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PLEASE READ: The following 5 episodes include detailed experiences with food, disordered eating, and eating disorders, as well as relationships with food. While this is not intended to trigger anyone, I do want to be mindful of anyone who is struggling and let you know that there may be some moments that are triggering or hit very close to home for you.

My hope and wish is that you see this as an opportunity to learn and heal your relationship with food, however if you feel that is a delicate subject for you at this point in your life, then you may want to skip this mini-series.

Find Part 1 Here

Find Part 2 Here

Find Part 3 Here

Find Part 4 Here

Find Part 5 Here

In this episode, I discuss:

WELCOME TO THE FOOD ANXIETY MINI-SERIES!

These conversations are based around food fear, anxiety, disordered eating, intuitive eating, and changing our relationship to food.

During this episode, I will introduce this mini-series and also share my personal relationship with food and how it has evolved over time.

Additional Resources:

PRODUCT: Tapping to Support Chronic Illness

Discover the immense power of emotional freedom technique! This is an effective tool for your toolbox that will help you to overcome negative beliefs, clear your energy, and even identify information from your subconcious mind so you can get to the root of the challenges you are experiencing.

PRODUCT: Autoimmune Strong

Try a 7-day free trial of Autoimmune Strong! This fitness program was specifically created for people who live with autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain.

BOOK: You Can Heal Your Life

Louise Hay is one of my favorite authors on self-development and releasing limiting beliefs. In this book, she’ll show you how to completely rewrite your story.

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing, and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast is everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode now. Let’s begin.

Welcome. I am so excited for the next four episodes. I had a question that I proposed to the large Autoimmune Tribe community, different social media outlets. And I asked everyone, who knows somebody who coaches, or is in the field of helping people specifically with chronic illness, healed our relationship with food? And while I didn’t necessarily find that perfect person that encompasses that exact niche for their career, in what they offer the world. I did find four women who have very unique stories. And, help others heal their relationship with food in alternative ways.

And this question came up for me originally, because of my own experience with food. And I just want to share with you for a moment, that I’ve had low points in my relationship with food. And yes, you do have a relationship with food because it’s part of our everyday life. We survive off of food. Food is something we think about every single day. Well, we’re still going to think about it, even if you’re fasting, even if you’re not eating it, you’re probably thinking about it, at least a little bit. And it’s so intricately woven into our day to day habit and routine, that we certainly have a relationship with it. But that relationship can change. It can evolve. It can be good. It can be toxic. It can be emotional. And there have been moments in my own healing, where I have opened up my refrigerator and literally, just stared into the abyss of the refrigerator. Wondering what the hell am I going to eat today? What can I eat today? Is there anything in this freaking refrigerator that I can eat today. And getting so upset, because I felt there was nothing that I could eat, that I was brought to tears. Other times I’ve been pissed the fuck off. Other times, I’ve just gotten frustrated and shut the refrigerator door and walked away. And in the moment, I knew that was not a healthy relationship with food. And knowing what I know I said, okay, Sarah, you are approaching this from a place of lack. Let’s think about other ways to think about the refrigerator and the food that is in it. Or maybe let’s put some new things into the refrigerator. Get creative with food. But that doesn’t take away from the intensity of emotion of those moments that I’ve been through.

And this relationship with food has almost been my entire life. I remember I was a really little girl, not really caring about food. It was whatever mom cooked that night or whatever mom ordered that night, that’s what Sarah would eat. And there wasn’t a ton of question about that. And I was never a really picky eater. I certainly didn’t eat everything. I didn’t eat all my vegetables. I know I didn’t like mushrooms or onions when I was little. They’re my favorites now, but I was a pretty good eater, I would say. And then, I got into middle school. And in middle school I hit puberty and I started to get bug bites in my chest, which turned into some boobs. As I’m sure most of you could relate. And my body started changing, and I started menstruating, and my hormones started shifting. And by no, no means was I ever fat or overweight at all.

But there was definitely somebody dysmorphia stuff going on, because I looked in the mirror and I saw fat. I saw love handles, and I would take my hands and I would grab my belly and I would squeeze, the mostly skin on my belly, and want it to disappear, want it to evaporate in my hands. And so, starting in seventh and eighth grade, I would start to run. And I would run around our neighborhood block again and again. And sometimes, I’d rollerblade and sometimes I’d ride my bike, but I was very conscious of whether I felt heavy or I felt thin. And I don’t remember there even being a scale and our house. So I wasn’t weighing myself, but I was very cognizant of how my body looked and how my body felt. And so, I’d run. And I remember the neighbors being, is Sarah on a cross-country team? Why is she running so much? This young girl by herself, just in shorts and a t-shirt running around the block. And I was not on the cross-country team.

I was just conscious of my body and not in a healthy way. And, as I grew older and gotten to high school. Same thing, I would work out. I would run. I was always playing sports. So, that made it pretty easy as well. But I would run after practice sometimes if I didn’t feel I had burned enough calories in soccer practice. And most of the time, I would wait, especially in the summer and on the weekends, when I wasn’t at school. I would wait until like one o’clock in the afternoon to eat. And I thought, okay, well, if I can just wait until one o’clock to eat, but I won’t eat as much today. Therefore, I will not gain weight. And as I reflect on this, I thought I was just a normal girl.

And in many ways, I think I was, but I didn’t see that this relationship and behavior around food was not healthy. That it became a lot of disordered eating stuff. A lot of that stuff came up. And that really continued all through high school, where it was either me not eating, because I felt like I overate the day before. Or never eating past being full and depriving myself. I remember coming home sometimes and eating a donut. Boy, how times have changed. Those chocolate-covered donuts. I remember savoring, every single bite. Being, this is my little treat, and this is my only treat for the day. So I’m going to savor every bite of it. And there were so many emotions tied to food. So many emotions tied to food.

And then, when I got to college, I was drinking a lot and I did gain some weight. Before, I was making ‘love handles’ up in my head. In college, maybe I had a little bit of that, but it was because I was drinking a lot. And I didn’t want to stop drinking, because I loved to be social. I loved to spend time with my friends. I loved to party. It was so much fun for me. And so, I didn’t want to stop drinking beer and taking shots. And that’s just the truth. So I thought, okay, let’s go back to that deprivation. Let’s not eat. And when that didn’t necessarily give me the results that I wanted. I thought, okay, well I’ve been hearing all this stuff about being a vegetarian. Being vegetarian is all the rage. Why don’t I jump on that bandwagon? So I did. I think I was a junior in college and I cut out meat and thought, okay, well, if I just don’t eat meat, then I’ll be skinny.

And it didn’t exactly work that way, because I ate a lot of carbs. A lot of pasta. I didn’t know I had celiac disease at the time. And really felt like shit as a vegetarian. Really, really felt shitty. I had no energy and my skin would continuously get worse and worse and worse being vegetarian. That’s just how my body reacted to it. So after college, I thought, okay, this is not working. And I went on the Autoimmune Paleo protocol. And that’s when I shifted. So, before you even AIP, actually, I just did an elimination diet. Because my wholistic practitioner in Chicago, let’s fast forward to grad school. I don’t even know if AIP existed yet, but elimination diets did. And she was, I think you got something going on with gluten. Let’s do an elimination diet, and we’ll do gluten, but we’ll also do all the cross-reactive foods to gluten.

And then that ended up showing some results, but then, we needed to go deeper. So then I did a lot of other things like dairy and eggs and corn and soy and et cetera, et cetera. Then we went through all these different phases of the Elimination Diet. And I was very religious about this. I was very strict. I followed the rules. If I accidentally ate something, I would start the two weeks over of that elimination phase, and then I would reintroduce. And so, I was a good student, on the elimination diet. And actually, it did help me understand how food was medicine. It helped me understand that, I could shift my relationship with food to, instead of being something that was annoying, and just made me feel crappy, and made me feel bloated. Because up to that time, my relationship with food was really bad, because every time I ate something, I would just bloat.

And then, I started to get so afraid of eating anything, that I just wouldn’t eat. So I did these elimination diets. Got a lot of answers about what my body was reacting to and what it wasn’t reacting to. And changed my diet again, and I reintroduced meat. And I felt like I was healing my relationship with food, because I realized that based on what I ate, that determined how I felt. So I could just pick the foods that made me feel good. Food was like medicine. Food had nutrients. Food could help me heal my gut. Other foods, I started to label as evil.

I started to label as bad, and that’s where it started. It started to change where, instead of food being medicine and healing, this relationship with food. That really did feel good for a while. And then went over to the other end of this different relationship with food where it shifted into nightshades, tomatoes, peppers, white potato, those are bad. Those are not medicine for my body. I should avoid those at all costs.

And then dairy got this label. Dairy got the label of, you will make me break out. Dairy is evil. And all these different major food groups, I started to label as something that wasn’t good for me. And even nuts. Nuts were another food that honestly did not make me feel good. So it was easy to cut them out. But again, then, I could not eat anything that had almond flour in it, almond milk in it, which is a huge substitute for a lot of the foods that don’t have dairy in them. And then, I started to get fucking frustrated, to be Frank. I started to get so frustrated because I had this long list of all the foods that made me feel like shit. And this short little list of foods that made me feel good.

And I thought I was just eating intuitively. But then, I realized that I actually was labeling this food as bad. And therefore, depriving myself in so many ways, and not really seeking the support or alternatives or creative ideas for cooking, that maybe would have helped me get through this time. So I just ate those 10, 12, 15 foods that I could eat, that made me feel good and thought, this is my life. And I felt kind of sorry for myself. And I would just eat from those specific foods until they started to make me feel like shit.

And the day that I realized that chicken made me feel crappy, was the day that I really started to freak out. I was, that’s one of the main foods that I can eat. What’s going to happen if I can’t eat chicken anymore? And so, the relationship took this huge turn with food, that then literally, it was, I just never even wanted to eat. I thought I can’t eat anything so I might as well not eat. And it’s almost full circle of where I started. Where there was so much fear and so much anxiety. I was afraid to eat out because I didn’t even know exactly what was in the food. If I ordered something gluten-free, I’d take a couple of bites, and then I’d wait 15 minutes to make sure it was okay. And then I would eat the rest of it if I felt okay, because I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust any of the kitchens to really make a gluten-free meal. And I didn’t want to risk feeling like crap. Maybe some you do that and that’s okay. But this was constant for me. Where it was, I didn’t trust anyone with my food.

I didn’t trust anyone to prepare my food. It became very isolating, very isolating. And fortunately, my partner will eat the way that I eat, but he was getting bored with it too. And so, there was all this anxiety and all this fear. And there were so many moments when I opened up that refrigerator and was, how did I get here? How did this happen? And I still have some moments like that, where open up the refrigerator and I’m, man. Usually, it’s, Sarah you could have prepared better this week, but sometimes it’s, nothing sounds good. But I think we all have those moments. Other times it’s, I can’t eat anything.

And so, I’m still healing that relationship with food. And what I really wanted to dive into with this little mini-series, within the podcast is what solutions has this community come up with? How do you heal your relationship with food? How do you turn that relationship into intuitive eating, and a healthy relationship with the food on your plate. Finding gratitude for your food, eating mindfully, all the things that we know are good for us. But when we get into this dark place of, I can’t eat anything. That food is evil, this food is good. And we put labels on everything. That, to me, felt like a very slippery slope that I was going down. And I recognized it, I acknowledged it, and I pulled myself the hell out of it, because I didn’t want to live the rest of my life, which I hope to be a long, long life, with that relationship with food.

So, here we are, and I have four beautiful, wonderful, knowledgeable women to share with you, and introduce to you, in this mini-series within the podcast. And they each again, have unique experiences to share.

And I share a little bit of my story throughout these interviews as well. So, you’ll hear a little bit of my story come up. But mostly, there’s tools, tools for you to start to shift out of this place of lack, and what the hell am I going to eat today? Or I probably just shouldn’t eat until 1:00 p.m. These unhealthy patterns, and shift that into loving your body. Loving your food, realizing that food is medicine. And we can always shift, we can always change this relationship. And I’m happy, happy, and grateful to say that my relationship with food has changed a lot. Even in the past year, where I’m no longer living from a place of lack, wondering what the heck I’m going to eat next. And instead, every Sunday I sit down and I tune into my intuition, and maybe I pull out a couple of my cookbooks. And I pick the meals that I’m going to prepare for dinner each night that week.

And I write them on this pretty board. It’s like a chalkboard, but I use chalk pens. And it hangs in our kitchen. I have an opportunity to make something beautiful out of it. And then, I make a grocery list based on those meals that I’ll prepare for the week. And then I go to the store and I buy everything I need for those meals. And it’s in the refrigerator and there’s variety in what I eat. Because I’m conscious to create the right variety, and the food is there ready, so I don’t have to scramble last minute to make it. And for me, that’s turned into a really good habit and pattern to have. And helped me shift my relationship with food as well. I think that each of us has been to find a different way to heal. And that, again, is why I’m so excited.

Each of these women, I had no idea you guys. I had no idea what they were going to say about their relationship with food, or how they healed their relationship with food. But when we went into these conversations, I had these conversations with them. By the end of these four conversations, I had to giggle to myself, because they’re all so different, so different from each other. And I think that is the coolest thing, because each of you is different. You are each unique. And so what works for you is going to be different. So now, after listening to the following four episodes, you’re going to have a huge toolbox. Pick and choose what feels good to you, and then implement that into your life.

So, I’m so excited. Let’s dive into those mini-series on food fear, food anxiety, and intuitive eating. And I’d love to hear from you after you listened to these episodes, what has shifted for you? What are you going to change or implement into your life?

So much for tuning into today’s episode? I am beyond honored to hold this space for you. To create this content for you. And to stimulate our brains and make us think in a different way, including me. This podcast has shifted the way I have thought as well. And if there’s anything that you took away from this episode or any other episode, I would be so honored and grateful if you would share that with me on social media. Either through a personal message or put it in your Instagram story, tag Autoimmune Tribe. And know that we’re in this together. That this is truly a community. That our paths are interwoven for a reason. And that we get this beautiful opportunity to come together for the greater healing of all of our unique bodies.

So, if you loved this episode or any of the other episodes of the Healing Uncensored podcast, please share them with a friend, a loved one, an acquaintance. You never, never know whose life you might be impacting or changing with just a simple share. That’s all for now, tribe. I will see you next time. Have a beautiful rest of your day. I love you so much.

 

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