recovered-ish with chloe cox

pregnancy, body changes, and eating disorder recovery — the part nobody talks about | the recovered-ish podcast ep. 24

• Chloe Cox • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Episode Description

I used to think pregnancy would give me a break from my eating disorder. That the permission to gain weight, to nourish my baby, would make it all feel easy. That's not quite how it went.

In this episode I'm getting honest about what body changes in pregnancy actually feel like when you have an eating disorder history — the first trimester appetite chaos, the body dysmorphia on high alert, the awkward in-between phase where nothing fits, and the pressure to be the perfect pregnant person that nobody warned me about.

This one is for anyone navigating pregnancy, postpartum, or body changes of any kind in ED recovery. The lessons here go way beyond pregnancy.

In This Episode:

  • Why I thought pregnancy would cure my eating disorder — and what actually happened
  • First trimester appetite chaos — and what it stirred up mentally
  • Why pregnancy triggers body dysmorphia like almost nothing else
  • The awkward in-between phase where nothing fits — and the sensory challenge that comes with it
  • The myth of the perfect pregnant person — and how perfectionism fills the void when the ED quiets
  • Why relapse rates are highest during pregnancy and postpartum
  • What it looks like to practice body neutrality during pregnancy
  • The mantras I use when I don't love what I see in the mirror
  • Why other people's opinions about your body say more about you than them
  • How pregnancy has deepened my body trust — and what that means beyond pregnancy
  • What I want my daughter to know about her body from day one

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro + summer updates 2:00 Recovery Skills Training summer workshops 3:00 Today's topic — pregnancy, body changes, and ED recovery 5:00 A note for anyone whose fertility has been impacted by an eating disorder 8:00 Why these lessons apply beyond pregnancy 9:00 I thought pregnancy would fix my ED — here's what happened instead 11:00 First trimester appetite chaos and what it stirred up mentally 13:00 Food aversions, cravings, and eating consistently in recovery 15:00 Why pregnancy triggers body dysmorphia so intensely 17:00 The awkward in-between phase — when nothing fits but you're not showing yet 18:00 Body changes are supposed to happen — even when they're hard 20:00 The myth of the perfect pregnant person 22:00 Relapse rates in pregnancy and postpartum — why this is so common 24:00 Body changes nobody warned me about — the honest list 27:00 Being curious about body changes instead of critical 29:00 What are other people thinking about my body? — reframing that question 31:00 Taking your power back — shifting from external to internal 33:00 How pregnancy deepens body attunement 35:00 Listening to your body across all three trimesters 37:00 Mantras for hard body image days 40:00 What I want my daughter to know about her body 42:00 Body trust isn't about loving your body — it's about believing it knows what it's doing 43:00 Closing thoughts

Mantras From This Episode:

  • I am uncomfortable, and I can handle that.
  • I don't like my body right now, and I can trust this process.
  • I'm unhappy with these changes, and my happiness can be sourced elsewhere.

Quotes from This Episode:

"I thought pregnancy was going to be a vacation from my eating disorder. What ended up replacing it was the pressure to be the perfect pregnant person."

"Body trust is not about loving your body. It's just about believing that it knows what it's doing and allowing that to lead."

"If I believe that's true about my daughter — that her body has nothing to do with who she is — I've got to believe that's true about me."

"One of the highest rates of relapse happens during pregnancy and postpartum. You're so not alone, and you're likely not doing anything wrong."

Resources + Connect with Me:

Keywords/Tags: pregnancy and eating disorder recovery, body changes in ED recovery, eating disorder and pregnancy, body dysmorphia pregnancy, postpartum eating disorder relapse, recovered-ish podcast, chloe cox, ED recovery podcast, eating disorder therapist, body trust pregnancy, body neutrality pregnancy, quasi-recovery, pregnancy body image, eating disorder relapse postpartum

Resources + Connect with Me:

SPEAKER_00

One thing that I used to think was, oh, when I get pregnant, I'm not gonna worry about my body anymore. When I get pregnant, I'm gonna have so much food freedom. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna be gaining weight anyways, whatever. And I need to nourish my body so I can nourish my babies. I don't know if this is a widely known statistic, but one of the highest rates of relapse happens for people in pregnancy and postpartum. And if you've listened to my episode about relapse, the closest I ever came to a relapse was after the birth of my first son. There is an unavoidable truth when you're pregnant, and an unavoidable truth whether you're pregnant or not, that your body will change. You're listening to the Recovered-Isch podcast. I'm your host, Chloe Cox. And yeah, I know a thing or two about eating disorder recovery. Between my own very complicated history with disordered eating and the work I do now, I've seen this thing from pretty much every angle. This podcast is where we talk about the messier parts of recovery that don't really make it online. No platitudes, no inspirational quotes, just the real, raw, sometimes frustrating, sometimes surprisingly liberating process of building a life beyond your eating disorder. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome back to the Recovered Ish Podcast. My name's Chloe. I am your host. Thank you for being here. This week it is turning into summer in Southern California, and summer has been very much top of mind. You probably aren't surprised by that since last week our whole episode was about travel and eating disorder recovery. If you haven't listened to that one and you are like freaking out about the summertime, and if you have any trips coming up, that's a great resource. I'm pretty proud of the way it came together. It felt disorganized as I was recording it, but upon editing, I was like, okay, yeah, I think this makes sense. So I hope it was helpful for some of you. I know that for me, summertime used to be a pretty triggering time in a lot of ways, which again is why I am offering my summer workshops in June, July, and August this year for anybody that joins my recovery skills training course. So just again wanted to let you know that as a resource. If you found that episode helpful and are looking for a little bit more support and would appreciate hopping into a workshop directly with me, I would love to have you there. But man, I have been getting very sweaty and I don't know if this is a pregnancy thing or if this is just a me thing now. I think it's just a me thing. Sorry if this is gross, but I don't know. Is this a universal experience? I was blow drying my hair this morning after I'd taken a shower and was like fresh and clean. And then I sweat so much, I was like, I need to shower again. What the heck? So you're like, how does this have anything to do with eating disorder recovery? It does, and I'll tell you why, because there's a lot of unglamorous parts of eating disorder recovery. Eating disorders in general, they are not glamorous. The media tends to glamorize them. But there's a lot of things about being a person that are just icky that we have to deal with. And I think, especially as you're recovering, if you're going through any physical changes, your body's probably responding to recovery in a myriad of ways. So no shame around it. No shame around it if you're sweaty like me, which I guess is a good segue into what we're talking about today. This episode has been highly requested since my pregnancy announcement. For those of you that might just be joining us for the first time or are newer to the show, I am 21 weeks pregnant with my second baby. I have a son right now who is a little over two years old. He is the light of my life. I'm obsessed with him. And he's getting a little sister in October. I'm very excited. And also slightly terrified, which I think is a healthy way to feel, as we know you can feel many things at once. So I'm certainly feeling excited. I'm also feeling nervous. And I've talked about this before in prior episodes, just the mental and emotional challenge of raising a girl in 2026 in particular. I think it's never been easy to raise children, period. But there's a certain cultural shift that's been happening in the last couple of years when it comes to women and their bodies. And where maybe 10 years ago we were shifting towards some body positivity, it seems like the world has really walked it back, much to my dismay. And so now as I think about bringing a little girl into this world, I just want her to grow up feeling comfortable in her body. I want her to feel confident in who she is. I want her to know that she can do anything that she puts her mind to within reason. And that the way that she looks has nothing to do with the value of her personhood. That's really what I want her to know every second as she's growing up. And of course, I want my son to believe these things too. But as a woman, I know what my experience has been living in the world and the cultural messaging that has just always been there. And to feel it getting even more intensified today is scary to think about. So that's on my mind. And that's something I want to cover in depth in another episode. It's not what we're fully diving into today. But as I am halfway through my pregnancy at this point, it seems like it would be a good opportunity to talk about the experience of being pregnant, experiencing a lot of changes in my body and what that means for someone that has been through an eating disorder. And you might be listening to this and you're like, okay, I don't have kids, or I don't ever want to have kids, or I am not in a body that can carry children, or this feels irrelevant to me. The pregnancy part, yeah, that that might not be quite so relatable, but I do believe that a lot of the lessons I've learned about body changes have come from pregnancy and can be generalized and applied to body changes, period. Because the truth is our bodies are changing all the time. They're not meant to stay the same. We're dynamic, our needs are constantly changing. The demands that the world puts on our body are constantly changing. And while pregnancy is at the forefront of my mind, of course, with what's prompting some of these body changes, your body is going to change throughout your lifetime too many times to count because it is meant to, it's supposed to. And our eating disorders teach us a different story. Our eating disorders tell us that we should stay the same. We should stay one particular way that is the way that a good body looks, and any sort of change is terrifying. So I would encourage you to keep listening because a lot of these lessons, yes, I learned them through my experiences of pregnancy, but I have carried these lessons with me to postpartum, to reestablishing life in a body that does not carry children. And I'm thinking this is probably going to be my last baby. And so I'm hoping that I can carry on a lot of these things that I have learned through this life-altering experience to continue to live more in alignment with my values. And that's really what it's all about. That's really what coping with change and sitting with discomfort really comes down to is how can I survive this experience that feels so hard? The answer is in your value system. The answer is in shifting what's really important to you. Way easier said than done. But before we even dive into talking about the pregnancy stuff, I do want to say there was a time where I didn't know if I would even be able to become pregnant because of my eating disorder. And I am so aware that has got to be a fear for some of you listening and might even be a reality for some of you listening. And if that's the case, I want you to protect your heart. And this might not be the episode to listen to because we are going to be talking about pregnancy a lot. But I also just want to say I do acknowledge the privilege that I have in accessing recovery when I did, being able to repair my reproductive system and my cycle in the way that I did. I'm so grateful for that. And I do not take that lightly. And if any of you are out there with fear around whether this could or will ever be possible for you, I do want you to know that there is hope for that too. So, anyways, I do want you to take care of yourself. Try to know yourself if this is going to be an episode that's helpful or not. We will be talking about body changes in all forms, not just pregnancy, but just know I have the most empathy for wherever you're at in this journey. I have so much compassion for where you're at. As I said, this is my second pregnancy. So this is not my first rodeo. I've been through the whole 41 weeks. That's how long it took for my son to be born. And he was late, a week late. As most, I think, first pregnancies are. I've been through it. I've been through all the trimesters, all the body changes, experienced with postpartum, and here we are again. I'm doing it all over again. And both of my pregnancies have felt similar in some ways, different in others, but one through line has been my body has changed. Maybe that it feels that way only to me, and probably to the average observer. No one's really picking up on the changes that I am feeling. But it's been hard. I'm not gonna lie to you. One thing that I used to think was, oh, when I get pregnant, I'm not gonna worry about my body anymore. When I get pregnant, I'm gonna have so much food freedom. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna be gaining weight anyways, whatever. And I need to nourish my body so I can nourish my baby. So I really had this notion even 10 years ago that if I ever were to have a baby, that my eating disorder would just disappear. And I've heard this echoed from some of my clients as well. And maybe some of you have had that experience. I remember I posted a while ago what helped you to actually fully recover from your eating disorder. And so many people said getting pregnant. And yeah, there's definitely some truth to that. My experience was a bit different. I thought that everything was going to be like, oh, whatever, I don't care about my body anymore. Now that I'm pregnant, that's what's the most important thing. You would think that it would be common sense to a line there. When I first got pregnant, that's where my head started to go. And then first trimester really hit me in the face and knocked me on my backside, to be honest. My first trimester with my son, I felt sick all the time, starting at week six to week, I think for him it lasted to about week 11 where things started to get better. In the grand scheme, a relatively short time, but when you are feeling sick all day, every day, it is an excruciating existence. I'm not going to lie to you. I also realize that there are many women out there that have way worse morning sickness. And it's not even morning, it's literally all day, you guys. Way worse morning sickness than I did. And then there are some unicorns out there that don't get it at all. Bless you. I'm jealous of you. But what that did for me was really confusing because it was a shift in appetite that felt so extreme, it really threw me for a loop. And as you might know from past episodes, I am a really regular eater. I am really attuned to my body cues at this point. I pretty much have three meals, three snacks every single day because I get hungry at those times. And when I was in my first trimester and felt sick all the time, the only time that I didn't feel sick was when I was eating food. And it wasn't just any food. There were some foods that were absolutely repulsive to me. And there were other foods that felt like this is the only thing that will ever taste good in a in my life ever again. And so I was pretty much eating constantly. And as an audience of listeners, who I imagine most of you have experienced with eating disorders, yes, I was several years into my recovery when I was pregnant with my son. And also my eating disorder hated that a lot, gave me a lot of criticism for that. But to be real, I was so sick that I just needed anything to help me stop feeling sick. So I survived. And I'll say that with my second pregnancy, it was pretty much the same, if not a little bit worse, the level of sickness that I experienced. And I responded to it in pretty much the same way. The kind of only way I could get through the day was having a constant stream of snacks. And for someone that eats so regularly, that feels pretty freaking weird. That feels pretty freaking weird. But you kind of don't think about it as much because you're just kind of trying to survive it. I don't know if that is the experience for everyone, but I will say it was challenging mentally to push through that. And the only way that I really found that I could shut down those critical voices was something is happening to me beyond my control. My body is giving me the loudest cues that it literally has ever given me. And to ignore that, my guess is it wouldn't be great for my baby. And so that's what I tried to reinforce. If I have a random craving for excessive amounts of goldfish, that's what your girl was having. And the kind of permission that I had to give myself in both of my pregnancies was not easy. For many of us in pregnancy, the food aversions, the appetite chaos, it's mentally really draining because very often a lot of the foods that we have considered very safe become the foods that are the hardest to tolerate. And then the opposite and the reverse is true as well. Foods that maybe we've held as fear foods now sound like the only foods that we could actually tolerate. So while if you've never had an eating disorder, you might just think, okay, this is a temporary, this is a temporary moment in time. The world is not going to come to an end if I'm subsisting only on, I don't know, for me, it was like cheesy pasta. The world will not come to an end. If you've had an eating disorder, you understand that changes like that, especially if you're in your earlier recovery and you get pregnant, changes like that can feel really dysregulating and extreme. On top of what you're already experiencing with however you might be feeling physically, it's really tough. And at the same time, you know you need to keep nourishing yourself to nourish your growing baby. Another reason that pregnancy for those of us that have had eating disorders is especially hard, is I do believe many of us have a hyper awareness and a hypersensitivity to body change and sensory input in particular. We notice every subtle thing. Very often, we notice things that aren't even actually happening. That's body dysmorphia. And so body dysmorphia might be triggered like crazy from the second you know that you're pregnant. And that's a battle. On top of that, the smallest shifts, the little bit of fluid retention, the like subtle and very slow process of your belly growing, you might be aware of that at every single turn. The way that your clothing starts to feel, that is so hard as well. There's this really awkward phase in pregnancy where your body hasn't changed enough to wear maternity clothes yet, but it's changed enough that your normal clothes don't fit the same way anymore. And that feels really hard from a sensory perspective, just having the attention called from these cues of your pants feeling a little bit tighter or a little bit different. The attention that keeps getting called back to that again and again, when you're just trying to get through your day, that is a massive challenge. Where if we could step into a regulated place, we could understand this is uncomfortable and I'm not doing anything wrong. And that's true for all body changes. That's something I want to reinforce. But those conclusions are very difficult to come to when that hyper-awareness and that hypersensitivity sends your nervous system into high alert. There is an unavoidable truth when you are pregnant, and an unavoidable truth whether you're pregnant or not, that your body will change. When you're pregnant, there's an understanding of your body will change because you are growing a human child and it has to change. There's no way around it. Your body cannot stay the same. That would not make any sense. And it's also true that across your lifetime, your body will change for various different reasons, all of them okay, all of them valid. And it would be weird if it didn't, in the same way that it would be weird when you're pregnant if your body didn't change at all. I think back to the body that I had when I was 25. It's different than today when I am 31. The body that I had when I was 16, it is different today than when I was 25. And I expect that my body is going to be different the day that I turn 40 and the day that I turn 50, God willing, and the day that I turn 60. It is supposed to, it's adapting for the stages of our life. And that's a lesson that I've learned from pregnancy. My body is supporting me here through this stage of my life. And when it changes again, it will be doing that again. And postpartum, it will be changing again to support that stage of my life. When I start perimenopause, it will be changing again to support that change in my life. And none of that, knowing that, makes it easier to tolerate the change, but it does contextualize it. It does make it easier to understand if I fight this, I'm going against nature. Just because certain things are supposed to happen doesn't make them easy to manage through. And that's where, if you have the background of an eating disorder, these changes are probably going to be a little bit hard. Even knowing that. That meant exercising appropriately enough, doing certain types of exercise, and trying to make my body change the least amount as possible. Now I will say, because I was in a recovered space when I was pregnant with my son, those thoughts did occur to me. I didn't necessarily follow them. I did make sure that I was eating enough, definitely. I did still try to be flexible with my eating. I certainly had to be flexible with my eating, especially in the first trimester when I just had no control whatsoever over what was okay for me to eat and what was not. I did my best to exercise intuitively along the way. And when those voices of you must be the perfect pregnant person came up, sometimes it got to me, I won't lie to you. And then other times I could say, that is ridiculous and a myth. There's no such thing. This doesn't matter. Focus on things that are important to you. And I was able to shift back to center. Granted, I have been doing that work, the recovery work for a really long time at that point. So shifting those thoughts, sometimes they would win, sometimes they wouldn't. And I don't want you to beat yourself up if that narrative is coming up for you too. Or if that narrative did come up for you too. For so many of us, eating disorder recovery is like playing whack-a-mole. When you get one behavior taken care of, another one pops up. And for me, perfectionism is that way. When I have one area of my life that I iron out the creases with perfectionism and allow myself to be a little bit more flexible, then lo and behold, I'm still a perfectionist and it's going to pop up somewhere else. So that's where it came up for me was this pressure of not the freedom that I expected to happen with pregnancy, but again, a new set of standards. It's exhausting living in my brain. And I imagine for many of you, it's exhausting living in your brains too. I'm sure you get it. Anyways, all of this is to say. Pregnancy and body changes, period, when you've been through an eating disorder, they're a little bit more complicated. Even if you've been in recovery for a long time, it can be something that really wakes up the eating disorder. I don't know if this is a widely known statistic, but one of the highest rates of relapse happens for people in pregnancy and postpartum. You maybe have gone through, as I did, nearly 10 years of recovery, and then you have a pregnancy. And if you've listened to my episode about relapse, the closest I ever came to a relapse was after the birth of my first son. And I know that was because this experience was more challenging, I think, than I gave it credit for. The body changes were harder to tolerate than I really understood. And the pressure I experienced afterwards when this life-altering event of now becoming a mom happened, I don't think I was fully prepared for how that would feel. And so if this is feeling hard, or if you're feeling like you are struggling again after a lot of time feeling pretty solid, you're so not alone and you're likely not doing anything wrong. This is just a really hard life experience. For anyone that is hoping to be pregnant in the future, maybe is going through it right now, or perhaps you've already experienced this. There are a lot of things that changed about my body that nobody really warned me about, which I think is another reason why first time around it caught me off guard. I thought that what change happens when you're pregnant? Oh, yeah, your belly grows. It grows a baby. I thought the rest of me would stay the same. That was very naive. That was very naive. At least for my body, it was. I will be so real with you. There are some changes in my body that I experienced that were really tough for me. Part of what happens for some women is there is a degree of puffiness that no one told me would occur. There is some swelling that nobody told me would occur. My boobs became enormous, and they are currently, which you're like, they're not enormous, Chloe, because I have rather small boobs, anyways, but to me they are. They're much more enormous than they were before. And it's weird. It's weird. Sometimes it can feel like you are living in somebody else's body that no longer belongs to you. And that's very disorienting, especially when a lot of our experiences in eating disorder recovery is feeling foreign in your body. So it's strange. It's strange. And the best way that I can approach it, at least second time around, is trying to just be curious and objectively observant of the body changes. So now when I look at my body, I'm thinking, okay, maybe I'm noticing some more puffiness in whatever area. And I'm thinking, okay, let me be curious about why that's supportive to me right now. I know that scientifically, when you're pregnant, your body retains a lot more water. And that's what you need to support your growing uterus, support the growing baby, all of the blood that's pumping through your body now. The increase in blood volume while you're pregnant is wild. It's a lot more. Okay, I'm noticing that. That's supposed to be happening. That's fine. That's okay. That's actually a good thing. Is it hard for me to look at myself and see that this is different? Yes. And we can hold both of those things. Compassion that this is hard. And also the knowledge and the assurance that my body has got me. It's doing what it's meant to. These changes are uncomfortable and I can get through them. Another example. My hips are definitely a different shape than they once were. I have a different kind of curve to me that I didn't at one point. While this seems really striking and strange to me who knows my body very well, I can again be curious. Okay, why is that change supportive to me and my body? It's pretty obvious, right? My hips need to widen in order to carry a human and then have enough room to birth her. Okay, does it still bother me that the shape of my hips have changed? Yes, on some level it does. Is that gonna make or break my life right now? No, it is not. Is anything gonna change about the people that love me? Nothing is gonna change about that. Would I change this if I could? Honestly, no, because I know that it's what my body needs to be doing right now. So I can tolerate being unhappy with this because it's not the thing in my life that brings me happiness. I've also touched on the awkward phase where your bump isn't obvious yet. You don't look maybe actually pregnant to the general pop, but you're in a different body. That can feel really weird and bring up thoughts of what are other people thinking about my body changes? What are other people assuming about me who don't know that I'm pregnant? That kind of thought is also relevant if you are pregnant or not. When our body experiences changes across any point in life, we might start thinking about, okay, what are other people observing and what are they assuming? This is a really tough one to push through. And every time I ask myself about it and I ask my clients about it, what power does that hold over you? The opinions of other people. Most of my clients will say, I know it doesn't actually really matter to me what other people think, or I know that it shouldn't matter to me what other people think, but it just does. And here I think we're tapping into some cultural programming, but also usually there's a specific narrative or we can trace certain memories that are uncomfortable experiences of people observing your body that lead to the conclusion that people do actually look at your body and form opinions about it, and that feels bad. So we're not crazy to think that people are noticing body changes and forming opinions about them. The best way that I have ever gotten through this is first not denying that I care. I think a part of all of us probably cares what other people think about us. That's hardwired into us socially. So first I want to validate hey, it's human to care. It's human. The second piece that I have to follow it up with, though, is asking myself how much of my power over the way that I feel about me do I want to hand to other people? Usually that question can snap it into focus. Why do other people get to determine how I feel about myself? That tends to shift the power back into my hands and present other questions. Like, how do I want to feel about myself? I'd like to feel just okay about myself. How do I want to feel about these changes? I want to feel at peace with them. The question that I then will ask is like, how can I actually take that power back to determine within myself how I feel about my body? Typically, what it comes down to with any body change, pregnancy or not, if we're concerned about what other people might be noticing and assuming, what's actually going on is us criticizing and feeling discomfort in ourselves. Other people may or may not be thinking whatever. Usually we'll never even find out. But it's more reflective of internal and personal discomfort. And that's what I want you to take care of. That's what I want you to attend to. Not spending the time worrying about how to control other people's opinions. When you start to worry about what other people think, can you stop yourself and say, okay, actually there's one person who I have power over to shift beliefs and shift thoughts? It's not that person over there. It's me. I am the one person who I can truly impact change upon. So if I'm concerned about what that other person is thinking, pause and ask yourself that same question. What am I thinking about myself right now? What am I thinking about my body right now? What do I want to be thinking instead? How can I find a neutral ground? And sometimes it's just about shifting focus. I'd like to feel at peace in my body. I'm uncomfortable in my body right now. And so I'm gonna take that as the truth at present. And instead, I'm gonna shift focus on what's important to me. My son playing with a train in front of me, way more important. Watching the Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup for hockey this year, way more important. Sitting down and pressing record for this podcast, so much more important to me than worrying about the fact that I feel a little uncomfortable right now, or even a lot uncomfortable. As I've said in episodes in the past, so much of recovery is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, or at least learning to tolerate it. Learning to say, okay, I'm uncomfortable, and I'm gonna put that over here and I'm gonna focus on what actually matters to me. I can live a full, happy, and complete life and not totally love my body and not feel comfortable with the changes. That is possible. And I know it's possible because that's my current existence and has been for a really long time. As I mentioned, pregnancy has taught me many lessons about trusting and honoring my body. And while it can be a pressure cooker for criticism and distress, it's also a really good catalyst for body neutrality, especially this time around in pregnancy, where I've this is my second child. And so I'm also juggling the demands of motherhood and having a toddler and also running my businesses. And my life requires a lot of me right now. And so I've had to really think about and get attuned to what does my body need to support me through this era? And knowing especially that during pregnancy, my body's cues are so loud, they cannot be mistaken. This is a really good time to practice alignment to that. First trimester when I could only have cheese. That's what I was gonna have. My body was really specific about what it wanted and what it didn't want. So I listened. First trimester, there is no freaking way I was going to be exercising. I felt so tired and sick all the time. If I had pushed myself to exercise, I do not think it would have been good for me mentally or emotionally. And then I also think I would have been totally tapped out showing up for my son when I needed to and showing up at work when I needed to. What that was doing to my body, I tried to see completely neutrally. I'm taking care of my needs and it's resulting in my body changing in this way, and that is not bad, and that is not good. It just is what's happening because other things matter more. Again, that's something that's true during pregnancy and not going through three trimesters of pregnancy, you notice that those needs shift depending on what stage you're in. Now I'm in my second trimester, which for me is always the golden phase of pregnancy where I don't feel sick anymore. I feel way more energized. Um I am celebrating having a bump right now, which is I love it. I love knowing that she's there and I'm like feeling her move. It's so cool. Uh, that's feeling really cool and good. Second trimester is where I go into grind and prep mode for work so that I can get everything settled before I reach third trimester and start prepping for maternity leave. And also because I have more energy, I know that I need to fuel my body more efficiently. Certainly am eating more food than I was pre-pregnancy, which is totally fine and okay. Sometimes my body wants specific things, has specific cravings. I listen, I must, but I also have more energy to move. So I'm getting outside more, I'm doing more yoga because that feels really good in my pregnant body. And I know that this is what's feeling good right now, today. It might not feel that way even tomorrow. And so I have to be prepared to be flexible and change that when I change. Third trimester, the belly's getting big, I start to feel more out of breath, things are gonna change again, and I know that's true and I know that's okay. But going through trimesters in this way is such a great reminder of how connective we are to nature. Our bodies are much more attuned to the cycles of nature than they are to anything man-made, which is so ironic because very often we treat our bodies like calculators or bank accounts. I am this weight and this height, so I should have X amount of calories and X amount of protein and exercise for X amount of time per day. And it's who is making that up? A calculator? No one actually knows what your body needs except for your body, especially because it changes every day. Those needs are different every single day. And so pregnancy is such a good reminder of that attunement of today. I'm waking up and able to do a little Pilates. Tomorrow, oh my gosh, my alarm goes off. I'm freaking exhausted. I need to sleep an extra hour. Today, a salad sounds delightful. Tomorrow, that sounds disgusting, and I need a plate of pasta. I'm framing this again in the context of pregnancy, but you guys, it's really true all the time. If you can get aligned to what your body is asking you for, that's the best blueprint for what your body needs to be its healthiest, it's happiest, it's most authentic, most you. So for me, pregnancy is a great time to practice that attunement and also practice the neutrality of change is an unavoidable fact. It's going to happen. There's nothing wrong with it, which is not good and it's not bad. It just is. My favorite mantras to use throughout my pregnancy as my body is changing, and you can also use these pregnancy beyond, are really geared towards days where I am feeling not so great in my body, or I look in the mirror and I'm like, who is that? I try to repeat to myself, and sometimes I do this with butterfly taps on my chest. That's just a little bilateral stimulation, and a deep breath, and I say, I am uncomfortable and I can handle that. I'm uncomfortable and I can handle that. And when that feels a little too tame, I try to say, I don't like my body right now, and I can trust this process. I don't like my body right now, and I can trust this process. Or even I'm unhappy with these changes. I'm unhappy with these changes, and my happiness can be sourced elsewhere. I'm unhappy with these changes, and my happiness can be sourced elsewhere. And then I'll start to think where else I can source that happiness from. But if you can come up with a few anchoring phrases for body image and changes and things that feel not right, and really every single time you feel that way, take a deep breath, put your hand on your heart, or someplace on your body that feels safe, say that, feel it, remind yourself that it's true, and then take yourself away from that trigger and focus on something that actually matters more. There is a bigger picture here, and I try to remind myself of that. I have nine months of discomfort in this particular way. Granted, I have discomfort in my body beyond pregnancy, but I have nine months of tolerating these changes, nine months of going through this, and then and then I have a change in my life that's going to be so much bigger and so much more meaningful than anything that happens to my body in those nine months. At the end of these nine months, I get my little girl. I'm gonna cry now. At the end of these nine months, I get my little girl, and she's something I'm gonna cherish forever. And she is someone I already love, and she is who I'm doing all of this for, she's who I'm recovering for. So these nine months, I'm gonna do my darndest to be my most recovered self for her. Because I know that if I practice that now, if I start speaking to myself differently now, I want her to see from the very start what it's like to treat your mind and treat your body with care and love and respect. That's what I want for her. So in my darkest moments, I will remind myself that I'm doing this for me, I'm also doing it for her. I want her to love her body in all forms. And if not love, I want her to at least feel okay in her body at all forms. I want her to know that her body in all forms has nothing to do with who she is. That is way more important. And if I believe that's true about my daughter, I've got to believe that's true about me. Maybe I don't a hundred percent believe it yet, but I'm sure gonna try. So again, whether you're in a season of pregnancy, postpartum, planning, hoping, wishing, or never want to have a baby, or maybe it's not possible for you to have a baby. The truth still carries. Body trust is not about loving your body, it's just about believing that it knows what it's doing and allowing that to lead. This is gonna be an ongoing conversation. There's so many other parts of pregnancy, postpartum, the way that weaves into eating disorders that I do want to cover on the show. And one of them for sure is how I'm preparing myself to be the most recovered version of me for my daughter and how I plan to parent even a little girl growing up in this really crazy world that we have right now. So if that's interesting to you, let me know in the comments. I'm thinking about dropping that maybe in the next month or so. But thank you for tagging along today. I appreciate all of you listening. Even if the pregnancy stuff doesn't feel relevant to you, I think that there are universal themes in recovery across this experience. I am so excited about this little girl coming in. Oh my gosh, four months? No. Okay, a little over four months. Ah. That seems really soon. That seems really soon. Thank you for tuning in. I'm so grateful for all of you out there. I would love to hear what you thought of the show today. You can always DM me or drop some comments down below if you're here on YouTube. Give it a thumbs up, subscribe. Would so appreciate reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you have the time. Just helps get this message out to more people that might need it. As always, don't forget to eat your food. Be gentle with yourself. We'll talk next week. Bye.