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Licensed psychologist Dr. Jen McWaters, and wellness coach Kaitlin Reed, join forces to help women create an abundant life through holistic wellness practices, mindset shifts, and fostering a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. Join us as we take a deep dive and uncover the raw truth about mental health, nutrition, fitness, and beyond, offering insights and strategies for transformative growth.
Dr. Jen McWaters is a licensed psychologist and a holistic wellness coach for women. She is a Certified Integrative Mental Health Professional and is passionate about helping high-achieving women overcome their mental blocks, find freedom from anxiety, and create an abundant life inside and out. Find out more about her work at: awakeningholistichealth.com
Kaitlin Reed is a fitness, nutrition, and mental wellness coach on a mission to help women build the body and life they deserve and desire. She has BAs in Health Promotion and Wellness & Fitness Management, MA in Performance Psychology, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Health Psychology. Her goal is to help women finally understand the science and strategy of nutrition and exercise so they can achieve their goals and live an empowered life. Head over to kaitlinreedwellness.com to learn more.
DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your personal physician if you have any personal medical questions.
Welcome to the Counter Culture Health podcast. I'm doctor Jen McWaters. And I'm coach Kaitlyn Reed. We're here to help high achieving women overcome mental blocks, find freedom from anxiety, create an abundant life, and build the body and life that they deserve and desire. In this weekly podcast, we'll uncover the raw truth about mental health, nutrition, fitness, and beyond.
Intro:Let's get to it.
Kaitlin:Hey, friends. Welcome to another week of Counter Culture Health. Thanks so much for joining us today. We are doing something very special and something we've never done before, a client interview. So, Laura, thank you so much for joining us and being willing to share your story and your journey.
Kaitlin:I reached out to you because I know you're you're gonna be an inspiration to so many women. I know this is a lot of people struggle with this, but it's a very, like, unspoken thing that we talk about. And I I think a lot of women will connect with you, and it'll be so helpful and empowering for other women. So thank you so much for joining us and being willing to share.
Laura:Sure. Thank you for having me.
Kaitlin:Yeah. Okay. We'll jump right in here. So first, share a little bit about yourself. And well, first, maybe I should explain what we are here talking about.
Kaitlin:That would be helpful. Right? Laura is here to talk about her recovery journey from binge eating. And so tell us a little bit about yourself and what your life look like before your recovery journey began.
Laura:Sure. So I'm a mom of three, and this summer I'll turn 50. I grew up I live in Virginia now, but I grew up in Colorado in Boulder. And it wasn't until I really got out of Boulder that I realized Boulder isn't your typical town to grow up in. It's very outdoor, very active.
Laura:Every street almost has a bike path. Like, people bike to work, walk to work, and we were no exceptions. It was extremely active lifestyle. I was also a really serious athlete, a division one athlete, and all of that was fantastic. But I think it was also the perfect blend of circumstances to mask a pretty horrible binge eating disorder that honestly, as I was thinking through things for this podcast, I realized I can't remember a time that I didn't have problems, you know, with food and, silly thoughts around food even back to as early as grade school, which was pretty wild if you think about it since I'm gonna be 50.
Kaitlin:Yeah. That's a long time to live that way, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kaitlin:So what did what did binge eating look like for you personally?
Laura:So, obviously, it took a lot of different forms throughout my life, right, from childhood to teenage to adulthood. But I think some of the common denominators that were the toughest for me is it feels a lot like chaos, and you don't have routine. It feels like you're constantly failing. And that when you're growing up really hurts self esteem. It just it's pretty insidious and affects a lot of areas.
Laura:So I think although it took on different faces at different times, real common denominators were just chaos and a lack of balance and self center. I'm
Jen:curious, Laura. Could you speak to what it looked like or manifested as a kid? Just thinking of it too, we have a lot of moms that listen. So, you know, especially with, like, teen girls, I'm just you know, that might help them also think about what are the warning signs that show up because I think they're little different than adults.
Laura:Yeah. So that's a great question. So early on, I just remembered our home was really pretty strict in food unintentionally, think, but my parents really always wanted just healthy food around. And then anytime we had bad food is what, you know, it was kind of taught, we would have it in huge amounts and then it was like, gone gone again. And so for me, I remember when I would go over to friends' houses, it would be a lot of, like, real fascination with their food, like, wanting a ton of food over there, which I know doesn't necessarily help moms, but it was a definite fixation on anything that wasn't deemed good or healthy type of foods.
Laura:And then it would be eating a lot of food and then not hungry for dinner or things like that, I think as a as a child. And then I would say the other thing was feeling almost like you kinda had to hide anytime you ate candy or anytime you ate something that wasn't supposed to be good as a child.
Jen:That's interesting. Okay. So there was so it wasn't just there was a healthy food focus, but also there was almost its own kind of form of binging when unhealthy food, quote unquote, came into the house. He always ate a ton of it
Laura:at once and then didn't. So there was already kind of
Jen:like a parallel process there, like a a modeling of of binging. Right? And Yes. And then It's
Laura:interesting. At the time, I would have no realization of that. It almost took me to get much older and have some conversations with Caitlin where I realized, like, there was things going on in my home that were creating a picture. I never felt for my parents, oh, someone is overweight, they're bad. Be it us, our our family, anybody else.
Laura:But there was a definite clear picture of what bad foods were and what good foods were. And anytime bad foods were brought into house, they were largely binged upon and then taken back out of the house. And so now that I look back on that, I think and then I think it came in a perfect storm because I have four older brothers. And again, unintentionally, comments were made about, you know, if if a woman was ordinary, not necessarily skinny, just ordinary, that would never quite be good enough or something like that. And so I think all of that came together in a in a perfect storm.
Laura:Right?
Jen:Thank you for sharing.
Kaitlin:Was a lot of it, like, learned learned behavior through, like, modeled, like, from your parents or, like, kind of how the house was set up with did your mom struggle with this? And then maybe unintentionally, kinda trickled down into, like, your habits and behaviors. So I would say yes. If if you were
Laura:to ask me a few years ago, that probably would have been no. So it's super funny. Right? But now, yeah, like, even as recent as just a couple weeks ago, I was talking with my mom. My mom is 90, but she's still around, very lucid, in good health.
Laura:And we were talking about food. And I said, you know, mom, what did you eat for lunch, like, when you were younger? And she went into this whole dance about and wouldn't answer the question. And it was very interesting. And finally, I kinda pushed on her a bit.
Laura:She's like, well, I don't have a bologna sandwich, but I know that's not good. And I and just little thing and then I remember charts. My dad was like an engineer for IBM, so everything was charted. Right? So I remember these charts he would hang up on the wall that were his and my mom's weight.
Laura:Sure. And those things seem basic to me at the time because that's how he was kinda pre OCD in that way. Right? Like, his whole garage was, like, alphabetized and all of that. But now I look back on it, and I think it would be a little odd for my three kids to see.
Laura:And and my dad didn't have a problem with his weight. So now I'm thinking in retrospect, he was charting to keep at the top of the mind for my mother unsaid, unspoken. You know? I don't know that, but I'm suspicious of that now. And then now as a parent of both a teenage daughter and three children in total, I think, oh, that's that sends a message that I didn't understand back then.
Laura:Right? So there was that type of stuff. And then I remember being in the gym with my brother, and there was a guy in there in really good shape. And his girlfriend was with him, and she had a little fluff on her tummy, but she was in great shape. But, you know, in the nineties in Boulder, that wasn't what you were supposed to look like.
Laura:And I remember my brother said, god, how much would it suck to be that guy and, like, have that as my girlfriend? And at the time, again, you don't think about it, but now I think if my older son said that when my daughter was present at 16, I would have immediately needed to address that situation. Right? So I think all of those things came together to create a weird environment around food.
Kaitlin:Yeah. It's so fascinating. Like, as adults, we can look that like, in our childhood, it seems like normal, like normal. But then as we get older as adults and we look back on those things, we're like, that's not normal. That wasn't normal at all.
Kaitlin:And we see, like, was, like, some problems with that and, you know, it it kinda connects the dots and makes things make sense. And I know for a lot of people too is because those, yeah, I don't bad foods or whatever is, like, around for, like, any sort of emotional things, celebration, sadness, anger. You know, it's it's any emotion, We, as childhood, use food to solve it, so then that carries into our adult life too. When we are sad, we turn to food. When we're happy, we turn to food.
Kaitlin:When we're celebrating, we turn to food. And so it just those things in childhood carry into our adulthood. And Yeah. You know, it's really it's it's hard. It you know, forty years or thirty years or whatever it is of certain habits and behaviors, it's really hard to break those.
Kaitlin:But as adults, when we realize, like, oh, this is what what maybe kept me safe as a child or protected me as a child or whatever is now impacting me as an adult, and I now need to address this and really face this and solve this. Yeah. Yeah. So how did binge eating impact other areas of your your life? I know of, like, a big one with eating disorders is how it impacts relationships.
Kaitlin:So, you know, any relationships, your daily routine, confident, all those things, like, did it trickle in and
Laura:So frustrating to look back on now sometime. It it really does. It impacts it's I think I said it earlier. It it's just insidious. It has that reach in so many different places because you feel really badly about yourself.
Laura:You feel badly about the willpower that you're certain you lack. It's just a problem with willpower, and that feels like a failure. And really, for me, it felt like, well, if I'm a failure in this very basic area, then that has implications in my mind for other areas. Right? Like and then it really almost does begin to impact those.
Laura:If you guys think about it from an athletic standpoint, like, to be at the top of your game in high school and into college requires consistent nutrition. It requires feeling good. And I was in such a cycle of just ignoring how I was feeling, coping with massive overeating. And, you know, I'm sure that there's probably a lot of different levels of bingeing. For me, just to be clear with everyone, because I think this is one of the things that people guard the most, like binge eating is just full out of control.
Laura:Like, I could eat almost an entire pack of family Oreos and then wait a bit, and now I'm ready to eat chips or McDonald's or and everything for me was done in the dark. It was done hiding wrappers, hiding I mean, it is a full blown eating disorder the way I experienced it and one that's super embarrassing because I remember even feeling like I had some friends who were bulimic where they would throw up their food. Right? Yeah. And I remember even feeling like I'm not even good enough to be bulimic.
Laura:Like, I just had to throw up my food a couple times and it didn't work. I didn't do it. And I was like, I'm just not even tough enough to, like, puke up my food. Like, it's just such a crazy embarrassing mindset that you get in that even if it's indirect, there would just be no way in a podcast to touch on all the ways that it affects your life from something as basic as hurting friendships because you have great plans for Friday evening. And then you have a binge and you feel like complete crap on Friday, now you're canceling.
Laura:And that may seem like, oh, it but no. These are relationships, high school and college, and when it happens multiple times, and you're not really telling them why, so it seems like a lie. And these are a lot bigger when you're younger than it may seem now, but that's just like the basic end. And then you're not even talking about the depth that you get into where you just feel like a complete failure and everything is inside, so there's no other perspective. Right?
Laura:So it's just it weighs heavy on every area of your life. At least it did for me. Yeah. Yeah.
Kaitlin:I think a a big point. There's a lot of, like, guilt and shame when it comes to this because it's very hard for people to admit that they're consuming a large amount of food. Yeah. And so a very big piece of binge eating, but also eating disorders in general is dishonesty because of that shame and guilt. But we know honesty is what brings healing.
Kaitlin:Right? But, also, it's very isolating too, you know, because you you don't want to anybody to know about, like, these behaviors that you're doing, and so you're you're very isolated and in the dark and missing out on a lot of
Laura:It's almost like the double life too, you know, at least it was for me. I think maybe, again, for some people, the experience might be different. But for me, because I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where I was quite athletic and I went to good schools, you know, I got into UCLA. That's division one level of athletics and very competitive academically. And so there was one thing of like, hey.
Laura:I'm a UCLA athlete. And then next to it was, I'm this, you know, an acute young girl. And then right juxtaposed was, I'm this woman who's intensely
Intro:struggling with binge eating. And, you know, you with binge eating, I think oftentimes you get into things like laxatives and all of that stuff. And, like, having
Laura:juxtaposed those two things coexist was super tumultuous at a time where young women just struggle anyway. You know, anyone from your junior or senior year to high school, midway through college is probably some of the toughest years as you're kind of coming into being a woman and what you feel about your body and to have those two things going on and one that you just keep completely in the dark as you create this facade of what I am over here, it's very, very difficult to go through. Yeah.
Kaitlin:And exhausting too. Like, pretending you're you're this one Exhausting. Yeah, and really underneath you're struggling with all of all of these things. Yep.
Jen:I'm curious. How were you managing you were an athlete. So how were you managing sports and academics at that time? Did you notice an impact physically or cognitively on on your body as you're going through the binging?
Laura:Yeah. I was not not well. I was not managing him well. That's for sure. So it it's it's very chaotic.
Laura:So there would be times where, you know, once I was signed with UCLA, then there's a excitement around that, and you can fixate on that. And so I lost a bunch of weight, got in great shape, So everything looks great. Right? And then once there's kind of a plateau, I'm there, things settled, and everything began to crumble. Right?
Laura:It really hurt my performance. I didn't play much my freshman year, and then my grades were really slipping. Then the school year ended, and I remember there was kind of a sense of relief. And then I came back to Colorado, and I had a really great summer. Like, I was able to focus in again, lost a ton of weight again, trained with a really good basketball player that was, you know, playing at the University of Colorado, came back right into the season, was doing fantastic.
Laura:And then it began to fall apart. And by the time I was in my junior year, I decided that playing basketball wasn't the right thing for me anymore. And then I ended up going to UCLA for four years and coming up, I think, like, they were in trimesters, so I'm following a couple trimesters short of even graduating just because everything is so chaotic. So I I didn't manage it well, and it it really, I think, hurt the complete college experience for me.
Kaitlin:Yeah. I think this is a very common thing among athletes too that's not talked about a lot. And I I from personal experience too and maybe from your experience as well, you can relate of just, like, the pressure to perform and compete and, you know, be at the top can like, the eating disorder can be your coping skill for all of that pressure that you feel. For me, personally, that's kind of how it played out for me of, you know, perfectionist performer, it manifested in this other way. And I think that's very common among athletes too.
Laura:Yes. And I think that was a big piece is when you're able to just do it in one area, you can almost hold it together. But for me, since coming into UCLA was very hard academically as well, then the balance of that and you're missing classes because you're flying out of state for games and all of that, you just can't juggle it long enough. Right? And you're just trying so hard.
Laura:And I remember just sneaking out nights in my room or leaving. Like, I was, you know, I was my own adult, but, like, going down to the, like, campus stuff and just getting candy and, like, I can just remember it, like, every area of my life, almost where you'd go to get your dealer. Right? Like, it's super it's so weird to think of it like that, but that's what it feels like when I remember it now.
Jen:Yeah. Right? And scientifically, it is the same thing, actually, the way that it lights up the brain. Right? It is Yeah.
Jen:The same addictive cycle.
Kaitlin:Yep. Now one of the biggest things that we talk about is that it food is not the actual issue. Right? It's it's what we are using the food to cope with is what we need to address, and it's like that underlying root cause. I I remember you saying earlier, like, this simple thing, like, to food, like, this simple thing, but, like, really, food is very complex because of the mental and emotional like, all the roles that it plays.
Kaitlin:So it seems simple, but it's a very complex thing which make makes it very challenging to kinda deal with too. But we always talk about, yeah, it's it's not the food that's the problem. It's what we're using the food to cope with. So, like, what was the moment or the realization that you realized you needed help?
Laura:This is such a great one for me. This is one of the things that stands out to me so much in my life. So before I tell you that, just to tell you real quick, one of the things that I think back on and think is the most intriguing is so bingeing for me was really born out of a lot of things we discussed, but the huge element to it was an all or nothing mentality. And I'm sure we can talk about that later. I think that's probably not just me, but, you know, it was okay at chocolate, so I might as well just screw up now.
Laura:Right? And I cannot tell you how many it must be hundreds of times, we're talking years. Right? That I would go to the grocery store and have, like, the perfect little cart with whatever I would deem was perfect. It would be kale.
Laura:It'd be green and purple and no processed anything rolling along because tomorrow was gonna be the day that actually became the person I was sure needed to be. And a thousand times, this has ended up in a gas station binge. But I was sure in my head that that was the time. Right? And that and that is so crazy of how you're how wild your mind is around it.
Laura:And so I think that's what took me so long. You know, you always think you can start like tomorrow's gonna be the day where I rise to the occasion. And I remember the time I realized, like, I think for the first time that occasion was never coming is I was talking with my husband. Our two oldest kids are a senior and a junior, and then we have our youngest is seventh grade. And we're talking about, wow.
Laura:Like, they're gonna graduate pretty soon. What does our second half look like? Like, how are we gonna live our life no longer being mom and dad that have to do all the things. Right? And I asked my husband.
Laura:I said, what do you wanna do before you die? And he was like, you know, I wanna go to Antarctica, and he's pretty wild. So he has all these super cool things. He's like, what about you? And I literally didn't even understand.
Laura:I burst into tears. And I looked at him. I said, do you know that the only thing I wanna do before I die is, like, struggle with my eating like this anymore? And he was like, what? Because I hadn't really shared with him even.
Laura:And then I think that's when I just let loose for him as well. And he was just, what? Like, he was blown away at the level I was able to hide this because we really don't have secrets from each other. Right? And he knew I struggled with weight or things like that, but nothing of this nature.
Laura:And I said, I just I realized, like, if I'm laying in my deathbed one day and I'm still struggling on this level, I'm gonna be so disappointed and have so much regret. And so it just kinda came like I'm sure it was building for time, but it just came in that moment. And he was really the one that was like, hey. Then let's let's go figure this out. And that's what led to the next steps.
Kaitlin:Yeah.
Laura:That would make me
Kaitlin:kinda yeah. Shows, like, how secretive of a thing this is, though, How in the dark Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Jen:Yeah. The fact that you could hide it for years, like, wrappers and trips to the gas station, all of that. Right? And that's usually the case. Like, people who have disordered eating get really good at their secrets and hiding and sneaking and their their whole routine and how to make sure no
Laura:one can ever see. Right? We're talking, what, forty years? Forty years at every different age. Like, I could look back now and just be like, oh my gosh.
Laura:Like, that poor girl. Right? At every different age, I just figured out how to do it. Guess that was a achievement.
Jen:Type of perseverance. Yeah.
Laura:There you go.
Laura:But how great
Jen:of you to to be able to actually be honest with your spouse in that moment and Yes. Let him in. That must have taken so much courage and vulnerability. Thank you. He was great with it too.
Kaitlin:The good news is is that we can heal and recover from this. So we're not we're not stuck with struggling with this for the rest of our lives. So for you, what what helped you the most?
Laura:So after this whole situation with my husband, I was looking into some places. I had googled some things, but I really struggled because there was, like, in house eating, you know, help. But I really think I had an inkling in my mind that, like, this isn't about food. And although now I think I know those places probably know that and they're probably great anyway, I thought they were about food, and I remember thinking, I feel like I need something different. And then at the time, Caitlin and I had a mutual acquaintance, and I think we were so I was Instagram friends with this person, and they just put out a post that, like, Caitlin had helped them through an eating disorder and that she was a great resource.
Laura:And I think it was just the right like, it just was supposed to happen. Right? It was random. I've never ever hired anything or anyone off the Internet, and I just clicked on on Caitlin's profile on your profile, and I really don't think I thought you could help me.
Kaitlin:In that moment, you feel like I've been struggling for so long. Sometimes people accept, like, this is just how my life is going to be.
Laura:I'm gonna have to struggle with this thing forever. Seriously. But, you know, the the acquaintance that we had, her text was very pivotal, and she had been open on Instagram about having eating disorders and disordered thoughts. And she had really been open about pretty rough journey that I felt kinda mimicked mine in some ways. So I definitely clicked.
Laura:I read, and then I reached out to Caitlin, and we just decided to talk. And I just remember for the longest, I I really didn't think that it was gonna be about binge eating. I thought this is just gonna be about working out, etcetera. And then the first meeting with you was the very first time that I thought, uh-oh, we might be able to make change. That was the first time I really realized that we might be able to go somewhere with this.
Laura:That was big for me.
Kaitlin:I always tell people macros and workouts aren't going to solve the problem. That's what they initially come for, and then it always turns into much deeper work because it's it's macros and it's not what it's about. Right? There's much deeper work behind that. We can, like, get to that place at some point, but, like, where we started is very different than where we ended.
Kaitlin:Right?
Laura:You know, it's the most pivotal for me is when we started to talk. We covered some things, and I said I don't know if you remember, but I said, so what what type of deficit are we gonna start with? Because still the goal was I wanted to lose weight. And, you know, I was like, obviously, I'm trusting you. I probably told her I trust her, like, 80,000 times cause I didn't.
Laura:I was reaffirming to myself that I needed to trust her.
Kaitlin:But I spent my money in a
Laura:It was you. Annie, I hear you that 1,200 calories is not enough, and I can tell that I've been spinning my wheels. Like, what deficit are we starting with here? And Kayla goes, you know, in her voice, she's like, oh, we're we're not gonna start with a deficit. That's not what we're doing here.
Laura:I was like, what what are we doing here? She's like, we're gonna find your maintenance, and we're gonna eat at your maintenance calories, and we're gonna show your body what it looks like to be consistent and to give it love and care basically and the right macro balance. And we're gonna do this for a while. And there was, like, silence. She goes, how do you feel about that?
Laura:I was
Laura:like, I I don't know. I thought I'd done that. So weird.
Laura:It was so different. Right? That was the first time in probably thirty five years I ever set out on a goal to be like, let me eat to be healthy, to feel good with no pressure and see like, my now the person coaching me has told me this is what we need to do, so I have the freedom to do that. And from there, it was pretty life changing.
Kaitlin:Yeah. And that's it's so important because what what most people need is just to to eat appropriately consistently for a for a longer period of time. Right? It's it's not like maintenance Maintenance isn't what got us, you know, to where you were in the first place. It was the chaotic eating.
Kaitlin:Right? So we need to figure that out first. And it's the it's the overeating, so then we restrict, which then turns into overeating again, and then we restrict to feel better from it's just this vicious cycle. So the first step is to always just we just need to eat eat enough consistently for a long period of time and things start to shift and happen. Because then you don't have that, like, that restrict binge cycle anymore because you're getting enough consistently.
Kaitlin:There's, like, there's just no need for it anymore. You're like, wow. I feel fueled and satisfied. I don't feel like I need to binge. I don't feel like I need to restrict because everything's very constant.
Kaitlin:Like, no more chaos with it. Right? Yep.
Jen:Laura, how did you get to the point of trusting Caitlyn, especially because she's about the long game, obviously, and your well-being long term versus you were in this cycle of a lot of, like, instant gratification. Yeah. Right? Losing weight quickly and then binging. So how did you shift that mindset come to where she was?
Jen:How did you buy into her process and trust?
Laura:So I think for one, it took some time. I think Caitlin was super patient. Caitlin has a gift of being very patient and very caring, yet very consistent and very clear. And that worked that worked with me. And, I think that in the beginning, there there wasn't trust.
Laura:There was just, me saying there was trust and me realizing that what I was doing wasn't working. And so once she really put forth a different direction, I remember thinking, okay. At least I'm doing something different. And then I think from there, it happened relatively quickly because when you go into maintenance as somebody who has just yo yoed your whole entire life and you see and feel the difference, it's kinda undeniable, at least it was for me, especially being in my late forties where I'm starting to enter into perimenopause and things are getting really tough. Right?
Laura:Just being able to get up every day and say, I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat what I wanna eat within this macros and this type of kind of overbalance, pretty quickly, could see the effects it was having both on my body and mostly my my mind. And then one of the other things that was super important to me is once I did decide to work with Caitlin, I went all in. So, you know, I did what I needed to do financially to be able to call her up when I was struggling. Right?
Laura:Like, that was something that was important to me at that early on state, and there was many times, Caitlin can attest to, that I called in a in the wrong mindset. Right? And she had to walk me back out of it and show me a different way. And by the time we got off the phone, it was just like, oh my gosh. Like, why couldn't I see it that way?
Laura:But I I just couldn't. Right? I was just stuck mentally. And so through all those interactions, then you just build a trust that is set for life at that point. Right?
Laura:Wow.
Kaitlin:Yeah. I think when you're when you're in it, when you're deep in it, you don't see any other way. And I think that's why it's so important to have a coach or a therapist or whatever to show you, like, all these different ways. They're different perspectives, you know, because we can't when we're in it on our own, we're stuck in this one thing, and we can't see a way out. But if you have, like, somebody else to guide you through it, it's it's so important, so helpful, especially with something like this.
Laura:Yeah. I think when you're stuck in disordered thinking around anything, be it food or anything in this situation, food, there's at least for me, there's these pillars that are really important, right, to continue that that lie or that whole game in your mind. And Caitlin was just really good at breaking those down for me. I remember I remember a lot of them, but one that's a great example is, like, in in bingeing and restricting, it it really eats at willpower, and your whole thing becomes like, I have no willpower to to say no when I need to say no. And I just remember calling Caitlin one day and her just going, it's not about willpower.
Laura:If you're having willpower struggles, then you're already off base. And I was like like, everything shifted. I was like, wait. What? She's like, hey, man.
Laura:If you're in the kitchen and you're hungry enough that you're having to invoke willpower, then you need to eat the food. Like, you need to have a conversation with yourself. Or if you're in a willpower struggle because you want some chocolate, then you you need to eat the chocolate. And, like, that was so life changing for me because it was like all of a sudden chocolate didn't have this mysterious allure anymore. It wasn't a willpower issue.
Laura:It was, oh, okay. I'm I'm gonna have some of that and move on with my life. And there's so many examples of that. But when you're in it and you don't have somebody who's an expert who can help you pass those thought processes, you just stay stuck in the merry-go-round. Right?
Kaitlin:Yeah. And that's one of the the one thing that I really love about tracking our nutrition. I know it's it's kind of a difficult thing with, like, eating disorders in in that world with tracking your nutrition, but I think that it can also be so powerful because when you're not, you're just creating stories about certain foods without having the facts and data about what this food is actually made up of or how it contributes. Right? So now we're just labeling it, creating stories, whatever.
Kaitlin:When you can actually track it, now you see the information and data, like a a bad food that we might have labeled as bad before, and we get it in there and we see, and we're like, oh, it's not that bad, or it's not as bad as what we are creating it to be. It can kind of, like, create this safety around food of now I actually understand it, or I can have this thing and nothing bad happens or whatever. So it really kinda takes that away, and that's one of my favorite pieces about tracking nutrition. I think that was very helpful for you too of having the information data to kinda, like, take the labels off of certain foods and being able to work them in there and still be able to make progress Yep. Or or not binge on these things anymore because now you allow yourself to have them, like, on a regular regular basis.
Kaitlin:Right? So it's it's something that I can have, like, whenever rather than I need to binge on it and get rid of it all the time.
Laura:Yep. Exactly.
Kaitlin:So we know that all these little voices still creep in and, like, the rear of their ugly head every once in a while still and probably for the rest of our life. I always tell people it's not something that disordered eating or eating disorders isn't something that we completely get rid of, but how we manage it, how we respond to it changes and improves. It's like when these when these voices or thoughts or whatever start to creep in, how do you handle those?
Laura:So for me, I think it all comes down to mindfulness, or I call it when I talk with my husband about it, it's like owning the moment. I find that like we just talked about, I don't play in willpower anymore. I'm pretty structured with my eating. Like, today, when I came back from the gym, my lunch was like a pretty typical rice with chicken and avocado, and usually I'm good with that. We've had Halloween candy around.
Laura:I haven't really cared. But today, for some reason, when I was done, like, I wanted Halloween candy. And for forty five years, I would have just bought that until I was staring at the bolster and then knee deep in the freaking whole bag. Right? And today, I didn't have to, but, yes, I chose to weigh them because I it was not about a punishment.
Laura:It was about seeing what does look like what and knowing what is there, putting it on a plate, and then taking a bite and being like, you know what? Do I want the rest of that? Here's what I'm looking at. Do I do I really do I need that? If the answer's yeah, cool.
Laura:So I did that. I took each little one out, and then the Hershey, I didn't really care. For some reason, the Whopper really hit today. Was like, I'm gonna one of those.
Laura:The Whopper Wok. There you go. Right?
Laura:And it was like a 150 calories later. I mean, I could have never done that before, but I know for a lot of people, maybe journaling works things. For me, it never does. I can't keep up with it. What helps for me the most is really owning that moment and reminding myself, hey.
Laura:I'm a grown up. I can do what I want. If I wanna binge, then that's what I can do, but the least I can do right now is I need to think it through. What is it that I really want? Do I really wanna fight, fight, fight, and then have a bag of candy?
Laura:Has that made me feel good in the past? And as soon as you have that conversation with yourself, at least for me, the answer becomes abundantly clear. Just have the the the sugar that's staring at you that you want and then be done with it. And it feels so good. And I felt a little better today, a little more energy, like I probably needed it.
Laura:But if I don't take that moment of mindfulness, then that's where it just can spin out of control very quickly. So for me, that's the one biggest thing is just being willing to have a dialogue with myself and ask, am I hungry or is this emotional? And even if it's emotional, hey, chocolate never hurts sometime when it's emotional. As long as you're like, hey, that's that's what I'm doing right now. That's been, like, life changing for me.
Laura:And one of the biggest things that's allowed me to go out and enjoy meals with my family again, things that I could never do for forty years. And I'm also very surprised when I do that. You know, there's an element of trust. You stop trusting yourself because you continue to make these, you know, these just binge, repeat, binge, repeat. But when you start to trust yourself, you realize you don't really crave bad food a lot or I shouldn't call it bad food.
Laura:You don't really crave like sugary foods that's kind of empty of other stuff. It doesn't feel very good. Right? And but you you don't know that early on. So mindfulness really helped me kind of build on all of those things.
Laura:And so that's the one thing I go back to over and over when it pops up.
Kaitlin:Yeah. I think that's so great. And that's one of the biggest things that we talked about is practicing the pause in those moments. So those thoughts, feelings, whatever comes up and coming at it from a place of decision rather than impulse. Yeah.
Kaitlin:Right? Or just just out of habit. Just Yep. Do something without even thinking about it. So now you're deciding.
Kaitlin:You know, you can decide to do this, but now you know the consequences of it or you cannot. And it's it's, you know, really taking ownership of that instead of it being very mindless and impulsive behavior.
Laura:Because I feel like most binging is that. Even when I'll watch some other people online that I enjoy to follow who are candid about binging them in their own life or things like that, that's one of the common denominators that I thought was only related to me until I saw it, which was like, hey. It's almost like I wasn't even hungry. It just like, it just happened. It was just mindless or and so, yeah, when you practice the pause, I haven't heard that for a minute, but, yes, that's it.
Laura:You know, it just it makes a huge difference in your decision making.
Jen:Sounds like too, Laura. You just and I'm sure Caitlin talked about the concept of wise mind with you. It's like you got into your wisdom with that you're able to to utilize your logic and your emotion to make a wise mind decision rather than just an emotion based decision, which you've been doing for for four decades.
Laura:So that must
Jen:have been pretty wild to shift and realize you you always had that ability. Yes. You needed help to be able to access that.
Laura:Yes. That's very well said. A lot of those feelings have come through in this recovery process that have been amazing because, you know, just in how you said it, the implication is when it's there, where else is it in my life? Like, where can I tap into this aspect of my life where I can grow in so many different ways? Right?
Laura:You're either kind of reaffirming negative patterns or you're opening up doors, I feel like, for new healthier patterns. And just the way the negatives touch every area, the healthier ones have already begun to do that for me. Right? Right.
Kaitlin:Yes. You've touched on this a little bit, but how has your life changed since finding freedom from binge eating?
Laura:So has changed so much. So, I mean, some just huge ones where I am able to enjoy events with my family and holidays and things that were always so nerve racking leading up to it, so disappointing once it happens. You know, usually what you do is you binge as you eat great at Thanksgiving, and then at 2AM, you're down in the fridge when everyone else is sleeping. Right? And so and it's because you didn't enjoy it, right, when you had it.
Laura:And so just being able to thoroughly enjoy those experiences, Realizing, you know, with a binge, one binge really almost can ruin a lot of your goals if your goal is to lose weight or if your goal is to be healthy. I mean, because they're massive and you feel terrible for two or three days, and you're actually then eating at a caloric range that you literally can gain weight. I think relearning that when you have an extra pie at dinner, like, your body's like, thanks for the extra. I'll figure that out as long as you don't do it too often, maybe. Don't know.
Laura:Caitlin can speak to that better, but the concept is true. Right? So it just changed my outlook on enjoying those things and understanding that even when you overeat in a day, that's not binge eating. We all make mistakes. We all overeat in a day, undereat in another day.
Laura:Living those fluctuations and just letting them healthily exist, I think for people who don't struggle with binge eating, it's something that people don't even think about. For me, it was, like, life changing to just realize I have that flexibility and my body just adapts and it moves forward and I have a little bit more energy for a workout. And then just overall, I feel like commitments in my life, just the chaos that is no longer there. And it was super critical for me as I head into perimenopause and menopause because that alone is a huge challenge. And to couple that with a chaotic eating base, like, you could just tell the health implications that were beginning to build up.
Laura:You know, before a binge would feel bad the next day, it got to a point where it was like, I literally could feel like I my blood sugar has got to be off right now, you know, because your body at 50 can't handle it the same as it can at 20. And so just feeling the stabilization, the routine was beautiful and still is. Just the routine of normal eating is not lost on me. Maybe one day it will be, and that'll be kind of a good sign, but still right now I just appreciate every day that it just feels normal and good.
Kaitlin:Yeah. Important to note, like, not every day is the same. Right? We're not robots, so it's okay that things fluctuate and are different every day. And, you know, if there is that one day where maybe you overeat, doesn't mean that it has to go into the next day and the next day and the next week.
Kaitlin:Right? You're able to recognize it. Like, k. This was today. Tomorrow is different, or the next meal is different or whatever instead of getting so so stuck on that, you know, that one meal or that one day and just being able to recognize it and move on and move forward with your day.
Kaitlin:You know,
Laura:based on you saying that and the question about kinda how is, you know, the normalcy different now, one thing I should add too is it's not all just happiness. Right? There are some things without binging that I would probably be remiss without mentioning. I think in hindsight now, there's some enjoyment to always being able to start over. Right?
Laura:There is an enjoyment to a feeling of Friday afternoon when you've decided to binge. You're gonna start over Saturday or you're gonna start over Monday. There's, like, an excitement around that because you're gonna be able to do whatever you want. Right? Or just the concept of, like, that there's a reality where I'm gonna start over and be this perfect person.
Laura:And I think Caitlin and I had many conversations. If you remember, Caitlin, we talked about that multiple times where I kind of cracked jokes, but I was serious. Like, well, you took that away. Like, that fantasy kind of goes away. Right?
Laura:And you really have to deal with the reality of, oh, it's just me, and this is me that's gonna show up every day. And I start to choose how to show up. Right? And I think that was something that maybe isn't the happy go lucky version of solving this big problem. Or, you know, another thing that comes out that I spoke a lot about was beginning to notice like, oh, I have my period.
Laura:I don't feel good today. Like, I didn't have a good workout today. You know what? I'm grouchy today. If I think back to my college years and all those times that we just talked about how dysfunctional it was, I can't for the life of me ever remember feeling PMS, feeling sad, right, because I wasn't feeling.
Laura:And so now you really if you're not going eat your feelings, you have to, at least for me, I had to start feeling them. And that kind of sucks sometimes. It's not always happiness. And it's really helpful to have people around you that love you or someone like, you know, Caitlin, that's an expert to really work through that with you. Because if you've gone forty five years without really working with feelings, they come kind of fast and hard.
Laura:And then there's also, there was for me, an element of feeling like, wow, I'm a pre infantile in how to deal with emotion and deal with feelings. And then you're dealing with that while raising three kids and all of that stuff can pile on, right? And so I think that, again, we probably leave out something important if we don't talk about the extra things that come in that you do have to breathe through and feel because otherwise, she'd just be eating and and unaware of them. Right?
Kaitlin:Yeah. That's some something we talked about a lot is kind of feeling like a toddler with your with your emotions just because you never dealt with or never allowed yourself to to feel them or dealt with them before. It's always just math with with food.
Jen:Yep. Which is something people who struggle with, like, alcoholism will say similar things when they're finally sober. It's like they felt like they lost, like, fifteen years or twenty years of emotional development, and they have to go back and and we have to relearn how to be able to feel feelings in a in a okay way and to not be afraid of feelings, be able to feel them and not react to them, or have to grab a drink or food or whatever it is to cope with it.
Laura:Yep. And I found that to be pretty challenging when you're doing it alongside, you know, children. Like, I have a 16 year old daughter and if we're in the same emotional state,
Laura:some days we're a little rough around here. Thought. Can tell arguments don't happen. I look at
Laura:my husband, and I'm like,
Laura:dang it. He's agreeing with my daughter right now. I think I need to go upstairs and take a five minute time out. See what's going on.
Jen:I think that's the case for every parent. We all get in those moments where, like, I'm arguing with the five year old right now.
Laura:Like I'm not winning. Even if I'm winning, that's not winning. No. This
Kaitlin:is so great. As we wrap up, I wanna leave, like, one thing with our listeners today. So someone who's listening who may be struggling with something similar, what do you want them to hear or take away today?
Laura:Oh my gosh. Listen. If, if I can do this, anybody can. If I can overcome forty plus years of an eating disorder that started when I was in grade school that I had no concept of how to handle, no concept even what it was. If I can go for forty five years to the degree that the the level of binging that I did and literally work through it in almost, what was it about, less than a year with you, my biggest thing that I would want someone to know is you absolutely can solve this.
Laura:It's not about the food. You just have to figure it out, but it may take reaching out to somebody. Because if we get stuck in patterns, if you've been doing this for a year or more, you're probably stuck in a pattern and you need help just seeing it differently. But if I can do it, anybody
Laura:can do it.
Jen:I love that. That's beautiful. I'm gonna leave that there because that's how this should end today. Laura, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful story, and you did it so eloquently and with such vulnerability. So thank you.
Jen:I know that touched a lot of people today and whoever's gonna hear this now, future, ongoing. So thank you for having the courage to do that and to break away from shame, guilt, all of the things that often keep us from sharing our story even though our story is, I think, the most powerful tool we have to help other people. So we appreciate you coming on. Thank you
Laura:for having me on. I appreciate you.
Jen:Thanks for joining us on the Counter Culture Health podcast. To support this show, please rate, review, and share with your friends and family. If you wanna be reminded of new episodes, click the subscribe button on your preferred podcast player. You can find me, Jen, at awaken.holistic.health and at awakeningholistichealth.com.
Intro:And me, Caitlin, at Caitlin Reed Wellness and caitlinreedwellness.com. The content of the show is for educational and informational purposes only. As always, talk to your doctor and health team. See you next time.