I'm gonna also ask you to address like
for me, my body, my baseline, and I'm like letting
go of counting protein and how much I've had. But
if I'm working out and I'm trying to keep muscle

(23:11):
on and I'm almost forty years old, and I hear
as you age, like things start to sag and we
want to keep it the and I hear women need
to have a hundred grams of protein to maintain their
muscle mass as they age. And so I'm like, oh, gosh, okay,
I gotta get a protein. How much protein did I have?
And so I'm having to let that go. But also,

(23:32):
I mean, I am trying to work out and take
care of my body. So what's the fine line of
working out making sure we're nourishing our body properly to
see whatever results are looking for? And maybe i'm i'm
a I'm. An example right now is when of your
clients like, what would you tell me if I was
bringing you that? Oh? Yeah, no, this is such a
fantastic question. And this instance, as well as my clients

(23:56):
who really try to identify as body positive and are
really coltonist trap between how I be body positive and
love my body and accept myself as I am, but
I want to move better or I want to decrease
my back pain, And I always go back to what's
the motivator? What is driving you to move the way

(24:17):
you are and eat the way you are? Is that
this negative, toxic voice in our heads that is telling
us that we are only worthy if we do this,
or we only deserve it if we burn this, or
we are good quote unquote if we eat X y Z.
And I think going back to the motivator and reshaping
our relationship with movement and food is so important. We

(24:42):
have to take care of our bodies it's the one
thing that is a constant in our lives, you know,
and being so grateful to have a body that is
able to move and able to participate in day to
day activities, that's a blessing. And to take care of it,
you know, to celebrate our bodies through movement not punishing
it is really something that it's It takes a long

(25:04):
time to really home that skill and reshape our our
minds around it. But I always go back again just
to kind of reshaping the motivator. And if you are
really fighting that toxic voice in your head every time
it creeps up, we have to be aware of it
and call it out. So a toxic voice being like
I need my body to look this way, this is

(25:25):
what's ideal, instead of accepting what the baseline is, like
what is the shape of your body and you don't
have to go through drastic extreme measures to achieve this,
and then we can if we all accepted our baseline,
it would we would all look so different. For some
people literally they didn't know they're based on Like in
just a few years, I've seen my curves come out,

(25:48):
but they were probably curves that would have always been there.
But I was suppressing them and now I'm trying. I'm
learning to love them and be comfortable in my skin.
So resetting that baseline. But what about also to addressing
the is it negative talk to Is that what you're
saying my my, my thoughts? If I'm like, oh, I

(26:08):
have to have x amount of protein to make my
workouts even worth it? Yeah, you know, it's like that
absolute language of I have to do this or I'm
only worth if this. There's so much gray area when
it comes to fitness and nutrition that I think we
really as a culture thrive on rules and immediate results

(26:29):
that we kind of have forgotten that there's so much space.
Somebody once said to me, given half the chance, the
body will feel itself, and that really stuck with me
because a big part of the work that I like
to teach my clients is we should eat really well
the foods that that provide us energy, that make us
feel good, whatever those foods. Maybe we should move well

(26:50):
because we enjoy it finding a way to move that
that we enjoy especially, and if we're moving a healthy amount,
if we're eating a really beautiful allents of high quality,
nutritious foods, or bodies are going to do what they
need to do, and they will find and you call
it the baseline. I've heard it also referred to as
that that weight point. Um. It's something that we really

(27:13):
reference in eating to sort of recovery. Is like the
set weight point or the baseline um our bodies will
go there. But even if your body is settled at
its baseline, that voice can still be there, and that
that takes years and years of practice of refining the
way we think and and combating that language when we
talk about baseline. One thing I found as a registered
dietitian is that people are not comparing themselves now to

(27:36):
themselves two years ago. People are comparing themselves to high
school or even teenage self, or college self when they're
in their thirties after they've had kids, and so recognizing
that baseline isn't one thing, and rather our bodies change
over a life cycle, whether we're just going through puberty,
whether we're in college, whether we're prenatal or postnatal, whatever,

(27:57):
you know, throughout the life cycle it changes, and therefore
your body composition and your weight change as well. So
just remember that baseline is kind of a hard thing
to you know, if you're always trying to get back
to this thing that doesn't exist. You're going to run totally.
Like I sometimes have to fight my baseline of being
when I was having hot lemon water for breakfast, which

(28:19):
hot limon unders not that like you can still have that,
but I mean I was sometimes treating that as a
breakfast and then waiting until lunchtime to have you know,
vegetable smoothie and then having kole for dinner. That was
not a good space for me. And while I thought
I was in a really good space, I can't define

(28:41):
that now as my baseline. Like I went and put
on jeans from when I was like that. And also
I had time to go to beakrom yoga like every
single day, which was ninety minutes of this intense hate. Yeah.
So I mean, but that was my world. I didn't
have kids, my husband was deployed half the year, so

(29:03):
I had a lot of time to myself, and I
was focused on different things, the wrong things, but that's
what I had time to focus on. And I think
it was last year or something, I just finally went
through my closet and got rid of those genes because
that's not my baseline. That's not attainable unless I want
to go back to that, which I don't. Then I

(29:25):
need to go ahead and just call it today and
move up a few gene sizes and washing into it.
It's not a big deal. When you buy something that
actually fits you what it's you, you feel so much better.
There's not this pressure of Okay, I guess I'll just
well neat and then finally I'll fit into those genes.
But I also I don't want to be confusing in

(29:46):
m Caitlin, you can maybe speak to this too, just
because of your profession clients that you deal with, Like,
it doesn't mean we're saying just continue on a trajectory
of what I mean not taking care of your body
and you don't have don't think you're nobody's obligated. One
thing I've learned recently is you're not obligated to take
care of your health. So but if it's something that

(30:06):
you care about, that's not something we're saying you don't
have to do. I mean, for me, understanding what exercise
my body likes versus what I thought I had to
do changed everything. So, like you just said, bicker yoga,
I hate bicker yoga, but I love any other form
of yoga pretty much. So tuning into like what feels
good was hugely different for me because I was no

(30:28):
longer going to the gym to punish myself. I no
longer had to drag myself to the gym. It was
no longer I had to go. If I ate something,
it was like I want to go, or even on vacation,
oftentimes it's like, oh, I have this free time in
the morning, I get to go to the gym, And
it's funny to hear the relationship to the same thing
be so different. It's something that I'm really passionate about

(30:50):
spreading the message, especially working with clients who are interested
in the intuitive eating model. Not to get totally off topic,
but I think that goes hand in hand because so
many people the intuitive eating as this blueprint to just
throw their hands up in the air and eat whatever
they want. And while their permission to eat freely, it's
not about not taking care of yourself. It's actually about

(31:13):
taking the best care of yourself by listening and getting
back to that voice that our bodies have intuitively and
refining just the or kind of like cutting through the
nonsense that we get fed about food. And our bodies. Again,
I just kind of go back to encouraging people to
see the gray area and not living in this black

(31:33):
and white absolute language around fitness and our bodies, and
and remembering that there's a variety of ways to move.
Just leaving a workout and drenched in your own slit
does not It's not the only thing that constitutes a
great workout. Um. A lot of the times those are
terrible workout. Actually, there's there's something to be said grabbing

(31:54):
a variety of activities and and learning to see exercise
as move man. I love that you don't. You said
you don't need to be drenched in sweat for it
to count as a great workout. I just want to
make sure that's heard loud and clear because it's so true. Yeah. Well, Caitlin,
thank you so much for coming on. I want to
send people to your Instagram. Your Caitlin Wasniak, but your

(32:14):
handle is Caitlin with a y so k A I
T L y in. And then what does say your
last name? That's your middle name's your middle name. Yeah,
it's very confusing. My middle name is Denay so d
I N n e H. We'll put it in the
show notes. We'll put in the show notes, but at
Caitlin Denay. I know a lot of times people don't
go look at the show notes, so I just want

(32:35):
to make sure we give you a shout out on here.
So at Caitlin DNA and then uh Dnay again is
d I n e H. So thank you Caitlin Denay
wasniak for coming on and talking with us. We appreciate
you so much. Thank you, guys. So after we talked
to Caitlin, I turned to Lisa. I was like, Okay,
I think this is where I want to clarify a

(32:57):
few things because I know in talk with Caitlin and
I talked about how I just still struggle with where
I am with my body and wanting to maintain a
healthy muscle tone and the DRAMs of protein or having
your body stay even though we're aging and your body
is changing in different things. Like I feel like for me,
I can have some of that control, but you always

(33:20):
mentioned to me outer wisdom, and I think I'm starting
to understand a little bit of what that looks like.
But for other people that might not, like, how can
we ditch the whole? This is how much protein we
need to the Graham and this is how many carbs
we need to the Graham. Because for me, what's crazy
is that was such a new concept to me. I

(33:40):
never even knew what a macro was until last year,
and really what it meant, it's comical to me that
I'm having to ditch it already, And like you know,
we talked about, I was clinging to it already as
like a a life vest for anybody else that is
in that. Let's talk about that and then outer yes,

(34:00):
so outer wisdom that the phrase that Amy keeps repeating
is a part of my modern mindful eating philosophy. And
while learning to ditch diets, there's a there's a few
ways to do it. Some people will completely ditch everything
that they've been taught to know, and kind of like
you said, I think in an earlier episode or any

(34:21):
random conversation conversation that like, you know, maybe you need
to go to Chick fil A every single day to
prove to yourself that you can have Chick fil A
and that Chick fil A isn't a bad food. Right.
What I have found from working with clients and with
myself is that while that might be the case with
certain foods, we can bring a nutrition into the equation
of listening to our body, but in a very different

(34:41):
way than how we've been taught to use nutrition with
our body. So using nutrition to empower versus create fear
or control are kind of two very different things. So
outer wisdom means being conscious or aware of what you're
eating that external information, but in a completely new way.

(35:02):
So when it comes to counting macros, which is something
that Amy was doing for a little bit, that means
basically not counting calories, but counting the amount of grams
found in carbs, protein, and fat and using that to
guide her food choices. And in a way, I got
caught up in two calories in calories out because I
was also full disclosure. I don't know if I told

(35:23):
you this, but I would use my Apple Watch and
I would track like my steps and whatever work up
now my Apple I touched my Apple Watch, not talking
to me, but you can check your whatever calories that
your watches saying that you burned for the day. And
while I didn't obsess fully on how many calories I
had eaten, I knew that every day I wanted to

(35:46):
hit like calories on my watch now I wanted to
burn whatever that is, and that was from like the
time I woke up. It included like I would record
my workout in there, so would calculate that then my
steps blah blah blah, and then I get it. It's
not accurate, which is probably this is a good time
too for you to touch on food and if we're

(36:07):
calories inverse calories since we did just talk to Caitlin
about working out calories inverseus calories out and how we
put so much emphasis on what the calories on the
box says and then what we need to do to
burn it. And it's not the same for everybody. It's
not the same. But okay, first of all, it's the
it's the most efficient way to have an unhealthy relationship
to both food and fitness, to equate fitness to food

(36:29):
in that way. Oh my god, the apple out of control.
I'm just gonna take it off anyway. Um, not to
go too far down the rabbit hole here, but calories
inverse calories out is not a made up thing like
in theory. You know, to lose weight, you eat less
calories than you will burn more than you eat. Right,
that's the method for weight loss. If you eat too

(36:49):
many calories, you gain weight. That's what we've been told.
But the problem is that we are human beings. We
are not calculators, and so plugging in numbers into our
body doesn't quite work in that same way that we
think we do. So there's a lot of different reasons
for this, but there's a lot of things that are
going to affect the amount of calories that you absorbed.
So Amy and I just had lunch together and we

(37:10):
eat the exact same thing, but the amount of calories
that I'm going to absorb is going to be different
than the amount of calories Amy absorbs. And we have
to remember that calories are an amazing thing. We've positioned
them to be this bad thing because we've been told
too many calories equals awakened. But calories are literally just
the energy we derive from food. If we want to
have energy during the day, we need to consume calories.

(37:30):
So if my body consumed more calories than Amy's, that
doesn't necessarily mean that I have a worse body or
a less efficient body. It just means that's what my
body did. So one thing that you should understand is
that the labels that we make all of our food
decisions based off of the on the nutrition fact panel
can be off by up to twenty percent. So that
means that you're let's say you're you're trying to eat

(37:53):
two thousand calories a day and you're plugging it all
into my fitness Pal, that two thousand calories could really
be six hundred or twenty four hundred calories. So I
just want to let you know that to kind of
tell you that you don't need to listen to these
labels because it's neverthing to it like it's the reason
for that is not you know, government regulations that want
to not give you the truth. That's what kind of

(38:15):
the media has chalked it up to. But because there's
such diversity in all of our bodies, in our microbiomes,
which are our gut, our hormones, all these things, and
they're all regulating in a way to help you function
and live optimally. So anything that goes on in your
body is meant to support you, not to get in
your own way. Does that make sense? Yeah, give me

(38:36):
your advice. If I'm having a day where I'm struggling
with the protein intake, am I working my muscle mass. Okay.
So the auterisdom comes into play here, because there's nothing
wrong with understanding which foods are protein, which are carbs,
which are fat. There's nothing wrong with understanding the general
caloric makeup of a food. But it becomes a very
different story when we are using these exact numbers and

(38:57):
relying on them to guide exactly what we eat. So
if Amy is trying to gain muscle, and she's out
a place where she can do that in a healthy
way without becoming obsessive, I think Amy can think about
protein consistently throughout the day, but doesn't necessarily need to
be measuring it in a contained way. Right You're not
a body builder, you're not competing. It doesn't need to
be taken to this level of seriousness that we often

(39:19):
go to. The other thing that you said was like
sometimes you'd be going to bed and you'd be like, oh, shoot,
I didn't get enough protein in and get up and
go get something that had protein because I needed twenty
more grams. So I mean that right there just shows
us that we are ignoring our bodies wisdom rather than
using information about nutrition as a tool to enhance our

(39:40):
plate or to make it more balanced. We're using it
as a tool to manipulate our bodies. But I think
that this is a strong thing, or a difficult thing.
It's a strong statement to say, like except your body
where it is, or don't manipulate your body, because for
so long, with all of these various things that we do,

(40:02):
it has been a manipulation of the body. Which is
back to where it's like, what is our body? What
is our baseline? In Taylor Swift Smith Americana, she expressed
like you can't win. She's like, when I was skinny
enough to be as skinny as I felt like I
was supposed to be was acceptable for me, and now
then I couldn't have the booty that is out there now.

(40:24):
And then if you've got the booty, you can't be skinny.
She's like, you can't. It's like you can't win, right,
It's so hard to again when it comes to manipulating
your body to be whatever it's supposed to be. So
also that comes with just the acceptance and love of
who you are individually, yep, and getting to know yourself.

(40:44):
We can do all these things to build self esteem,
but do we ever take the time to get to
know our self worth? And that's a topic that I
want to dive into a little bit more in this episode,
speaking of that and body checking and obsessiveness, like obsessive weighing,
even rigid schedule at the gym. Since we just had
Caitlin and I think this is the perfect time to
share Rachel's story, and then after her story, she'll do

(41:09):
her letter to herself as well. Hey, I'm Rachel, and
this is my story. My eating disorder slash disordered eating
started in eleventh grade, right around the time I began
taking Adderall, which was prescribed for my a d h D.
For those who know, this kind of medication is known
to suppress your appetite, and since I was barely eating,
I was also quickly losing weight. Little did I know

(41:29):
that this one thing was going to trigger something way bigger.
Within a few months, I became completely obsessed with the
way that I looked and what I was, or more like,
wasn't putting into my body. I began completely restricting food.
It started with the typically unhealthier bad ones, and then
it began to spiral into a general fear of most foods.
I was body checking, constantly grabbing the parts of my body.

(41:50):
I believe to be fat, staring in the mirror, repeating
horrible things to myself, over exercising my body's limits, obsessively
weighing myself sometime times up to five or six times
a day, and constantly, I mean constantly thinking and obsessing
over food and the way my body looked. Surprisingly, I
actually never felt pressure from society, and a majority of

(42:11):
these issues came from the pressure that I put on myself,
as I'm an overachiever and perfectionist. On the days that
I struggled so every day, I would feel physically, emotionally
and mentally exhausted. I was irritable, weak, and always extremely frustrated.
This deeply affected my relationships with my family, as I
was always acting out with virtually no reason in their minds.

(42:32):
I had so much trouble opening up and can barely
speak about my emotions. Also, I think it's important to
recognize that it wasn't even about the food at this point.
It was just about control and the ability to control
every situation in my life. I was so rigid and
stuck in my ways that I could barely even go
away as a day off from the gym or out
of my routine was absolutely not allowed in my mind. Ultimately,

(42:55):
I knew I had to make a change. When every
day was just more miserable than the next. I hit
a point so low that I basically isolated myself from
everyone and was finding it really hard to find the
joint things. I don't remember an exact moment that led
me to seek help, but there was an overall desire
to stop feeling so bad about myself. Once I began
therapy and really started to talk about my issues, I

(43:17):
noticed a huge shift in the way that I felt. Obviously,
it takes work, and I'm still nowhere near one, but
I do know that I'm feeling better each day. On
the days that old thoughts and patterns do arise, I
try to remind myself how miserable I felt then and
how fulfilled I feel now. I try to vocalize the thoughts,
as keeping them inside makes it worse for me. I
also really focus on not shifting or changing anything about

(43:39):
my current life, as I do not want to give
into my old patterns or behaviors. Doing these things definitely
help to alleviate the pressure, but it does not make
them go away. Honestly, I would say that every day
I choose to move forward through the pain and place
one foot in front of the other. By leaving that
life behind me, I have gained a newfound appreciation for
food and my relationship. Like I said before, I'm nowhere

(44:02):
near one, nor do I think i'll ever be. But
I've gained a new perspective on things. I'm actually able
to go out to eat with friends or family and
really enjoy myself. I also have so much more energy
and time to invest in things that really make me happy.
Life now is fun and interesting, and I'm so excited
to continue to grow. Dear younger Rachel, I am so
sorry for all of the pain and suffering that I

(44:24):
put you through. I'm sorry that I didn't recognize how
deeply you were suffering and how desperately you just needed
to talk about how you felt. I'm sorry for robbing
you of the joint excitement from so many situations, and
for making you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. Honestly, though,
I wouldn't change anything that you went through, because you're
suffering has only made you a stronger person. I want
you to remember how badly you felt then and how

(44:46):
happy and free you feel now, and overall, I'm really
proud of who you become. Okay, Lisa, I liked that
Rachel wasn't sorry that she went through any of it
because she's come out stronger on the other side. I'm
sorry either. You know, we wouldn't be here today. No,
we wouldn't. And that's how I try to approach everything
in my life that is difficult, or if I'm facing

(45:07):
any sort of adversity, it's like, Okay, what can I
learn from this? Like I don't want it to be
wasted or more than that, just recognizing that that's the
journey that got you exactly where you are right now,
But you're not going to get to where you need
to be if you are stuck and that and you're
not looking for Okay, how can I grow from this?
Where is the good? And it's so I'm not even

(45:29):
saying that it's easy to find the good and the
bad or how we can grow from it, but Lisa
and I are here using our own experience. We're here together,
and then now you're with us, and then how will
that change the trajectory of your story? Depending on where
you are with it and who will you affect positively?
And it can be a domino effect. For sure. Our

(45:50):
next expert is going to be Alexis. And this is
actually one of your friends, right Lisa met her through Instagram. Still,
she's a registered dietitian and and when I started Instagram,
I just loved her. She's witty, she's funny, she's real.
And we both came out around the same time as
registered dietitians before disordered eating was being talked in the

(46:12):
media or social media. And not to toot my own horn,
but very bravely, and I didn't know as being brave
at the time, you know, came out and said, hey,
we're registered dietitians and we have a problem. And it
wasn't the story that we've heard a lot of I
had anorexia, That's why I'm going into this field, or
I believe me, that's why I'm going into this field.
We were the first ones that I know of to

(46:33):
really say we are obsessed with healthy food and we
are scared where we were and we are scared of
anything else. And at the time it was trailblazer like
because there weren't many people as registered dietitians saying we're
imperfect and we're willing to change. Well, and thank you
for being bold because it led you to where you

(46:53):
are today, which again I'll keep saying, it led me
to finding you, which is awesome, and you finding Alexis
on Instagram too. So let's get into our little chat
with her right now. Right now, we have Alexis Joseph's
a registered dietitian. She's also founder of Alchemy Juice and
the very well known blog Homo Sapien. Thank you so

(47:15):
much for having me. We're so excited to have you.
You and I share a very similar journey, minus me
not owning a health food restaurant, but being registered dietitians,
being kind of public figures on Instagram yet sharing very
personal details of our struggles has kind of been a theme.
So I'm really excited to have you on. So I

(47:37):
thought a good place to start would be to just
share the subtle differences between eating healthy meals versus disordered
eating slash or x yah. Yeah. So I think, you know,
it's interesting because we all start, you know, typically from
a place of passion and just being really really excited
about eating a well, and then you know, some of
us obviously end up in this place where it's kind

(47:58):
of all we think about, and it moves away from
being supplemental to our lives and and healthy and nourishing
to a place where it's just kind of all consuming.
So I think it's important to reflect on, you know,
looking at health from just that bird's eye view and
knowing that it's so many different things. It's food, it's

(48:18):
being outside, it's your relationships, it's your environment, it's moving
in a way that makes you feel wonderful. And I
think that you know, we just tend just having that
super refined view of health is kind of where we
get in that danger zone, if you will. Yeah, that
makes sense. So health is more than just your diet exactly.

(48:38):
And I think, yeah, honing in when we when we
get so food centric, which I know type of personalities
like myself and you know, maybe you as well, Lisa,
we tend to just hyper focus on one aspect and
then we we kind of are blind to all the
other things that we're leaving behind and actually getting to
a place where too much health is not a good thing. Well,
it's so interesting to hear that from you because you

(49:00):
own a health food chain. I don't know if you
call it a health food chain. I'm sure other people do.
The Alchemy brand is based in Columbus, right, yes, And
do you guys identify as a health food cafe or
what how do you identify? Yeah, we call ourselves an
all day cafe. You know, we'll get into this, but
just how much Alchemy has changed over the years, even
when we opened our tagline with Juice Bar Cafe and

(49:22):
now our locations, Um, we don't even use the word
juice in the name. So we have like Alchemy Cafe,
Alchemy Kit Channel, me meal Prep and we've really grown
from being that you know, juice and smoothi bar identity
to being, uh, you know, a full restaurant that has
everything from egg sandwiches, is bacon to gluten through avocado
TOAs and a blueberry smoothie. So really all over the

(49:43):
board and really options for all eaters, options for everyone,
where no matter what you eat and what you don't eat,
you can sit at the table and have a lovely
meal and it's not about, you know, being in a
box based on what your diet is. So would you
say that that Obviously in the evolution of Alchemy there
was an aha moment either for the space you were

(50:04):
trying to create or yourself. For what did that look
like to know, Okay, wait this is this is not
really want to be and we need to shift. So
what was that moment? So yeah, I'll can We open
in two thousand and fourteen, and I made the transition personally,
like really came to terms with my own orthodox Fia
in two thousands sixteen, because that was about two years
later and really good for me. It was like subtle changes.

(50:26):
Obviously it was adding to the menu, so adding just
more food options for people, whether that's you know, a
turkey sandwich on farm bread that's God forbid not made
with whole grains, or um, you know our super food donut,
just adding those like fun yummy things the menu that sort.
You know, food is about so many things, and nutrition
is one of those things that we can celebrate, but

(50:47):
we eat for so many reasons, right beyond just being
good for you. So I think that, you know, even
coming down to the name. So for example, when we
first opened, you know, there's like a blueberry detox moothie
and just using word that even now I just wouldn't
choose to call it, like, you know, use the word
detox in a smoothie name and it's funny to look
back now and think like, oh, you know, if we

(51:09):
would have opened out me five years later, we actually
say this now, if we would have opened out for
me today, it would look very very different, just because
of how much we've evolved, even just growing five years
older and wiser, and just especially from my perspective again
not being so like, how do we pack as much
health into every single menu item? Like maybe items serve
a different purpose on the menu that isn't just how

(51:31):
many grams of fiber and house For example, I want
you to go a step further when talking about the
blueberry detox smoothie, like why was it important to you
to eliminate the word detox? You know, we try to
not be super like buzz wordy, and we try to
to set trends. We don't like to be just always following.
And you know, the second something comes out throwing and
on the menu, and I felt that that word, it
felt very health obsessed and I would have bought it

(51:57):
five years ago, but I wouldn't buy it, and not
I'm asking you that because I too have evolved as
a person and where I am in this space and
how I've used my platform and I used to be
like I was swear I was detoxing, Like I lived
one big giant detox in the way I was consuming things.
I felt like everything I needed to have, like had

(52:18):
lemons and all the everything I had, yes and cayenne
and just all the you know, tumeric with black pepper.
I just constantly was fighting inflammation and can have its space.
I'm not saying having a juice now is bad, but
I lived that whole detox life. And so that's why
it stuck out to me to ask you for you

(52:40):
what it was like to take that off, because yes,
I would have been a customer that came in and
I was like, oh, Blueberry, Oh you say the word detox,
I better get that when really our bodies are really
smart and wise and they are already detoxing without us
even trying. Yeah, I love you pointed that out, And
I really I feel like me today really represents a

(53:00):
gray area of and really like how I lived my
life of. You can have your don you can have
your kale salad, you can have your turkey sandwich, you
can have all these things in one space. It does
not have to be one of the other, and it
does not have to be this place of extremes, like
there is a middle ground and you just have to
trust the process and you know, letting herself get to

(53:20):
a place where that's a reality for you. It's so funny, Lisas,
did you hear her just say turkey sandwich? Yes? I
have Alexa's I have when I first started trying to
implement a lot of Lisa's and advice and wisdom and
fork the noise. I was in Colorado last summer and
my family was hiking, and then we got back and

(53:42):
somebody else was in charge of the food, and there
really was no I was trying to not freak out
about not having control over every little single thing I
was putting in my body. And they made turkey sandwiches.
That was what was for lunch. They put out the bread,
they put out the turkey, the mayonnaise, the mustard, the chips, whatever.
That was lunch. And normally I would have found some

(54:05):
extreme way to go around and not consume that, and
consume whatever thing that was far more complicated and just
make everybody miserable, well mostly myself and probably my husband.
I just looked at it and I was like able
to finally just say like I'm hungry, or what I
would have done is just not eat, which is not
doing myself any favors. But we had just hiked a

(54:27):
very long hike. I knew my body needed food, and
I ate a turkey sandwich and it was the biggest
I remember when she texted it to me. I just
I know that was one of my first it was.
It was like one of my first giant steps towards freedom,

(54:50):
the freedom that I'm still it's still a journey for me.
I'm I'm still trying to figure some things out for sure,
but that was I mean, my husband even looked me
and he was, do you realize you just ate a
turkey sandwich? And I'm like, I know, and guess what
guys like, Well, yeah, Emotionally, I feel like another day

(55:10):
way better because I wasn't stressed, but like nothing changed
about like like my day went on, My jeans fit
the next day, like it was totally fine. I actually
found that by you know, kind of avoiding all those
foods that I thought I couldn't have, like bread and
pasta and rice, like the typical carbohydrates don't eat foods.
When I brought them back into my life, I experienced

(55:34):
a more comfortable feeling in my body. Now this is
kind of twofold day. I was no longer just like
putting high fiber only foods in my body that made
me feel distended all the time. But I began to
trust myself that I would feed myself again. Does that
make any sense? Like, so I actually was experiencing stomach
pain from quote unquote healthy food, salad, or even a

(55:55):
distended stomach for longer periods of time than if I
just ate bread or pasta, And that was like, oh,
we need to look at this closer. So one of
the things that I think is really interesting that you know,
as a I don't really post much much food anymore,
but I think that this is a a reflection on
alchemy too. Is like we could still eat things like
cauliflower rice or have a blueberry smoothie, but are these

(56:20):
substitutions or all? Are they additions to our diet? So
for me personally, I love califlower rice, but I also
love rice, and making sure that I don't actually see
it as a substitution even though that's how it's marketed,
is something that I try and be really wary of.
Does that reflect itself? Into yeah. I think also yeah,

(56:43):
and even like you know, removing these external you know,
voices or these external expectations we put on ourselves, whether
it's the time of day or even just you know,
it's the weekend versus during the week. Like I had
a bagel sandwich. You know is eating this like bagel
in the park. It was like an everything, big, old
my favorite thing, and I out to myself like there
was no reason for it. It was like twelve on

(57:03):
a Tuesday, grabbed a bagel sandwich, and old me would
have been like, oh, I'll have a bagel if it's
like a brunch out with people, it's like a treat,
it's like a thing. And to get to be in
a place where there's not a reason for it, where
you just want it. In the same way if I
want a Blueberries movie, which I do. I love Blueberries
movies that have them all the time, but I don't

(57:23):
feel boxed into you know, I'm having it because of
this whole thing that I thought about way too much
in my brain. It's like um in the mood for
a smoothe I'm gonna get it, and like the thought
I was there and the thought is gone. I eat
it Alban versus this like story in my head. I
love when you brought up the just kind of mentioning
like relinquishing control, because I would assume me about a

(57:44):
similar experience, but even just noticing how being just relinquishing
that control with food, how that just like takes over
everything else in your life and you're just such a
more gentle whatever word you want to use, just such
a I feel so much more calm because I can
be more gentle about everything now that I've seen, like
through the lens of food, if that makes sense, a

(58:06):
kind of sense. One of the things that I think
is helpful for us as nutritionists that have experienced orthorexia
that those that are not nutritionists may not know, is
that when we go with the quote unquote healthier food
as a as a substitution, you're not getting the same thing. So, like,
there's a stuff called palmini. It's called palmini pasta. It's

(58:29):
literally just shredded hearts of palm and they call it pasta.
I've had it. I like it. I like it a
lot actually, but it's just hearts of palm. So the
problem becomes, I believe, when people believe that that is
now pasta and now all they're having for dinner is
palmini pasta with tomato sauce. And so one thing we
know as nutritionists is that hearts of palm is going

(58:50):
to be a very very low calorie food and therefore
whoever's substituting it is not getting nearly enough food energy
most likely than they need eat. And I see these
substitutions all the time, whether it's with cheese which is
now almond cheese. Again, no problem with it, but we
need to recognize that when we mutate the food and

(59:10):
we just call it the same thing, it's not the
same thing, right, And it's like, what's the goal? You know,
if the goal is to add more vegetables for example,
which is awesome. You know, who doesn't need more veggies?
That's great? You know, Can you make some holbeat pasta
or you know, whatever you're feeling and add some artichokes
to it? You know, does it have to be we're

(59:30):
removing the base that's going to make you not you know,
not be hungry again in an hour after you eat.
The kind of thing and why I think you bring
such a unique message to the internet right now is
because it is a place where people hear the word
intuitive eating and they either run directly to it because
they're so fed up with the diet world, or they
will run completely away from it because they think that

(59:53):
it means not taking care of their body, not eating
healthy and all the things that come with it. And
you what you do with your cre you're both with
Homo sapien and with alchemy, is you say, hey, we
can still eat foods that that used to go in
the health category as part of our norm without labeling
them and still live really like enriched lives. So in

(01:00:14):
a world that feels so black and white, I think
that you show a really great gray and we're still
taking care of our bodies by way of diet. But
diet is not everything when it comes to health. Does
that feel right for you? Yeah? No, Yeah, for sure,
I appreciate that. I think I think it honestly comes
down in the fact, like I grew up just like
loving food, throwed up. I love food before I love nutrition.

(01:00:36):
So you know, when I when it comes back to it,
it's like I don't want to snack on like a
you know, a kale, whatever it is, you know, I
just I want to eat food that taste good and
so I I feel that, um, and not everyone loves you,
you know, some people don't have a big interested to it.
So but I think having that perspective and me playing
more of like a breast on tour chef role than
I like day to day than I do a nutritionist,

(01:00:58):
I think kind of you know, just like it's at
a perspective for me because making food tastes good and
making food fun is my main job versus you know,
minity gritty of nutrition every day, if you will. Dieting
and health are not sinanyms. Like they're not They're not
the same thing. And I think that a lot of
times we lump them in the same thing. Like if
you're eating that way because you're trying to be aware

(01:01:20):
of the nutrients you're putting in your body, you're using
your wisdom and what you know about food. Um, some
people might label, including yourself, it is like, Okay, this
is this is my this is my diet and this
is how I eat. But I guess we just like
eliminate the word diet, like and yeah, I think also
like I think there's so much public infusion and I

(01:01:41):
think it's you know, it stems from so many different things,
and how we grow up and not being connected to
how we grow with food and eating so quickly in America,
and not being connected to the celebratory nature of eating,
and just kind of, you know, we grow up and
everything has to be very quick and very convenient, and
and food just kind of becomes this thing that's like
a hassle almost. So I just think we've become so

(01:02:01):
disconnected from the joy of eating and the joy of dining,
like whether it be at home with our families or
at a restaurant. Like everything I've noticed the influx of
fast casual restaurants, it's how can we make this more
quote unquote convenient? But we're less connected to our food
and less connected to the process of eating all in one, right,

(01:02:21):
And if it's like at what cost? You know, if
you're a quote unquote healthier because you're eating whatever caulifier
across or what have you? Nothing against calf flower, but
at what cost? You know? Are you hungry an hour later?
Are are you thinking about food constantly? Are you not
going out with your friends because you're afraid of eating?
You know, it's there's just so much to be enjoyed
in life, and I hate to think that people, you know,

(01:02:43):
are thinking, we have to give all these things up,
you know, just to weigh a certain number to be
you know, five Hunts Center, what have you. Yeah, So,
how do you personally encourage your friends or family or
maybe customers. I'm not sure if you're still working with
clients these days. You've certainly have got a lot on
your plate, also planning a wedding, But how do you
how do you encourage them to move away from extremes,

(01:03:06):
which is what people tend to latch onto, and move
towards intuition. Yeah. I think the first step is really identifying,
like what the rules are, because I think so many
of us have these you know, these guidelines in our
head that we're so used to them that we don't
even realize the rules were imposing on ourselves. Things like
like similar to your story, ie the client that was like,

(01:03:28):
oh my god, I just had a piece of bread.
It's been like two years, and you know, in our
head it was like bread is bad. It's not even
a rule, it's just a bread is bad. So I
really like to go through with whether it's you know, client,
what have you? Like, what are those rules that you
frame your that you live your life by, and like,
let's actually dig into why those exist. Are they health based?
Are they fear based? Is there any validity to them?

(01:03:51):
And I feel like that kind of really uncovers that
aha moment, like Wow, I just realized, like I don't
need pasta, but like I haven't even had it in
five years or even like going through people and learning
what they don't like. So many people say they don't
like things because they don't want to eat them. You know,
They're like, I don't like sweets, I don't like pizza.
I'm like, you don't like pizza, Like, are you sure?
Like if you have pizza, like I think you like it.

(01:04:11):
You know, just kind of revisiting all of those rules.
It also goes the other way, like just to give
some people some peace of mind like you might like pizza,
it actually works the other way. For me. I was
like I thought I had this crazy sweet tooth, so
I had all this quote unquote willpower and discipline that
never worked to keep me away from sweets. And when
I let sweets in, I found that I like a

(01:04:32):
lot of the times I don say I don't like sweet,
but I really prefer like a savory or a salty sometimes,
or if I do like sweet, I find it too sweet.
I mean one of the most interesting things I used
to down, like not Halo top because it was a
little before that time, but like diety type ice cream,
like yeah, a light to ice cream, and I would
just like go to town on it and and eat

(01:04:54):
it all, and I thought I loved it. And when
I eat things like that now, the flavor of um
Artifici sweeteners is so strange to me. And people used
to eat my food and say that tastes really weird,
and I was like, why does that taste weird? It
tastes good. And it's just like you, you get used
to kind of funny things. But my point there was
that like this thing I tried to have so much

(01:05:15):
willpower to not have, I needed no willpower. I just
needed to learn what I like, because you were right,
step back and learn about your body. And for so
long we've been you know, like you were saying, like
do you do you really not like pizza? Or is
it that you've just told yourself for so long you
don't like pizza? So then we don't even know what
we really like. We don't know what we like, we

(01:05:36):
don't know who we are. It's a pretty basic element.
I tell people it's really like learning a new language.
And I think that for all the reasons we've talked
about and being so busy, we just want everything to
be so immediate. And I think that on learning diet
culture is it takes a lot of work and a
lot of self reflection, and I think that we bury
ourselves in dizziness because it's hard sometimes to sit with

(01:06:00):
our own thoughts and to come to terms with the
fact that we have created these you know, these barriers
and these rules. So you know, I always just like
to encourage people. I know it's cheesy, like, oh, it's
a journey, but and you both have said, like, you know,
I'm still on the journey. I'm still on the journey too,
Like I don't feel like I have this you know.
Are there times where I make a decision and I'm like,
was that the most intuitive thing? Or did I get that?

(01:06:20):
Just because I feel like it's the healthier thing. But
I think giving myself the grace to know that I'm
working and I'm doing the best I can and I'm
aware of it versus you know, old me, I would
have said, like even just like I feel like I
was so judgmental, Like I used to be so judgmental
of other people's health decisions too, or just the healthy

(01:06:41):
eating high horse around. Oh my god, I'm disgusted by
myself how I used to like, how dare I even
like being to judge what someone else is eating? Like
it's so it's so just like unbelievable to me that
I used to put It's like we all judge based
on our own experiences. So when you have that narrative
in your head and you know obviously like what bothers

(01:07:02):
you really is telling of what you need to work on.
So it just makes so much sense. But I think
just really remembering that it's not instant and it does
take a lot of work. Like if I said you
need to learn Spanish by next week, you'd be like, uh,
it's really the same thing with with all this. I
love that comparison because it is and and even admitting
I think it's important for people to hear that we'll

(01:07:23):
bring you on, Alex this is an expert, and you too, Lisa,
but it is helpful to me and others listening that
are like me that are not in this world to
hear from you all that it is an ongoing process
and it's not something, because then that that gives that
hope of like because you don't want to constantly feel
like it's not like you're failing, it's something. If you
have a certain thought that you're not supposed to have,

(01:07:45):
or you know, you have a day where there's a struggle,
like that's normal and it's okay, it's just what are
you gonna do with it? And I think bridging the expert,
whether you're a therapist or a dietitian or another health
care worker, like bridging the gap between I'm over here
and you're over here is really important for in my opinion,
both parties to better understand each other because oftentimes a

(01:08:08):
healthcare professional. I know, when I started my business, Alexas,
I don't know if you agree, you know, I kind
of felt like I had to act like I had
it all figured out and that it was all perfect
because these people were paying money to see me, and
then they were there not fully connecting with me because
I was all the way over here. But when we
both share a little bit, you know, appropriately we're able
to grow together and recognize that we're always works in

(01:08:29):
progress with everything. Yeah, I think vulnerability is infectious and
I think that I think they're like Lisa, I mean,
I think Thread and you're so successful because you're so
vulnerable and that you were vulnerable before. Vulnerability was like
so in like right now saying that it's so so
vulnerable and it's like, are you that vulnerable? Because you
know what I mean? So you know that's I think

(01:08:51):
that's really um people. You know, they want to know
that that life is not perfect, because life isn't perfect.
And I think that especially like EyeT culture stems from
this quest to be perfect and so you know this
whole so many of us are just are just prone
to that because of our personality type, because we want
to control every single thing, every person. I see it

(01:09:13):
even in my relationship and how I've changed with my
fiance and and the linguishing control with him, Like I'm like,
you're like, you know, I don't want to treat him
like I used to treat my diet, you know what
I mean. And so it's it's so interesting when you
step back and think, like you know, they say how
you do one things, how you do everything? And I
really believe that and when you can step back from
diet calls are and start again in this like gentler
place of ntuity, beating again, like bringing up that topic

(01:09:36):
from before, Like it really infuses in your relationships and
everything else you do. Love that. I'm going to share
your Instagram bio Alexis. It says, what's your Instagram handle?
By the way, is homic sapien like so cute? H
U M m U s A p I E N.
So definitely give Alexis a follow. And in your bio

(01:09:56):
it says all happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. Breakfast. Yeah,
breakfast is amazing, And breakfast used to be a meal
that I always skipped because I was trying to reach
some fasting situation or trying to keep it light for

(01:10:17):
a morning like light too heavy is how I ate
my day, Like holm and water to green juice, too
smoothie too then I could have food and then you know,
so I'm with you on that all happiness of it
the time of day, you know, I think I'm freaking
my dad and my husband out when they see me
eat certain things, especially in the morning. I get out

(01:10:40):
like these cinnamon raising English muffins and then I make
like eggs perfect and like a little certain like I'm
getting a matter restaurant or something. Yeah, it's kind of
my little thing. And I like to put g on
the thing with some sea salt and it's like the
cinnamon raisins. So it's a salty sweet for me, which
is good. And that would have never followed my light

(01:11:02):
to heavy protocol like that is not a breakfast like
that's and then it's not even in anything because I
would do I couldn't have a protein with a carp
like if I was going to have protein had other
things been on so many different things that I have
done all the plans, I've done all the things, and
it's like now it's just so freeing that if I
want one of my little cinnamon raisin egg McMuffin concoction

(01:11:25):
thingies that I make at the house, and I even
wrap it and foil and it keeps it warm. Yes,
it's so it's so good, but I guess it's just
fun to me to make it. And then my dad
they still I think my family is still getting used
to it. They're like, you're making that for you like
you're going to eat it? Who are iating exactly. My
dad's always like peeking over at me. He's like, what,

(01:11:45):
especially because you know he loves food and he was
a cook and that was his love language, and I
would always shun his food. And then now he's like, girl,
you know, that's probably something I would have made you,
probably a side of bacon, and you would have gave
me the heisman and now I eat it. So yes,
there is freedom and a yummy breakfast. And if you

(01:12:06):
can make it leisurely or leisure a leisure along leisurely breakfast,
do it. So, Alexis, thank you so much for coming on.
We appreciate you so much. We have the story that
we're going to get into after you is going to
be a girl that is named Laurie. She is a
chef and has some cookbooks and I think she's the

(01:12:26):
perfect person to follow up our interview with you. So
right now we're going to get into a personal story.
This is a real story from our friend Laura Lee
up next. Awesome. Thanks. My life trajectory up to the
summer of two thousand and eight was centered around becoming
a lawyer. That had always been my plan. I dutifully
follow the English major program at the University of Virginia,

(01:12:46):
and then I got a job as a paralegal in
New York City after graduation. Three weeks in, I knew
I would never be a lawyer. Whether it was that
specific firm or the context of the financial atmosphere in
two thousand and eight, I'll never know, but I know
that I experienced a quarter life crisis of epic proportions.
Before then, I had a healthy relationship with food. I

(01:13:08):
listened to my hunger cues eight till I was satisfied,
mostly when I indulged. I didn't give the experience a
second thought. I was present, enjoyed every bite, moved on.
Here's the thing. I had also felt on top of
the world my whole life. I was an a student,
president of US and such, and spoiled by a happy
family that provided anything I could want. I felt completely

(01:13:30):
in control of my life, sure that I could map
out and accomplish whatever I chose. Yet, standing on a
street corner that first post college summer, tears streaming down
my face, I felt zero control. So I found a
way to get that feeling back. For me, disordered eating
was never about looks. I was okay with my body.
Had never really fluctuated in my weight or given shape

(01:13:51):
much thought. When I began to restrict food and work
out excessively, my weight low school wasn't physical, it was mental.
I needed to accomplish something to see it checked off
the list. I needed there to be something I could
always manipulate. I created food rules, a self constructed guideline
for right and wrong. When it came to what I ate,

(01:14:11):
how much, and when if I ordered a wrap, I
tore off any piece that wasn't actually touching the filling.
When I ate almond butter with my breakfast, I couldn't
have it later in the day, but I could have
peanut butter. Not one or three, but only two scrambled
eggs were acceptable, and there were many others that I
could no longer recall. Thankfully, none of it made sense,

(01:14:33):
none of it was healthy. But following this imaginary protocol
was calming and predictable. And when I didn't or couldn't
follow it, after a few glasses of wine or out
to dinner with a menu I couldn't modify, I felt anxious, guilty,
mentally and physically heavy. The next day, I'd make sure
to add a few extra minutes or bump up the
speed on my treadmill, I'd leave a few more bites uneaten.

(01:14:56):
Compensation was the quickest and most satisfying way to get
back to stat as quo. The trickiest parts of my
disordered eating were twofold. Firstly, I was eating. I wasn't
skipping meals or even eating tiny portions all the time.
I just wasn't eating enough. Friends didn't pick up on
any problem, so it's easy for me to convince myself
that all was well. Plus, I had created a comfortable

(01:15:18):
distance between me and the people who knew me best.
Not only could I better filter my behavior that way,
I didn't have to put myself in food compromising positions.
As much as possible, I turned down invites to the movies,
to ice cream drinks after work or birthday dinners. Secondly,
my world was a societal environment of validation. Living in

(01:15:38):
Supermodel City, I received constant praise from my lean frame
on a regular basis. The gratification I felt wasn't because
they approved of my looks. It was because they were
acknowledging the quote fruits of my labor. The fragile world
I'd constructed could only last for so long. However, my
best friend Francis invited me to her mountain house for
a long weekend. I knew France Us was concerned, had

(01:16:01):
picked up all my pain more than anyone else. Our
second night, we grabbed ice cream in the local town
and I said I was full, with one scoop remaining.
Francis gently asked if I was okay, and I broke down.
I called my parents and told them I needed help.
I started to see a therapist who specialized in disordered eating,

(01:16:21):
but it was cooking that truly healed me. I began
to spend my free time selecting vibrant, fresh food from
the Union Square farmers market, taking it home to play
with in the kitchen. Quickly, my desire to control through
restriction dissipated as I found a way to serve myself
and others from the inside out. By the time I
graduated culinary school in two thousand and thirt team, I

(01:16:42):
had developed a sustainable and respectful relationship with food. My
world went from one centered around fear to one centered
around hope. I rarely have moments where my old food
rules worm their way into my current life, but when
they arise, I don't let them guide my decisions, and
this takes away their power. I eat the second helping

(01:17:02):
grab Chick fil A or chocolate croissant, go a few
days without veggies, or slather on the butter, on everything
in sight. I just do it anyway, and I see
that the world doesn't implode. Life goes on, but not
as usual. It's better. Dear lorly, how I wish I
could sit myself next to you twelve years ago, where

(01:17:24):
you stared at a city landscape. It looked as bleak
as your heart and your mind felt. If I could,
I'd rub your twenty two year old back while telling
you that you are powerful beyond measure, that you can
exhale and let go, that there's no such thing as
a finish line or having it all checked off the list,
that everything is beautifully an evolution and an ongoing journey.

(01:17:48):
I'd remind you of what you've accomplished and share a
glimpse of accomplishments to come, which have nothing to do
with what you ate or didn't eat on any given morning.
I would lean in, hold your face with my day
hands and convince you you don't have to accomplish to
be perfect and to be loved that the feeling you're
desperately seeking comes from simply resting and your enoughness. I'd

(01:18:12):
offer this as I offer it to myself now. You
are a beloved, divine miracle by virtue of just being you,
and there's nothing you have to do to deserve it.
So we hope you enjoyed today's experts and the stories
that were shared and the letters to self um. But
before we go, Lisa's going to talk with us about

(01:18:33):
self esteem versus self worth. So this is an amazing
concept to me and my whole work. As much as
it's about helping people find food freedom through mindful eating,
it's actually helping you to establish a true sense of
self worth. And these words self esteem and self worth
are actually used interchangeably, but they do have important distinctions.

(01:18:54):
So I want you, guys to think about, to spend
a few minutes even thinking about what the difference is
between self esteem and self worth, and I hope that
you'll come to realize that self esteem the most distinguishing
factor between the two of them is that self esteem
is based off of your perception of how you're being
perceived by other people, where self worth comes from within

(01:19:16):
and it can't be robbed. So for self esteem. For example,
you may build self esteem by getting all a's in
school or by being the best athlete in your sport.
And when you're better than other people and you're getting
that applaud, it's wonderful. But the question is what happens
when that applaud is no longer there, which will eventually

(01:19:37):
come with all those things, even if you go and
win the gold medal in ice skating, right, you've built
all this self esteem off of how good of an
ice skater you are, only to the next year either
lose or eventually age out right. And this applies to
whatever you're in. Maybe it's not the Olympics. But while
it's important to build our self esteem to feel confident
in our own skin, self worth is where we need

(01:20:00):
to put our efforts into understanding ourselves because with self worth,
we don't have to do anything. We are who we
are and we are worthy of love and wholesomeness. But
it's a lot easier to say than to do. Right, Yes,
I think that this takes work. This takes work, and
this is why when you see people on Instagram talking
about self love and you say, well or body love

(01:20:21):
even and it feels so foreign to you. It's because
you don't arrive at body love and body You know,
I love my body now or I love my entire
self now. You have to do some work, and this
is the part that most people miss, which is self awareness,
getting to know who you are. You might only think
about yourself and strengths, or you might only think about

(01:20:43):
yourself in terms of your weaknesses. Both are really unfair
because you are a totalsome of all of these things.
And when we begin to accept that we are a
total whole of all of this, we can begin to
see ourselves more clearly and develop that self worth that
we are here, we are loved and not and can
never change that. Yeah, there's power in that, so much power.

(01:21:04):
And you have a worksheet, I do. I've got a
worksheet to help you get there, because remembering that it's
a process and that we need to engage in this
process is absolutely fundamental work. So you can go to
fork the Noise dot com forward slash self Worth and
that's your homework for the week. And then next week
will be episode four, final episode. We'll have expert talk

(01:21:26):
again and stories to be shared. And then Lisa and
I will just put a bow on this thing. But
who knows. This may not be the end all be all,
but this is I will just call this like season
one of whatever it is we have going on here
without Weigh and we would love your feedback. So again,
hit us up on Instagram at Radio Amy and Lisa
is at the Well Necessities. We would love to hear

(01:21:49):
from you. Screenshot the episodes if you're listening, share them
on social use the hashtag Outweigh, and we will see
you next Saturday for episode four. Okay, so again is
getting false ending. I am coming back on this time
without Lisa. If you are new to the series, you
just heard episode three, and there's two other episodes to

(01:22:11):
listen to, so go back and find those if somehow
you've stumbled across this one. And we recorded this in
early March before coronavirus got crazy and I felt like
we needed to come back on. But Lisa and I
aren't together anymore, so by we, I mean me, but
I represent Lisa as well, and just touch on something
that you might be going through at home during quarantine.

(01:22:34):
In this situation, we just didn't want to ignore the
fact that there's a global pandemic and not address something
that might be helpful to you during this time. So
we both really like to post that the birds Papaya
put up. If you don't follow her on Instagram, you
definitely should. Lisa and I've already said if we do
a season two of this series that the Birds of

(01:22:56):
Paia would be goals to have on as an expert.
So here is what she posted. It's her in a
cute little denim jacket with a pink hoodie peeking out,
and she is drinking a Coke zero out of the can.
And here's what she posted. I'm doing a lot of
things these days that are not part of my normal lifestyle,

(01:23:17):
even things I've felt i'd rid my lifestyle of as
if I had found a moral high ground without them,
things like drinking diet soda, playing video games, watching TV
till two am, and endless bowls of cereal for no reason.
Maybe you were late, or perhaps you're dealing with this
entirely differently. Perhaps for many, we are reaching emotionally because

(01:23:39):
it all feels so constant. I don't know what's right.
I'm not sure any of us do. So we do
what feels the closest thing to it. Just in need
of simple comforts, reminding ourselves it's not bad to do so,
even if it's all contrastingly different than what we did before.
This is us coping during a pandemic without any guide
book in place to do so, and it feels un table,

(01:24:00):
because really it is. So we move from laughing to
crying one moment to the next. I got this to know.
I don't from one room to the next, grateful for
this time and resentful of it too. So I'm doing
what feels the closest to right right now, drinking the
damn soda, eating more damn carps, watching TV to drown

(01:24:20):
out the noise, whatever feels the closest to write. So again,
that's from the Bird's Papaya. Her name is Sarah and
you should definitely follow her on Instagram. Her website is
the Bird's Papaya dot com and she has a lot
of really great posts that hopefully will be helpful to
a lot of you and inspiring and encouraging. So that

(01:24:42):
officially concludes episode three, for real, for real this time,
so quickly want to shout out to those that were
on today's episode. Big thank you to our experts, Caitlin
and Alexis and then uh those that came on to
share their story and their letters, Rachel and Laura Lee.
Which speaking of Laurie, she has a new cookbook out

(01:25:04):
which is super cool. It came out on April seven,
so you should definitely go check it out. It's called
Simply Laura Lee Balanced Recipes for Everyday Living, and I
put it up on my Amazon page to make it easy.
If you already know how to get to my page,
that's where it is. Radio Amy dot Com is my
website where you can click on Amazon Favorites, or if
you just go to Amazon dot com slash shop slash

(01:25:27):
Radio Amy, it's under books under that section, or you
can just go to Amazon and type in Simply Laureally
Balanced Recipes for Everyday Living. So whatever you want to do,
however you want to get it, just show her some
love and maybe you'll find some new recipes to whip
up during quarantine. All right, I hope y'all are doing well,

(01:25:48):
staying safe, and we'll see you next Saturday for the
final episode of our Outbay series

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 3 of OUTWEIGH: A Series Exposing the 'Grey Area' of Disordered Eating