Let's Talk About...Accepting Your Body
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
Release Date: 07/10/2024
The Power of IFS: Kali and Amanda's Stories
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
It's episode 100 of the Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast--I can't even believe it! And to celebrate, I thought I'd invite two amazing women who I've had the honor of working with come into the show and share their experience with IFS. Kali and Amanda are two former clients who graciously agreed to talk about their struggles with food and their bodies and how IFS and Intuitive Eating have helped them to heal. They have very different histories and backgrounds, different body types, and different experiences, and I have no doubt that you will...
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Let's Talk About...Food Rituals
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that at some point in your life, you've tried to change what you're eating. Perhaps because you started a diet. Or you were trying to "eat healthier." Or maybe you were trying to move toward a more Self-led or Intuitive Eating approach to food (where you're really tuning into your body and feeding your body in ways that work well for it). Regardless of why you were trying to change what you were eating, it probably wasn't all that easy. There may have been foods that you tried to cut out but...
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Let's Talk About...Episode 98: Let's Talk About...Connecting to Your Body’s Hunger and Fullness Cues
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
On the last podcast, we talked about "blocking parts." And by blocking, I meant parts that tend to come up when you’re trying to get to know another part. Like when you’re headed for the kitchen and a part of you says, "I should get to know the part that’s leading me to the kitchen right now" but another part comes up and says, "Nope! I don’t want to get to know that part. I’ll do it next time." I hope that the episode was helpful and that you noticed more of those parts over the past couple of weeks. This week, I thought it would be helpful to focus on another...
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Let's Talk About...Blocking Parts
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
Let me ask you this: have you ever noticed yourself heading for the kitchen to get some food, knowing you aren't hungry, and when you start to check in with the part who's leading you there, you hear something like, "Oh don't do that crazy IFS stuff--just eat the food." Or, "Ugh--who cares why we're heading to food--just eat it!" Or even, "Life is so stressful right now--just eat! We deserve it!" These are parts that I call "blocking parts." They jump in and block us from getting curious about the parts of us that lead us to food. And I think sometimes we...
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Let's Talk About...Emotional Eating
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
Here we are, in the middle of the holiday season, and I thought it might be helpful to go back to the basics of the Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast and talk about, you guessed it, emotional eating. Yep, it's been 94 episodes since we've focused on this topic. Well, that's not exactly true. We've focused on specific aspects of emotional eating, but we haven't discussed it in broad terms like we did in the second episode of this podcast. And I don't know about you, but I know my emotional eating parts have been more active lately. Due to the...
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Unburdened Eating, with Jeanne Catanzaro
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
This week's episode features , who's a bit of an IFS rockstar. Jeanne has been one of the strongest voices in the IFS community in regard to food and body concerns, and I'm so thrilled to have her on the podcast! Just a little about her: Jeanne is a clinical psychologist who has specialized in the treatment of disordered eating and trauma for over twenty-five years. She trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing®, and eye movement-desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) before discovering the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model. Jeanne is known for...
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Let's Talk About...Healing Body Shame
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
Well, it's fall here in New England, which means cooler weather, absolutely beautiful trees, and apple cider! (And for those of you who love it, pumpkin spice!) It also means lots and lots of raking is in my future! And it also means sweater weather!!!! Yay!!! So many of my parts love sweater weather. Throwing on a big cable-knit sweater just feels so cozy. And I just love fall colors (especially forest green--I can't tell you how many forest green sweaters I have). But do you know another reason why some of my...
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Understanding Binge Eating Disorder, with Amy Pershing
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
On today's episode, I'm so excited to be joined by Amy Pershing to talk about Binge Eating Disorder (BED). Amy is essentially THE expert on treating BED with IFS, and I'm so thankful that she's sharing her wisdom with us! We've been trying for months to record an episode, and we finally did it! Just a little about her, Amy Pershing, LMSW, ACSW, CCTP-II, is the Founding Director of Bodywise, the first BED-specific treatment program in the United States, and President of the Board of the Center for Eating Disorders in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the founder of...
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Let's Talk About...Creating a Parts Check-in Practice
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
If you're someone who's done your own IFS work, you were likely encouraged to check in with a part that you met during your session on your own regularly throughout the week. And you may have thought, how in the world do I do that? Hopefully, the therapist or coach you're working with helped you with that process. But if they didn't, you're in luck! It's the topic of this week's podcast! While checking in with parts that you meet during session is incredibly important, so is checking in with parts in general. And one of the things that I've been focusing on...
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Let's Talk About...Anxiety (and why our parts eat when we're anxious)
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
On this week's podcast episode we're talking about anxiety, one of the most common things that lead our parts to food. Very often, parts in our system use food to calm our anxious parts. I think this happens for a couple of reasons. First, food can be a great distraction when we're feeling anxious. And second, food actually calms us down. Research has shown that food (especially carbs) elevates serotonin levels, which can decrease depression and anxiety. So if you're someone who tends to eat when you're anxious, there's a reason for that. It...
info_outlineWhat's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say the word acceptance? As in accepting who you are and accepting your body, right here, right now?
For many if not most people, the thought of acceptance brings up parts saying, "No! I won't give up!" Or, "I can't acceptance myself the way I am--I'm not good enough."
Yeah....acceptance is really hard....Which is why we're discussing it on this week's podcast.
First, let me just say that I think working toward acceptance needs to happen on multiple fronts, because there are numerous factors that contribute to the negative feelings so many of us have toward our bodies. How we feel about our bodies is shaped by how we personally experience them, how others treat them, the messages we get about them, how they function, how much they differ from others--the list goes on and on. I can't cover all of that on just one podcast--it would be 57 hours long.
So on this week's episode, we're just focusing on one factor that contributes to our negative body image and our difficulty accepting ourselves. And I think it's one of the main factors: the beauty industry. Thanks to the beauty industry, most of us have spent time, energy, and money focused on our appearance. And it's really impacted how we feel about ourselves and our bodies (and others' bodies) in an extremely negative way.
In this episode, I'm sharing a lot of research completed by Dr. Renee Engeln, a psychologist who focuses on what she calls the "Beauty Game." She wrote a fantastic book called "Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women" that's chock full of information on this topic. She's also done a couple of TED Talks on the subject, and she contributes regular articles to Psychology Today.
Just to give you a little idea of what we're up against, here are some research findings on the topic:
- 34% of five-year-old girls engage in deliberate dietary restraint at least sometimes (yes, you read that right--five-year-old girls)
- Between the ages of five and nine, 40% of girls say they wish they were thinner
- Almost one-third of third-grade girls report they are “always” afraid of becoming fat
- By age 13, girls report significantly more body shame than boys
- In the United States 69-84% of women experience body dissatisfaction, desiring to be a lower weight than they currently are
Unfortunately, all of that isn't even the half of it. The bad news goes on and on and on and on. The beauty industry (and the diet industry) have wreaked so much havoc on women in particular that it's no wonder we have such a hard time feeling good about ourselves.
Here's a quote by Dr. Engeln that speaks to some of this:
"The more easily identifiable you are as a woman, the more you will be objectified. The more you are objectified, the more your body will begin to feel like a performance piece instead of the home in which you live."
Our bodies should feel like our homes. We should want to care for and nourish them well. But thanks to the pressures we experience about our appearance, we often don't.
My hope in focusing on this topic is that parts of you will really start realizing that any negative thoughts and feelings you have about your body and your appearance are not authentic to you. They're internalized messages from our appearance-obsessed culture. They're learned. Which means they can be unlearned.
So, on this week's podcast we're looking at lots of research, and we're also talking about:
- What acceptance actually IS (it's NOT just giving up)
- What the "Beauty Game" is (defined by Dr. Engeln as a collection of cultural pressures that make women feel like all that matters is how they look)
- The impact of the media on our self-image
- The link between beauty and power
I also give you ten ways to start working toward exiting the Beauty Game and working toward acceptance.
I'm not gonna lie--I personally think this is an important episode, because so many of our parts think that the negativity we feel toward ourselves is justified and valid. IT'S NOT. It's been cultivated by an industry that makes tons of money off of our insecurity. I think it's incredibly important for your parts to have the correct information on this, so I hope you'll take a listen! Check it out!
Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Thinness Hurts Girls and Women
Dr. Engeln’s Psychology Today articles
An Epidemic of Beauty Sickness TED Talk
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