Disordered Eating and Disconnection From Your Body are Solvable Problems

health and our loss of human connections. Just what health is can be complicated to define. In the United States, there's an often repeated idea that body size and overall health are linked. That oversimplification can be problematic. Seventy nine percent of weight loss program participants report coping with weight stigma by eating more food. And eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of all mental health disorders, surpassed

only by opioid addiction. That's according to the National Eating Disorders Association. For me, I based my health on my blood work, on my consistency with going to the doctor. For me, it's how much of sleep am I getting? How much connection am I getting in my relationships, rather than am I eating enough fruits and vegetables, and am I exercising Precampos used to work in an eating disorder clinic.

She worked to help her young female clients to restore their weight, but she wanted to spend even more time helping them to redefine their relationships with food and their bodies. I think it scares the American public. We live in constant disarray with our relationship with food, and it's actually to a point of bonding. Like we often connect around feeling bad about our bodies or feeling bad about food or oh, i'm a I'm cheating today, I'm off today.

Campos is a licensed mental health counselor and body image coach. She operates from the premise that health at every size is achievable. The Health at Every Size framework has been shown to improve cardio respiratory fitness and reduce psychological distress and clinically obese people. It deemphasizes weight in favor of a focus on overall health. Disordered eating and disconnection from

your body are solvable problems. Health at every size at its core, is the idea that, regardless of our body size, we have the right to pursue health and I don't deal with people's food, but their relationship to food and to their body. Talk to me a little bit about your journey to becoming a body image coach. I got into the work because I lived it, lived life in a larger body, and my health was always assumed and it impacted not only my relationship with my food, but

with my body as well. What do you mean when you say people assumed your health? So my entire life, I was made to feel like your body size is a problem, and specifically doctors and family members. I did not struggle with an eating disorder in the same way that the girls that I worked with, but I definitely struggled with disorder eating because we pushed this singular idea of what beauty is supposed to be. And so not only did I see myself as larger, I also saw

it as something that was disqualifying. That I would not be as successful in my career, that I would not be accepted, that I would not find a romantic partner that doesn't even align with my values. I believe in not judging quote unquote a book by its cover, So

why am I putting that standard on myself? In the last year I've lost a lot of weight, and I think one thing I've noticed is like there are for me, I can tell you that there's concrete things that have changed about my own body and my own health that are tangible that I can see, whether it's like not being out of breath, whatever, all those things that are

connected to being in a smaller body. Absolutely, With all of that being said, what do you think is the disconnect between actually getting people to be healthy, like just healthy, size agnostic, just healthy? What are we lossing here? Health? And every size approach is not anti weight loss. It is anti intentional weight loss through restrictive measures because we

don't know what our body's going to do. So for me, in my recovery, my body got bigger, and every time I lost weight, my mental health decreased significantly, and so

that wasn't even being considered. And so I think that if we were to pursue health outcomes regardless of how our body changes, if we were to trust our bodies to do what they need to do, just like we trust them to go to the bathroom, just like we trust ourselves to fall asleep, that's how we would be able to measure and see health outcomes change people of color. They're suffering from body image issues and eating disorders at the same rate as white folks, but they're far less

likely to receive a professional diagnosis or treatment. Is health at every size and weight inclusivity founded with a particular race or culture in mind? You know what? That is an incredible question, And I don't even know if I have an answer. It was probably written for what most things are written for, right, so the most accessible white female. And now people are arguing that body positivity health at

every size should be a social justice issue. It is a social justice issue, because if we're talking about accessibility, if we're talking about who has the ability to get mental health care, never mind eating disorder treatment, then how can we even begin to cover? You know, these issues? I worked a neating disorder center. We didn't even talk about fat phobia, never mind talking about racism or the Patrick artchyme. And so I think that there's a deep

need on the macro level. And sometimes if I go down the rabbit hole too far, I'm like, oh my god, what's the point, Like we're screwed. And so that's why I am like, I see it and I know it, and I hold importance for it now. According to the American Journal of Public Health Health that every size has been shown to work on the individual level, but the studies authors didn't endorse it as a public health measure.

What do you think the hold up is? Have you been like following the research or have your class but a part of any of the recent studies. Here's the thing is, nobody wants to fund that. The diet industry is a seventy two billion dollar industry that profits on the belief that dieting will help our health. So I would love for people to invest to measure at that level. It can health at every size help Nobody benefits except

the consumer. Except us, We benefit from that. Don't you think that the food companies and the people that make food at whatever it is, this would be something that they could get behind where it's like, you know what I mean, because if we're talking like not diet culture anymore, they were just being like, put butter on it. What are we doing here? You know what I mean? Like it seems like there'd be more money from a different place. There are so many people who can get behind it.

One of the things that people crap on is like I can't gain weight because then I can't fit in seats. I can't you know, buy clothes. And I'm like, there's a huge industry here for companies to be like, all right, we can make it. We caught it for you, So why don't people? Because I think it scares the American public. We live in constant disarray with our relationship with food, and it's actually to a point of bonding. Like if you can pull yourself back and you look at how

we connect. We often connect around feeling bad about our bodies or feeling bad about food or oh, I'm on it, I'm cheating today, I'm off. Once I was able to step outside of that, then I see like, oh man, like what I was doing there was It was a bid for connection. I just I wanted to belong and I was so fearful that my body size or my food freedom was going to be the thing that exiled me. Am I still afraid of that? Now? Sure? Am I probably going to get flat back for this episode? Absolutely?

Are people going to say that I'm justifying my body size by taking this position? Absolutely? Does that change my position? Not at all? So where do you think the idealization of Thinness comes from and what do you do to push back. I'm giving your listeners lots of reading to do. There is a book called The Beauty Myth written by Naomi Wolf, and she talks about how the beauty myth and the thin ideal has actually been carried with us

through generations. That's rooted in racism, It's rooted in the patriarchy, that there is an ideal body size Sabrina Strings book Fearing the Black Body. Somebody profits off of their being an ideal and it's making it a desirability. And so the average female woman in the United States wears a size sixteen. And so how I push back from that is one acknowledging what are my values and what are

society's values. I was told by people, you're not going to be able to find a boyfriend if you don't lose weight, and I was able to recognize that's not true. I have friends and larger bodies who get married. I have friends and larger bodies who are having intimacy and are able to connect with their body with other people. So why is that message true for me? And I had to unlearn that message, and so my reframe is I am not for everyone, and I am deeply loved.

That's where progress is made. I say this thing to my clients. Would you if you could pursue health if your goal is is health, but your body doesn't change. If your body does, size does not change, or even worse in your mind, your body says gets bigger. Well, you still want to pursue health. Is that enough for you? That's a good question. I noticed that the health of every size movement doesn't have a lot of data about successful outcomes with heavier groups. You think that there's any

limitations to the health at every size approach? Again, I think that we would love to do more studies, but we need to have studies funded. I know, so, I know it's a little bit of a what about ism because I'm going in the opposite direction. But how long

do we see weight loss successful? For the most that we have is about five years for five percent of the people we have sustained results, which means for ninety five percent of the public, we're going to end up back in the same place that we started, or heavier, and they're not giving you long lasting studies that are effective in changing health outcomes. Brie. A few weeks ago, we talked with Michael Moss. He's an investigative journalist. We

talked about the exploitative nature of food companies. He believes that the food industry's product development actually contribute to food addiction. I will tell you off the back, from my clinical perspective, I do not believe that people can be addicted to things that we need. And rather, I believe that restriction causes binging. That it's sort of like this pendulum, and this pendulum is pulled and so then once there's freedom,

we swing in the opposite direction. Now, the first guideline of intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality, the notion that there are good foods and bad foods, and to allow ourselves to have permission to eat all foods. And when I say this to people, and when I share this with clients, there's a lot of pushback. There's like, no, but if I if I'm allowed to eat this, I'm

never going to stop eating it. And I have felt that myself, and I can tell you I am in the largest body that I've ever existed in, and I have the best relationship with food because I was able to set rate out those food rules. And now when I eat said food. It is out of desire and not out of restriction. So I think one of the things that is noted in that episode is we're born being addicted to the thing that we need, which is

food and water. Do you think that still falls in line with what you're saying or does that fall in opposition of what you're saying. I think what we're arguing here is the nuance of addiction. And one of my favorite authors on addiction is Johan Harry, and he talks about addiction with the rat in a cage with cocaine water and regular water. The rat would go towards the cocaine water. But Johan Harry had followed another study that said, well, if you're just putting that in front of the rat,

of course he's going to go to it. But what if you put the rat in an environment where he had friends and he had things to do, and they called it rat park and you put it out of the way, would the rat bs life to go towards the thing that it feels addicted to. And what they found in their research was no. And so what Johan Harry says about addiction is that the opposite of addiction

is not sobriety that it is connection. Yes. Do people maybe use food as a coping skill, yes, but why do we demonize that if that is all you have access to? How do you define health? If you only define health based on body size, then sure I'm not healthy. For me, I base my health on my blood work, on my consistency with going to the doctor as a fat person, and I use fat in a reclaimed way. I get a lot of pushback from doctors who are not in line with this health that every size paradigm.

For me, it's how much of sleep am I getting? How much connection am I getting in my relationships? What does my mental health look like? It is a true holistic approach rather than am I eating enough fruits and vegetables? And am I exercising? And there's another book that I have erect ammend people read. Lindo Bacon and Lucy Affermore wrote a book they wrote, Health at Every Size, But then they also wrote a follow up book called Body Respect.

It says that food and exercise only make up thirty percent of health, that health is impacted majoritatively by accessibility, and so we can't even get into the nuances of what these big companies are doing. While yes, that is important if we can shift our relationship to said food, it's that we will trust our bodies to do what they need to do. I don't need any program to tell me how many times I need to go to the bathroom. I trust my body to do that. It's

a natural reaction. Everybody was freaking out this year that they gained weight, and I'm like, if we were to think about this in you know, the cavemen times, if they were sheltered in and they were stuck in, they would be grateful that their body sustained weight as a survivability mechanism. So I think we might be differing on

the word of addiction. I think it has a negative connotation, but I truly believe in giving the power back to the consumer, to the person that without feeling guilt, I can buy these foods that I have been told I'm not allowed to and they don't have to control or consume your life. Brie, I read that in your practice you explore something called body grief with your clients. Tell

me more about that. Yes, when I was in the thick of my body image journey, and I realized that because of some of the health complications that I have, which are hormonal and autoimmune, that the likelihood that my body will ever change or be small, the fact that I will never be able to attain that ladder. I had to explore the death of what that grief meant or said to me. I had to learn how to belong to myself, and in that I had to say

goodbye to things that I wasn't going to get. So I would never get the praise and adoration from my family around being in a smaller body. I would never be seen to society as a success story. In allowing myself to go to those dark places with grief, sharing with other people and realizing I'm not the only one who feels this way, it lifted that burden of being alone in my body image. And Elizabeth Cooper Ross actually wrote the stages of grief. They're originally the stages of death,

and we're familiar with them. And it is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. An acceptance is not yeay, death, yea hey, I let to live in a bad image. That's never what acceptance was. Right. Acceptance was I am here, I'm glad I got you said, and I think that there's this misconception that acceptance is going to be like, yeay, I love my fat body. And here's what I'll tell you that my body acceptance does not mean that I love all the parts of my body. It's not like

I have some acne over here. I'm not excited about it. I don't love it, but it no longer hold narrative that I am less then, and that is acceptance, That is body acceptance. What can our listeners do to support the help that Every Size movement, to learn more about it, to help promote a more weight neutral approach to health for themselves and among their friends. I love the idea of weight neutrality right because of being weight inclusive feels very hard at times, so of if we can just

begin to be neutral towards it. The thing that you can do is begin to explore your own relationship with your body and with your relationship with food, and begin to unravel where did this come from? Where did this belief system exist? I recommend reading Sonya Renee Taylor's book. I recommend reading Sabrina String's book. I recommend reading The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf Health at Every Size and Body respect and anti diet. I recommend getting into the

literature and understanding. So we're deprogramming from diet culture like deprogramming from a cult on the macro level. That is a great question. My thought is, I don't know, so I just keep showing up and talking and hopefully people like yourself will listen. Thank you so much for briting with us, Brie, Thank you for having me. This has been such an honor. Brecamp Posts is a body image coach and mental health counselor based in New Jersey. Be sure to check out our show notes for links to

all the books that Bree mentioned in this episode. Solvable Listeners, It's summer and we're gonna take a two week break to enjoy it. We'll be back in mid August with a terrific collection of solvables for you. Starting with a conversation with Ebram x Kendy from our sister podcast, Be Anti Racist. We're going to talk with him about how to endure while doing anti racism work. Sometimes we get a little tired in those spaces. He's going to teach us how to get through it. We're still reading tweets

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Ronald Young Junior. Thanks for listening.