Shame of Dieting

Mentalhealth.org reports that 1 in 5 adults feels "disgusting" about their bodies. How do we break free from the toxic cycle of body shaming ourselves? How do we create peace with our body image? Allison Ross,  eating and body image therapist and author of "Non-Dieting: How to Love your Body and Be Healthy in Diet Culture" discusses:

• the origins of body image issues
• body neutrality
• understanding the role of social media in our body image issues

You can support the show at patreon.com/unshaming. #StayUnshaming with us at instagram.com/unshaming and unshamingpodcast.com. 

Producers/Editors: Jor Gonsalves & Sam Stone

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jordan: What does it mean to bring our whole selves into the world, to give ourselves the gift of unconditional acceptance? Join me as we learn together. I'm Jorgen Solves, and this is Unshaming.

Hey, it's Jordan. So before we get the show kicked off, I just wanted to remind everyone, make sure you are following unshaming and you are subscribed on Apple podcasts on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, so that you never miss an episode. So let's get into the show. So this week on the show, we are talking about dieting.

We're talking about diet culture and all of us have kind of engaged with it at some point or another. Like I want to be thinner. I want to be stronger. I want to look more fit. I've definitely had those thoughts in my head and I think to a certain degree it can be healthy, but I did think to myself, when does this go too far?

So I actually came across this research. Published by mentalhealth. org and it stated about one in five adults feel disgusted by their body and I want to say this was shocking or surprising but Honestly, it wasn't and I think if you're being honest with yourself, too It probably isn't to you either and I think that's because at some point I All of us have looked in the mirror and felt critical of our bodies.

And as I was sort of thinking about where this comes from, I have realized through the many interviews that I've done now, it starts super early. We learn early and often to be ashamed of ourselves. And some of these early memories come from our families. And I don't think that They intentionally try to body shame us, but they do intentionally try to pass on this idea that the bodies that are beautiful are the bodies that have access and that can be access to success, access to opportunity, but also It can be access to worthiness and this attitude that our access to true connection, connection to others and to the world around us is conditional upon what we look like, that really sets us up for failure.

It sets us up for a toxic relationship with our own selves. And when I think about it, Of course, if we believe that someone else's acceptance of us is conditional upon what we look like, our body weight, our body image, doesn't that mean that our own acceptance of ourselves is conditional upon those same things?

So in order to learn more about body image, I know it's a huge topic, but in order to learn more, I decided to interview Alison Ross. She is a licensed therapist and a neuro feedback practitioner, and she specializes in eating and body image, and she's an. Experts on this concept called non dieting and I just thought that was so unique and interesting And she has a new book out.

It's called non dieting how to love your body and be healthy in diet culture and the way that she defines non dieting is the practice of Rejecting the dieting industries and the diet media That are constantly body shaming us You And as she puts it, returning to ourselves. Ugh, I just love that. And basically what that means is returning to our natural power of understanding what our body needs, when it needs it.

[00:04:19] Allison: people to say, you are not just a body. Like, you are this totally unique composition of body, mind, and spirit. You are a being with a purpose, meant to take up a, a, a sacred and 

[00:04:36] Jordan: totally unique And her journey was inspired by her own recovery from disordered eating and embodiment struggles. This episode isn't just about diet culture, it's really about the relationship that we have with food and with our bodies.

Especially coming off such a stressful year that I think for so many people affected our diets. I think a lot of people are examining that relationship with food right now and examining that relationship with their body right now. So I think it's a really relevant topic. This is the shame of dieting.

What was your first memory of Dieting or diet culture. 

[00:05:23] Allison: So, my first memory of dieting, uh, my first experience with dieting happened when I was like 11 or 12 years old. My body was changing as I was entering puberty and members of my family and a kid at school started to tease me and make fun of me and call me fat.

that best way to help me was to help me lose weight. So she took me to a diet center where we started. Um, and you know, I clearly remember that the first thing that the diet counselor said to me is how much do you want to weigh? And I was really shocked and excited by this question. Like I had no idea that I could just pick my weight and size.

And so, you know, I wanted to know. Um, and so, you know, I thought, I thought about the weights of like the popular girls at school when they were being publicly weighed in gym class. And, you know, I picked a weight that I thought would be a good weight for me to be. And then I announced it to the diet counselor.

And I remember that she seemed really proud, you know, of the weight that I picked. And she pulled out this chart because everything was paper back then. Um, but she pulled out this chart and, you know, she wrote my goal weight at the bottom of like this 10 week chart. And she showed me each week. And she said, okay, so for each week.

You're going to eat this way and you're going to exercise this way and each week you're going to lose these many pounds and then by the time, this many pounds, and then by the time you get to the 10th week, you will weigh what you want to weigh. And I was just so excited about this idea. I mean, I just bought it hook, line, and sinker.

It felt so good to think that I was going to, you know, what I thought at the time, I was going to redeem myself in 10 weeks, you know, so I just, I went on the diet right away. I lost a little weight on it and I just became a believer. in dieting. Ultimately, I will say that that diet that was supposed to last 10 weeks actually became an obsession for over 10 years, where I would really just live at war with myself the way that so many dieters do.

You know, I became obsessive about my weight and distortive about my body image and stuck in this tug of war between. My willpower, which is of course a diminishing resource, and then my brain's ever powerful weight regulating system. So I had become a yo yo dieter. I remember also in middle school walking down the hall and this kid was standing there with his friends and he went, Whoa, what an elephant.

As I walked by and I mean, it was just humiliating, you know, they all laughed. They all thought it was so funny. And when they said that to me, I didn't actually really understand what they meant by it. I knew it was bad, but I didn't really understand exactly what they meant by it. And I remember I came home and I, and I asked my mom, like, why would they have called me an elephant?

And I remember that my mom started to cry. I think it made it so much worse that my mom started to cry, you know, because I felt like, oh, wow, this is really bad. I mean, now I've even, you know, I'm such an embarrassment and now I've hurt her and. And, and I, I think that that was actually part of the catalyst of, you know, why she took me to that diet center because she was, she was feeling for me.

And in her mind, perhaps I had become like one of the worst things that one could become in diet culture. Like, I got bigger. And so, since that was sort of her mentality, I think she felt kind of hopeless about it. 

[00:09:09] Jordan: From your first diet up until college, what happens next, Allison? Walk us through that. 

[00:09:16] Allison: So, when I went on that first diet, I did lose a little bit of weight and started to really believe in dieting.

I do remember taking my diet lunch to school. When I, with that first diet, I took my mom packed me my diet lunch and I remember I went to school and I had that lunch and I was so hungry by the time school was over. My mom came to pick me up and I remember telling her, like, I'm so hungry. Can we just go to McDonald's?

Which is something that maybe we would have done, you know? And I remember that she looked at me in a way that Where she didn't have to say any words was like, I understood that I wasn't supposed to do that anymore. And that, that really, that this diet actually was serious. Like this was expected of me.

Certainly when we, you know, tear at a child's relationship with food and their form, we do set them into quite a deep psychological state. stumble because I couldn't really trust anymore that hunger. You know, now I just needed to trust this plan that was given to me. I couldn't trust myself anymore, which is the biggest thing in the world really to lose.

You know, that dieters lose all day long. Dieters lose all the time. 

[00:10:32] Jordan: So that was a transformative moment when you're basically now prioritizing this diet over your body's natural ability to say, I'm, I'm hungry or I'm not hungry. 

[00:10:44] Allison: I do think that was my moment of putting my appetite into exile. That was definitely my moment, and I didn't even really realize it until I told you that.

But it was my moment, and it would take me a long time to trust that I could recover. My connection to the intelligence in my body that knows what I need Emotionally and physically so I entered into these ten years of you know being a yo yo dieter and I actually found plenty of friends who were Willing and ready to jump on the dieting bandwagon with me.

I had one in particular, you know, like we would go home after school together and we would eat our diet friendly snack of Melba toasts and diet Coke. We would have two Melba toasts and a diet Coke and, you know, we would do that together. And then, you know, You know, after a while we got kind of bored of that.

So we started having fat free popcorn and lots of diet Coke. And then, you know, we would get bored of that. And so then we started making chocolate chip cookies, but we could only have two, you know, so we would ration them with our diet Coke. And then eventually we'd find ourselves eating a lot of the cookie dough and feeling so bad about that, that we would follow that up by doing at the time.

Jane Fonda had put out these, um, home workout, like aerobics videos that were really popular. And so we would do that in order to kind of compensate for the eating that we had done. And, you know, what I can see when I look back at that is like, what happens to dieters? Anytime, you know, we're told that we can choose our weight and size.

That's kind of what diet culture says, that if you're just willing to diet and exercise, you can, you can choose your weight and you can get there and you can be there forever. Well, it's such a lie because anybody who pushes their body too far and fast into malnutrition or out of a weight range that is actually genetically healthy for them, what they're going to do is they're going to trigger survival responses in the brain.

You know, your brain is going to fight back. So you're going to end up at war. And so this is what was happening with my friend, you know, we start out being very restrictive and not really eating much food and not being very satisfied and little by little, we sort of eat more and more and more until we're actually binging on chocolate chip cookies and exercising to try to get rid of it.

What we were doing by dieting was just incredibly unhealthy. We were becoming so Disconnected from our body's wisdom, you know, from our ability to feel our hunger and feel our fullness and follow our appetite, you know, and we kept this up for a long time. And I I'm so sad to say that the only thing that stopped us was that my friend's mother discovered that she had become bulimic and put a stop to our routines.

And, uh, my friend all the way up to her thirties struggled. She ended up. With bulimia and anorexia, and she ended up in a treatment program for that. And she is now doing very well and healthy, and I'm so proud of her. But, you know, I feel so sad to realize that I was part of that for her. And, and I guess in a way she was part of that for me, we both struggled for long periods of time.

[00:14:03] Jordan: What was going through your head in those moments of. Intense eating and then the regret and the remorse that would soon follow after. 

[00:14:15] Allison: I mean, I was at war with myself. Nothing about my deeper self mattered to me anymore. It didn't matter that I was hungry. It didn't matter that the food that I was eating was bad.

wasn't feeling good to me. It didn't matter that I might have certain gifts or passions or that I might need something. I think I lost touch that there was a human inside. All that really mattered to me was that I kept running this program that was going to make me thin and therefore give me access to the power structure around me.

Give me the ability to fit in. That was all you. That mattered to me. And it was a miserable existence as anybody who struggles with an eating disorder or disordered eating can tell you, you know, when you're at war with yourself, you just don't even feel like a human being anymore. Yeah. 

[00:15:11] Jordan: What was that moment when you kind of said, and how old were you and sort of what was the setting where you said to yourself, I need to claim control of my life.

[00:15:23] Allison: So I continued. In disordered eating and as a yo yo dieter into adulthood. And so I remember, you know, in my twenties, I was actually known by people around me for being a really healthy eater because in public, I only ate salads and, you know, things that would normally be on a diet plan. No one ever saw how out of control I had become with food.

I mean, I literally can remember eating. Whole pizzas by myself and not feeling full because the more that we restrict, the more that hungry drive in our deep brain grows, the hungrier that we get. So in public, everybody thought that I was so healthy and would give me so much praise about that. And in private, I was doing this crazy, crazy things with food.

And, you know, my, it wasn't really showing up on my body because all of our, you know, our brains, You know, handle what we do with food differently. We're all unique. And so, you know, you really can't, by the way, and this is an important point, you really can't look at a person's body and know what's happening in their relationship with food.

You know, so often when we see somebody with a bigger body, we say, Oh, they don't eat healthy. We see someone with a smaller body and we go, Oh, they must be really healthy. Well, that's just simply not true. You can never really know what's going on behind the scenes because the truth is, is that we don't have as much control over our bodies as we think we do.

Um, it's much more genetic than anything else, and we have this limited influence over our bodies, but we can't choose our weight and size. We can't just keep our bodies where we want them to be. We're not in charge of what our brains do when it comes to managing our weight based on our genetics and our environment.

And I remember, so my turning point was actually, I was in my twenties and I was working for this company and there was this, uh, woman who worked with me and she was really thin and fit and I was very jealous of how she looked. I kind of didn't like her because I was so jealous of her at the time. I'm ashamed to say, but, um, she, um, I remember that she told me one day about yoga and she said, you know, you should go to yoga because it's like, This great workout and you will tone your body and, and, you know, when she said that I was, I was ashamed because I thought that she was telling me that my body wasn't tone enough.

I mean, she couldn't have possibly known the deep well of shame that she was digging into in that moment. But anyway, I sort of pretended like I wasn't interested. But within a week, I got a yoga mat and I went to a yoga studio in my neighborhood, and I, I walked into the class and I remember like rolling out my mat and feeling, you know, a little bit insecure doing exercise, doing this new exercise in front of people.

I wanted to be good at it. So I remember I started doing this yoga class and I just started pushing through the poses the way I had always learned to do at the gym. Just like, come on, do it harder, do it stronger, do more. And a little bit into the class. This, the yoga teacher came over to me and he like sort of put his hand on my shoulder and he said, for the rest of class, I want you to lie down on your mat and to think about what makes it hard, so hard for you to let go.

And I was like, what? I just, I could not believe what he was saying to me. I mean, I'd never had a fitness instructor. want me to relax and rest and slow down. So I didn't understand it. The only way I could understand in the moment was, and 

[00:18:47] Jordan: this was him coming up to you personally and only you in the class, 

[00:18:51] Allison: only me, only to me.

So I was new in his class. Um, Didn't recognize me. Um, but so I laid down. I, I, I, you know, I was, I was very embarrassed. I thought that he was basically saying that I wasn't doing the class right and I wasn't good enough at it. It was, it was embarrassing for me, but I didn't want to make a scene. So I laid down and literally there was an hour left of class.

So I had to lay on my mat for an hour, just quiet. And I remember that as I laid on this mat doing nothing. I started to become aware in a new way that I wasn't alone on my mat, but that there was this big mind, this big ego of mine that was sort of hovering over me. On my mat and it was angry at me and it was telling me that I was an embarrassment.

I wasn't doing the class Right, you know, I mean I had heard this voice in my head for so many years that this was a normal voice but it was like laying there quietly and hearing it in that moment was a Was it was different, you know, and I started to feel the pain of how my own mind treated me and so this is what I realized there on the mat and it made me You Very sad when I realized it because I thought it was like, for the first time in my life, I think I felt compassion for what I was going through, for what the human inside of me was being put through every moment of my life, you know?

And I would say that in that moment, it was probably my first bit of understanding that there was a human being in there and that human being mattered and that I needed to be kinder to her. After that yoga class, what I did is within a short period of time, I ended up getting a therapist. I ended up returning to that yoga studio on a regular basis and learning how to do mindfulness meditation.

What happened for me was that ultimately, I transformed that voice in my head that was strangling me and hustling me. I transformed it into like a kind inner presence that cared about me and could take care of me emotionally and physically in a way that never before I had. 

[00:21:15] Jordan: We'll be right back. One of my favorite things in the whole wide world is receiving letters from listeners.

I love that so much. It's literally my favorite thing because it sort of affirms that the work that we're doing on the show is resonating with people and ultimately that work is communicating and conveying to people that you are allowed to bring your whole self into the world. You are allowed to celebrate.

life. And that's what the show is really about. It's about the celebration of life. If you think this work is important, you can support us. You can donate to our Patreon and help us tell these inspiring stories. Help us bring these inspiring stories to life. That's patreon. com slash unchaming.

This year has been tough on mental health, to say the least. During quarantine, actress Beth Behrs from 2 Broke Girls turned to music as a form of self care, and she was astounded by the healing effects. So she started Harmonics, a podcast that ventures to explore the intersection of music and healing By hearing the stories of other creative women from all walks of life.

Join Beth as she talks to guests like legendary comedian, Carol Burnett, Glenn Doyle, and Jewel. You can listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And follow along with Harmonix Podcasts on Instagram. There's something that you said, returning to ourselves. Yeah. That, ooh, that, uh, took me to church for a moment, but how do we return to ourselves?

How do we return to these natural states of Listening to when our body has desire, hunger, want, and needs. How do we, how do we get back to that and sort of undo a lot of the conditioning that all of us have been going through our whole lives from these very tender moments of, of childhood up until adulthood for some of us, how do we return?

To ourselves. 

[00:23:39] Allison: Yeah. I will tell you about a meditation that I often do with my clients or in my support groups that I lead. And, you know, I'll ask people to just take some deep breaths and to relax their bodies and to, and to just notice what's happening inside of themselves. Because. What we're going to notice when we start checking in with ourselves, when we get quiet is we're going to notice that big ego, that big mind that's like trying to tell us who we should be.

We might notice that it's really loud. We might notice it's really hostile. Like I noticed when I was laying on that yoga mat for an hour and to then notice that, that we've taken that in from somewhere. And that maybe we haven't taken it in from the healthiest places, you know, start to kind of question how it affects us to walk around with that big voice in our heads.

The other thing that I'll ask people to do in this meditation is to start noticing their little voices, like the voice in their gut, you know, what is their gut saying about their last experience with food to check in with their heart. What are they feeling and how might that connect to their current needs?

So, you know, a really important part of this is, is just getting reacquainted with your inner self, with that human inside and starting to listen more. Like who am I on a deeper level? What are some of my passions? What are some of my gifts? What did I gravitate to? Early in life, what, you know, what do people who love me, love about me, you know, and we start to kind of do a little bit of reflecting on that.

And we start trying to take other parts of ourselves more seriously. And that has to combine with us being brave enough to start trying to share who we are. I think that that's part of the process too, because we really do need to get validation For who we are, 

[00:25:48] Jordan: I actually came across someone who talked to me about body neutrality and This was a total game changer for me because the general idea is my body is neither good or bad.

It's just my body 

[00:26:07] Allison: and 

[00:26:08] Jordan: it's functional. And that's what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to be functional. And I found that to be really liberating. 

[00:26:17] Allison: Yeah. Body neutrality is a beautiful, important, wonderful concept. A lot of times when I'm, um, inviting people into some kind of a guided visualization or something, I'll, I will tell them that it's, it might not be easy to feel positive about their bodies, or their feelings, or their hunger, but could they try neutrality?

Could they try just the neutral sort of observation? Of, Oh, I'm hungry or, Oh, I'm craving pizza. Just kind of like information, you know, I will tell you that I don't use body neutrality, that term that much. I use body positivity a lot more. And the reason that I do is because I believe that, you know, we've been stuck in this toxic over identification with our bodies as a source of worth.

And in doing so we've lost touch with the fact that we are this toxic Unique combination of body, mind and soul that we are so much more than a body Embodied life is a miracle And so I think that when you start to come out of that toxic over identification with your body And you start to realize how amazing it is to be alive in a body and to have a mind and a soul and Then I think how can you feel anything other than positive about this body?

That is carrying you through this amazing experience of life. 

[00:27:47] Jordan: You know, Alison, I remember I had dated this guy a couple of years ago who was picture of beauty as you know, we know it in the conventional sense. I mean, he had abs, he had the muscles, the looks, everything, the eyes, you know, you name it. And I remember we were sitting down in the park together one day.

And I could. See him out of the corner of my, like playing with his phone or something. And I looked and he was using this app called Facetune to sort of like contour his body to post a photo on Instagram. And I was really confused by that. And so I just asked like, Oh, what are you, why are you doing that?

And he ended up revealing to me. All of these different body image issues that he had. And I sat there shocked with my mouth open, because here we were kind of all of my friends looking at him to sort of be like the standard of beauty. And here he was telling me that he didn't feel beautiful at all.

[00:29:06] Allison: Yeah. I mean, I see that so much. I think we have this epidemic of people walking around feeling like something is wrong with them and that they're not okay and that they're not enough. And, you know, you look at them and you think that they're just great and you can't believe they feel that way. And, you know, this is, this is something that our food and diet culture has actually, and all the conflict in it, has created for people.

Because, you know, when you. Teach a person, especially a child, because we learn this early and often, right, to be insecure about our bodies. When you teach a child to pair fear and shame with their bodies, You actually distort their body image. So fear is distorting. It's sort of nature's way that when something threatens us, it, our perception, when the amygdala lights up, because we're experiencing a threat, our perception of it, we start to think that it's bigger.

more distorted and more dangerous than it really is. This is nature's way of, if something is coming at you, you will see that it is huge and terrible and you will run or you will fight, you will flee something. But this is what happens in our brains. When we're taught to feel shame and fear about our bodies is that we no longer see our bodies as they are.

We see them through the lens of this lighting up amygdala and that distorts what we see. So your friend who was laying there looking so perfect to you didn't look that way to himself. And that's just, what a tragedy, you know, to take away our ability to perceive how we are. It's just, it's such a tragedy.

[00:30:48] Jordan: Now I want to talk about Instagram. I think this is probably what everyone is thinking in their head. How the hell do I have a good relationship with my body and with food and have an Instagram account at the same time? 

[00:31:03] Allison: Right. Right. 

[00:31:04] Jordan: Seriously, because, you know, I, I, I think that for my generation and for certainly the new generation that Instagram is native to, I really don't understand how they differentiate what is fantasy and what is reality.

What does a balanced relationship look like? With social media in relation to our personal relationships with our own bodies. 

[00:31:35] Allison: Yeah. So, you know, I might have a little bit of a surprising take on Instagram because I really love the democratization of information. I think it's so incredible because, you know, I grew up in the seventies and the eighties where, you know, basically you would sit down in front of a TV or magazine or whatever, and, you know, marketers and boardrooms had come up with the message of like, what is good and what is worthy.

And they kind of just. And I mean, a lot of us didn't even realize that we were being manipulated, you know? So for me to see what's happened with social media, where it's like anybody who wants to has a voice, I mean, it has created. In a lot of ways in my industry, it's created some really important, you know, like, like a lot of diversity, a lot of people who were not represented anywhere are now represented and, and much more inclusion, it has helped us to understand each other.

It has created more, you know, like if you're going to go buy a swimsuit, you might be able to find somebody who is. You know, who looks a little bit like you, who's modeling one, you know? I should also say that we can fight back with social media, you know? We fight the powers that be, you know? I remember when like, you know, Victoria's Secret said that they wouldn't hire a transgender model and they were only going to hire skinny models, you know?

And I, and they ended up having to you know, You know shut down their runway show because people were so enraged by that or like I'll see you know an ad for a a shake like a like a weight loss shake and they'll talk about how it's going to like flatten your belly and people become enraged by that And they fight it and so it's actually really changing the messages and creating a lot more Diversity and inclusion and for that i'm very happy for it To what you said, on the other hand, you know, looking at everyone's highlight reels all day long has a very bad effect, of course, we have to realize that just as changing your body isn't going to make you happy, nothing that comes through a screen is going to make you happy.

You know, happiness happens when you are in relationship with yourself, with nature, with others. That truly is where we boost serotonin. You know, when we, when you, when you get on a screen, or when you eat some food, or when you have a drink, or whatever, you are. You're spiking dopamine in your brain. That's the pleasure neurotransmitter.

It feels good, it's very rewarding, and you want to do it. It's also very addictive. And over time, too much spiking the brain with these hits of dopamine actually makes you become more and more sad. It actually depresses your ability to generate or uptake serotonin. Serotonin is the happiness neurotransmitter.

When you are in relationship or connection with yourself, with others, with nature, with God, you are actually boosting the serotonin system. And that is creating real happiness. And serotonin is not Addictive, like dopamine is, and it also creates a more long lived sense of satiation. So there is no doubt that we have to unplug if we want to be happy.

And, you know, we just can't, we have to balance our time on it. And we have to really sort of look at like how we're using it too. I mean, I just know who I am. And what I have to say and people can like it or not like it and that's no problem for me You know Some people are on the same path with me and some people are not and I think that if we're going to engage there That it's good to kind of cultivate that mindset about it that you're there sharing what's important to you to share and you'll find the people who are on your path just trust that and Then there'll be plenty of people who aren't and trust that You 

[00:35:35] Jordan: Speaking of being at war with our body, so many of us are at war with our body.

One of the biggest battlegrounds it seems to be in this war is the mirror. What is the experience that we should be deriving when we see That reflection, I would venture to say probably every single person, if not almost every single person has had a moment where you're standing in front of the mirror and you're looking at the parts of your body that you want to change.

[00:36:10] Allison: Yeah. 

[00:36:11] Jordan: What does that experience of looking at ourselves, seeing our reflection, what should that evoke? 

[00:36:18] Allison: You know, what it does evoke. is how we feel about ourselves and our, and our perception of our bodies, right? So whether it's positive or negative, that's what we're going to see when we come to the mirror.

You are right. The mirror is sort of ground zero for pain for a lot of people. And you're also right that One of the mistakes that we make when we show up to the mirror is that we look right at the parts of us that we were most teased about, or we feel the most shame about, or most hurt about. We look right at those parts, and you know what happens from a neurological point of view when we focus in on the part that we don't like?

We actually distort it. We take it out of context, and we make it look. Different than what it really is. This is something that we can change. We can come to the mirror and we can be aware that we're looking right at that part that we hate. We're just making it seem so much worse and instead of doing that we can remind ourselves Look at the whole self.

Step back. Look at the whole self. You know, another alternative could be that when you go to your mirror, step forward and look in your eyes. Your eyes are the window to your soul. Just gaze into your eyes for a moment and see that person. That is there have a little conversation with the person that is there you know, I really like and I just wrote a blog about it on my website, but I really like the idea of of turning at least one of your mirrors into an empowering space for you, so Whether you put, you know, like your prayer beads close to your mirror or a picture of you on a vacation where you felt such freedom and such peace, or you put pictures maybe of animals or people who love you near your mirror, or maybe you put, you know, an important quote.

Or an affirmation on your mirror so that when you come to it, you can connect to something that supports you. And that is, is positive in my book. I offer this guided meditation where I invite people to imagine looking in the mirror and to just notice the feelings and thoughts that come up when they do.

And then I invite them in this meditation to bring in animals and people. They could be real or imagined or. You know, alive or past, but to bring them in, to stand at the mirror with them and to just feel that circle of support around you at the mirror. And I think that if we come to the mirror and we bring those people to mind, or we have those objects, maybe in your mirror, that we, we can create a more empowering experience that helps us to start that process of loving and supporting ourselves and seeing the whole self.

[00:39:09] Jordan: Last question, Allison. Given your experiences with dieting, with food, your whole life, now, what does food mean to you? When you see a plate of food, what is that experience like for you? 

[00:39:28] Allison: Yeah, that's a good question. So, food for me has taken this place of just sacredness, joy, And energy, because I'm no longer worried about how my body is and, and because I'm excited about how my life is and the ways in which I'm showing up in the world, I see food as a way to really support that.

So to me, food has become to a large extent, energy. I eat in a very body attuned way. I don't have any rules about eating. I just eat when it's convenient or when I'm hungry. And I, I'm so privileged to be able to, before I eat so often say to myself, what do I want? Do I want something sweet or salty? Or, you know, do I want something light or savory?

And, and in many cases get what I want. I mean, how amazing is that? So to a large extent, I bring gratitude. To food. I just feel so grateful that I live in this environment and I have this life right now at this time where I can enjoy this bounty. You know, my relationship with food has changed tremendously and I've used it to a large extent as medicine to be healthy and to have energy.

[00:41:04] Jordan: Well, thank you very much, Alison. This was wonderful. 

[00:41:07] Allison: Oh, so much. It was such a joy to talk to you. I really appreciate you inviting me in. 

[00:41:14] Jordan: I'm Jorgen Solves and you've been listening to Unshaming. For more information about anyone featured on this show, follow us on Instagram at Unshaming or visit unshamingpodcast.

com. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. If you have questions or want to tell us what you're unshaming, DM us on Instagram or email us at unshamingpodcast at gmail. com. Special thanks to Mirzy for generously providing her original music. You can find her wherever you stream.

Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.