Understanding Binge Eating Disorder, with Amy Pershing
The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast
Release Date: 09/19/2024
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_outlineOn 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 Pershing Consulting, which offers training to clinicians treating BED and trauma worldwide. Amy is also the co-founder of "Attune", an online coaching program for attuned eating and recovery support.
Amy is an internationally known leader in the development of treatment paradigms for BED, and one of the first clinicians to specialize in BED treatment. Based on 35 years of clinical experience, Amy has pioneered an approach to BED recovery that is strengths-based and trauma informed, incorporating Internal Family Systems (IFS) and body-based techniques to heal the deeper issues that drive binge behaviors. Her approach integrates a non-diet body autonomy philosophy, helping clients create lasting change with food and body image.
Amy is also the author of the book Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery and Beyond (Taylor and Francis, 2018) and Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Bingeing And Body Image: A Trauma-Informed Workbook, with co-authors Judith Matz and Christy Harrison (PESI Publishing, 2024). She also offers a variety of trainings on BED treatment through PESI. Amy maintains her clinical practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Amy begins the podcast episode by discussing her own history with binge eating disorder and how, thanks to the relentless messages from diet culture, she believed that her body "needed to be fixed because it was fat."
Throughout the episode, we touch upon:
- How IFS views Binge Eating Disorder
- The role of Binge Eating parts
- Shame as a coping mechanism
- How to build trust between Self and parts
- What Self-led eating looks like
- Developing trust in your body
Amy also emphasizes the fact that Self cannot be damaged by trauma, and Self does not accept body shame narratives. She states, “There’s never a time that you’re in-Self and accepting a body shame narrative. It just doesn’t happen. Self knows that body shame doesn’t exist.”
We ended the episode speaking directly to therapists, both those who work with food and body issues and those who don't. Amy noted that all therapists are working with clients who live in a body and we're therefore all working with body stigma to some degree. She further notes that all clinicians really need to think about how their parts feel about their own body, food, weight stigma, and health.
And finally, she states, "If you treat BED, you’re treating trauma. We have to understand the binge eating in the context of their history."
Amy gives us so many pearls of wisdom in this episode that you'll want to listen to it more than once (and take notes). Even if you aren't someone who binges, how she talks about body shame is applicable to everyone in a body. Take a listen!
Where to find Amy:
Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery and Beyond
Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Bingeing And Body Image: A Trauma-Informed Workbook
Where to find me: