Embracing Change: Jan Sansom's Journey to Counselling

Music.

And welcome to Change Your Relationship with Food, the podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley. With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. This week we have a guest and what a guest she is. She is a person that I met about five years ago before COVID kicked in.

Her name is Jan Sansom, and she is a counsellor down in Adelaide. So I'll give you a little bit of a history about Jan. She had a background in sports and coaching and administration, which she, I presume, did very effectively because she does everything very effectively up to her sort of mid-40s. and then her life took a big change. And I'll let her explain that a little bit later. But around the age of 50, she got into counselling and that's where she's been ever since.

So thank you so much for joining me, the legendary Jan. How are you? I thought you were the legend. No, you're the legend, my lovely. So give a little bit of background into why your life changed and why you went into counselling. Well, at the age of 45, 44, 45, I got breast cancer and my husband and I moved to New Zealand, so I had no distractions. So I figured it was time that I changed the way I thought about things.

It just set about this whole thing of how important our self-belief and what we do is in making who we become. And that led me into...

Looking at alternative things and which brought me to counselling. And when I got to counselling, I felt this is it. This is where I'm meant to be. Yeah, I'm sure it is because you've got, you're the sort of person that I suppose everybody opens up to pretty easily. I know I do. You've got one of those faces, Jan. And I've got a little bit of life experience. Absolutely. So do you mind me revealing, or you can reveal your age to everyone. Go ahead. I'm 81.

So, and I don't feel 81 most of the time, and I probably don't act 81 most of the time. You certainly don't. And the important thing to mention as well is that you're still working. And this is a conversation we had. I met up with Jan in Sydney a couple of weeks ago, and we had a whole conversation about retirement and she was of the idea that why would I retire? Well, exactly, because you're brilliant at what you do and you inspire lots of people. I just don't want to see you get bored.

I don't know that you would, but that's probably my fear. I was talking about you, not me. Now tell me then over those 81 years how's your journey with your body been how's your attitude changed over those years bearing in mind not just the aging process but also obviously your battle with cancer and everything else that's gone on in your life what's what's happened well if we We started with me at the age seven. I got polio in the middle of that epidemic and spent three years in hospital.

When I came out of hospital, I was painfully thin and gradually built up to what I now can see was a really lovely, healthy body. But my mother liked slenderness, so she encouraged me towards dieting, probably about the age of 17. And that's when I started to think that I wasn't good enough and that my body wasn't right. And I started on the diet thing, which I kept on with and feeling unhappy and feeling like I was failing until I met you.

At the young age of, what would you have been, 76 or something like that? Something like that, yeah.

So did cancer change your thoughts about your body though? No, it changed. Well, this is the thing, when I look back, it could have and it should have because I was working on feeling better about myself, But that seemed to exclude my body because everybody tells you that, you know, it's what you eat, it's what you become. And so, therefore, I just assumed everything was my fault for the body. Okay.

Okay. So I'm surprised though that cancer didn't kind of give you, because a lot of people describe these sort of feelings of sort of suddenly living in the moment and being much more appreciative for things in their life after a sort of close call with cancer. Oh, definitely. It definitely changed all of that. But for some reason, the body seemed to be separate from that. Oh, interesting.

So you say that it changed when we did that course together in Adelaide five years ago. What changed at that point? When I realised all the myths and, if you pardon the expression, the bullshit that we specifically females have been fed for so many years, doing the stuff with you and learning about the historical things of what a diet used to constitute back in the day and all of those sorts of things.

And knowing that every diet I had been on, I would lose weight and then put it back on again and more. But I was sure that was my fault. And you teaching me about that was just mind-blowing. This isn't something you'd sort of met before that time, the idea of that. It's 76 years of bullshit I'd had.

See, this is fascinating because it's weird because, you know, and you must feel the same as this, when you know stuff, you kind of make that assumption in the back of your head that everybody knows that stuff. And quite often it's held me back over the years from, you know, from doing things like podcasts because I kind of thought, well, everybody knows this stuff. Why do I need to say it? So it's interesting.

They don't. Coming back from your course last week, I was talking to a young friend of mine who's 50, and I said something about what we'd been studying. And I saw the look of shock on her face. And you and I had talked about how even though your course is designed around teenage girls, that menopausal women would find this very, very useful as well.

Well, there's two times, it's worth mentioning, two times when women particularly are least satisfied with their body, and that is puberty and menopause. The two times in our lives where our bodies go through pretty dramatic changes. It's useful, I think, to get out to menopausal women just like it is to get out to adolescents and hopefully let them have these messages and know that there's something better on the other side, hopefully, a different way of dealing with your body. Absolutely.

So tell me, has your counselling work actually influenced your relationship with food or your body image? So since we did that course five years ago. Hugely, hugely. My thing, if I'm talking to somebody younger and they're saying, I'm going on a diet, and I say, oh, please don't. And I used to before just think they'd look at me and think, well, what does she know? She's not the young, slender thing. But now I just say to them, well, if you want to end up like this, keep doing what you're doing.

So this is, you know, I'm happy with my body. I enjoy working with it and whatever, but it's not what a young girl would think was the perfect body. And do you qualify that, though? Because it sounds as if you're putting yourself down there, but you've obviously been on a big journey. Yeah, yes. Then I go on to explain more and more about the stuff that you teach.

So, I mean, I was going to ask the question, what wisdoms would you share with your 16-year-old self, which is slightly different because what you've just explained is what you would say to a younger person.

But if you could go back and meet you at 16, what would you say? I would tell myself to enjoy everything that I had, that I had a beautiful body, that I had legs that could walk, that I had arms that could hold, that I had a body that didn't have aches and pains, which you get when you're older. But just appreciate the moment that you're in and everything that you have. I often say to people today, you are at your youngest. Well, this is true. Because you are. Tomorrow we'll both be a day older.

And this is it. This is the body. Potentially the best body that you're in is today. Yeah. And what would we do if we knew that and we knew this was the best it was ever going to get? How would that change our thinking? You'd enjoy it, wouldn't you? You'd hope so. You'd hope so. Because a lot of people put things off because they say, well, you know, when I lose weight, I will do whatever it is they're planning to do. Or when I slim down into that outfit, I'll wear it.

Or when I'm small enough, I'll wear a bathers at the beach or something like that. And I often say, what if that never happens? and not to be sort of miserable, but to say, what if you never get there? Are we going to delay this sort of stuff forever and never do it? You'd never get there. You'd be lying in your coffin going, hmm, my bad. That was a mistake. Exactly. If only I looked a stone lighter in my coffin.

We shouldn't joke about that stuff. Think of those poor, poor bearers having to lift up this weight.

Now, look, I want to finish on something which hopefully is a happy subject, which is if you could choose your favorite meal and who you would share it with, what would you go for? I would have a family roast. So not roasting people, but, you know, just the lovely roast meat and all the roast vegetables, and I would share it with my family because I've got a pretty fun family. And we all get on, exes and all, and that's my happy place. And do you do that often then? We do fairly often, yes.

Yeah. See, that's lovely for you to want something that you've kind of got. Isn't that good? It is. It is. Because I often think at this point, I ask this question because people can come up with an amazing sort of dream menu and to have dinner with someone that has passed or a famous person or something like that. So for you to have basically chosen what you can do, I don't know, this Sunday or something is pretty spectacular.

Well, it's a no-brainer. It was instantly what I thought I enjoy and would enjoy and will enjoy. Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Jan, for giving up your time today. It's been wonderful to speak to you as it always is. Thank you for having me. So thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for your company today. I would also love it if you could follow this podcast.

It really does mean a lot to me. also we have a six-week online change your relationship with food course that you can take just visit www.acfeb.com and click on the ACFEB and me courses link there's also a journal and a workbook available on Amazon and you'll find that link in our bio I really hope you can join me again next week goodbye. Music.