TINAH Talks | Mental Health and Wellbeing Podcast

41. Embracing Body Acceptance: Overcoming Emotional Eating

• TINAH • Season 2 • Episode 41

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This week on the TINAH Talks podcast we’re joined by guest Laine Allen to delve into the intricate relationship between body acceptance, food psychology, and mental health. 🍕🧠

Layne is a global EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques/Tapping) Practitioner & Body Acceptance Coach. She helps women unsubscribe from diet culture & focus on liberation.

The conversation with Laine looks at how how societal standards and internal narratives shape self-perception, the dichotomy of body image perspectives, and the importance of understanding body acceptance versus body positivity.

Laine also highlights the emotional connections we have with food and the pervasive influence of diet culture on our mental well-being with a particular focus on the complexities of food choices, the societal pressures that influence our eating habits, the impact of food intolerances and hormonal changes, body acceptance, and how that intertwines with our mental health.

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The Personal Peace Procedure is a free download designed by Laine that works to catalogue past negative experience we still hold on to. It gives you the grace & space to work through each one at your own pace to promote inner peace.

Connect with Laine:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eft.laine

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eft.laine

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eftlaine/

#BodyAcceptance #BodyPositivity #SelfLove #SelfEsteem #EFTTapping #SelfCompassion #MindfulEating #EmotionalEating #SelfAcceptance #PositiveBodyImage #FoodPsychology #BodyPositive #WhatIsBodyPositivity #BodyPositivityModels #OvercomingBodyImageProblems #FoodAversion #FoodAndBrainHealth #BestFoodBrainHealth #PsychologyOfFood #DietAndBrain #FoodIntelligence #PsychologyOfOvereating #MentalHealth #EmotionalFreedomTechniques #DietCulture #SelfPerception #CopingMechanisms #EmotionalWellBeing #FoodChoices #NutritionEducation #CognitiveReframing #SelfImprovement #Mindfulness #Motivation #SelfHelp #GrowthMindset #LifeCoaching #PersonalDevelopment #PersonalGrowth #ProductivityTips #SelfDevelopment 

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Kelsey (00:01)
Welcome back to another Tina Talks episode. I'm your host Kelsey and today we have an expert guest, Miss Layne Allen. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Laine Allen (00:11)
I am

amazing. Thank you so much for having me.

Kelsey (00:15)
Yeah, we're excited to have you. So today we're talking about all things from food psychology and body acceptance and how this ties into our mental health. And so before we get started, I would love to introduce you, Ling. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you come from in terms of these topics?

Laine Allen (00:34)
Absolutely. I am a body acceptance coach and an EFT practitioner. EFT stands for emotional freedom techniques, or it's also commonly known as tapping, which is essentially an alternative treatment to physical pain and emotional distress. And I've been doing this the last couple of years. Prior to that, I was in a very corporate field, which was something that I...

thought I had to do, very much dreamed of doing, got into the space, did it for a very long time. And of course, during the pandemic, had a change of heart was like, this is just, this is not for me anymore. I can't, this is not aligning with my values whatsoever. And so I just delve into a beautiful online community, which opened up doors in many different ways for me on an emotional level, spiritual level, just

every level really, and decided to make that change. I got out of corporate and have been doing this work ever since and I absolutely love it.

Kelsey (01:40)
I love it. I always love hearing the leap of faith in the career change, right? Because I think there are a lot of people who are unhappy, who are stuck and stagnant, where they're at, and they have other passions and things they want to pursue. And so to see someone else do that, I think, is always incredible. And so really excited to have you. Thank you for coming on. Yeah, let's dive into it. So we're talking about kind of

When we're talking about body acceptance and food psychology and all that, think really ultimately this comes down to the unrealistic, you know, body image standards that are out there, as well as like the narratives that are around like the diet focused narratives that's kind of really pushed commercially. And I mean, I'm aware for those who have listened or have who haven't listened, I come from the psych background. So

We've seen in inpatient a lot of people who get affected by these things and it can lead to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, all sorts of things. And I think that it just ties very closely. It's to our internal narratives of how we view ourselves and how we take care of ourselves, which then can really swing the pendulum one way or another with our mental health.

And I know you've got some perspectives that I think are really interesting because you tie in a little bit of the systems that we have in place in our world today around all of this.

Laine Allen (03:08)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that a lot of the time we internalize so much on upon ourselves, right? Like we have failed. We're not good enough. We can't do X, Y, Z. We're too fat to do X, Y, Z. And I think a lot of the time we forget that there are just so many other systems that are at play that really impact that internalized thinking, right? It's not just about

how you see yourself, it's about the systems that are in play that make you feel that way about yourself. And we don't, as women, often look at those systems because we internalize so much and we take on so much responsibility because at the end of the day, we are women and our inherent nature is to, you know,

nurture everyone else around us and be responsible for everyone around us and that includes ourselves and so we often blame the blame on ourselves when in reality as mentioned there are all of these pillars and structures that are in place that are keeping us very small on purpose.

Kelsey (04:18)
What are some of the pillars that you're talking about? mean, I've got an idea, I want to hear.

Laine Allen (04:24)
There are

so many. mean, capitalism for one, the patriarchy, of course, marketing, social constructs, cultural constructs, generational things as well. You know, there's a lot. And once you start to dig a little bit deeper into each one of those pillars, you start to really realize like, wow.

know, this isn't just my fault, like this isn't just me. And yeah, it's, it's, it's a huge unraveling to take a step back and do all of this unlearning because we have been conditioned by these pillars in many different ways to be small, for sure.

Kelsey (05:10)
Yeah, I think a lot of it is naturally subconscious, right? I mean, our brains can't process everything consciously all at once all the time, but when we are watching TV, when we are looking through magazines, reading the news, we're on our social media, right? And then even just hearing how people behave and interact around us, maybe even when it's not directed at us, all of that our subconscious absorbs.

Laine Allen (05:39)
Mm-hmm.

Kelsey (05:40)
And I think it's really interesting. I can think of like very key things. In the US, we had lots of amazing shows. I'm 33, so amazing shows that we grew up on in the 90s and the 2000s. And someone recently said, no wonder, like as a millennial adult woman, I have body image issues. And it's a compilation of clips from different talk shows, from TV shows, from, and it's like,

you know, the skinniest of the skinny women being like, I need to go on a diet or like reporters asking a female, you know, actress about, so what'd you do to get fit for this role? And then asking more serious questions to the male counterpart. And so it's, think it's something that just like floats actively from like, you know, everything there's health and wellness that's out there, right? So there's a lot about like fitness and health, but when you're bombarded with so much of that, it can often feel like,

you're not good enough, you need to get fit. You're not doing enough, this is what you're supposed to be doing. And then there's those other kind of low key sort of subliminal messages. I know this is not low key, but my dad used to comment on women's weight all the time. And I later found out, and my parents had a very...

nasty relationship, separate kind of thing. And I later found out from my mom that like he would, he would regularly comment and be like, you need to work out and blah, blah, blah. And he really would try to drill into us kids. Like we have to work out and do exercise and kind of be more fit. And it was, I remember now for the wrong reasons, I use fitness now for managing my mental health, for my anxiety, for my depression. But like those are narratives around, there's a very long period of time where I was like, I don't want to work out.

think I resisted the idea because of where it originally came from. And so I think a lot of that just influences the way we accept our bodies, the way we accept ourselves.

Laine Allen (07:32)
I think.

Yeah,

I think that you touched on a very like key point and two different pillars completely in terms of, okay, you know, the social media conditioning that we have now or just, you know, media influence in general is one element and then you have the element of the generational aspect. And, you know, you were talking about the fitness piece of, you know, feeling like you have to work out in order to maintain.

a smaller body, some people do it for mental health, some people are doing it because they genuinely want to fit into a smaller size body. And I think that there are really two ends of the spectrum, in my opinion, that can lead to very polarizing actions when we think about body image as being a negative one, right? Like, one end of the spectrum, we have

people who talk to themselves negatively and go, you know what, I'm so fat, no one's ever gonna love me, what's the point in trying? I've failed so many times, so I'm just gonna be lazy, eat whatever I want. And then you have that pendulum swing to the complete other side where you have women who are out there putting so much pressure and strain on their body by over-exercising, by restricting their calorie intake.

they won't eat after 7pm and they have all of these rules, right? And both of these mindsets result in behaviors that aren't better than one another. But from that lens of social media and media influence, we think that the later is better, right? Like we think that, you know, we have to work out, we have to be on a diet, we have to wear particular athletic wear in order to, you know, achieve

the epitome of what beauty standards are in this day and age. And in my opinion, those two ends of the spectrum, one's not better than the other. And we need to find that middle, middle balance because both of those can lead to having poor mental health outcomes at the end of the day. Right.

Kelsey (09:39)
Yeah. no, I got you. Yeah, you hit it right on the head in terms of like, it's dichotomy, right? Like we swing too far in one direction versus the other. And I think like, maybe even if you're not, there's a period of time where you're not conscious of necessarily of the narratives that you're carrying with yourself. And then if you're not paying attention closely to the words and how you're speaking to yourself about your body, it...

It sneaks up on you a little bit, I think. And I'm not saying that men are immune to this. I think men also have this, but I don't think that they're as targeted in media and in consumerism and generational factors. There's not as much open comments about their body as there is for women. So I think this would be, go ahead.

Laine Allen (10:33)
I was just about to say, not only is that, you know, the language that we use towards ourselves as women, but it's also reflected to us in a lot of environmental elements as well. It is why the women's feminine and hygiene and beauty section is so much larger than the men's, right? It is why there are diet ads that are located in women's bathrooms and not in men's. So it's reflected in the world around us.

constantly. So it's no wonder that our internal dialogue and our subconscious goes to that negativity and the need and want and desire to change your physical appearance.

Kelsey (11:17)
Yeah, I personally, right, like, I'm not fat. know I like logically, I'm not fat. I actually feel relatively good in shape. I've been out of my working out routine for a little bit, but I've been back into it the last like month or so, but I was pretty solid the last couple of years. But even so, even I catch myself, like especially in certain parts of my cycle of my period, but I'll catch myself being like...

I'm fat, like I've gained a bunch of weight and it's always comes with this like heavy weight of, my God, like I'm worried about it or, what's my partner going to think about it or what are, you know, what are people going to say or perceive me? Cause I put out, you know, videos online for work and all this stuff and,

It's really not true. mean, like I know that that's not the case, but it like sneaks in. And I think it's like you said from those environmental factors, because you're kind of constantly bombarded by it. And I have to catch myself. And when I catch that, I'm like, OK, I need to reframe this. And we can jump into like how we reframe and how we address this at a later point. But I think it'd be really good to define really what is body acceptance? Like, what does that mean?

Laine Allen (12:32)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. And I think a lot of people tend to get caught up in the relationship between body positivity and body acceptance. And in my opinion, body acceptance is respecting and accepting your body for where it is and what it is right in that moment in time. Body positivity, I think has changed a lot from its original meaning, which we've taken from

Kelsey (12:42)
Mmm.

Laine Allen (13:00)
black culture when we've whitewashed it, which we tend to do with a lot of things. But the original idea of body positivity and what it's now changed to is this idea that we need to love ourselves no matter what, right? And we get this reinforced to us when we do feel, you know, fat or not happy with ourselves in a physical body. And you have people turning around to you saying,

Well, you just need to love yourself more and you just need to, you know, think positive thoughts. And it's like, hang on. That can't necessarily happen because your brain automatically knows that it's a lie. So you can't get to that stage without accepting where you are now. And those conversations look very, very different in my opinion. So body positivity and body acceptance, body acceptance is the ability to

reframe and be like, you know what, I, you know, you might catch yourself walking by a mirror and you think, my God, I'm so ugly or, you know, I feel so fat today or whatever the case might be. And being able to stop and take a moment and reframe that and be like, you know, this fat body may have carried children. And that's a beautiful thing that I've given life. And I accept that my body looks this way because of the journey that it's been on, which is very different to just being like, you know,

I love my fat thighs and I love my fat body and I love, you know, my fat tummy. Cause again, your brain is just like, hang on a second. No, you don't. So let's, let's, let's rewind that. so yeah, that's, that's my take on body acceptance.

Kelsey (14:44)
No, I love that. I've we've done so many episodes recently on like stress and all of that. And I learned what, do know what the cortisol bloat is? Have you heard of cortisol bloat?

Laine Allen (14:57)
I've heard of

it, you know, having all these stresses in our lives that have a reaction of cortisol, which makes us bigger. I assume you can correct me.

Kelsey (15:09)
Yeah, yes, yeah,

yeah. So I mean, cortisol naturally is good for us, but when you have chronic long-term stress, it's high levels of cortisol that are produced over a long period of time that can affect a lot of things. It affects your memory, your immune system. Well, one of the other things is you can actually get, because it also affects your hormones. So you can start to see like a more bloating in your face and then definitely bloating in your gut. There's like actual difference between like, you know.

you eat some broccoli and you've got that type of bloating versus like the stress bloating and they call it the cortisol bloat. And I've had a lot of stress in my life and recently I've had a little bit more stress in my life. I've done well to work on nervous system regulation. But for me, a big thing like is when I see that like I'm looking exhausted, it's usually like I'm tired. I probably have some cortisol bloat going on and I'm like, I look like shit. haven't showered. So I'm like, I look like shit or I, you know, I'm not, I'm not happy.

with the way that I look and I'm more negative towards myself about it. I have to remind myself, you're really stressed out. You have a lot on your plate right now. Your body is doing the best it can carrying you through these stressful moments and it's doing a good job, but it's also showing a little signs of that and that's okay. And I know it's a little bit different, think, right? Because I know it's different when we're talking about women who have carried children and other things, but I...

Laine Allen (16:21)
Thanks.

Kelsey (16:34)
it's more on a low-key level. Because I think sometimes it's really subtle and you just don't pick up on it. But I love the explanation that you give between body acceptance versus body positivity. And so I'm curious to hear where food psychology kind of comes into play with all of this.

Laine Allen (16:56)
Yeah, mean, food is a beautiful, wonderful thing. It keeps us alive, it keeps us social, it creates beautiful memories. And I think one of the things that we discuss a lot in EFT in particular is the memories that we associate with food can also be the reason why we behave a certain type of way around it, for example. You know, for me on my personal journey when I was growing up,

I felt very abandoned. had divorced parents. The stepdad in my life that I had called my dad for 13 years walked out and never, never returned. Always kept in contact with my siblings, but never me. And that stemmed a lot of abandonment issues for myself. And so food never rejected me. Food never abandoned me. It was always there. It was always very comforting. And I think that a lot of the time we don't

realize that when we have a strong craving for a particular food, we tend to forget that when you first try something different in terms of food, it's creating new neural pathways in your brain, right? Because there's all these different kind of elements going on. And so when you're craving a particular type of food, it's a good idea to maybe like question what is your earliest memory surrounded with this food, right? Was it

The first time I ever tried chocolate was when my nan gave it to me on the kitchen bench when we were baking a cake and you know, all of these like beautiful memories and things can happen, but it also can be a reason why we behave a certain type of way around food. And I can almost guarantee you that nine times out of 10, the food that you're craving is not gonna be a carrot, right? It's gonna be something that is like ultra processed. It's gonna be chocolate or chips or cookies or something like that.

And that then plays into that whole pillar about marketing and food science, right? Like we have gone from eating whole food, natural diets to opting for things that are of more convenience for us because of the way that they have been made with high fat content, high sugar content.

And then even like the crossover of different foods, right? It's not enough to just have an ice cream anymore. It's going to be an ice cream on top of a cookie in on top of like with chocolate sauce and with like chips and peanuts sprinkled on top of it. Like it's getting to a point now where that's all we're opting for. And again, that, that comes down, well, not necessarily comes down to the memories that we've associated with that food, but also like the comfort and emotion.

the emotional side that food brings up for us.

Kelsey (19:51)
Yeah, and I imagine is that you've never developed other coping mechanisms, right? Like to deal with feelings of abandonment, which we have a very similar story. Also stepmom, who I called mom that like walked out and then, and yeah, I had some contact, but it's been push and go and is now completely cut me off. So, and I know anyway, but very, very similar story. So we could chat about that. But I think that

Laine Allen (20:06)
Dude, ugh.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Kelsey (20:20)
Right? Like if you have these very positive, this positive association with food and it's been comforting in the past and you have these underlying emotional just like stressors that are probably ongoing or they're like they've happened but they've not been dealt with. You haven't figured out another healthy way of like feeling like your feelings, processing them and letting them go and moving through that.

I think that can, it can very easily tip you over towards like leaning into food more in an unhealthy way. I also know, this is, this is from someone I worked with in the psych field who actually like studied in this area and they were explaining to me one time that, right. So a big part of processing our emotions is like to feel it through our body and then to like move out of it. Right. And food often comes with a very physical sensation, like.

sensation of chewing in our mouth and then like the warmth of it going down our throat and then having like a warm full belly like that kind of thing and like the the endorphins that come with having a very savory or you know filling meal kind of deal and that in and of itself can mimic the comforting feelings or like as if we're we're ignoring kind of the painful ones and covering it up.

with this outside physical sensation. And that can really play a role in like, that's how we cling onto it as a coping mechanism. And I'm not, this isn't an extreme example and you can totally correct me if I'm wrong here or if this relates, but I feel like it's the same with anything, sex, drugs, alcohol, right? All of those things make us feel good to a certain degree and...

If we don't have any other way of feeling good naturally or being able to create that sensation for ourselves, we lean into other things for that distraction, for that ability.

Laine Allen (22:28)
And majority of the time, those things are easily accessible, very convenient, and don't take that much time, energy, and resources into like getting at the end of the day, right? Like with food in particular, we're not growing our own food in the backyard anymore, right? If I feel like an ice cream at 2 a.m., I can just get in my car and go down to the local McDonald's. And a lot of the time, we don't want to delve deeper and do

the more inner work and the understand and unpack and unlearn all of these like nuanced layers because it takes a lot of time and a lot of the time people don't have time. So again, we're opting for things that are the most convenient way for us to cope and deal.

Kelsey (23:17)
Yeah, yeah. What would you say is like how diet culture has like played into our, you know, our thoughts and our associations and our interactions with food.

Laine Allen (23:34)
That's a great question. And there's a lot to unpack in that. mean, diet culture and the diet industry in itself is like a multi-billion dollar industry. And it has a failure rate of upwards of 97%. Majority of the people who lose weight in the first two years are more likely and 97 % more likely to put it all back on and then some within five years. So we know systematically that diets don't work.

And yet there's that cognitive dissonance of feeling like we still need to do it. Like make that make sense. If you knew that your car isn't going to work five out of seven days of the week, why do you still drive it? And I think that that's one of the key elements is that like, we don't want to necessarily give it up, but we don't know how to.

It's very confusing and that's why we struggle so much with the diet culture. It's something that we need to perpetuate over and over again, even though that we know that it fails. Like it just doesn't, doesn't make sense. And I think I've forgotten the second half of your question about the food element of it. So yeah.

Kelsey (24:49)
That's okay.

No, think when I think of, I think a big, a huge portion of it, and like this is one of my core beliefs around like all things that feed into our mental health and our mental wellness is the lack of education. There's a lack of education around how to manage your thoughts, how to manage your feelings, and a lack of education around what is actually healthy food, not some, you know, bullshit grandma story that says like,

this thing is good for you because this is what you know my grandma or my mom did and blah blah blah blah blah like no like based on what our our body needs in terms of fuel in terms of having healthy internal mechanisms what do we need in nutrients and and i know i can say for america like with all fda approved foods like they're in cahoots with pharmaceutical companies and all these other things and so

the food pyramid is not an actual legitimate, it's not an accurate representation of what healthy food is. And I just feel like we didn't really learn in high school in our like, you know, one health class each year of what is healthy food and what do I need to feel satiated to feel energized and not fatigued and to feel balanced in terms of if it's for women, our hormones versus

Laine Allen (25:51)
No.

Kelsey (26:17)
you know, what do we need for cognitive functioning and all of this? And not to make it so science-y, but like when you aren't tired and when you feel satiated and when your hormones are balanced and your internal systems are working really well, it affects your mental health until you're not as much like, it's not another stressor in terms of, my God, I have to cope with something that doesn't feel right.

Laine Allen (26:38)
Mm-hmm.

And you made an interesting point earlier about like, you know, the FDA and how they're in cahoots. Love that word. But also the structure in which we've been told that, you know, we need to have breakfast, lunch and dinner every day at certain periods of the day. That came from the wheat industry to, you know, get more money essentially at the end of the day. You think about what you have for breakfast, a piece of toast. What are you having for lunch? A sandwich. What are you having for dinner? Pasta.

all of these things that play into the conditioning that we just think is normal and we don't question, right? And the other reason why we don't question it is, you know, when you are sitting at the dinner table, your mom or dad or parental figure is being like, you can't leave the table until you've eaten everything on your plate. You know, kids, kids are the most intuitive beings there are. They know when they're full, they know when they're not going to eat.

And parents worry and stress so much about, you know, is my kid eating enough? Are they eating the right food? They're going to tell you at the end of the day, but we have lost that in ourselves because we're now fully grown adults. We can make our own food choices. And again, that need for convenience, that quick, easy, ready meal is, is nine times going to be picked right. Like compared to

something that you're actually going to dedicate and take the time to wash and make and prepare it with love and be mindful whilst you're eating and really sit there and in like enjoy it. We don't do that anymore.

Kelsey (28:19)
Right.

Yeah. Well, we also don't have the time to, think like, right? I think everyone's in cahoots with each other. So like, you know, the way that our society is set up, it's like, you go to work. And it's not just you go to work and you work for eight hours a day, but most people have less than 30 minutes for lunch. They have an hour commute to and from their job. So now this is turning into like almost a full eight hours of working plus another

Laine Allen (28:25)
See.

Yeah.

Kelsey (28:49)
another hour and another hour for a commute there and back. That's 10 hours of your day. And then you know, you've got to do your, your shower or whatever it is that you have to decompress when you get home. And it's a very limited time for us to actually, you know, think about what's going to be healthy for me right now. What's going to give me the energy that I need. We're, all exhausted. We're like functioning in a burnt out society. And I, and I know that like, when it comes to food, food can be, so I've had to do a lot of work, just from a lot of my trauma, I've become

I now have intolerances. I'm gluten intolerant, I'm dairy intolerant, and it wasn't like that most of my life until I just went through period of not having so much of it and then trying to go back, really wrecked me. And wait, I totally lost the plot of where I was going with this, but it happens sometimes, no big deal. But I think like, I've had to be, and then I got off of birth control after being on it for 12 years. My system was all kinds of messed up.

Laine Allen (29:33)
I'm

Kelsey (29:48)
So I was forced to have to address it in terms of like, what am I eating? Now what can I have versus what can I have? And then my energy, my cognitive functioning, everything was all over the place because my hormones were totally out of whack and I hired a hormone and a nutrition specialist to work with and it was not covered by insurance. I had to pay for that out of pocket. It was one of the best things I did, but like.

Laine Allen (30:11)
Never is.

Kelsey (30:15)
learned a lot in terms of like, my body needs this sort of thing to function well. this is, and it was a deep, deep level of education. was a learning curve, but it has made a difference. And I just think this comes full circle to, know, our society is not set up to support us in this way. We don't have the education for it. And what we're being marketed to in terms of all these things also compounds it. So sure, shit, yeah, like

body acceptance, body positivity, are not, like, food psychology, all of this is like, it's just kind of circling down a little negative feedback loop drain that's gonna, you know, kick us in the butt when we're having a bad day.

Laine Allen (30:58)
Yeah,

they're all like a hoot, people.

Kelsey (31:02)
man. So I guess we could let's talk about maybe how body acceptance and like healthy food psychology can support us, especially in our mental health. Is there anything in particular that you've noticed when you talk about with clients or anything you've done with yourself? How are you incorporating this to help with like anxiety, confidence and self-esteem and

Laine Allen (31:32)
Yeah, I think, again, very, very unique to each individual, right? Because, like we said, there are so many different pillars that are holding up this structure. And you don't know whether or not the underlying issue for someone is like a generational thing, because the way that they saw their mother get ready in the morning and the way that she spoke to herself is a direct reflection of how you treat yourself now. Like,

I had a mother that was obsessed with dieting and still in some ways does obsess about her appearance. Which I find to me as her daughter, I find it absolutely baffling because I think she's the most stunning woman in the whole entire world. We look nothing alike. She's like five foot nothing. I'm six foot. She's blonde. I have dark hair. She's got brown eyes. I've got blue eyes. The only thing that we share is this

lovely nose that we've got going on. And I have ended up on one side of the spectrum of having a really emotional relationship with food growing up because of that abandonment. And then my sister has been on the absolute other side where gone through an eating disorder. And I find it very fascinating that as much as you grow up in the same household with the same mom, you can end up on two very different

ends of a spectrum because in reality, you're not really growing up in the same household with the same person. You're both kind of like experiencing different, different things along the way. You know, my mom's learned things as she's gotten older. She's learned to not talk about diet culture in front of me anymore, which I think is, you know, one strategy that I've had to implement because I find it to me. I don't like using the word trigger because I think that

your triggers are the things that you kind of need to like delve in and investigate more about each to their own. But when I had these diet conversations with my mom, that ultimately would trigger me to go and emotionally eat. And that's going to be very different to somebody else that hasn't had that experience, right? So it's all very unique to the individual. And there are so many different strategies and coping mechanisms that we can integrate depending on, you know, what that system is.

And the reason why I really love EFT is that it can accommodate for all of them, right? It's kind of like an umbrella for absolutely everything in terms of being able to address what the tabletop issue is by looking at what are these like legs or systems that are upholding that tabletop, right? So I think that, yeah, EFT is a really, really great coping strategy. It's a healthy one.

It can address a lot of the things. It's free, it's accessible, and I just love it.

Kelsey (34:32)
Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. I mean, you're right, right? Everyone comes from a different perspective around food and around body image and all of that. And I think like, I know we've talked about a whole of core things, but I think, right, there needs to be first awareness and everyone who has ever listened to this podcast is probably sick of us talking about awareness all the time, but you got to first be aware.

Laine Allen (34:38)
Hmm.

you

Kelsey (34:56)
How are you talking to yourself and like how, what do you identify within your body and how do you treat your body is a core step of being aware of. you being, do you have a lot of diet culture stuff? Do you have a lot of fitness, health things, like too much of it on your social media, like right? I'm a psych based person. I love all mental health things. And then I also got into fitness stuff just because.

has helped my anxiety. when all I see is mental health and all I see is fitness stuff, it starts to become too pressure filled. So there needs to be an awareness within your environment and awareness internally. And then I think with body acceptance, learning how you can start to challenge those narratives in a way that will feel good for you and will support, how do you want to feel about your body moving forward and how

Laine Allen (35:47)
you

Kelsey (35:52)
How do you want to view yourself and have a caring, kind, and gracious understanding of everything that you've been through? Do you have any techniques that you work with people on to practice body acceptance?

Laine Allen (36:11)
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. The thing that you said in regards to seeing what's being like suggested to you in your feeds, that is super important. I think that one of like the first steps in ditching the diet culture element is to clean up your social media feeds, like unfollow accounts that make you feel like shit because at the end of the day, that's just what's being reinforced to you and add a little bit of diversity in there.

there, there is no need to consistently have thin white women in Lululemon showing up in your feed if that is not a reflection of, you know, where you're trying to be at, like if you're trying to step away from diet culture, it's not healthy to have, have that being reinforced to you all the time. As you said, like awareness, also learning and understanding what does set you off. As I said in the example, like talking about diet culture with my mum, that's

that triggers me into emotional eating. knowing what triggers and why and unpacking why they make you feel a particular way is also really, really important. Yeah. And I think when we discussed earlier about your friend talking about feelings, know, feelings are meant to be felt, right? So understanding

like why you feel a particular way and digging a little bit deeper, know, asking yourself, why do I want to be in a thinner body? Why do I want to be skinnier or skinny? Like literally thinking about the reasons why, and probably majority of the time it's going to be for a reason that's outside of yourself, right? It's going to be for the man. It's going to be...

Kelsey (37:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Laine Allen (38:02)
so I can get that job because once I be once I'm thinner I will feel more beautiful or I'll be able to go and do this thing or whatever. Coming like getting to a point where the reason why you want to be maybe thinner is that maybe it's because you want to be healthier and live a longer life and that's very different to doing it for aesthetic purposes and there is also a need to question okay well why aren't I healthy

now in the size that I am because you can be a fat person and still be healthy as fuck like you can be a fat person that is going to the gym every day and moving their body and eating really nutritious foods but yet still you're not in a smaller body and that's okay and being able to accept that like is a big beautiful and liberating thing.

Kelsey (38:50)
Yeah, and I think that one of the tools that I often recommend to my own clients and for very different things, because we're not off to talking about body acceptance and stuff, but it can be very relevant here, is a little bit of cognitive reframing, right? So taking a look at once you're aware of all these things, and you make some of these environmental changes with, you know, setting boundaries in your social media, setting boundaries around conversations you're having with particular people.

And then you become aware of like what's those narratives that you're carrying and like, you know Why do you want to be healthy and fit versus why are you not currently right now or not in the body that you want to be? I think that the next step to actively change that narrative is write down What are the common thoughts like if you if you recognize that you frequently say I'm just so fat like if you say that to yourself all the time or whatever the phrase is that you say

Getting aware of those common phrases, writing them down, acknowledging the emotions that come with them, letting yourself feel those emotions. You can process that with EFT. You can process that with a body scan, progressive muscle relaxation, any of those things. But then you need to challenge that statement. You need to come up with alternative perspectives or evidence against it.

which you will have partially already done by identifying, why do I want to be fit? And like, why am I not happy with the body I'm in now? Like that kind of thing. And you have that evidence. And then what you need to do is you take those original thoughts and you reframe them slightly. And you did a really great job of being like, right, if you're unhappy with your body and it's a woman who's had kids being like, this body has done such a great job to carry all these children and to be a good mother and has put focus to nurture other people rather than myself, right?

That is a very different statement than I'm just fact, right? It's a very different. So coming up with these kind of reframes and then what I typically encourage my clients to do is once you have like a set that challenge that and they have to be like, they have to be realistic and slightly believable. Otherwise, right, your brain will just totally disregard it. Yeah, right. And so once you have a list of these, I typically...

Laine Allen (40:40)
Yeah.

I'm

Kelsey (41:02)
So I do this for like my own like my imposter syndrome, my own limiting beliefs, that kind of thing. So this is any limiting beliefs that you're struggling with. You can then use those as like positive affirmations, whether you're saying them to yourself in the mirror every morning, or you're just writing them out with your cup of coffee and practicing them. But that can really start to shift the beliefs that you're carrying with yourself. And I think that like also goes for like food psychology, like shifting your food psychology. So reframing,

Laine Allen (41:22)
Absolutely.

Kelsey (41:29)
often say, if I'm doing anything for myself or even for my clients, I recognize I have so many female clients that just straight up don't eat breakfast in the morning, but that leads to spiked blood sugar and higher cortisol levels. So it's not me being like, you have to eat food, but it's more like you need to get some nutrients in you so you actually have the fuel to function in whatever it is you're going to do in your day. And ideally do it before you have a of coffee because it's fucking with your hormones and you're having that up and down mood.

Laine Allen (41:56)
Yeah.

Kelsey (42:00)
to say like, let's talk about your diet. I'm always like, let's talk about nutrition. like, what are you doing? There's like other terms, you know, like food is nourishing. You can practice mindful eating, or you can challenge kind of the all or nothing approach to food rather than being like, well, I can't have any of this. And I know that's very hard for some people, but practicing in small doses, we need to

shift not only like those narratives, we have to shift those behaviors as well. like, right, we're shifting the thoughts with the cognitive reframing, shifting how we're talking about food in the first place, it's nourishment for my body, we're talking about nutrition, not diets. And then what can we put in practice in action to help reflect those things? Well,

Yeah, maybe you are someone who, right, your body has been through a lot, but you're feeling really stressed and you're unhappy with yourself. We've reframed the thoughts, but maybe we just like say, let's try to go on a 30 minute walk every other day. Super gentle practices, not necessarily more to move my body, not to be fit kind of thing. And to give my body the nourishment and the love it needs after doing a lot of fucking hard work.

Laine Allen (43:06)
Yeah.

And that's another thing that, you know, in talking about the the working out element of it, like reframing that to movement, right, because at the end of the day, movement is super important. As you get older, you want to be able to bend over and pick something up that you've dropped off the floor. But we don't need to do 100 burpees in order to achieve that. So looking at

Kelsey (43:29)
so

Laine Allen (43:40)
exercise through the lens of movement is super important and super empowering as well. know, fat people can exercise in the same way that skinny people can with the right techniques and the right kind of tools. I think, yeah, it's very, I think this is a totally different conversation, but like gyms and, and gyms and the exercise movement is, is very ableist and very

fat centric. I, it took me years to decide that I wanted to join up to going to a gym. And I stopped going because, you know, I was definitely the largest person there. And that is not inherently a good thing for myself to put myself in a position where, you know, I'm feeling uncomfortable. And yet I want to do this thing that is beneficial for my body. So yeah, like, sorry to kind of go off topic there, but

Kelsey (44:32)
Mm-hmm.

No, no, I think you're right. Like it's right changing how you frame it right body movement versus exercise, nutrition versus diet. And I come from like, I have my own insecurities about going to the gym, not necessarily around my weight, but I just I have my own insecurities about it. And I've gotten myself to go because I think it's right. It's important to get we have to get out of our comfort zone now and again to see that we can write it's more so about like

Laine Allen (44:44)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Kelsey (45:05)
Reinforcing we are capable we we can we're strong individuals and we can could do these things But if it becomes a point where you're not feeling comfortable like at the gym or whatever There are alternative ways to move your body. You can go for a walk You can get a weight set that's gonna cost a two month gym membership anyways, and then just have that at home So you can make sure you're still

Laine Allen (45:17)
Yeah.

Kelsey (45:26)
giving the love and care to your body that you need, more so for functionality, right? We're talking about body movement for functionality, not necessarily so that you can be fit and strong and all of those things. So yeah, so I think, right, we kind of hit on all three, the thoughts, the feelings, and then the behaviors behind it. And when it comes to food, I think...

Laine Allen (45:36)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Kelsey (45:50)
The biggest thing is that all or nothing component of like, can I do to nourish myself a little bit in a way that doesn't feel excessive and is I'm not feeling like you're limiting yourself, right? Again, it's that pendulum of how can we stop going from here to here, but to like, just, you know, sit comfortably here a little bit and, and work around the emotions that you need to, to get you there in the thoughts, right?

Laine Allen (46:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, stop categorizing different types of foods as being inherently good or inherently bad. Like, can't eat this because it's bad and I can't eat that because it's bad. Nothing is inherently good and nothing's inherently bad. Nothing's that black and white, right? It's about acknowledging what this food is doing for you, the feelings that's associated with it as we kind of touched on earlier. So, you know, I think

Kelsey (46:26)
Mm-hmm.

Laine Allen (46:43)
that subconscious bias again comes into play particularly when it comes to food. There are so many things that we as women do that we don't even necessarily realize that we're doing because it's just been ingrained in us such as you

They're not eating carbohydrates because they're bad for you and, you know, not eating after 7am and making sure that you're drinking two litres of water every single day, which at times can also deplete you of minerals and nutrients if you're drinking that much water excessively. Like there are just so many little things that I think that we don't even realise that we're doing on a subconscious level. So acknowledging those can take some time and take some work for sure.

Kelsey (47:19)
Yeah, so I come back to nutrition education. That only had to be a whole nother conversation, but yeah, well, this is an amazing conversation. Before we wrap up, I wanna ask you, because I asked all of our guests, what has been your number one coping mechanism that you use for yourself that has been a game changer for your mental health?

Laine Allen (47:22)
Yeah.

this is not in the context of necessarily like diet culture and the body acceptance space. This is just for me on a personal level is my thing has always been to try. I think at the end of the day, being able to, being able to try is the ability to learn something new, learn something different. And I think that that plays into coping skills. Like you're never going to know what's going to work for you unless you give it a go.

There are things that I have, you know, as, someone who takes a very holistic approach to life, there are so many things that I've tried that I thought I would love that just didn't work or resonate with me. And that's okay. At least I gave them a go. And I think that that is one thing that everyone can adopt is that willingness to give something a go. Whether or not that be for a coping mechanism.

Kelsey (48:15)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Laine Allen (48:41)
or whether it just be for life in general, just give it a go, give it a try. See ya.

Kelsey (48:47)
I love that. think that's fantastic. And it resonates deeply with the sentiment behind time is not a healer, right? Like time doesn't heal. We are the masters of, we're the creators of our own experience and how we respond to experiences. And so you just got to try and get to figure out what's going to work for you. And you have to take a little bit of action there. So.

Awesome. I appreciate you so much coming on the episode. For those who are listening, will have some resources and her information. We'll have it all in the show notes. So if you wanted to get in touch with her, more than welcome to. But yeah, thank you so much for coming on, Lane.

Laine Allen (49:28)
Thank you so much for having me, I've really enjoyed this chat and I know that we could have definitely carried on for a bit longer, but we will stop ourselves there.

Kelsey (49:37)
Yes we will. Alright guys, until next time.