Ep. 13: Lily's story and eating disorders, menstruation, and how to get help

Lily Thrope is a licensed clinical social worker and certified intuitive eating counselor with a private practice in Manhattan. She specializes in eating disorders, body image, and women's health—and she came to this work because she lived it. She got her period at 10, spent two decades battling an eating disorder that no doctor caught, and it wasn't until a friend finally named it that she began recovery. Throughout college and her early twenties, she lost her period for months at a time, saw multiple doctors, and not one of them asked the question that mattered: Are you eating enough? Now she runs a practice treating women in larger bodies, hosts free Recovery Supper Club dinners in NYC, and is passionate about one thing: the dangerous intersection of eating disorders and women's health.

Key Components:

• Starting her period at 10 changed everything — it was the moment her body became something to shrink instead of something to live in.
• How doctors never asked the one question that mattered, and instead went through years of tests and theories while the real answer went unspoken.
• Why doctors hand out weight loss prescriptions like they're candy, and what that actually does to women with PCOS, endometriosis, and eating disorder histories.
• From rock bottom to building a practice where women in larger bodies actually get support: Her journey from restricting her way through college to helping others recover.

"Not one doctor that I saw said, 'are you eating enough? What's your relationship with food like?' No one thought to ask those questions and I slid under the radar and was never noticed until this friend in grad school who noticed it."

Check out thropetherapy.com
Connect with Lily on Instagram @thropetherapynyc 

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🤘 Podcast produced by Binge-Worthy Studio

For informational and entertainment purposes only — not medical advice. We're here to get loud, not to play doctor.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Okay. I want to ask you something. When you were 10 years old, 10, did anyone sit you down and tell you what was about to happen to your body? Did anyone explain why why it was happening or what to do when the world started treating you differently because of it? Yeah, me neither. My guest today got her period at 10. She was on a field trip. She thought she pooped her pants. And from that moment on, she spent years trying to shrink herself to keep up with the peers whose bodies hadn't changed yet. By college, she'd lost her period for five months. She saw doctor after doctor. They blamed her thyroid, her hormones, PMOS. Not one of them asked if she was eating enough. Today, Lily Thorpe is a licensed clinical social worker and a certified intuitive eating counselor with her own practice in New York City. She also might now be one of my top favorite humans in life. She also hosts a monthly in-person dinner called the Recovery Supper Club, which I am personally planning my next New York trip around. This conversation gave me two words I am now going to use everywhere, every day, all the time. Nourishment and discernment. You'll understand why by the end. This is the kind of conversation that used to happen in whispers, if it happened at all. Just like all the things here on the Down There Aware podcast, not anymore. This is the Down There Aware Podcast. I'm Amy Milne. Let's get loud. All right. I am super excited to welcome Lily to the show. Lily, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. I'm really passionate about women's health and sharing my story and can't wait to dive in.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, me too. I have, I'm not gonna lie, I um I did some, you know, Instagram stalking. That's how I'm like finding incredible women because we you couldn't always before that. So I'll give a props to Instagram that that's how we all get to connect because you and I are not neighbors. You live in the US. Um and I found you online and I was totally mo um inspired by what you were doing. And I dropped into your DMs and said, would you join me for a conversation? So I'm so grateful you're here. So Lily, please tell our listeners who you are, where you are, and what you do.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for having me. So I am a licensed clinical social worker and certified intuitive eating counselor. I started my own private practice in New York City, where I have four amazing clinicians on my team. And we mostly specialize in working with eating disorders, body image challenges, LGBTQ pop population, um, and anxiety and depression. Also OCD and substance use. I'd say those are kind of comorbid with um eating disorders and other women's women's health issues. And we have an in-person office in New York City and Manhattan on 37th and Lex, right near Grand Central, Midtown East. Um, and we also see clients virtually in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And we're really passionate about working with women, especially women who are um in larger bodies or navigating the health system while they're in a body that doesn't look like, you know, this skeletal, thin body that we've associated with health, which isn't actually health, but that's a debate for another day. Um, and we're we're really passionate about creating community spaces where women can take up space and be present. We we host a monthly in-person dinner in New York City. So if you are craving community, that's also a way to access our services. And it's a fully free dinner. You come, you do have to pay for your own food, which in New York City could be $30. But um it's a really beautiful space for women, and we also have men and LGBTQ identified people at our dinners, and it's a really lovely space.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

I want to come for dinner. I'm when I come to New York, I need to plan around coming for dinner because I would love to. What a beautiful thing. Um, because who doesn't love to share around a dinner table, right? Yeah, 100%. Um, and I love that uh, well, on your site, it's called the Recovery Supper Club, and I I love that. I appreciate that. Um okay, so there's so much to unpack here because you're doing something so phenomenal, and it started from your own journeys. So do you want to take us back to where little Lily started and how this all came to be?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Yeah, totally. Little Lily, uh, I'm holding her so close to my heart. And, you know, as I reflect on my journey, I I always tell this story slightly differently because there's different ways that I kind of came into what I would call my own eating disorder. Um, and one of the things I was reflecting on is just like when I started menstruating and how much that played a role in my mental health and my relationship to my body and also my relationship to other people and how I was comparing myself to other people. And I was really young. I was 10 when I got my first period. I was in fifth grade. I remember it viscerally. I was on an art field trip and I had a stomachache. I felt terrible. I went to the nurse. I honestly thought I maybe like pooped in my pants. I didn't know what a period was at that time. I was 10. Like if you really picture someone who's 10, it's so young. Um, and I remember my mom picked me up and we got MMs, which was awesome. And we also bought some pads at the store. Um, so I always associate MMs with my period now, which is a lovely thing for me. But, you know, I remember feeling just so uncomfortable in my body. My body was doing this thing I didn't understand. I was developing at a very young age. I was developing breasts, things that my friends didn't have. I was starting to wear a real bra in fifth grade, and I was getting unwanted attention from men also. Like it really changed the way that my body was interacting with my peers, my um community, and myself. And I think really that 10-year-old is who I think about when all of my body image dysfunction started. And it's really just so hard. When I see 10-year-olds, I'm like, oh, it hurts to see them because I know that's when things start changing for them.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Huge. And it was, it's thank you for sharing. And I remember I was, you know, 12, 13, more the average age. And I remember, like, it's I remember a gal, her name was Christine. And I remember that she had her period and she had her her her breasts, and like running was hard and she couldn't run. And I just, it wasn't even happening for me. And I remember that for her being this girl watching this other girl turn into a woman, and we were in grade five. Like it was, it's on her, like it's crazy that, and there's no support for anyone at that age. I mean, I think slowly but surely. And I worked, um, I was a mental health counselor in my first career and worked with young kids, and I worked in a board of ed school for a while. And I, I was so passionate about teaching puberty because the teacher didn't really want to, but I could as the child and youth worker. And I sat in front of these girls and I was like, you know, here's a tampon. This is what it looks like when it goes in water, here's a pad, we're gonna open them up, we're gonna touch them. Because I didn't, I worked in a neighborhood with underserved human beings. A lot of them were um Jamaican, so they dense body-wise, they were heavier, which meant you started to menstruate earlier and they didn't necessarily have the education with their parents, and all of that. And I was just like, we have to do something. And so, because that's a really freaking scary time.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, totally. I think to your point, it I became known in my grade as like the person who had it first. And I think you can remember even like the person in your grade who had it first, which is crazy to think about that. That was like a gossip thing, but it really was. And I think it wasn't really coming from a negative place. I think when you're in fifth grade, you're starting to realize like I'm differentiating from my friends. I care about these things, they care about those things. We're not all playing the same sports anymore. We're differentiating and figuring out who we are. And it's, I hate this word, but it's normal to look around and think, like, who got their period? Oh, what's going on with their body? We're trying to make sense of things. So if I'm taking my most compassionate view, I think my peers were trying to make sense of things. You know, boys were pretty immature at that age. So that was just like a thing to know. And no one really understood what it meant. I don't think anyone had the full context. But as you said, we didn't have great training in puberty. And if I remember, I think puberty in fifth grade comes like the last day of fifth grade. They show you like a video on the last day, and it's like people are already experiencing that before that video. So yeah, from there, I think, you know, I was prone to like depression and some body image dysfunction at that age. I was very into sports. I was playing soccer, I was really competitive with that. Um, I think over the years, I've reread my fifth grade journal, and I wrote in that journal, I'm fat, I'm disgusting, I need to cut out, you know, these foods. I don't know how I knew about that. I think kids now are learning on social media some of these diet trends, but somehow I knew that like restricting your food could lead to weight loss. Um, and I think developing early also led me to feeling that I needed to stay smaller longer. Like I needed to keep up with my peers. I needed to stay smaller. And I think that was related to my desire to be small, was like, I want to be like my peers. I don't want to be different. I don't want to take up space in this way.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

That's a lot, Lily. I can feel like I can feel you. Yeah. Um how how brave to go back and read those words and turn them into the power you're using today to help other women. It's a scary place to be a 10-year-old girl and beyond, really, because it's when the time that we realize that it's all freaking backwards. And, you know, I will say the one thing that I'm appreciating as we are slowly, slowly getting to where we're going right now is that strength is being seen as beautiful where it wasn't before. And I mean, we have a long way to go. Um, but when you and I were younger, and I'm gonna think you're younger than I am, we strength was not a sign of beauty. Size was not a sign of beauty. And you're right, how did we find out? I think it's it was in the books we read, right? The things we saw, the images, like our cartoon characters weren't, they were skinny and big boobed, right? Our Barbie dolls, like all that stuff. Like it wasn't even written or as in our face as social is today. It was literally in our hands.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah, it's it's everywhere. I think it's yeah, media, TV shows, sitcoms, you know, they all have. If you go back and watch any sitcoms from the 90s, you'll be horrified by the fat phobic joke, or maybe not, but you'll be horrified by how much fat phobia was just constant in those shows. And those are things we're consuming from a really young age. So I think it makes sense that our identity formation gets so connected with your body shape when it's constantly commented on by everyone around you. Your doctors also can play a big role in this. Like some of some of my clients, the first time that they really became aware of their bodies is going to the doctor and being told their BMI is high, which I don't even know what a young kid would do with that information. And also, it's not really valuable information. It's not helpful. It doesn't set people on a path of health. And I, you know, I get really upset about everyone mentioning health. Like, is this really about health or is this about appearance? And I I sadly think about what what would I have been like if I never experienced what I did with my body? Like, would I have been a better soccer player? Would I have had more nourishment to show up and do better in school? Would I have been able to pursue a different career path? Like, I am so grateful and love the career path I went on, but it really is hard to think about like without diet culture and dieting, what would women be like? And to your point of strength, when I heard you saying strength, I was thinking of power. Like I actually think what's really great is I think women recently have been connecting back to like, I want to be powerful. And in order to be powerful, I need to be nourished. And that's becoming a bigger story, is like when you're not nourishing yourself, you're not taking up physical space, but also mentally, you're not able to take up space in the things that you really care about.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Agreed. I really like nourish. I think that is so you can pull so much from that, both inside and outside. I think that is beautiful. And it's a it's a such a beautiful reframe in terms of thinking about it. So you read your journal, you realize you know you're in this horrible spot and and you have the reflection back, but then you had those diary, so you went on to not take care of yourself, and what was that like? And how did you, you know, go from that to where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, definitely. I'll go into that, but I love the word nourish also, and I want to just pause on that for a second. I think the idea of nourishing yourself is so much more than food. It's self-care, it's boundaries, it's rest, it's all these different things. It's education. Like these are all things that nourish our soul and our bodies. But in order to enjoy all of those things I mentioned, you do have to be fed. So I think that's part of nourishment, but it's so much more to me.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

So yeah, where so and I think, sorry, because I just I think it's such a it's nourish is because then it speaks like to me, nourish is a positive word. And it it, you know, there's a stand-up moment to that of like, I'm gonna nourish myself. And so, like, even thinking of needing to fill my body with good nourishment. And so, you know, it's not food, it's nourishment. And I know it is that's what goes in, but it's that that nourish that is such a it's just uh I think I'm just gonna use it all the time now. I think we're just gonna reframe it. Yeah, clearly you do and what you you're doing, but it's just it literally I've got all these like light bulbs going off in terms of just how to speak of like how to speak of things. And it is so much more than food, however, to your point, uh, you know, it's it's the food that we've been we've been taught that what we put in is what we come out as and look like. And we've got to change that.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Yeah, definitely. I think of it as really empowering. It's empowering. You can nourish yourself in all these ways. And when you're fully nourishing yourself, who do you get to be? How do you get to show up? When you're focusing on staying as small as possible, or you know, doing things to be better than other people, or doing things to be compared to your peers and people to say, wow, you're doing so great. That's not really nourishing your soul. And we know that. And it it leads to a lot of dysfunction, honestly. So totally. Yeah. Coming back to my story. So yeah, I throughout middle, throughout middle and high school, I kind of always struggled with body image. I I I cringe looking back at photos of myself because I felt huge and I was totally a typical straight size person who shopped in regular stores. Like I was not in a larger body. Right. Um, and you know, my body's fluctuated throughout my life. And I I really didn't start recovering from my eating disorder um until college. So college was really, I think this is true for a lot of college athletes and and just college, you know, people, like people in college. When you get to college, you finally have the freedom to really restrict in the way you want to and over-exercise. I would spend two hours at the gym, I'd walk 10 miles every day, I would um, you know, eat very little at the what our place was called, the marketplace. I would, I would really just challenge myself to see how little I could exist on. Um, and it's horrifying to say that now. And I'm so grateful to get to do the work to help people get out of this too. But when I came back from college, I went to college in LA and I came back to New York and I was part of this yoga, I'm gonna call it cult, that um was teaching this kind of diet and it was teaching this lifestyle, and it was kind of supporting the way that I was living. I was in this program and one of my friends who I still collaborate with now pointed out to me that I had an eating disorder. And she it happened to be the perfect time where I was ready to hear it, right? I don't know if you've ever had something like that where it's like, if they told you five minutes earlier, you would have brushed it off. But like I happened to be exhausted and ready for recovery. And she said it at the perfect moment where I was open and able to hear it after years and decades of struggling. And it really set me on the path towards recovery. So that was kind of how I got here. And I was in grad school at NYU at the time when I was really learning that this is what it's called. It's called an eating disorder. No one, no one had said that. And even in college, I had lost my period for five months. And I remember shuffling along to all these doctors and being told, oh, it's your thyroid, it's this, it's a hormonal imbalance, it's PCOS, it's you know, all these things. And not one doctor, not one doctor that I saw said, are you eating enough? What's your relationship with food like? No one thought to ask those questions. And I slid under the radar and was never noticed until this friend in grad school who noticed it. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Are you still f you're still friends with this wonderful human being? Yeah, yeah, I'll shout her out.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Kate Katie Corardino, she's a dietitian who works with eating disorders. So she's phenomenal. And I've been on her podcast a few times. So she's she's a really, really great resource, and we've actually been able to collaborate on some cases. So we both work with the same client and get to collaborate. And she brings the dietitian piece and I bring the therapeutic piece. And it's so nice to collaborate with another provider who have such a good deep relationship with because there isn't any sort of like tension between our approaches. We work really synergistically together.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And you have this like cosmic meeting that you were supposed to have to put you both on this journey in life, like exactly what sucked ass for you, and like and turned into what you get to do to heal others and with her. What a beautiful person to even have the courage to share that with you. Um, because how many times do we think about it? And I think it just it's a testament to when also just, you know, when we're in relationship with people, that it, you know, sometimes you do have to share the tough stuff, but what it can bring is so much better. And I even think, you know, we were taught to shrink in that. Like how many times could, you know, we might have been friends and we would have never said anything and we could have been struggling at the exact same time, which is probably what happened in 90% of all of us in our friend groups. And so for her to have the courage to say something to you is pretty beautiful. I love that you're still friends. Maybe I'll need to, I'll need to have her on here too. I think definitely um so then so you do this and you go to grad school and you're like, I want to help women like me. I want to like what where how did you end up exactly where you are?

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, so let's back up a little bit. So I wanted to be a physical therapist, actually. I think this is an important part of the story. And in my junior year, I had already taken organic chemistry, I took physics, I took calc, one and two, I did all this stuff, and I ended up getting a D in anatomy, which is really the course that you need to be a physical therapist, memorizing the muscles, the bones, all of that. And I realized, okay, you know what? This isn't for me. Like I love it. I love sports, I love being a part of it. And I think in the end, it's great that I didn't stay in that world because I think there's a lot of disordered, toxic culture in the sports world. Um, and I basically went back to the drawing board and I was a philosophy minor. And my dad said, you know, why don't you consider social work school? I have a lot of friends who are social workers. I think it'd be great for you. You love giving back, you love supporting other people. You volunteered with a lot of organizations already. Why don't you consider that? And I kind of never looked back. I realized the thing that I connected most with in physical therapy was the healing journey. And I was able to kind of translate that healing and getting to know someone's story to working in mental health and figuring out how to support people recovering in different ways, right? It's not a physical injury, but there's an emotional injury that we're all navigating. And I'm really grateful that I got a D in that class, right? It kind of set my trajectory somewhere else where I needed to be. Like this was calling to me, and I didn't even know it. Um, so I ended up going to NYU for grad school. And while I was at NYU, I worked in two, you have to do these um internships while you're in grad school. I worked with the elderly doing home visits, which I absolutely loved. If anyone has the opportunity to work with elderly and hear their stories, I think it's so powerful. So many people don't have the patience or want to hear from people who are elderly and they need that support and they are so appreciative. They were my most appreciative patients. They were so happy to see me, so excited, wanting to talk to me. So few people were taking time for them. So I really appreciated that experience. And then I worked at the Women's Prison Association, which is an organization in New York City that works with previously incarcerated women. And then also, it's an alternative to incarceration for women who would have been sent to jail or prison, but instead they come into our program and we kind of rehabilitate them so they don't have to go to prison for like a first time offense or something like that. They're a really cool organization. And I really loved working with these people in this kind of like chronic trauma. And I think the biggest thing that I think of when I think of an eating disorder is it usually is a chronic illness. It's a chronic trauma. It's something that your body's going through all the time. And trauma to me is really like our bodies feeling unsafe. The real definition of trauma, we could argue, is, you know, something that's life-threatening. Eating disorders are life-threatening. 100%. Being incarcerated is life-threatening. These things are life-threatening and you're experiencing them consistently over a long period of time. And I think the way that that trauma takes root in the body is really fascinating to me. And I again didn't set out to work with eating disorders, but I happened to be recovering and I happened to be working later on at a private practice where I started getting a bunch of eating disorder clients. And I sort of became the eating disorder specialist at that practice, like inadvertently. And over time I realized this is the work that energizes me. When I'm with these clients and I'm working through this stuff, I'm feeling energized. I'm feeling hopeful. I'm feeling excited. I'm like, let's do this. Let's dive in. Let's get in the hole together. Let's figure this out. And also let's sit in the shit. Like sometimes we just do need to sit in the shit. And I've been in that shit. And I'm gonna sit in there with you. 100%. And it's just been, I've been really, really lucky to do this work.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Well, you've been caught. It sounds very much like you've been called to do this work. Like as someone listening, having the privilege of listening to your story right now, I you've been called, like all the way along. I mean, unfortunately, you had to live have the lived experience, but I think that's what makes you even that much better and more suited for what you're doing. Like it's I like if all these things have literally like as you uh, you know, they always say you can only connect the dots backwards, like as you go backwards, you're like, oh, that happened because of that. Like literally yours is like in my mind would be this giant heart, because you all your dots would come to be this giant heart that you now are is filled for you and you get to nourish others. So I love that. Yeah. So what did you so you you're very welcome, and it I can I can feel it. Like I'm having all the feels as I'm talking to you. So um tell me what it was like for you in your healing journey if you're up for up for that. Like what you know, you're from your friend telling you to doing all these amazing things to get you to the place that you are now. What was that, you know, what did you do for yourself? Like if there's someone listening right now and going, like, fuck, I have some of this, or I like what what could you offer them? What was your experience?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, so ironically enough, the first access point that I had to recovery was my friend sending me a bunch of podcasts. She was like, listen to these podcasts. I think they're gonna make you feel understood and heard and seen. And I listened to these podcasts and I looked up the women who were speaking about their eating disorders and, you know, they were a bit older talking about fertility and all these things that felt so important. And I remember looking at their profiles online and just being like, these are inspiring, amazing women. I want to be like them. I don't want to go down this path of disappearing, literally, like disappearing into the ether because I don't have energy and I don't have power. I want to do that. I want to be that. I think that was the first connection that I felt like going from here doesn't have to look like giving up or failing, right? When you're when you're deciding to recover from your eating disorder, there is a small part of you that's like, I've committed 10, 20, 30 years to this eating disorder. And a lot of people describe their eating disorder as like a best friend. Like I've talked to this person, I've decided what to eat with this person, I've decided how to move. And now I'm breaking up with that person. Who am I breaking up with that for? What am I gonna have in the future that's gonna be worth it to say I'm pushing that away? And hearing these women's stories, I think really made me realize there's a future after this. Giving this up doesn't mean failing. It doesn't mean, you know, letting go of something you care about. It means stepping into something different and finding new things to care about and bringing that version of yourself with you, but being able to do it from a place of, like we said, strength, power, excitement, um, joy, and not fear, anxiety, stress. Like that was the eating disorder, was so fearful and anxious. And listen, fear and anxiety can get us to do a lot of things, like pay our taxes or whatever, but like it's not actually a motivating force for living life, for thriving. So I listened to these podcasts. I got my own therapist and dietitian who specialized in eating disorders. I never went to formal treatment, so I didn't go to a higher level of care, an IOP, PHP, or residential. I really worked closely with an outpatient team. Great. Um, which is what I do in my work is work with clients, even sometimes clients who have tried residential, have tried PHP. And, you know, they need a more individualized approach. What's so great about the outpatient care is that you can find your individualized team and figure out who exactly is going to be able to help you move forward. It's not for everyone. And I think higher level of care has such a place in treatment and can be so helpful. Um, but I was really lucky to be able to work with a certified intuitive eating dietitian and then also a therapist who specialized in anxiety and eating disorders, which were really kind of the intersection I was in. Um, it it looked like practicing food exposures. So I was, I was reflecting the other day. I was thinking of I ate French toast for the first time, like in a really long time. Like that was a kid, that was a food I loved as a kid and I hadn't had it. And I remember sitting with my dietitian, and we had this little like card and it had um like how distressing things were, and you would fill it out. And I I said, I want to try French toast. And I remember texting her the first time I had French toast, and it was so good. I don't even remember where it was in New York City, but it was just, it was so freeing to be like, I don't have to follow these rules. I can eat this. And I'm not giving enough credit to like all the skills that I worked up and everything I processed. And this was a slow, long, you know, two-year process of recovery, but I really got to experience that and get to the point where now I don't have any food rules and I I have food freedom and I have flexibility and variety in my diet in a way that I didn't have before.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Wow. Food freedom. Those things we don't think, right? Like those who don't know if they haven't been through what you've been through, or others that are struggling with with, you know, eating disorders, like there's to the point of the rules and the things and the the consumption. It's just it's so much. And I think if you're not cared for, you know, I always having grown up, you know, with superior depression, I I I absolutely st struggled with some eating disorder disorders myself. I used to starve myself and I was thinking about as I'm listening to you, and I'm not laughing because it's funny, but I'm thinking about, you know, when I went and I wasn't eating and um the doctors were like, well, if you don't start eating, you're never gonna have babies. It's like, but I also have a fucking undiagnosed something happening is what like what? Like just this stuff. And and again, it's like you reflect back and it's not that they were wrong or uncaring. It's not enough education. And you know, and and I think that's where, you know, you are I you and I are so aligned is that we're here because so much of what we're passionate about right now is is it first of all being women. Um, and then just everything else under that is that we're so underserved and underdiagnosed and under, you know, helped because people haven't taken the time to invest in making us better and helping us get better. And, you know, eating disorders have also been around for a long time and still, you know, aren't are still shameful. And, you know, it's it's a it's a mental health disorder. And it's tied, you know, for you to even know that it's tied back to when you started menstruating. And just even for any of us is you're menstruating and you, you know, th those of us who went on the pill and the pill caused weight gain and then you starve because the hormones in your body, like it's nuts. And, you know, and now we are where we are, where we're lurk, we're starting to learn. Like I feel like, and and I'd love your opinion too, like we're getting, I I love this like inundation of like information, but now we're it's like, are we just a meme? How do we pull through this? What is real? Like, this is why for me, I, you know, even on this podcast, I'm not an expert. I'm an expert in my own story. Um and I'm finding people like you who are experts in in actual like science and knowing it because right now there's so much that, you know, what do you weed through? And I think when it comes to, you know, body image, what what are you seeing as it comes to now like the perimenopausal? Like now all of a sudden this conversation has changed to like a 35. This is where we hit, and it's so some of that is fact, but now we're also learning how much impact that has on our body shape and size. And so, do you have thoughts? Are you working with some people who now like what happens if you had an eating disorder when you were a young human and you you recovered? And now all of a sudden, like, just what are you seeing and what are some of your thoughts in this space? Is all of a sudden this is like a big topic again or now? Yeah, completely.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Well, one word I want to come back to that you said is investment. I don't remember exactly what you were saying, but I heard that word and invest. It it makes sense that people aren't investing in women's health because the diet industry is a billion-dollar industry. If they invest in us actually taking care of ourselves, learning about our bodies, learning how to take care of ourselves from a nourishing place, the diet industry would collapse, right? We wouldn't be paying billions of dollars to stay in shape and, you know, support products that keep our skin flat and all these things that, you know, are expected of women to spend so much money taking care of themselves when we actually don't have to. I don't wear any makeup. I'm not wearing any right now. Like I'm not participating in that as much as I can. And I find that to be like a radical act of recovery and self-care that a lot of people hopefully can access. But even in eating disorder recovery, there's still so many people who are doing Botox and all of these other things to remain a certain way. And I feel like there's just so much comfort around it's okay to want to change your body all the time. It's okay to keep up with the trends. Our bodies are not trends. Our bodies cannot keep up with trends. That's not what they're meant to do. Our bodies are meant to live, literally. That's it. So whatever you need to do to live, I want you to do those things. But I don't think uh getting Botox is about living. I don't know. We could argue about that. But um I'm not gonna argue with about that with you on that. I think this landscape is really challenging right now. I mean, I don't think we have enough time on this episode to get into, you know, GLP1s, which I think are medications that have been, you know, talked about a lot and have been really useful for certain people with certain medical conditions, but also have been misused to pursue weight loss, you know, just for weight loss sake. And I think when we get into people making decisions about their health that they don't fully understand, that's what really upsets me. I believe in body autonomy. If you want to get Botox, please go. Do whatever you want to do. Yeah. But are you fully understanding it? Or did you see a TikTok trend and say, I want to try that because my favorite TikTok influencer is doing that thing. And that is why I want to try it. Did you speak to your doctor? Have you spoken to your therapist? Have you spoken to your dietitian and someone who's really taking in your story, not someone you found on the internet? And in this culture of knowledge where we're learning a lot of things from social media, hey, I learn cooking tips, I learn cleaning hacks, I learn these things, and sometimes they're really wonderful. I think we have to be really cautious about where we're getting our information. Is our information coming from a trusted source or is it coming from a celebrity? And celebrities have a platform and sometimes they use it for good. And I'm so appreciative to all the celebrities who are speaking about their mental health concerns and making mental health awareness so much more accessible. At the same time, just like you said, we're experts in our own stories. We're not necessarily experts on whatever topic we might be talking about. And I really think what I try to teach, you know, the teens that I work with and the parents that I work with is to be discerning, to be discerning. I think that's a skill that is getting lost a little bit. We just see someone saying something authoritatively and we think it must be true. Right. Do your own research. Think about is this AI? Is this a human? Is this someone who has credentials and has done research on this? Right. Unfortunately, with women's health, there's so little research, but there is some research that we can look at. And also, who's producing this research? Who funded this research? You know, there's a missing link right now about discerning is this information real? Is this, is this information important for me to take in and make decisions with this information? So I guess as I come to you know, the conversation around women's health, perimenopause, all these different things, there's so many floating around theories. And I think fertility is a whole other one where I see so much quacky stuff on the internet, like drink this juice and do this. And having worked with my own, you know, fertility people, I feel like I've learned so much about how much of that is just not real. It's not real. And it's giving people false hope around their fertility. And I think I looked this set up right before we got on. About 20% of people who have eating disorders will have infertility struggles. And even I think there's an even greater number that will need fertility support, but actually like having complete infertility, it's 20% of people with eating disorders. That's a lot of people. Not to mention the general population that also shows with fertility.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

That's a lot of people of a segment of a group of people. Right. That is a lot. And I think, you know, when you uh the discernment, I'm gonna I'm gonna take away a lot from this conversation, but discernment and nourishment and you know, finding you, you know, you even shared in your own journey that you you didn't do in patients, that wasn't where you went, you found your own team and you did the work to do that for yourself for your healing journey. And if I even look at my own healing journey as well, you know, all the way until I ended up with a hysterectomy. And then since my hysterectomy, and I had a full hysterectomy. And so there's very little information on surgical menopause. And so I've literally had to find my way through this, and but I've done it with doctors in the right information and the right people. And, you know, I talk to my friends a lot because I've done a lot of the work, but I did a lot of that work for me because I'm not the expert in this. I know some information now, and because I've done the reason I've done my own research to get there, but I can't say that the exact formula of things that I am on are gonna be perfect for you. I know it's working for me because also underneath, I'm not just a surgical menopause human being. I had a chronic illness, inflammatory illness for my whole life that could still be in my body because nobody knows if endometriosis, like, right? It could be sitting in places I don't even know. And so, even armed with that information, I'm like, okay, what do I need to know now that I know more of that in order for me to, you know, figure out those things. And so I think it's so important for people to find experts like yourself and others in order to take them through what they need to do to heal and to be nourished. And the discernment piece is so freaking important right now.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah. And I I just want to hone in on one thing you said. You said like this has been the right approach for me. So, even my story, the right approach for me is not necessarily the right approach for you. And I'm not advocating for I did it so you can do it. I think that's what social media is like, I did it, you can do it. Right. It's more like I did it, let's work together to figure out the best way for you to do it. I think doing it is worth it. I'll tell you that. Yeah. But beyond that, I'm not here to say how. Therapists are not here to give you advice, they're here to help you figure out what the best way is for you, whether that's navigating a medical condition, a chronic illness, fertility, an eating disorder, any number of things. There's a right way for you. And it's not going to look the same as anyone else's.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

No, and I think it's it's important to start it and be in charge of it. And we haven't always been told or allowed or shared with that we get to be in charge. Just because the doctor said, like it's interesting because I've been an advocate for myself from my full journey from like startomenopause to this, to my eating disorder, to my, you know, cutting to wanting to end my life, to all those wonderful things that make me who I am. I had to find my way. I was the kid who is 13 going, yeah, I don't really know that that doctor is correct. So I'd like a new therapist. And but I had that in me and I know that I am rare. And I even have friends now who they're like, well, the doctor said I can't have this. I said, so you need to find a new doctor. Like, yeah, again, I don't know if that doctor is correct, but if your gut is telling you that you are not getting the care you believe you deserve, then find another doctor. Find another someone. Because I do believe we know in our gut, even if that energy is right or wrong, right? Like you and I have been in therapy over our like you know if that therapist, if you jive and whether you don't. And that's what you do every day, right? Like you, you know you have clients that are going to be amazing under your care. And maybe some of them you're not meant to be, because there's someone else out there that can get them to where they need to be. And I just I think sometimes as women, we go, well, this is where we were sent. We have to do this, and we don't believe there's choice.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah, just that advocacy piece of like finding the best care for you. That's possible. You have to have the energy, you have to be somewhat nourished to spend all that time figuring out who is best for you. And also, I do think, you know, there's a level of if you are like in a mental health compromise place, it is also okay to enlist family support to help you find those things because it is exhausting to find doctors that listen to you and understand you. So you're not alone in that. And I think there are resources out there, but also being discerning about what's right for you is ultimately up to you.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

And hopefully, as we do the work that we're doing and we keep raising our voices and helping other women, is that we will be able to get a place to a place where people are nourished and they are looking at what is right for them and that they are looking and using people. And I I don't want to lose that because you just said there are people there to help. And I think so much of what we, so much of what you talk about, you're you're an expert in it, but knowing my own story and eating disorders and and periods and pain, there's so much shame. So if we're shrouded in shame, how the fuck do you ask for help? It's really hard.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

It's brave. Like it's really hard. It's it shouldn't need to be brave. It should feel normal, it should feel regular, it should feel every day that people are asking for help and people are reaching out for help. And I wish that was more of a thing. And I hope that over time, like you said, it's becoming more accessible to tell your story, to be extended the best support I've gotten is when I tell my story to people and someone adds something from their story, and they add something from this, and they tell me about a doctor they know. And this is how we get the network of people that are really helping and not hurting. And I think that's a really important shift that we're going through big time because we're hey, I just created a platform.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

I'm like, I'm gonna show up in my underwear. I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing it because I want to set the stage because I've got the courage to do it, and I just want to bring everyone along with me because I've been an outspoken human my whole life and was often criticized for that. But I know it's I know I'm using it for good. I know I was always using it for good, despite what some of the people used to say. But anyways, um, but I don't this is this is for me to to share. Like it's just because in my in my corner of the world and what we can do, you know, I just I know that this podcast already, I'm no big huge star yet, but I know already how much the episodes and just pulling the right people towards this are already having an impact. And that is so that is nourishment for me. And yeah, it's so important.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

It's awesome. And I really appreciate you having this platform because I think so many people don't speak about menstruation. They don't speak about PCOS or PMOS, whatever it's now. I know no new name. Endometriosis. Yeah, I think these things are, you know, I didn't know what endometriosis was until I did. And you have to have friends who are going through that to find out. No one tells you about it. When you go to your OBG. And they're not like, let me tell you about some things that might be going on with your body. They're just like, all right, everything's good, and you're on birth control and whatever, and you don't know anything about your body until you have friends who start going through stuff and you're like, oh wow, a lot of people are dealing with these things. Um, one final piece I'll say about you know, I don't want to shit on doctors. That's not my goal on this podcast, but I do think there's value in saying that so many doctors just give patients the the I the solution of losing weight. They say, Oh, you have PCOS, endometriosis, lose weight. And I just want to note how invalidating that is to people's symptoms. Weight loss does not always lead to relief. Also, what are people supposed to do? Like giving someone the recommendation of weight loss gives them no strategy, no toolbox. And often people can't lose weight because of metabolic conditions going on, like PCOS. Um, and it's just, it's such, it's, it's, it's such a lazy solution. It's such a lazy recommendation. I really implore doctors to be more creative about did you even ask the person if they're already exercising? Did you ask the person what they've already attempted to lose weight? Losing weight might be part of what landed them in this chronic illness in the first place. So I think that like trying to lose weight is not always a solution and actually can lead to other problems like developing eating disorders, developing binging, developing restriction, restricting. Um, and I yeah, I just want to recognize on this podcast while where we're talking about these women's issues that so often people in larger bodies are actually prescribed eating disorders to treat something like PCOS endometriosis. And I want you to be really cautious of that recommendation and find people who will actually take a genuine look at your medical underpinnings and give you solutions that are creative and unique to you because weight loss is just a lazy solution and it doesn't work for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

No, that is that is a drop the mic moment. There's so much I want to talk to you about and learn from you. And I'm gonna leave it there because I think that is so powerful. And you know, being prescribed weight loss and antidepressants is not gonna get us to the finish line in a healthy way. And we're so much bigger and bolder and better and interesting than that. And so thank you, Lily. Thank you for sharing your story and your expertise and your time. Um, it has been an absolute pleasure. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Thank you so much for having me and for making this platform. Well, thanks. We'll see you in Canada.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

Yeah. Hopefully soon. I gotta make it to Canada. And then I'm gonna come to dinner in New York. I'm on my I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Yes, let me know when you're in New York. We would love to host Recovery Supper Club with you there.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Thank you for being here. Yeah. Oh, I know before we go, people are gonna want to get in touch with you. I'm gonna put all that stuff in the show notes, but how do people get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Yeah, so you can find me on social media. You know, we could say whatever we want about social media, but it is a good place to find me. She is. Um, my handle is thrope therapy nyc. Um, you can email me. My email is lily at throttherapy.com. L-I-L-Y is how you spell my name. Um, and my website is thropetherapy.com. So you can find me kind of online anywhere. If you Google me, you'll find me. Um, I answer all my own emails. So please feel free to reach out. One of my favorite things to do is help people get connected with the right therapist. So even if you're not in one of the states that I work with, please reach out to me and I will do my best in my network to help you find an anti diet, health at every size, intuitive eating, weight inclusive provider, which is not easy to find, but I do have a good list. So please reach out to me if you have any questions or if you need any resources, because I have a big list of resources that I'm excited to share.