![Two Things Can Be True At The Same Time: Part 4 [The Mini-Series] (Outweigh) - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/QPD22MyZ)
I won't let my body out outwait everything that I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning to love who I am.
A gat I'm strong, I feel.
Free, I know every part of me.
It's beautiful.
And then will always out way if you feel.
It, but you are, She'll some love to the food.
Why have there take you one day?
Nita?
Did you and die?
Out way? Happy Saturday? Outweigh.
I'm Amy Brown and I'm Leanne Ellington, And this is part four of a series we're calling two things can be true at the same time, and today we are focusing on well, three things being true at the same time.
You can heal from.
Your disordered eating and have a healthy relationship with food and still love food, love, sugar, fine, pleasure and joy and food and still have food stuff that you're continually working through.
All of these things can be true.
Yeah, absolutely, all at the same time.
So yeah, I think this is a big one because we think that we need to or at least I died, you know when I started my healing journey, and this was a product of the extremism of you know, still thinking that there was good and bad, right and wrong or that I couldn't even imagine a version of myself that could trust myself around these foods that I typically associated with pleasure. And then of course I had been hearing that like sugar is the enemy, sugar is the devil,
all these things. So we're being programmed and it's so confusing. So we think that, at least I did, and I know a lot of my clients have this perception as well that when their air quotes healed, they're never going to have sugar, or they're never going to want sugar, or and maybe it's not sugar, maybe it's you know,
salty and savory and all of that. But I know for me, I had this perception of what it was going to look like, and so I didn't even have the awareness to have the awareness that all of these
things could be true at the same time. So having a healed relationship with food, finding joy and fun and pleasure in food, which we'll talk about, but then also be aware that I'm here and I'm at peace, but there's also the next level of freedom and peace that I might be working on, and giving yourself permission to be on that journey as well. So starting with the first thing, which is finding that freedom and that peace, And like we talked about on the first episode of
this series, is this concept of really being mindful. And in my opinion, I do believe you have to take a sabbatical from the weight loss mentality and the typical goal setting mentality and really go heal this. So when we talk about having a healthy relationship with food, it denotes that if you've learned and practiced many years of an unhealthy or a disordered behavior relationship with food, that it denotes that you're going to go through a period
of healing. And again it's not always linear, it takes time. But coming from this place of having a more balanced and peaceful driven relationship with food, where does the topic of enjoying food come into play?
Because that's the thing it's demonized.
You know. Again, we talked about sugar being labeled as bad and evil and addictive and all of these things, But it doesn't leave space for food being part of connection and pleasure and fun and family and culture and all of these things. So how can we have both? And another distinction that comes to mind around this is when you're living in a reality that coexists with the
binge restrict cycle. So that bine restrict cycle is the restriction takes over at one point where you're like, I can't have that, not allowed to have that, that's bad, that's wrong, and then you abstain or you control or you restrict to the point in my case, when I couldn't take it any longer and I switched to the opposite.
So when I wasn't playing my inner food police, I was carefree, abandonment, eat everything in sight, and trying to you know, air quotes, get it in before I knew that the flip would be switched, the switch would be flipped again.
Oh yeah, That's how I spent much of my life, right, So in that paradigm, there's no room for having food for pleasure because it's not about that, right.
But when you have.
This relationship with food where it's just food and you you can like use it for sustenance and feeding your body and fueling your body, it also creates a space where you can be like, Wow, that chocolate chip cookie with like real sugar, real butter, real eggs, real chocolate was delicious. And it doesn't mean that I don't like my you know, protein cookie that I put cookie that I put protein powder, and you know, egg whites and stevia chips in isn't also good.
Sure, but there is a right there's.
A disorder that comes with that.
No, I think that that's totally okay. I'm with you on that.
I will say, though, when I finally flipped the switch to like being able to enjoy food, and I realized some of the food I used to find so enjoyable, or at least I convinced myself I did. I've gone back to eating it at times because it was all I had access to, or like, there was this particular type of bar, for example, that I used to get
because it had no sugar in it whatsoever. I don't even know how they make it sweet though, don't ask me, but I ate them all the time, and I thought that they were amazing.
And then I had one the other day.
Because again it's all I had access to, and I was like, this is disgusting. Yeah, how did I eat this all the time? Absolutely, for years I eat it. And then now that everything's changed, Yep, I'm a different person. Yep.
I can't go back to that now.
Some stuff to your point, like you may still enjoy that particular type of cookie and there's nothing wrong with black bean brownies or whatever. Although when I was starting that recovery, I swung all the way to where it's like, oh, only bad brownies or bust because I don't care about anything exactly. And now I'm in a place where I could be like, oh, black bean brownies, that makes sense right now because I would love to get in the extra fiber absolutely. Or now I see even blueberries in
a different way. I used to see them as like, Okay, that's a low sugar fruit that I'm gonna try to you know, be quote unquote healthy with. And now I'm like, oh, wow, I get to enjoy an abundance of blueberries right now, and my brain is going to be so excited for this absolutely, Like I see it more for what it's actually doing for my body then that it's just on this list of foods that I need to eat because they're allowed totally.
Yeah, you bring up such a good point, and that's where I where it was saying, like, when you're in it, you don't even see that this is possible, But once you're in the healing side.
Of it, it creates space for it.
Because let's be honest, when I was at the height of my disordered eating and even like the orthorexia side of it, I could and then swaying to the binging side of it. You better believe if even if I was, you know, air quotes judging myself, if it wasn't a black bean brownie, I would binge an entire batch of black bean brownies. I didn't discriminate, right, So the pendulum swings all directions, whether it's an air quotes healthy thing
or not. But part of it is like, that's where I want to invite you all and kind of sets you up for the expectation now that when you do have a healed relationship with food, because part of it, too is it's a product of being in that cycle. You're probably very desensitized or disconnected from what is hunger? What is fullness? What is pleasure? And where am I feeding a hole in my emotional self? Where am I actually, you know, enjoying this or where is it a coping
mechanism when I'm lonely stressed at our board. So we become desensitized to it. We don't trust ourselves. Often one of my clients was, like, my ticker's broken like she doesn't trust herself, she doesn't know what she likes and what she wants. So that's where I want to set you all up for now, the possibility that once you do have this, and I put it in air quotes normal relationship with food. But whatever you dictate, you want
your new normal to be a healthy, healed relationship. Like whatever your new normal is that you picture where you feel healthy and at ease with food, I also want you to invite you into the space where it can coexist, where you can also enter into a conversation where food is fun, it's pleasurable. You know, you could have a list of restaurants that you want to visit. You could have a page on Instagram that you follow because you
love their delicacies. Like, it doesn't have to be such a threat, but when you're in it, you might not even know that that's possible.
And I think too, it's important to remember that it's you're going to evolve the more you grow in this area, because I think of things you know that even just last year that let me see how I could put this, Like, I guess it's it's like permission to maybe not feel a certain way about a food for the rest of your life. Yeah, even in healing, even in recovery, your taste might change, your thoughts about something might change. And that's the best part. My favorite things is like if
we're not evolving, we're dead. And so your desire for certain fooddes are going to evolve and change as you're on this journey. And just because in the first parts of your healing you were like, oh, this is really the bread that I'm into, and then suddenly you're not,
Like that doesn't mean anything. You just don't put your pressure on yourself to have like Okay, now that I'm in this lane, it's this way or the highway, Like there's just some stuff for me that has flowed floan, flowed loan and flowed flowed in and out of my life and it's like I'm breezy with it. Yeahs like Okay, one day I'm I'm wanting that and I ate that
and it's like, okay, no big deal. But we love to bring up that pendulum swinging, Like there was times where it's like, oh, I want all of this stuff and that's totally okay. But if I go back over here and only want this type of thing, that's also okay too.
I love how you said breezy too, because it denotes this care free energy, which is the opposite of extremism and putting yourself in a box and having to be one way, and yeah, giving yourself permission to change your mind and change your beliefs and change your thoughts.
I know for me, you know, ten years ago, I was like.
Oh, official sweeteners or the devil, And.
I mean I was on that bandwagon.
And here's the thing, Like it's different for everyone, like people have different But there's now talk about the evidence based science world.
There's study after study after.
Study proving that you know, even aspartain, which is the one that is like gotten a lot of flack, is really not harmful in high doses, not everybody, or sorry, in normal doses that people would intake. Now, not everybody
is feels their best when they're drinking artificial sweeteners. But even things like that, like being open to new research coming out and being open to the fact that like maybe you're not the same person you were ten years ago or five years ago, and giving yourself that breezy attitude to be able to change your mind and leave space for it, and that is the third thing of the two things that can be true at the same time, like your relationship with food, your body, yourself.
Is always evolving.
So I remember times when I couldn't keep peanut butter in the house because it was a trigger for me. I would you know, binge it. It didn't have to be actual sugar, right, And then it was the next level of like, oh I can actually keep peanut butter in my house. And then it was like, oh, I can actually keep something that has actual sugar in my house.
And it's like giving yourself permission to let it be the next level, the next level, the next level, but find that pendulum in the middle where you can also give yourself permission to be human about food and pleasure and cravings and all of the things.
Do you watch Friends?
I did.
Yeah, it makes me think of that episode with Monica where she's like, I'm breezy, yes, and Monica is the most uptight of c not breezy person, but she's breezy convinced yes that she's breezy.
Yeah yeah, so get.
Your inner Monica.
Yeah, yeah you are, you are breezy.
Yeah. I even journaled this morning about my breeziness. Because I really wasn't being very breezy about something yesterday. So and I know you and I talk about a lot about acting as if, and I was like, you know what, I really do think that that was circumstantial and I am breezy and I'm easy to.
Get along with in this area.
It was something with my ex husband, and I was not being breezy at all, and I see it today. Yeah, but I'm going to celebrate the fact that I'm aware of it totally. I'm aware that I wasn't breezy. And then I journaled through how I'm going to be breezy, and I see myself in the future being so breezy next time. I'm already so breezy. It's amazing.
Yeah. Absolutely, I can't even see you. You flew by so quickly because you're so breezy, so breezy.
And so that might be how you know, maybe listening right now, you're not breezy about a certain thing, but journal through it, picture yourself being breezy. Yeah, And how does it feel being able to be breezy about it?
Absolutely?
Yeah, so much lighter.
Absolutely, I love how you you created that picture, because that's today's episode is a little bit harder to grasp if you've never experienced it. It's one of the biggest things for my clients are like, I don't even understand what it would be like to not feel so crazy around food. I don't know what it would feel like to have peace around food, but to also not feel like a chigarataqae Like it's hard for them to grasp.
So I think, if anything, if we're giving that weekly dose of encouragement today, knowing that it is possible to find peace with food and find pleasure in it, but without it being this rabbit hole where it becomes almost like a drug like pole, so to speak, or a feeling like an addict, Like there is that space for them to coexist even if you don't believe it's possible yet just giving you that encouragement that it is.
It is, it's totally possible. Because I had those exact same thoughts for decades. Yeah, and I was in a place of acceptance of this is just how this is my life, this is how it's going to be, and this is how we operate, and so.
Let's get used to it, right, Yeah, And then becomes yourself image and identity.
And it's just so not the case. So I know that if I'm able to be in a different place with it, and it just expands your world, it frees your brain up. I mean, they have that saying of like, this sort of stuff is just living in your brain rent free and.
You deserve better. Yeah, and it's totally possible.
Yeah, And that's why little conversations like this are helpful because if you're having those thoughts. I also remember thinking, am I the only person in the world with these thoughts? Because nobody when I was in my teens twenties, like, okay, so in the nineties and early two thousands, nobody was talking about binge eating. I thought, literally I was the only person and there was so much shame around it.
I didn't want to talk about it. And I'm like, why in the world did I just eat all of that? And who do I even tell? And I'm so messed up, something's wrong with me. And then now we know that there's so many people that have that, But it was coming from a place of my times of restriction, and it was this pattern.
Absolutely, it's so isolating, and it makes us think that we're the only one that struggles the way that we are. And then a lot of the thoughts that came up for me and for my clients are like, if only they knew how crazy I was, messed up, broken, fill on the blank. And that's another I think really import and part of today's episode is really just letting you know, like, you're not alone, you're not crazy, you're not messed up,
you're not broken, you're not too far gone. You learned what we learned, and there's a way to unlearn it and relearn something new that sets you free but also coexists in a world where you can enjoy life and socializing and friends and family and food and all the things that come alongside it. And the journey can be a dot dot dot, never ending, always evolving thing.
Yeah, So to recap, you can heal from your disordered eating and have a healthy relationship with food, and you can still love food, love sugar, find pleasure and joy and food and still have food stuff that you're continually working through. It can all be true. Absolutely, boom Leanne. Where can people find you?
Absolutely to talk more about this, learn more about this, you can head on over to stressless eeating dot com.
There's some resources over there for you to learn more.
And I am at Radio Amy on Instagram and we're going to be taking a break from this series. We did four in a row. Two Things can be True at the same time, and Lane's got some cool interviews coming up that she's going to be sharing every Saturday for the next few weeks, and then we'll come back yep with another four parts. Yep, So five, six, seven, and eight. Yep, there's eight total. Do you want to share who you potentially are interviewing or do we want yeah to that?
So our first two things Can be True at the same time was about you can you know, be on this journey of healing and health and loving yourself and peace and all of the good stuff that we all want more of and have goals and still you know, want to take your health to the next level. So I shared a little bit about how I drew a line in the sand and decided to figure out how two things could be true in my own life around that after ten years of not not knowing what that
looked like. So the woman that I worked with, and she's a friend and a mentor, will be sharing some awesomeness about all of that and how we can really bridge the gap between you know, the typical health and fitness world, but also the mental emotional health and how
to really heal from this. She's had her own testimony and experiences with eating disorders and disordered eating and body dysmorphia and all of that stuff, so she'll definitely share her own testimony and then we'll be talking about some cool stuff in relation to that.
Okay, so interview time coming up the next few weeks, and then Leanna and I.
Will be back together.
But hope y'all are having the day that you need to have and we'll see you next time.
Bye bye