We also talk about why traditional “thinking based” strategies to stop a binge aren’t always enough, and why anxiety goes hand-in-hand with food restriction.

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Summer:
This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire you on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance. With personalized coaching from me incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms. Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group. This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting and intersectional feminism. I am your host summer Innanen. a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

This is episode 257 and I’m joined by Tamsin broster And Gillian McCollum, anti diet and body image coaches. We’re talking about binge eating and how to start to overcome it. Why traditional thinking based strategies to stop a binge aren’t always enough. Why anxiety goes hand in hand with food restriction and so much more. You can find the links mentioned in this episode at summer innanen.com forward slash 257. I want to give a shout out to sopapilla who left this review love this show. Summer shares her wisdom and lived experience with honesty and humor while giving you a healthy dose of what it takes to move beyond eating disorders or disordered eating and embrace the joy in life again, definitely a must listen, thank you so much for that I really appreciate it. You can leave a review by going to Apple podcasts search for eat the rules and click to leave a review or give it a rating. You can also subscribe to the show via whatever platform you use. And don’t forget to grab the free 10 Day body confidence makeover at summer innanen.com. Forward slash freebies with 10 steps to take right now to feel better in your body. Also, if you’re a professional who works with people who may struggle with body image, I have a free guide for you, you can get the free body image coaching roadmap, which shows you the 12 sort of phases you can take a client through when you’re working with them. At summer innanen.com forward slash roadmap. I’m super excited about this episode, I don’t really ever claim to be an expert on helping people heal their relationship with food. I can certainly help people in that arena. But that’s not my primary of expertise. My primary of expertise is around body image and so forth. So I love having people on the show where food is really their their main area of expertise and actually learn so much from this interview. So I’m really excited to share it. Julian and Tamsin are people that I’ve known for a couple years now they did my body image coach certification program. So they’re trained in that area too, if you’re looking for someone to help you with food and body image, and I just love their work, and I love their approach to this work, and I’m so excited to interview them today. Jillian and Tamsin are both anti debt coaches on a mission to disrupt diet culture and help support people who are looking to heal their relationship with food and their bodies. Together, they host the anti diet club podcast which helps folks on their journey to food and body freedom through an anti diet Health at Every Size lens. Let’s get started with the show. Hello, Gillian. Hello. Tamsin, welcome to the show.

Tamsin:
Hello, nice to meet you.

Gillian:
Thanks so much for having us.

Summer:
I’m so happy to have you both here. It’s really exciting to see you again. And and actually get to, you know, like, ask you some questions and interview you about your areas of expertise. I love you to both just talk about like what brought you what brought you into this work to start?

Tamsin:
Yeah, so coming to this work. I mean, I feel like it’s a cliche, I feel like it’s a little bit of a cliche, saying like, this was my relationship with food. But it’s true. Like I had a really really disordered relationship with food for years since I was a teenager. And it just cycled from like dieting and binging and just, you know, being at war with my body, there’s no other way to describe it. And I gradually started to discover intuitive eating and body positivity. And I started exploring that over like, several years. And then it took me towards, you know, I just kind of wanted to do that myself. I wanted to help other people, which is the cliche that I’m talking about, but it’s true. And that’s kind of how it kind of came about, I guess. You know, I you know, Jillian, you can kind of tell your story is probably slightly different from mine. But

Gillian:
yeah, kind of similar. I mean, I you know, was a career Dieter, since I was probably about nine 16 Maybe I think I can date it back to. But you know, body shame predates that, for sure. I can always remember feeling the biggest person in the room, which, you know, objectively wasn’t true, but was how I felt. And then 2015 I stopped dating. But of course not really, because just we, because we decide we’re going to stop dieting gradually, that isn’t what happens. I went through all the iterations of, well, I’m not going to die, but I’m going to I’m going to just do this instead. Which then morphed into, you know, dieting by by another name. And I was a yoga teacher, right? So went through all the kind of Orthorexic kind of real health this stuff as well. And then finally landing years later, to a place of intuitive eating and, and doing a lot more body image work. And, yeah, and then Thompson and I both started, we have separate businesses, but then we started our podcast just over a year ago. So and here we are,

Summer:
yeah, that’s great. That’s so great. And so I know, you both really kind of specialize in in, like, I mean, the whole spectrum of like, you know, helping people heal their relationship with food in their body, but, but in particular, like binge eating, and things like that. And so I’d love to talk to you a little bit more about that, because that’s not my particular area of expertise. So I feel like it would be helpful for people like how do you even define binge eating? Like, because I sort of when I came into this, I thought, like, Okay, I’m not a binge eater, like binge eating is like, when you like, lock yourself in a closet and you eat, like, just so much food, right, like, so. I mean, is that what binge eating is? Or like? How would you define binge eating?

Gillian:
I’m happy to take this one. If you like times, like, Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point you make somewhere because everyone experiences binge eating differently. And I think you could look at the kind of technical terms that’s defined in the DSM, for example. But what I find working with folks is it’s really about how they feel about it. Is this something that’s really impacting their life, as opposed to looking at how much food and how often yeah, that’s, that’s helpful, but also, how do they feel about it? How To what degree is it impacting their life? And then also, I think it’s really important to get clear on are they talking about binge eating? Or are they talking about emotional eating, which Tamson now in the work that we both do a really see these things as being quite different and separate, although they do overlap, the kinds of causes and therefore maybe, ways in which we might want to recover would be slightly different. So that’s where I would begin. I don’t know, Tamsin, if you want to pitch in anything? Yeah,

Tamsin:
absolutely. I think the point you made about it being different for everybody is so true, because it is different for everybody. And people kind of label it differently. And, you know, we’ve had both you and I have both had clients who, who do identify as binge eaters, but actually, when we’ve kind of talked through it, it’s actually not really what we would maybe define as binge eating, but it feels like that to them. It’s a very personal thing. I totally agree with what you said that about, you know, it being a real kind of individual thing.

Summer:
Yeah. And so you mentioned like binge eating being different from emotional eating. So like, what, what’s the sort of like, what are some of the differences there? Like for someone who’s listening to this who’s like, an A, not that, like labels really matter? But I think the approach you then take to help somebody probably differ. So like, what’s, what are sort of the differences between the two that you would look for?

Tamsin:
Yeah, I think with emotional eating, we’re really focusing on when somebody is eating in a reaction to feeling something to an emotion, whereas binge eating is much more a reaction that people may not realize it at the time, much more reaction to restriction, whether that’s intentional or unintentional. So really, it’s just about getting curious, curious, with the client curious and getting them to be curious with themselves about what’s going on around the time that these things happen. And that this, like eating things, you know, these eating behaviors occur. And just that’s how you kind of get to understand whether somebody’s really eating and a reaction to restriction or eating a reaction to emotions, and sometimes both is going on, you know, they’re not necessarily isolated. I think what I would say is the common theme around it is there’s so much shame. There’s so much shame around whether you know, somebody is emotionally eating or binge eating, anytime that somebody just can’t control their food or they don’t have, like, you know, the willpower that diet culture sells to us all the time. They will have a certain level of shaming and kind of, you know, discontentment around how they’re eating. They don’t feel like they’re free around food. They feel like shooters ruling them. I don’t know whether Dylan has something to add or

Gillian:
Yeah, and I think I think you’re right what you say about the overlap. They are Right is, if you are continually in this cycle of trying to eat less than what your body actually needs. A binge episode is very much a reaction. It’s an it’s a really natural response to that, particularly long term suppression of weight, right. And often it’s the emotional piece that is kind of the gateway to the bench, right? When we are under emotional duress, and we’re not taking care of ourselves, or we, you know, are feeling chronic stress and anxiety or self care might be low. We don’t know how to process our emotions, all that kind of thing can be the gateway to binge eating, or a binge episode, which essentially is, you know, sometimes I think, I’m not sure what people sometimes think when times are nicer on our podcast that binge eating is, you know, yes, it feels like we’re out of control. It’s not a pleasant thing to experience. But it’s not that our body is flawed, or that it’s doing something wrong. It’s actually when you think about it, it really normal, a natural response to the restriction that we have been sort of inducing essentially through, not not eating enough food to the practicalities of just not consuming enough food, but also the mental restriction around food as Tamsin described the shame and the guilt, what we call like, psychological restriction. So all of that is at play. And it sounds very complicated, but um, you know, all of this cycles back to a shame around our bodies, which you speak, right, so much of your podcast, as we often say, on our podcast, we wouldn’t really have so much of a problem with our food, if we didn’t have a problem with our bodies.

Summer:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And yeah, it’s interesting to hear you talking about binge eating because like, when I was a dieter, I don’t think I ever would have referred to myself as like a binge eater. And yet, there were like, so many occasions, like every day, every week, where I would be like, you know, having that compensatory response, where I would be like eating so much stuff and feeling a lot of shame and guilt. But I think, because I never got to a point where I was like, sick to my stomach. I never considered myself to be like a binge eater or have that, but hearing you talk about how just those feelings of like shame and guilt are really the drivers as well as just having it be a reaction to dieting makes me sort of think like, Well, yeah, I probably was binging but I just, you know, didn’t label it that way. Not that labels necessarily matter. But I do think that there’s some helpfulness and just acknowledging that, like, you know, this is happening as a response to something else, not because you you don’t have control, like I think most of us feel like it’s because we don’t have control.

Gillian:
Yeah, absolutely.

Tamsin:
I think, you know, quite a lot of the time we’re so focused on us being the problem that it’s our thing. I it took me such a long time. When I first heard that, you know, binge eating was really this response to the restriction. It took me such a long time for that penny to really land. I don’t think that’s something you just go Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s it. And it’s, it’s takes such a long time to figure that out. And, and then you almost feel like cheated, that, you know, really diet culture has you fixated on the way you’re eating is the problem, not the way you’re restricting.

Summer:
Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. So when you’re working with people around binge eating, like, what’s kind of the first step towards towards healing.

Gillian:
So in terms of binge eating, I think I would encourage or be curious, I suppose with my client in the beginning as to what does their eating patterns look like? Is for what I see a lot, for instance, is people look back what we call backloading their food. And I was a classic example of this, so I can spot this on my off, and that’s someone who wakes up every morning and it’s day one, right, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do, I’m gonna do my best today, I’m going to really, you know, best meaning, you know, eats little food as as possible or stick to the plan or whatever that is. And I used to do that I would lay it out on my kitchen counter, and I’d be like, yeah, that’s That’s it. That’s, that’s an appropriate amount of food for anyone in a day, which, of course, it wasn’t because I was looking at it through a diet culture lens, and then that food would be gone by 11am. Because I’d be hungry, and I would just, you know, eat the food. And then of course, I would start from like, 11am until like six 7pm When I came home in the evening, and then I would that’s when a binge would happen. So another thing I suppose to know around binging is, is sometimes it can happen after months and months and months of restriction. But for me, that was the case but then eventually was just like every night I couldn’t even hold it together for a day. And so for me and what I help clients with is really trying to Be realistic about the amount of food that we actually need per day, per week per month, and then trying to for your own subscribers mechanically eating. So eating in a really regular way trying to not get to that place of complete starvation. And then we we then fall into this, you know, response of, of eating everything that isn’t nailed down. So trying to get you know, I see it a lot for folks who maybe don’t eat breakfast, or maybe try and hold off having that first meal for as long as they possibly can in the day, or that kind of stuff is really going to get our bodies into that place of anxiety, right? We are designed to be anxious when we aren’t fed, that’s biologically good. So try not to get into that place of of feeling like we’ve so long on the hunger scale that we need that we fall into that kind of compensatory behaviors. So that’s, that’s where I would start. And then in terms of if you if you would agree, but just trying to get into that to three meals a day, plus as many snacks and just and just gone. And of course that’s going to throw up body image stuff, right. But then that’s why it’s so important to be doing that work alongside Yeah, I

Tamsin:
think that mechanical eating as a first step is is really is something I would always look at putting him first before you start really even diving into like further work in intuitive eating. Because if you hop skip and jump into that just too quickly, it doesn’t work. But it is it is hard on the nervous system. Because when you’re used to just delaying that food and like I was exactly the same as Jenny and I would be like, like, this is what I’ve got for the day, this will be fine. And then like, oh, like, you know, by like 11 o’clock. Oh my gosh, like, oh, it was wrong with me. And again, it was always like, what’s wrong with me? Why have I eaten all this already? Like, why can’t I just get myself under control? Or I’d be thinking, it’s fine. I just don’t need to eat anything for the rest of the day. I mean, like, I’m bound like not to get hungry, it’ll be fine. And, and I think that is so common. But I think especially when you will start working with clients around this, this idea that you’re gonna start eating like three meals a day, but you’re gonna start eating early, because start that like, almost like opening that door to allowing food in straight away can be really scary. Because often people and I know I did, will view their binge eating is how, as how they would eat if they were allowed to just be around food. Oh, yeah. Because it feels so scary. It’s like, oh, if I was allowed to be around food, like all the time, it’s like, you know, if you feel Binging at 10 o’clock at night, it’s common to be thinking to yourself, well, it’s a good time. I didn’t start doing this at eight because this will be my whole day. Which actually the opposite is true. But that’s really hard to kind of accept or believe like when you’re first starting out, and it’s understandable. This is why it’s baby steps. It’s not rushing in. It’s not like here’s your six week plan and this is it. This doesn’t it just doesn’t work like that. So gently baby steps.

Summer:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, that you both have so many good things they’re like and I think that a couple things, I just want to call out the like, Julian you just said about feeling anxious like that that’s like a normal response to you know, like, your body’s like biological response to being hungry is to feel anxious because I feel like that anxiety actually makes people want to like fixate on the food even more like it it almost creates like an even more vicious cycle or it makes them more anxious about their body like that’s something that I noticed. So it’s really interesting to like have people understand that like feeding yourself can actually reduce some of that anxiety if I’m like interpreting it correctly. Yeah,

Gillian:
there’s hungry bodies and anxious body right that’s what what I see all the time and and still I mean still I’m I’m years and years into this work. But if I feel now as a kind of x data that I don’t know where my next meal is coming from, like if I get on a flight and there’s like, you know, no vegetarian meals, like I still feel that anxiety my body remembers that right? So trying to rebuild that trust with your body when it’s being perpetually in that anxious state around food takes a really long time to repair that and to be able to kind of like manage that nervous system regulation around it. Yeah,

Summer:
I always have snacks for that reason because I’m the same like I don’t my body like when I start to feel like my blood sugar go down like I start to like feel like almost this like panicky anxious response. And so I’m always like, have like bars in my bag or whatever, just to be like, okay, you know, we got to eat something now just even though even though like maybe food is coming in like an hour or something like going out for dinner, like doesn’t matter. Like I just do it because I’m like, it just helps me emotionally feel better. And like I Yeah, and so it’s interesting, like, I don’t think I ever really thought about that as being like this like, kind of rich residual impact of decades of dieting. Yeah, that’s so that’s so interesting. Yeah. And then yeah, Thompson, you said something about like, yeah, people perceiving normal, like saying, hey, we want you to eat breakfast, like, I’m thinking like, well, it’s gonna be like, what my binge is like, like that’s, and I think that that’s like a huge sort of mental barrier for people in terms of actually giving themselves permission to sort of eat enough. Like, it’s like, that’s really interesting. Yeah,

Tamsin:
yeah, it’s because that’s what happened with me, I just, I couldn’t, you know, I felt like I was morally better if I could, like stave off that kind of inevitable, like food, you know, like, a day of eating, because as soon as I started, it was like, the hunger never went away. So of course, like, why would I believe that that was because I hadn’t eaten something earlier. And it’s the same for clients, you know, it’s, it’s so hard to really like, allow, like, let go and really trust your body. Because I think when we talk about this on the podcast a lot as well about that, we talk a lot about not getting people back to a place of trust, but their body is actually a very new thing, because it’s unlikely you’ve ever had it, if you’ve been brought up in a diet kind of like environment where maybe your caregivers were dieting and people around you and you were surrounded by diet culture, which most of us were growing up. And then you became an data or by yourself through your own decisions. You’ve actually never really trusted your body almost like before, to kind of we never talk about like, oh, let’s go back to how your body relationship with your body was because most people would be sitting there going, oh, when was that then? Because I don’t identify.

Summer:
I don’t remember when I was an infant. Yeah.

Tamsin:
Because that’s really the only time and even then it’s still you know, can be reasonably controlled.

Gillian:
We’ve interviewed a few people on the podcast that talks about their experience of essential what we’re talking about here is food insecurity, even though for us, it wasn’t the driver wasn’t an economic driver. It was a self imposed famine for us, when it’s for a lot of people, a couple of folks we’ve interviewed in the podcast, their environment around food growing up, there was insecurity around food. So again, there wasn’t that there wasn’t as Tamsin saying these memories of, of that just this peaceful, joyous relationship with with food. It was always quite strange. It was always feast or famine, sometimes to diet culture, but sometimes not depending, you know, what your, what your childhood

Summer:
was like, Huh? Yeah, totally, totally. And so like, when someone’s relearning how to eat, like, I think one of the things that I witnessed and see is that, like, our perception of what someone is supposed to eat, like, especially someone who identifies as female, like, our perception of it is so skewed versus like, what we most likely actually need. What’s your experience with that? Like, do you notice that too, like, it’s like, people think they need like, just this little tiny amount of food when like, I mean, I always say, like, you have to eat like a grown ass woman or a grown ass adult. But it’s such a hard thing, I think, to think like, wow, like that much. You know, like, it feels a bit scary, at least.

Tamsin:
I think it is quite unnerving. And kind of enlightening as well, when you kind of get through that like understanding what you really need to fill yourself up, you know, what you really need to feel satisfied from a meal or a snack or all of those things. And you’re right with, you know, if you’re socialized as a woman growing up, you know, a female growing up, you are told that your portion sizes should be less than, you know, maybe your male members, your family, and that is just so skewed, it’s one of the things that we talk about quite a lot is like, do not believe that you have to have smaller portions than, you know, perhaps that you know, part of the people you’re surrounded by, just because you’re that’s what you’ve been told your whole life because it’s so skewed, and it can like portion sizes. Again, they’re just a guide, but we take them as like fact. And then if we are in a larger body, we’re told that that must be because we’re eating too much. Nobody ever talks about body diversity, or, you know, the fact that just different people just weigh different amounts. And that’s, that’s it, we have different body sizes. We’re just told that it must be because we’re overeating. And again, again, that word about like, we must be eating too much. And we don’t even we don’t even look at what somebody might be eating, but who is to know whether somebody is eating too much or too little. And actually, what does that even mean? Like what does it matter? This is where we try and allow clients to get to a place where their food just is allowing your food to just be and not really, you know, not policing it anymore, which is a big step to get to. But yeah, I think our perception of what is enough food is is not based on fat, or experience because we’ve not you know, we’ve been judging our food For as long as we can remember,

Gillian:
and also the influences like what you see on social media and on for like what we Sunday eats in a day, like what a celebrity eats in a day is one of my pet peeves. And I remember, I remember listening to one actually recently, and you can people who love food, who are trying to sort of like, not eat the most infuriating thing to listen to, because you can hear that tension. And one of the things that we tons and I talk about a lot, I think you kind of just hit on it, there isn’t just how much food you’re eating, but are you eating food that actually you find tasty and satisfying, because you can eat all the diet food in the world, but still binge, right? You can, you can be full, your stomach can be full of food. But if it’s food that you feel either guilt and shame around, or food that is just completely devoid of any enjoyment, we’re still going to seek that out. Right? So it’s really complex. It’s not just as simple as not eating enough food.

Tamsin:
And those diet foods, for me, especially became my first binge foods as I was kind of like losing my grip. You know, if I’d started a diet, the diet foods or their foods that were allowed, became like, you know, the replacement things for the things you enjoy, like, you know, the foods that are demonized, like chocolate and crisps and stuff, or any kind of like substitutes eventually just became like, the first things that I would just consume loads ox and thinking, Well, okay, if I’m gonna consume lots of food, then it might as well be this good food, like, good food, which it’s not and you just that you start losing your mind around that. And then that just doesn’t satisfy that doesn’t fill you up, and it just goes on and on and on. And then you just always think that you are the person. That’s the problem.

Summer:
Yeah, I can’t tell you how many like plates of paleo brownies I ate trying to just trying to like negate the guilts. You know, it was also just like, why can’t I stop eating this? Yeah, no, Gillian, you said that exactly. What I was gonna say was just that, like, I remember, like, you know, seeing because when I was a nutritionist many years ago, like I remember, my, some of my colleagues or other people in the industry, like would post sort of what they eat. And I was always like, Oh, my God, I eat so much more than them, like, what’s wrong with me? And, and always feeling that way? And just like how toxic that that social media can be towards our perception of what we think we should be eating? Because it’s like, I mean, I don’t know, maybe people do sort of survive on that little food. Like, I’m certainly not one of them. But I just think or I’m like, sometimes I’m like, do they just put that on the plate? And then they actually more when they turn off their camera, like, what I mean, like, I mean, who knows, but I just I was always such a mind. Like, it was always so damaging to my mind just to see that stuff. And it’s, it’s terrible that it’s so prevalent now. And and especially like the what I eat in a day and all that stuff. But one of the things I wanted to ask about was like, discomfort around fullness. So I think some some things I’ve heard from people who were previously binge eaters is like this, this feeling of like, it almost feels like threatening or scary to have that sense of fullness. So like, what’s your advice to someone who maybe struggles with like that feeling of fullness? Because that was always like, something that almost like there was like, almost like a sense of alarm attached to it?

Gillian:
Yeah. What I would always get really curious about around first with the client is, when we talk about discomfort around fullness, are we talking about physical discomfort? Are we talking about emotional discomfort, and I think clients will most of the time, but I see talk about it through the terms of physical discomfort. And that’s not to say that isn’t true, because we can make ourselves physically sick with, you know, when we’ve when we’ve had a binge episode. But it’s really, if that’s all that we’re dealing with. And I say all kind of, I suppose flippantly. Really all that that can be done in that situation is to put on some comfortable clothes, drink some water and rest, and it will pass or body will self regulate. But that’s the trust piece that we were talking about earlier. dieters have a mistrust, in that their body has the capability of self regulation, right? If we get out the way and allow our bodies to lead, we just assume that binging is just going to be what we do all the time. But it’s the emotional discomfort as well, right that what what sort of what’s activated inside us when we start to get past that neutral point, because I know when I was a dieter, I wouldn’t let myself get full. I would go from empty to neutral, empty to neutral. And then I would just feel like I was needing to eat all the time. And of course because I was never getting what I would describe this meal full So trying to work through that emotional discomfort of what are the what are the stories that are coming up? When we feel fullness, when we feel that expansion of our belly? What emotions does it trigger inside us? So I think that piece is just as important as the physical stuff.

Tamsin:
And just to touch on the point, you said there about your expansion of your bellies, you know, that would be what I kind of talk to clients about first as well is like, How comfortable are you just breathing into your stomach and allowing it to expand because there’s so much tension there, I find, you know, many clients just haven’t properly breathed into their belly is actually one of the first things they do into my sessions, when we kind of come in, and we just take a couple of calming breaths, ask them to breathe in, expand that stomach out, because so often, we just don’t feel allowed, and we’re slew trained or trained to like, hold, hold that, you know, tightly. And so when we feel full, and we’ve eaten, you know, a lot of food that maybe we’re not used to allowing ourselves to eat, or maybe we’ve missed the, the fullness cues, at some point, maybe or, you know, maybe it’s just something we’re not used to like it that happens in the beginning, but we have, that’s where that curiosity comes in. And that allowing that compassion for ourselves. And allowing that to happen can be hard, but especially so if you’re just not used to, just like Jillian says, Put on some comfortable clothes, we’re not used to allowing our bodies to just relax, and just be a certain way after a meal like that can be really, really hard for folks to handle.

Gillian:
And I think I think another really important piece that I that I missed out there that would keep us in that binge cycle, or the emotional eating cycle is what happens when folks feel that emotional discomfort, or is everybody’s go to response restriction. And that’s what keeps what keeps us in the cycle. So I think one of the most important things that you said, Tamsin, there was compassion, taking care of yourself, if you’ve had a binge episode, or, you know, you really shown all the emotions and, and food is what you’ve, you know, a lot of food is what you’ve used to self soothe, then letting it be that, but absolutely, we’re going to be kept in this cycle. If we feel that we need to course correct or compensate by either doubling down on the gym the next day, or cutting our food intake in half or whatever it might be nuts that compensate from that, that sort of emotional anxiety around what I’ve just done. I don’t trust that my bodies can self regulate. So I need to cognitively, you know, manage this situation.

Tamsin:
Yeah, that’s so true. Yeah.

Summer:
So I want to talk about the emotions like the you know, the corresponding emotions of like, guilt and shame that we often feel with like, either, you know, secret eating or or binge eating like, what’s, what’s your advice? Like? What, you know, what helped you maybe move past like, some of those feelings of guilt and shame, knowing that it probably not just like one thing that you do for one time, and then it goes away completely, because obviously, that’s not true.

Tamsin:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you’re right. That’s not true. But I think in the beginning, as hard as it is, it’s really, you know, for myself was really, like understanding, like, the concept of food being good or bad, and how I had labeled it, and how, like dieting had created this, like moral, like moral value attached to anything for a start. And that does take, you know, it’s hard when you’re going to the cupboard and you’re saying to yourself, like, all food is good food that is tough in the beginning, when all you have heard for decades, is this is bad, that is good. And this is what you should eat, and this is what you shouldn’t eat. That’s tough, but that really does start to unlock it that legalization that allowing yourself to just be like, you know, this food to just be because it just you’re no longer putting the foods that you think are bad for you on this pedestal, and then they just kind of become food. And actually even so far as to say I would went through a phase of it being a bit boring. Sometimes it was like wow, it’s just food like okay, and then realizing that, you know, everyone who was used just labeled me as like the one who bakes Well, I used to bake because I used to binge on something, you know, like I really bake anymore because I don’t need to I just don’t feel that pull to like, oh, I need something so therefore if I take for my kids I’ve got excuse to eat this food in these quantities like it takes the does take the shine off it sometimes I know that I went through that kind of low and then came out the other side. So it’s like a real rocky road of like, emotions, like no pun intended with Rocky. But it is a real like up or down of emotions with like how I felt about you know, I had no emotional attachment to having that relationship with food, I guess. You know,

Gillian:
yeah. One of the things that really hurt helped me around the kind of what I was talking to earlier about the kind of emotional activation of eating the food, primarily the guilt and the shame. It’s really, really hard to when we’re so embedded in the guilt and the shame, and I’m the problem, and there’s something wrong with me, it’s really hard to be curious, this is something that we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast, they get in the way, because we’re just so fixated on us being flawed. So one of the things that I kind of forced myself to do in the beginning, was anytime I felt a pool to eat, what I would term at the time, emotionally eat, which tended to be at night when I was, you know, I was back at home, the door was closed, I could finally kind of relax the adrenaline of the day was subsiding. That’s when the emotions would creep in. I would make myself name the emotion. And it couldn’t be guilt or shame, I had to get underneath that. What was I actually feeling and I would have an emotion wheel pinned to my fridge. So it wasn’t a case of naming the emotion so that you don’t eat that food. It wasn’t like a distraction tactic or an aversion tactic. It was just get really clear as to why I’m eating this food. It’s okay to eat the food. But can I get clear as to why is it loneliness? Is it sadness? Is it stress is it whatever it is, it’s okay, but be clear. And that was the first step for me. And once I did that, it was then easier to have some self compassion, because I kind of knew then what I was dealing with, as opposed to just like, I’m the problem, I can control myself around food. And that’s that, yeah, we hit a brick wall with that. But if you can get underneath it, and look at what the actual emotions might be, not only can we find kind of, I don’t want to see different solutions. Because foods always a great solution, right to self soothing and comforting, but additional solutions, extra solutions, other solutions that might help once we actually know what we’re feeling.

Tamsin:
We will talk about having like a toolbox, don’t we and expanding our toolbox. And we were doing I emotionally eating episode, I think we were talking about not taking emotional eating off the table. You know, really kind of like knowing that we only feel that way about it because we’re labeling it as something that diet culture is labeled as bad. Like, there are people who maybe eat emotionally but they just don’t call it call it that they just eat and then they move on. But it’s if you don’t take it off the table if you’re not trying like not to emotionally eat, but actually good. You using it as a way to like Jillian was saying like, what’s underneath it all? What else is there? And what else do I need? What do I need right now as well as the food like not instead of not as like a distraction? But what do I need? As well as this? If anything? Or actually Is this enough? Is this all that I need to have right now? To get me through whatever this difficult feeling is sometimes food is okay. It’s okay to eat emotionally?

Summer:
Yeah, I think what I’m hearing that is really clear is like, You’re not asking people to, you know, choose one or the other, which I think is like pretty main, like mainstream, I would say recommendations around emotional eating, or even binge eating or like to, you know, deal with the thoughts and like, try to distract yourself or like go for a walk or do all these other things. And what I’m hearing is that like, that’s not really helpful. It’s more helpful to, you know, allow the emotional eating and tend to the emotions that are there as well.

Gillian:
Yeah, and same with binge eating, like, and we can we try not make it wrong is as unpleasant and distressing as it can be. Sometimes I even say to clients, would it be helpful if we didn’t call it binge eating? Would it be helpful because that word is so loaded? Right? So it’s emotionally eating so stigmatizing in and of itself? Can we can we just say we eat a lot of food, and maybe get curious as to why not that it’s bad, but if it doesn’t feel good in our body, and we feel you know that as we were saying that eat to the point of feeling sick, like getting curious as to what’s happened have we in enough during the day have we been trying to suppress or we’ve been feeling guilt and shame around the food that we’re eating? And then as Thompson said, like, are we do we know what’s in our toolbox? Can we use them when it comes to actually coping with our emotions and, and I think that’s really, really hard to a place to get to, as I say, when you’re just in that place of these are my eating behaviors, and it’s wrong and bad. And that’s why I’m the size that I am, which was my story. I

Tamsin:
think it’s really like interesting to ask clients, if they would call it a binge. If it was a different type of food that perhaps they associated with being like having a you know, good, you know, being a good or a healthy food like quote unquote, you know, would they would they attach that label to it? Probably not. You know, that’s, you know, often we never hear people kind of saying, I just binged on salad because we think we’re morally good if we’ve eaten so salad or we’ve chosen that as a thing. You know, that’s quite often, you know, I asked clients that like, would you call it that? That’s so true,

Summer:
isn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So the last thing I wanted to talk to you both about was you that you I know, obviously, both teach intuitive eating. But like, you also say that that’s not the full answer. So what do you mean, when you say that? Um, I think,

Tamsin:
I mean, we did dive into this quite deeply on podcast before but, you know, I love intuitive eating. But again, I think it’s so different for everybody. And it depends on the person, I don’t think it’s a one size fits all straight out of the back of diet culture, I think it really is an individual thing. And sometimes if, because donators, we, you know, all of us who have been dieters tend to have this like perfectionist strategy, like we want to want to dive into intuitive eating, but we want to get it right, we want to do right, and I think that can sometimes distract people. So I think it’s useful to be able to steer people into just allowing their food to just be, and just not really kind of taking their attention away from whether they are hitting the hunger scale at a certain point, or whether they’re, you know, even hitting the satisfaction scale at certain point, because that can just distract and make them kind of thinking that this needs to be black and white, like good or bad. Like, I’m either failing intuitive eating, or I’m not. And that’s sometimes why I think it really depends on the client. But if that’s where they start to have a lot of take them back a few steps and just go by, let’s just get back to, again, what we were talking about before with mechanical eating, and just eating regularly. And, you know, so what if you’re like food can’t just be. And I think the other thing, really, for me is, like, we have to talk about the things that we want to eat intuitively aren’t always available to us, you know, economically, like access wise, like there’s not always something that’s, that’s, you know, there for us, like I quite often want to eat with my children, like, I try and do that regularly. I don’t always want to eat the same things that they want to eat. But you know what, I have to kind of find some middle ground because it’s more important to me to eat with them. And I have strategies of where I make that, you know, satisfying to me and kind of meet their needs, but not making 10 different meals. But if I’m really honest, I’m gonna want something different. I like a lot of spicy food and stuff like that, but it just doesn’t always fit in. And when you’re away, like it families, and you know, when you’re not in control of what you can eat, you can still eat, you can just allow your future just be like I said, right, I think, you know, if it stops somebody from choosing to eat, that’s when I kind of would take them back a step and say, well, actually, you know, eating is the first step not eating, you know, in like some sort of perfect, intuitive way.

Gillian:
Yeah, we can really get caught up in making intuitive eating a diet. Because you’re, you’re a dieters tend to be perfectionistic, it tends to be binary thinking we’re either on or off the wagon. And people can be called for. So many people come to me and they’re like, I’m coming to learn how to do intuitive eating better than how I’ve been able to do it myself. And there really is no better I would say, I would say the work then is you know, actually how can we work through the emotions that’s coming up when you feel like you’re not doing it? Right? Like, what does doing it right even look like? How can we just be okay, with, you know, maybe our food isn’t entirely satisfying, we can’t afford the food that we would love to eat. We often have to eat when we’re not hungry, because of our schedule because of when, when in the day we want to exercise or you know, there’s so much that actually means that we can’t be completely intuitive. So I think a lot of the work is how can we be okay with that, and be okay with where our bodies land in that process. And using it as a guide, but but not getting fixated on it at all.

Summer:
It’s really hard to break away from that rigid, you know, follow a plan, do X, Y and Z to get this result. It’s really hard to break away from that. Tamsin, I was laughing when you talked about you’re going to eat when your kids eat because I literally have to eat spaghetti every week. And I’m like, can I take

Tamsin:
it? You know what, it’s really important to you to do something that I missed out on so many years of that, like eating with my kids. And no, this is really what Mommy wants to eat wasn’t what I wanted to eat, and it’s eating the leftovers because I actually just wanted food like more food, you know, but I’m just talking about like intuitive eating that I did a weapon obviously, by intuitive eating one of the first slides was, I want you to get it wrong. I actually genuinely want people to kind of like almost aim to get it wrong, so that they can because if they’re getting it wrong, if they’re getting it like an air quotes wrong, then they can get curious about what’s coming up. If they’re doing it perfectly, then it’s done. It’s they’ve almost certainly nailed it into a diet straightaway. Yeah, totally.

Summer:
Totally. I think this has been hugely helpful. I loved everything that you were talking about here. So I really I appreciate you taking the time. I’m excited for people to hear this episode. Where can people find more of you each? Both?

Gillian:
Yeah, so we we have separate businesses we work independently. i You can find me, Gillian mccollum.com. I’m on Instagram as well. I have a different name. There I am Julian Wilson is my handle over an Instagram. But if you want to find a place where you can hear for both of us, that would be our podcast, which is the anti diet club podcast.

Tamsin:
Yeah, I’m also on Instagram. I think that’s mainly where I hang out. I am just Tamsin underscore Rasta and my websites with the same name. And I’ve also got a Facebook group so I tend to hang out on there.

Summer:
So neither of you are on Tik Tok yet. Oh,

Tamsin:
okay. Yes, we are the podcast is on Tik Tok. I’m on Tik Tok and Gillian’s on Tik Tok. We

Gillian:
I’ve never used it. And on the rare occasions that Tamsin will send me a link to somebody’s profile that we might be having, again, as a guest on the podcast. I lose half a day. So I try and never go on there.

Summer:
I don’t have it. Yeah, that’s why I was asking.

Tamsin:
I was told to like, go and get my handle because one day I’m gonna want it and Instagram is dead and read. I just love Instagram did away. But yeah, so I started making videos on that. And I tend to be exactly what I post on Instagram pretty much, but I don’t really understand it. And I feel a bit like I’m too old for it. But I’m trying to understand it. And I’m trying to give into that kind of a not to offer anything, but it’s hard.

Summer:
Well, I had I had someone who was they were 23 or 26 years old. And they said, I’m too old for Tik Tok, because it’s all like 12 to 20 year olds. time with the kids. I was actually going to get my son’s babysitter to maybe teach me because I was like, she’s 18. Let’s like, see if maybe she wants to sit down and like, teach me for a couple hours one day because I’m like, do I need to know this? I’m not on there yet. Anyways, I know. I was just asking because I was like, I’m just curious. Like, who’s on it now? But

Cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I’ll link to all of that in the show notes. And thank you so much to both of you for being here today. Thank you for having us, Rock on. There’s so much great stuff in this episode. But there’s one quote that has stuck with me ever since. So we recorded this episode, I feel like in like November, December, I think feel like it was in December of 2022. So it was a couple of months ago now. And when Julian says a hungry body is an anxious body, I was like that quote has stuck with me. And I feel like it’s such an important thing that everybody needs to know. Because anxiety and eating disorders go hand in hand. But the word disordered eating even often comes from like the sort of anxious feeling within ourselves and we’re grasping for control, but that quote of just like hungry bodies, and anxious body is just like so important. So, you know, if you’re feeling anxious, go eat, make sure you’re well fed. I think that’s the main, the main point there, but there’s a lot of other good stuff in this episode too, but it’s just like I’m recording this outro you know, like three months later, and I just like that quote still sticks out to me. I hope you enjoyed this show. You can find all the links and resources mentioned at summer innanen.com forward slash 257 Thank you so much for being here today. Rock on. I’m Summer Innanen. And I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer Innanen. And if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts search eat the rules and subscribe rate and review this show. I would be so grateful. Until next time, rock on