Disordered Food Thoughts & Patterns?? You Are Not Alone! (Outweigh)

time did you and die out? Happy Saturday? Outweg fam amy here and my guest today is Patrick Custer, and he is on to talk about, well a little bit of your own journey, Patrick, but then what you're doing to help others that are in recovery or maybe even just struggling and wondering. What is this process of recovery even look like? Is there help out there? Am I alone? Because I feel like that's one of the most daunting

things when you are going through something. For me, in particular with my eating disorder, some of the thoughts and actions that would take place in my mind and then that I would do, I think, Oh my gosh, I can't ever tell anybody about this. This is crazy? Am I the only one? So Patrick's here to remind us

we are not alone. Oh my gosh, you just hit you know, so many, so many things, you know, talking about shame and guilt being such strong drivers for us from such a young age, both societally and and I think naturally, it just it just it is there. And whether you know, I know a little bit about your story, and I'll compare contrast for me. I know, I ended up meeting and getting like addressing seriously at an early age my medicators and so quickly to just kind of

try and put it in a nutshell. I look back as a child. I grew up in a southern family where everything you know, food is everything, everything surrounds food. When you know, we we all get it. I was in sports, I was active. I never really thought about food, I mean other than like I liked it and I ate it, and nothing was you know, I didn't correlate to my body. And then I started to hit a something weird and puberty and I got chubby. I remember just the shame and guilt that fell all over me,

both internally but from social reinforcement. So at this time I'm a gay man. I wasn't out then, raised a super conservative family. So at the time I'm trying to fit into this mold what I think I'm supposed to be, which is like a supermasculine manly man play sports. And so my story is very interesting to talk about body image body dysmorphia from an early age where this is the role that I was felt like I was dealt

and this is what I was trying to play. Right, So from a very early on, I didn't know like I battled over eating and body image issues at that point then came along I don't even remember what introduced to me, but like over exercise and then dieting. So these were my earliest medicators food than exercise, than restricting. And it wasn't until I went to college that that

I really got exposed to some more extreme measures. Drugs and alcohol played a huge role, and ultimately I had to seek help for all of it because at the end of the day, I was trying to control how my body looked, how I felt, the peace within myself.

You know, a lot of us in twelve step programming, which I am actively, you know, we call it, we referred to it as the is um, you know, like it's not just one thing, and for me it has been just like a bounce around of you name it, all kinds of things medicating behaviors and so you know, when it comes to sobriety from addiction, from chemical addiction, alcohol and drugs, I've been sober. The February will be uh, twelve years. That's awesome. I want to stop and acknowledge that,

because that's I mean, that's amazing. A good friend of mine, I just celebrated twelve years a couple of weeks ago, and yeah, she was like, it's my sober birthday. Hey, yeah, it is exciting, And it's interesting how those birthdays end up. They end up being less about me and more about other people and showing the way, like you get at the longer and longer. I'm fortunate enough to you know,

hold on to sober time and stay healthy. Well that's part of recovery anyways, using your story and then also being in a twelve step program, having you know your sponsor and then sponsors. That's how you say right to the other way sponsors and sponsors. Yeah, and then you're motivated. You're out there, you're serving others. I feel like services a big part of that, taking it off of you

and on to other people. And I remember my mom telling me that early on in college when I was really struggling with my eating disorder, and she said, uh, could you just go falling here somewhere or do something. I mean, that was her way of saying that to me. It didn't register, of course at the time, but she

was onto something. It was she was trying to get my brain to stop focusing on some of my things and focus on someone else to shift And obviously if you do that enough, it does help rewire the brain. But I love that you're talking about making it about others because that is part of the journey in staying in recovery. And I'll stop here and say, no matter what you're if you're you know, you identify that you're recovering from one thing, or you might need to recover

from something. You know, everybody's got a different journey, different thing that they're recovering from, and different healing experiences, um and different things work for different people, but there are a lot of commonalities. One of them is connection. We know that. I'm gonna try and get his name right. The person who coined this phrase, Johan, I forget his last name. He was the initial person that talked about connection being the opposite of addiction or self medication and suffering.

And we see that across the board, right and through that and under that umbrella is the connection of getting outside of ourselves through serving other people, saying that you know, I'm part of you, you're part of me, and you know,

taking the focus off of myself. So I will say that, you know, the eating stuff for me has um and as I think you know, actually no matter what you're talking about, I mean, like it's very black and white with them addiction because I don't drink at all anymore, but we have to eat when we talk about process addictions, so you know, eating disorder is a process or eating is a process, and the addiction is whatever surrounding the that process. And for me, there was a lot of

or though over exercising under intake. They're just complete restricting altogether, and I have to be careful every day to not fall into that trap because it's really really easy, as I'm sure you know as well. Yeah, and that's a good reminder for anybody listening that if you've made strides and you take a step back. It's such a good

point that we can't eliminate food from our lives. You can try to remove yourself from alcohol and drugs by who you're surrounding yourself with, what you allow in your home, but food has to be allowed in the home. So yeah, that was something that was, you know, difficult. You couldn't just be like, okay, well I just won't have this. In fact, for me in recovery, I had to invite more food into my home. I had to start allowing

more things that I used to not allow. And Patrick, and regards to your service to others, something that I want you to tell people about is the podcast that you're running, because I feel like that's another resource that people can check out and if they're wondering, like do I have something going on? I have these thoughts? What is orthorexia? Some of this stuff is new to people, this vocabulary or other addictions because oftentimes it may not just be one thing that you're using to numb out,

like you said, the medicators. And I feel like your podcast to be an excellent resource for people, So tell us about it absolutely well. You can check on our website it's Rooted Recovery Stories dot com. That's rooted. Like we talked about keeping keeping people rooted in recovery and it's got kind of a unique story. We started out I work for Promises Behavioral Health. We own treatment centers across the country for mental health, addiction, sex, addiction, eating disorders.

We treat all the things UM and our various treatment centers and UH I have the privilege of getting to oversee all of our aftercare programming so lifelong. We support our alumni afterwards when they go out and have to hit the real world and they're outside of the safe container that they've gotten the help they need in I myself have experienced at that's what helps get me on

the track to health and safety. And you know, long term engagement meaning like two resources that are connecting us, are serving us, are serving the walk that we wanna do. You know, whatever you're talking about recovering from, we believe is the key to success. So this podcast came out from that as my life's kind of passion project. But it's a mission thing to serve the whole entire community. You don't have to be an alumni. And we talk

about recovery from all types of adversity. And I say adversity because it's a very umbrella term that encompasses trauma, the full spectrum of the mental health issues, parents of children who have overdosed, people who literally are have experienced recovery, overdosed themselves, all the things that I named. We interview and talk about stories, what it was like for these people, and the resources that are available to help them. So I think that there can't be enough hope out there.

We've got all kinds of things to entertain us. And binge. When we talk about binging, Oh my gosh, what a trigger word and a key you know thing we talked about right now. But like Netflix TV, we consume so much to just entertain ourselves. This is an outlet that we really put so much heart and soul into providing that is something to feed the soul. Oh. I love

that feeding the soul. I know you give the website, but if they're just in their podcast browser, we're on everything, so you can watch it or stream it like via the regular podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Facebook, YouTube. Just search Rooted Recovery Stories and you'll find us. And I

love that name, Rooted Recovery Stories. It's so good. Well, Patrick, thank you for sharing some of your story and then the message of connection and service and the reminder of hope, because I think that's what what we all need, because some ones that can just you just feel so overwhelmed by everything and you're like okay, and then you see it working for other people and and instead of saying, oh, I wish that could work for me, see those other

people's recovery as as hope and encouragement to you, not discouragement because you're not there yet. Don't let those thoughts go into your head. If there's one thing I could say, it's just if people come into your path, don't let it let their recovery annoy you because you're not there yet. Feel like, oh wow, thank you God for showing me that person that's in recovery, because I know what it's like to be jealous of someone that's in recovery and

you just wish you could be there. But you know, right, because we all wanted into gratification. I wanted insta gratification when I was living in my sickness, and I want instant gratification when I'm seeking healing. But I want if I could really quick, I wanted to add something that I feel like it's so important. There aren't enough men that are out there talking about their history or struggle

with eating disorders. And I don't know if you would be surprised at this, but many people would be so surprised that it is a legit real thing. Whether you're gay, straight, trying, whatever, it's it affects everyone. It's no respecter of persons. And the compare and contrast for me when I was talking about earlier, you know, I grew up and wasn't living myself, tried living as a straight man for a long time, and a more masculine presence that was, you know, hiding

things and doing sports and whatever. That body type for me was was way different. And then I, you know, move into my twenties and I'll just tell you the gay male world, you're either very very thin or super muscular, like those are two two of the most idolized body types. And I didn't know how to go to the zero body fat, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Channing Tatum, whatever realm, And so what was easiest for me was to slide into that

rail thin category. So I just want to say that, like, if you are a male, you know, assist male transmail doesn't matter. And you're hearing this, don't let societal norms tell you that, oh, I'm just being healthy or going to at a gym trips. You know, I'm just following, you know whatever from Men's Health magazine. You know, this is totally different from what Amy's talking about and all that all that jazz. It hits all of us, and it's real. Yeah. No, it's um disguise like when we use.

I used for a long time orthorexia for sure, under the guys of well, I'm having fertility issues and I read this one book that told me that if I eat this exact way that I'll be able to get pregnant. But really, I mean, yes, did I want to get pregnant, Absolutely, But did I love having eating that way as an excuse to tell myself because I knew some of my behaviors weren't normal. But I was like, well, that's okay, that's what this book told me that I needed for

my fertility issues. And when I would be out with friends, they'd be like, oh, you don't want this or you don't want to eat this. I would be like, oh, well, I'm trying to get pregnant, and then that would shut everybody down and you might be like, oh, oh I saw this in Men's Men's Health. Oh well that's okay, no problem, it must be approved and totally good for you, So thank you for sharing that as well. And yeah, rooted recovery stories. I love it. Patrick, well, thank you.

And yeah, we'll have to have you back on again. I love it. Thank you so much