Five: Diets, Dogma, and Dollars

Are you religious about your workouts? A fanatic about nutrition? Do you consider yourself a clean eater or try to stay “good" about your fitness?

While it’s funny to joke about Crossfit or veganism being a “cult,” have you ever stopped to really consider the intersections of religion and food? And what happens when your religious fervor gets tied up with your income stream?

In this episode, we’ll look at the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the spread of orthorexia (the “clean eating disorder”), and how wellness entrepreneurship becomes both a cover for an eating disorder and its perpetuator among non-eating disordered people.

Transcript

Sarah Vance 0:00

We still don't get paid what I believe we're worth

Tiana Dodson 0:03

I had secretly been wanting to try health coaching

Carrie Ingoglia 0:06

women have been dropping out.

Andi Zeisler 0:08

Your body is the next frontier of liberation.

Stefani Ruper 0:12

You have to monetize.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 0:13

We buy into this idea that anyone can do this

Victoria Ferriz 0:16

your body becomes proof

Kelly Diels 0:17

whether or not we're trying to sell a service or product. All women are brands

Brenda Swann 0:21

now I'm a health coach.

Kaila Tova 0:25

My name is Kaila Tova, and this is your body your brand, Episode Five, diets dogma and dollars. Content note. This podcast will talk about weight loss, anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, and exercise addiction.

From 1944 to 1945, scientists actually began an experiment on the effects of starvation using human subjects. They couldn't do an experiment like this today, but back then they could and in order to better understand starvation and repeating in order to help the war effort, research that the University of Minnesota gathered a group of 36 conscientious objectors to World War Two all able bodied sis men without a history of mental illness. The men spent 12 weeks in observation to obtain a baseline and then 26 weeks fed below 1600 calories a day, which is considered a starvation diet for people born with a penis in an effort to have them lose 25% of their body weight, then they would go through a repeating period. The men did not enter the study with anorexia. So to make this clear, the men did not enter the study with anorexia, but they began to display many of the physiological and psychological behaviors of the anorexics during the starvation period. According to apa.org, and I quote, beyond the gaunt appearance of the men, there were significant decreases in their strength and stamina, body temperature, heart rate and sex drive. The psychological effects were significant as well. Hunger made the men obsessed with food, they would dream and fantasize about food, read and talk about food and savor the two meals a day they were given. They reported fatigue, irritability, depression and apathy. Interestingly, the men also reported decreases in mental ability. Although mental testing of the men did not support this belief. This study could never be repeated today for legal reasons. I mean, deliberately starving a person and then studying their reaction most likely would never make it off the ground, let alone receive a peer reviewed status. So when they talk about the Minnesota starvation experiment, most people focus on the short term effects, the men began developing the physical and mental symptoms of anorexics. But what about the long term effects? These men who were starved for half a year eating the same number of calories recommended for weight loss by your favorite TV nutritionist or bodybuilding forum or Instagram health coach? Well, they became obsessed with food long term, some became so obsessed that they quit their jobs to enter the food industry themselves, so they could be around food all the time, for at least my entire lifetime since the 1980s. Our culture has unwittingly been perpetrating this experiment on an entire generation of women. We have been taught to under eat and over exercise to view those actions as noble pursuits worthy of reward. And as a result, many of us have become obsessed with food. I'm not just talking about like having cheat days or binge eating after a diet, but long term obsession with food. I spent most of my life living with disordered eating and calling it clean. My calorie restriction and over exercise were lauded by everyone around me is healthy. So I didn't actually know that there could be anything wrong with it. I was under eating but all I could think about was food. I lived on healthy living blogs, reading recipes obsessively. Eventually, I became a baker. I started baking cookies every single day and bringing them to France, co workers and cast mates whenever I was in a play. And then people started paying me to make them cookies. So I started a company, but I never ate what I baked. I had other people test my recipes for me. I said that making people food was my love language and that I just enjoyed making others happy. But in reality, I just wanted to be close to food all the time. I also became addicted to exercise. I couldn't take a single rest day because my brain had become dependent on the endorphins generated by exercise. If I had to miss a workout, I would grow anxious and irritable. I was a terror to be around anytime there was a holiday or a gym was closed or I was on vacation, and well betide anyone who tried to make plans with me that interfered with my ability to get my daily workout in. People just told me I was dedicated. But I was more than dedicated. I had an addiction, a real one, and no one ever thought about offering an intervention. Even after I decided go into eating disorder recovery, I put myself in situations where I could be around or talk about food and exercise all day, I got certified as a personal trainer, I signed up for a bodybuilding competition, I became vegan, and then paleo and then a health coach. All of those decisions were in part, fueled by my earnest desire to be around food and to exercise all day. And that's the part I want to talk about today, in part, fueled by the knowledge that I could make my desire into a career, so I wouldn't have to stop becoming a personal trainer and then a health coach meant that my identity as a food person would be tied to my income to stop would then be insanity, even if it was also insanity, literal insanity to keep going. When I talk about this, most people outside of the eating disorder community just tune out. It's not relevant to them. They reason because they don't have an eating disorder. So why should they care? my eating disorder is not after all, a good reason why someone who isn't suffering from a mental illness should stop going to say orange theory seven days a week. But, and this is a big, but I believe that it's not only relevant, it's absolutely imperative that we all learn to have this conversation and recognize damaging behaviors before they happen. There are two major reasons why I believe this should matter to everyone. Reason one, by glorifying under eating and calorie or nutrient restriction or biohacking or obsessive exercise and then showcasing them on the internet is healthy. People with eating disorders are being given a cover for their behaviors and turning these behaviors into a career. And by turning these behaviors into a career. Their recoveries are hindered by their dependence on their behaviors as an income source. reason to non disordered people want to know how to be healthy. So they may find and follow people who are participating in and promoting disordered behaviors related to food and exercise. They're literally being taught by the influencers from reason one, how to have disordered relationships with food and fitness. In other words, we're paying people to spread the Minnesota starvation experiment for free and without peer review. And it's spreading like wildfire, especially as women look for ways to make money outside of the traditional workplace.

Katie Dalebout 7:25

I studied journalism, I wanted to be a TV news reporter. But weirdly, I got very into wellness see things and wellness blogs, specifically at the end of college, started one myself and gotten so far down the rabbit hole that I had an eating disorder.

Kaila Tova 7:41

That's Katie Dalebout the author of let it out, and the host of the let it out podcast. Katie and I met via the internet several years ago now when we were both coming to the same realization about the dangers posed by the allure of wellness blogging. So let's just start, because I do want to break this down a little bit. Because the audience may not know kind of what you mean, necessarily. But so you had a wellness blog, and it turned into an eating disorder. So what does that mean?

Katie Dalebout 8:09

Well, what really happened was, I was in college, and I hated my first two years of school, I really wanted to go away to school, and I didn't. And I was really unhappy. I was doing yoga all the time. But I was really disconnected from my body. And I didn't really have any good role models around me with people's relationship to food. And I didn't know what was happening. But I knew I didn't like my body just like most women, and I was wanting to change it. But I didn't know how I really know what to do. But then there was the internet. So I kind of read everything. And I was like I could do this cleanse. And I could do that. And I started just kind of play around with things and it felt very in my control. And that felt like a really good feeling.

Kaila Tova 9:04

Now, as we discussed in the previous episode, many of the women that I interviewed didn't start off talking about their careers, they started talking about their relationships with their bodies. But those poor relationships were almost always rooted in issues of unhappiness and feeling like they were out of control of their lives, a feeling that often related directly to their job or career path. Maybe their careers felt unfulfilling, or underpaid or black direction over so stressful that they had no time to take care of themselves, or eat well, or exercise. And as you've probably experienced yourself, women identifying people are often encouraged by the mass media by women's magazines, and now social media like Instagram to fix themselves first, after that, the rest should just fall into place. What when we feel unhappy or out of control, we often seek resources to help us regain control, or to help us feel in control for the first time. And with the internet, those resources are readily available.

Katie Dalebout 10:08

I just like naturally kind of lost this weight that I had put on my first couple of years of college, and maybe then some. And that became very satisfying to me the fact that the compliments I got and the you know, people admiring that it felt very in my control. And I felt like Well, I do that. Why don't I do a little more and that, you know, that's a slippery, slippery slope. And so I started dieting and I started controlling. And I just got more intuitive, more intuitive, more into it until I was doing really, really negative things that that aren't worth going into.

Kaila Tova 10:51

Well, we can debate whether eating disorders are caused by nature or nurture. And we can debate whether Katie may have been predisposed to disordered eating behavior before where she found wellness blogs on the internet. The fact of the matter is, many of the behaviors being promoted as health on the internet are actually quite disordered. They're restrictive, extreme or unnecessary. And they almost always promote a thin or lean ideal that cannot be achieved without restriction or over exercise. And even in recovery, many people turn to wellness blogs as a way to mask their eating disorder behaviors. Because after all, those blogs that say they're all about Holistic Health really just promote the exact same thing, restriction and over exercise, and in that way, it becomes a false mirror for recovery.

Katie Dalebout 11:40

I was like okay, okay, I get that I have a problem here because I you know, I there was like an intervention and I had to get treatment and all that, but my way out of it was orthorexia. My way I was like okay, guys, I got this, I'm just gonna be more avocados no big deal. You know.

Andrea Lamarre 11:59

Every year, there's at least one story that's like the new eating disorder orthorexia, or when you know when clean eating goes wrong.

Kaila Tova 12:07

Dr. Andrea Lamarre, who recently graduated with a PhD from the University of Guelph has dedicated her academic career to studying eating disorders and weight stigma. Here she weighs in on orthorexia.

Andrea Lamarre 12:19

Literally, it's been around since you know, earlier 2000s. In terms of people recognizing it in clinical and research literature, it's pretty controversial. From a diagnostic standpoint, like, there is no diagnosis of orthorexia. But, essentially, what we're talking about, I think, or at least how I would approach it would be, you know, the obsession with eating quote, unquote, healthy foods only. And I think those differ a little bit depending on who the person is, and what sorts of health communities they've been, I guess, groomed in. But I think it's kind of focusing on only those foods that are seen as morally right and good. And there's that moralization, I think of health that exists within that. And those things that are seen as like, you know, treating your body as a temple and making sure that you're only eating those things that are going to bring you the greatest health benefit. And it's not even necessarily about being dinner. But it's definitely about being healthier to the extent that it becomes quite obsessive, and continues to kind of rule your life and it makes it really hard to be in social situations. It makes it really hard to basically do anything but focus on you know, how your day is going to revolve around your food and possibly also your exercise.

Emily Deans 13:40

Are you thinking about eating and what you're putting in your mouth and your food so much, that it really consumes a lot of your day, and it's causing you a great deal of anxiety.

Kaila Tova 13:50

Emily Deans is a general adult psychiatrist whose blog on Psychology Today explores evolutionary health, I asked her to define orthorexia, at least as she he's seen it in her practice.

Emily Deans 14:02

But you can't go out and eat with your friends and not be kind of worried about oh my god, what oil are they doing and this you know, in the fish, it makes sense if you have some sort of a severe allergic reactions to fish, or if you have celiac disease, to be worried about cross contamination. But if you're worried about contamination principle, in general, with unhealthy food, if you go to a BBQ, then that's probably a problem. You know, you're spending too much time thinking about food, you're adding anxiety.

Kaila Tova 14:42

So by now, you're probably like, Alright, so what does this have to do with women dropping out of the workforce? Well, sadly, there's an important tie in your brand.

So when we're talking about a company, or a corporation, or some kind of entity that employs people, when they create a business, and they're knowingly creating a specific voice, message and image of themselves, they usually hire people to do that. And in order to gain their audiences trust, and therefore make money they need to strictly adhere to their brand. And, you know, while that may work for like a large company, or even a small one, it can create problems for these solo printers and influencers, who have to turn their lives into a company and stick to that brand in order to sell. Because for a singular person, to turn your life into a brand and to do so authentically, you really have to believe that the concept of the product or the lifestyle you're selling is integral to your own life. So I asked Daniel Pink about the intersection of sales and belief, can you sell a thing you don't believe in? How hard Do you have to believe in the thing you're selling in order to make the sale?

Daniel Pink 15:50

You know, you're asking profound questions about the nature of belief in some level, and that goes to very deep questions of philosophy and neurosis science. So I do think I mean, I on a more mundane level, I did ask a lot of sale in doing research for that just a lot of people, this this like this, this, there's this notion out there like oh, this person, you know, they can sell anything, they're natural salesperson, they can sell anything they could sell ice to Eskimos is always the stupid phrase that is used. And I asked seasoned sales people about that. And I would say 95% of them disagreed with that. Yeah, because their view was that, hey, if you don't act like again, in the short term, you can do that. Okay. But in in, turn it for any amount of time, no, you actually can't, like, you're not going to just, it's not like you can't do it. Because the moral weight of that treachery isn't going away on YouTube much that the reason is that you you're not you're not very good at it. Because for as you say that that lack of belief leaks, and people can see it.

Kaila Tova 17:02

And if lack of belief leaks, then to be an authentic salesperson online, you do have to believe wholeheartedly in the lifestyle that you're pushing. And that whole heartedness can lead to the adoption and projection of the most extreme version of the behaviors that you're performing around food and fitness. authentic and effective. Branding requires that you stick with your message and project a clear and concise version of who you are and what you believe to your audience. Which means that if you have a quote unquote, healthy persona online, then you better make damn sure that people know it if you want to make money from them. And then there's a second problem. You can't just be selling the same thing over and over. Because as a quote unquote, real person, there must be more to your life, and your audience probably will get bored seeing the same message over and over again. So what happens is that when you start to run out of content, you have to get even more creative, which often means more restrictive or extreme with your on brand messaging. Here's some of the deans to explain the origins of the term orthorexia.

Emily Deans 18:07

orthorexia was originally a term coined by this guy named Stephen Brockman was an interesting fellow he was an alternative medicine practitioner big into kind of she was at a vegetarian commune and was serving people those macrobiotic diets where you have to cut up these raw vegetables and then cook them just blanch them and just this tiny pieces and it's a very the most Orthorexic of Orthorexic i think is a macrobiotics. And you would be he was a chef at this commune and people would fight each other over you know, you couldn't have the if you had any salmon out there couldn't you couldn't have contaminated the table and sounds like everybody there was a little bit over the top with their purity and trying to keep themselves clean.

Kaila Tova 19:00

In other words orthorexia the obsessive compulsive anxiety causing emotional or mental illness depending on whom you ask, mimics the way people project their health behaviors online. Yes, believe it or not, much of what you see marketed on the internet is health, clean eating healthy living natural diets, etc. It's actually a form of disordered eating, and worse for many of your favorite bloggers and personal trainers and bodybuilders and Yogi's etc. It's a way to mask severe control or body image issues. And the more you click like or buy from them, the more you validate those behaviors to them. And the more you validate those behaviors, the more they develop the social proof that makes them look like legitimate models of health. It's a vicious cycle. So while you yourself may not have an eating disorder proper, you may still be practicing disordered behaviors being marketed to you by your favorite Healthy Living blogger or personal trainer. This is not to say that you have an eating disorder if you follow a diet or exercise plan that you found on the internet, or that say, eating avocados is unhealthy, but rather just say, just because those avocados look great on someone's Instagram feed doesn't mean that obsessing about food purity is necessarily a good thing for your mental or emotional health. In our last episode, we heard from Bethany Edwards, the PhD who became a bodybuilder and essentially purchased a pass for orthorexia from her bodybuilding coach at a time when she was particularly in need of a feeling of control over her life and her body

Bethanie Edwards 20:38

took that kind of obsessive behavior to a whole new level the bodybuilding did then your, you know, like depleting your body of water and like you're not eating any salt. And like I was saying, I recently got a list of like 16 foods that I was allowed to eat, you know, no salt, no milk, no dairy, no grain, you know, those are things that like I wasn't eating anyways, but it was you know, just sweet potatoes, broccoli, chicken, spinach, and like strawberries at the end, you know, like this is all the way through those allowed to continue. And, and I think I was going through a really hard time during that time here. My grandmother was dying and, and, you know, the orthorexia and, and really any eating disorder, it's never about food. Sometimes it's about the food, but very rarely is actually about food. It's always about controlling our emotions and exerting some sort of control over any aspect of our life that we can.

Kaila Tova 21:43

She's not the only example, Sarah Vance, the body image coach, whom we met last time as well fell into orthorexia via her bodybuilding diet.

Sarah Vance 21:51

So I ended up hiring a coach and got my first diet. And at that time, my life was pretty, pretty low, I was at a low point in my life. And when I decided, you know, this is a great time to to do all this shit. But that's, that's again, it buys into that, that idea that, you know, if I just have this body, if I look like this, then I'm not going to have to worry about the stuff that I'm worrying about, I'm gonna, it's gonna, you know, I'm going to feel loved, I'm not going to feel alone, because that's the stuff that I was really dealing with. And nonetheless, I hired my coach went on my first diet, it was horrible. I remember, it was so bad, I'm not going to get into details, but it was a really, really strict diet. And not safe whatsoever. Looking back on it, I mean, I there's times that I know, I probably should not have been on the floor as an artist because my brain was not getting enough food in general to even think properly. Yeah, so. But what comes along with that is because it was such a drastic diet, you know, it's the first time in my life that I had actually ever really restricted or anything like that, my body of course, changed, it was forced to because I was practically starving myself. So my body changed. And with that comes, you know, the praise, the validation, you know, things that were issues before started fixing themselves. You know, so it just kind of manifested as, okay, this is this is my life is fine, but it really wasn't like I was still in the depths of who I was still was not doing well. So I competed for probably, I want to say a year or a year and a half that I was on a diet straight for a year and a year and a half. You know, perfectionism is something that I had always struggled with my entire life and different aspects. And it's still something that I struggle with. Because I think that's for some people think that once you let go and you do all this work, that you're going to be never struggling with stuff. That's that's complete bullshit. But nonetheless, I say that because perfectionism was so driven and all of this that like I did do the cheat meals, I didn't do any of that stuff for a long time. Like, when I was like, I did everything driven by perfectionism. So I competed for a really long time ended up winning, I would say most of my shows that I did either first place or overall or second place, so it just drives this whole mentality. And as you progress in bodybuilding, it's you have to get leaner, you it's what's next, what can I quote, unquote, fix what can I quote, unquote, improve? How can I get smaller and smaller and smaller, yada, yada, yada. So I ended up going to Nationals. And this is when I was extremely disorder when I was in nationals. And I started actually having symptoms related to over exercising and extreme restriction, which is, of course, you know, losing my period, my hair, my nails, my hormones were a disaster, my sex drive was non existent, my sleep cycle was all jacked up. And I had full blown anxiety. This is when I started switching from restriction to binge just that that pendulum that kept swinging back and forth. And it was all very much out of I was very scared. I was anxious about food. And that is when I realized that that's the in it that I talked about when I'm I'm in it, that's, when's my next meal? What am I going to eat? How much am I going to eat? When am I going to work out? What am I going to do? When when it's all around that it's that is the life that is the life? You know, my friendships that I had became non existent the relationship that I was in, even though it was shitty, there wasn't even if it was a good relationship, quote, unquote, there would not even been mental space to even think about it. Everything was very much just, what about what am I doing in relation to food working out in my body, that's it, you can't just go out to dinner and like order something, it's all you see our numbers or when you're working out, that's all you think about, or you're spending copious amounts of in the mirror, and the constant breeding that you have with that self talk. So I went to Nationals had all those symptoms, and I just remember thinking, like, Okay, this is this is it, like, I thought this was going to be, you know, like, thought this is going to change my life, like, what the hell, when you're in it, then you become fearful. And the fear is what keeps you trapped in it. It's the fear that keeps you there. Because the fear is, well, I don't want to go off the diet, because that's scary as hell because I'm going to lose, I'm going to gain weight, and all this stuff is going to happen. And that's the internalized fat phobia that so many of us have. So then you're trapped in it. So eventually, I, you know, do a lot of what a lot of people do is they become personal trainers, because once you that's the only way that you can really uphold that quote unquote, lifestyle is by then, you know, teaching it to other people by living in the gym. It's what keeps you quote unquote, accountable. So I became a personal trainer.

Kaila Tova 26:59

Bethanie Edward's had a similar experience.

Bethanie Edwards 27:06

You know, but this whole time and so like flirting with this idea of like, Oh, well, I'm invested all this time and effort into becoming a fitness competitor. So I competed. I should ninth place. I think my grandmother died, like the week before. I think it was like, on my period, or, you know, it was kind of a disaster, I took ninth place, I was really proud of myself. And I remember being at like, the meeting for the, like, the competitors meeting, like the night before. And the MC saying something along the lines of like, you know, for some of you, this is like the fittest you'll ever be you know, some of you will never be this fit again, some of you girls, you're going to have babies, and they'll just never be this. And I was like, Oh my god, like, I must hold on to this I must maintain there's like peaks a week that I have, you know, and they said another thing during that competitors meeting about how many of you guys are personal trainers? And very few hands when nothing? It was oh, well, I'm really surprised. Very few of you guys a personal trainer. So somehow in life, you know, starving, hungry, you know, hungry mind, I like put it like, okay, I want to keep this pizza, the and training people and building a business. And you've shown us other people how to get this is how I do it.

Kaila Tova 28:34

Sarah and Bethany are not alone and seeking out careers that help them continue or mask their behaviors. Here's something Katie del about said during our conversation that really struck me,

Katie Dalebout 28:44

I spoke about this with my friend, Christie Harrison, who I know you also know we were talking about this, and the how so many people now are becoming trainers or fitness instructors or health coaches or wellness bloggers, or food stylist or whatever. And that's great. But I think what's interesting, and I definitely fall into that category in Christie said that she did as well is that our eating disorders, informed our career path for the rest of our lives. So because we happen to have an eating disorder, at this time in our lives, where our career was in this malleable place for me, it was right when I graduated from college, you know the time in your life where you're trying to figure out what where you're going to start out in the world. And that's where I wanted to focus because that's where my interest was at the time. You know, at the time, what I was so excited by was green juice and kale and watching all these people on the internet make themselves a lifestyle out of it. And I was so confused in my own life of you know, how do I be happy in my career and my life and my body. And I would just look at these women on the internet. And at the time, there wasn't really I think there was just Instagram, I don't even think I had an iPhone, or I think I had just had an iPhone and just had Instagram very new. So it was nothing compared to what it is today. This was 2012. But it was just starting. And I looked at these women who had platforms again, not even have the platform that they that they are today. And I was like, okay, she's living where I want to live. This person lives in New York City, this person has a, you know, partner that she looks really happy with this person looks like they're fulfilled in their job, their food looks really yummy, because they're talking about and how great it is. And they're happy with their body, I'm going to just do whatever she does, I'm going to eat whatever she eats, I'm going to go down that career path, and then I'll be happy.

Victoria Ferriz 31:10

Before I got before I was interested in fitspo as the concept of fitspo, but even knowing to call it fitspo. I became interested in it because through Instagram,

Kaila Tova 31:21

we met documentarian Victoria for reason our last episode, Victoria has been interviewing experts on something called fits bow or fits permeation the idea that we need to be constantly inspired to be fit. So we produce or consume images of ourselves or others working out accompanied by messaging, which toes if not completely crosses the line to being obsessive, restrictive or extreme. So I had had an eating disorder since I was about nine years old, I began

Victoria Ferriz 31:51

restricting my food. By the time I was 15, I had already developed Billy Mia. And it kind of went on all the way into my late 20s. When I discovered Instagram, I was about 26 years old. And I had always felt that if I fixed my body, that things would be okay. So there were other things I wanted in life. But somehow this whole body thing just kept coming back that I was meant to have a fit body, I was meant to have a six pack, I always wanted it. And I had I would promise it to myself, every single New Year's, and I just couldn't follow through, I would try some crazy diet go super extreme and then fail and then blame myself. And so when I found Instagram, what was cool about it was that I now had the solution to how to get this body. I became familiar with the bikini competition, the NPC bikini competition, I found out about, you know, women who, from all walks of life, either they used to be overweight, or they were moms or they were very thin before whatever. But you know, if they hired a coach, and they signed up for a competition, and they trained really hard, hard for four months seems to be the average time that the transformations took place, they could get that body. So at the time I was having a I was struggling with Believe me again. And I just felt I was all out of control. So I wanted to have something to hold me accountable. Something that would force me to follow through with not only this, this fantasy, this dream that I was had of having this body, but also that would help me kind of give me an excuse to to keep my eating disorder under control. It still involved being very controlling around food, it would still involve being at the gym all the time, which was I was already doing. But now I had somebody else supervising it for me, which was where my coaches, and I had a deadline that I had to meet, I had told all my friends that I was going to do it, I had already purchased my entry into the competition. So now I had to do it. And what was great about it is I had Instagram, and Instagram to document my journey. So I began to use hashtags, including fits bow to not only find other people who were also going through a body transformation, but also to document my own. And you know, it's funny. In all the people I've interviewed be at experts or lay people, one of the things I've one of the stories I've often heard is yes, sometimes I would lay there in my bed, either in the morning or late at night, scrolling through my Instagram, looking at Fitness photos, to either motivate me for the next day, or to motivate me to get out of bed that morning so that I can go into it. And as the training got harder. I I relied more on Cisco I relied more on the means that would tell me that if I didn't want it badly enough, or, you know, I was I was a big fan of listening to YouTube videos of like Bodybuilding Motivation, you know, and, and Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about you know, you know, you know that stuff. When I, when I finished my competition, I was very scared that I would no longer have this Regiment, I would no longer I would no longer have anything to hold me accountable. So I signed up for another one a month after after my first one. And I'll tell you this was really difficult, because I no longer could even feel through the documentary. I found that a lot of people, including myself, we want to change our bodies, because we think it's going to make us happier. And you know, one of the things you often hear is, well, I want to look good naked. There's this sense that if we feel comfortable enough in our naked body, they will feel unstoppable. But that's the last that's the last thing that's the last step to feeling fulfilled to feeling truly accomplished. And what no one tells you is that when you get to that place, sometimes you don't feel anything, you can't feel anything because you've depleted your hormones. Because you're so low body fat. Because you have become I'm a robot and movement is a longer movement movement is is how many calories of my burden, how many reps am I doing? How many sets how many circuits, your life becomes numbers, you know, your food is no longer pleasure and smells, your food is now macros and you know protein grams. I remember listening to one of my one of my Bodybuilding Motivation videos was Jay Cutler talking about, you know, I no longer see food as fuel, I see, food is food, I see it as fuel. And I think that's awesome, I want to get to that place. And I got to that place and it sucked. And it took a long time to recover from it.

Kaila Tova 36:39

And as I mentioned earlier, this doesn't just happen to people who have eating disorders. This happens to people who are exposed to diet, culture and messages about controlling their body and controlling their health people who have internalized these messages and then are exposed to media, from magazines to Instagram, that show us how controlling the body will supposedly make your life better. Here's Sarah Vance again.

Sarah Vance 37:02

My parents were bodybuilders and I think that's a important facet to kind of say because it's always, you know, bodybuilding when I was younger, it wasn't as prominent as it is now I feel like everybody in their mom knows somebody that does some type of competition, right? Like it's it blew up. But when I was younger, my mom and dad are bodybuilders. So I it's always was kind of something that I would was aware about. I remember my mom and dad, you know, going through the whole process of dieting, working out yada yada doing their shows, but I never really considered doing that, like I didn't really give a shit. So I grew up and went to school for nursing. And, you know, in nursing school, of course, they scare the shit out of you, I think that's with any type of medical field that you're going to go into, they tell you all these things, and they're like, this is what you do in order to not have this and of course, in our traditional healthcare system, it's related to you better not gain weight, you have to, you know, do this you have to this is how you quote unquote, should take care of yourself to basically prevent these illnesses. So I was like, Well, you know, I probably want to start taking care of myself because as a new grad and ICU, I was like, I don't want to end up in ICU bed. I don't want to deal with this shit. Because, you know, because I have control over that shit, right? Like I have complete control. That's the illusion that's that's the lie. We don't we don't have complete control over that. But anyway, so but on top of that, you know, I wasn't really feeling great my body. So I thought, well, I'm going to start working out because I want to take care of myself quote, unquote, but behind that was the Asterix of I really just want to lose weight. So I went down the route of of, you know, lifting weights, and it really wasn't an obsession until I started, I saw a competitor. And I this is like, pure as day I remember it like it was I mean, this was years ago. And I still remember this exact moment like I so vivid to me, seeing this woman and that was like the deciding factor of like, this is what I'm going to do.

Kaila Tova 39:01

The issue that I want people to take away from this discussion is not about the eating disorder itself, but about how and why it develops. I want people to understand that the word influencer isn't a meaningless buzzword. The people who use their bodies to sell nutrition, fitness and body image do truly influence people like you and me. And if you choose to become one of those influencers, your images and messages will have an impact on others. I spoke with Alan Lovitz professor of Chinese religion, and the author of the gluten lie and the forthcoming the dark side of Paradise, about influence and the connection between clean eating spirituality and the dangers of making our food and our bodies, our higher power.

Alan Levinovitz 39:44

I think a lot of us, especially, you know, in modern society, it's hard not to miss the kind of moralizing language that's around food. So I remember I think there's there's some kind of ice cream called Halo top ice cream, which is the lower calorie right, so there's a halo on it. There's this association between mean, between being good and pure, and eating the right kinds of foods. And so I was I was noticing this religiosity and moralizing around food. And I thought to myself, well, no wonder is this a, is this a new thing? Or has there always been this kind of implicit connection between being good and eating? Well, and how's that shaped our the history of our food, and of course, you know, it hit me then what will make a lot of sense if it did, because every basically every religious tradition in the world, one of the things that it's done is prescribed the kinds of foods that people shouldn't shouldn't eat. And often those prescriptions from the daoists monks that I study, to, you know, the first first dietary trial, which is in the Hebrew Bible, in which you know, they go vegetarian for a week, and everyone's really healthy. You know, I realized that these kinds of promises, eat this, not that and you'll, you know, heal yourself and achieve salvation, have been have been around for a very long time. And so I wanted to show people that actually, the decisions that we're making about what to eat and what's what we shouldn't, shouldn't eat, aren't really secular. And they aren't really scientific. But they're also shot through with this kind of implicit religious moralism that distorts the truth about food and can also be really damaging to our relationship with food in general. Nevertheless, you need to talk like this, if you want people to listen to you, because people are looking for certainty and guidance, you know, you think that dietary demons would scare people. But actually, it's scarier living in a world where there aren't any demons, because then you don't know why you suffer. And if there's someone out there, who's willing to point out the demons and call their names, and then promise salvation, that feels better than can relax you that makes you feel more confident about the way you're living your life. And so that's what that's what I think drives the incredible certainty that you see in a lot of these online, diet gurus. Another thing I point out, this is just this is just an aside that I think is really funny. One of the weird things is that if if these diets actually worked, and were effortless, the way the way we we think they are, there wouldn't be nearly the the market and the continued staying power of all these gurus. So I was struck, for example, by Gwyneth Paltrow, who is endlessly advocating these sorts of diets. And yet, she's never happy for long, right? She's always like, Oh, I started eating this way. And it totally changed my life. But then two weeks later, it's like, I was tired all the time. So I tried this new thing, and now she's got these vitamins supplements out that are that, you know, she was like, I've been eating well, and sleeping well, and I'm still tired and depressed all the time. And for me, it's like, you know, maybe, maybe if the Savior's keep coming out with new sticks, and new ways to start stick to whatever diet it is that they're trying to put you on. Maybe it's not so easy. After all, maybe there is no miracle cure, and maybe what we're really struggling against, and pretending doesn't exist is the basic human condition in which sometimes we feel good. And sometimes we don't, and we have trouble doing the kinds of things that we want to do. And we look for rules to help us feel better.

Kaila Tova 43:22

I was actually listening to another podcast recently, and there was a guy who had recently gone paleo and he had started following the bulletproof diet, which is questionable. And he, he was talking about how everything in his life got better when he's, he cleaned up his food, he can think better, he has better interactions with his children, he's gotten his life under control, simply because he puts butter in his coffee. On that same vein, you know, I was targeted with a Facebook ad by somebody who I used to follow in the Paleo world. And he, his ad said, you know, one person lost 40 pounds, and another person, you know, quit their job, because they made enough money online. And like, you can have all of this to just by joining my cooking tribe, like, because, you know, marketers call everything tribes. You know, so it was one of those things where it was like, Okay, so in addition to having that, that tribal feeling, like, identify with other people, therefore, I'm safe in this group. There's also this sense of needing control over your own self. by proving you know, well, because I can only eat fat for breakfast, and then eat nothing else for the rest of the day. I am therefore in control, and therefore I am worthy of, you know, the money, the fame, the family, whatever it is that you're trying to go for. And I wonder, kind of, is it because we're so out of control? Because we've lost a sense of religiosity?

Alan Levinovitz 44:56

Well, I think, you know, I think we've always, we've always been out of control. You know, I mean, events, humans have always been, you know, the mystery of suffering is at the heart of virtually every religious tradition. We don't know why we suffer. We don't know why we do stupid stuff. You know, we know what the right thing is, we do the wrong thing. Anyway. We, we struggle, we're tired, we're depressed, these things are, you know, part of the human condition. And when you have, when you have a set of rules, or when you have rituals that that are new, especially right, the zeal of the recently converted is is not something that is restricted to the Paleo diet. You feel amazing, right? I mean, you read the stories of people that have converted to Christianity, or converted to Islam or converted to whatever, and they'll tell you, oh, my gosh, my life, just, you know, it's totally different. I feel goodness everywhere, everything looks different. And a part of that is just the the sense of hope that you have something new and different with food, there's the additional factor that a lot of people who get on one of these diets, they were paying zero attention to their health before. And so the simple act of eating more healthfully because there is such a thing as eating more healthfully that these kinds of diets point you in that direction. And all of a sudden, what what really is just the result of paying attention to your food and taking care of yourself sleeping, more drinking, you know, not five beers at night, you attribute the benefits of that to the, to the specifics of a particular diet, and it feels good, because you feel like you've accessed some kind of occult knowledge, right, which again, is this sort of religious trope, there's the secret thing that they don't want you to know about. But we know and it feels good to know what they don't want you to know. And that combination is, is super empowering. You even if, even if the reasons it makes you feel better, aren't the author reasons that it's actually making you feel better?

Kaila Tova 47:09

Bethanie Edwards experienced that firsthand.

Bethanie Edwards 47:13

Well, you know, when you go from kind of eating like chicken nuggets in the middle of the night, and like splitting kinds of the Ninja boyfriend tonight, you know, you cut out everything that's artificial out of your diet. And you're like, only eating like sweet potatoes and veggies and meat, you know, obviously, like, bringing all this whole foods into your life is going to change your how you feel you're going to function better, you're gonna you know, so I felt all of that I lost. I didn't actually lose that much weight, but like, we live but like I definitely like dropped pant sizes. My boyfriend bloodwork came back really good from the doctors. He was like, let's keep eating this way. And you know, I was like, Yes, like, this is the way that people should eat. You know, I was like, you know, for a scientist, I'm kind of ashamed because I wasn't like really reading like the primary literature. But I would definitely like, be like, oh, there's been studies that like paleo diet better for you. And there are studies that say that, but you know what price sometimes?

Kaila Tova 48:26

At what price indeed, My issue is not necessarily with the way of eating or the diet that a person follows the specific style of their restriction, but with the way that restriction becomes performative, and the person becomes a vocal evangelist of that way of eating, usually in pursuit of capital. In Katrina Marcel's book who cooked Adam Smith's dinner, she looks at the writing of Robert H. Nelson in his book economics as religion. In this book, she says he asserts that there is a and I quote, a correct formula correct way to live and correct implementation one of the principles that will lead to the salvation of a society. Money is human happiness in the abstract wrote a philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He then who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money. The empty pursuit of money has replaced what money was meant to create in the first place. I see a parallel and the way we view food health and body image, there's a correct formula a correct way to live a correct implementation of the principles of any diet and once discovered, it becomes imperative to show others the way to salvation through perfect health. There's only so much you can optimize your food before it stops making you healthier. Just as there's only so much you can pursue money before it stops actually making you happy, correct and righteous eating or orthorexia becomes a disorder when the focus on food is salvation supplants all other priorities in life and becomes disruptive to our lives and the lives of people around us. So what happens when food as salvation exercise as salvation meets money as salvation, when these two forces not only become disorder and disruption, but also begin to reshape our society and become a collective delusion? Once we move past the ability to enjoy our lives in the concrete, we devote our hearts entirely to money and to the primary driver of money in our lives, food and body image. Marcel writes, today, economic science is the dominant religion in the Western world. I believe that economic science is one of two dominant religions. The other Well, right now these days, it's the religion of health, which is sometimes expressed as the religion of thinness, Marcel rights. As long as we continue to believe in the power of economics, there will be a continuing demand for a priestly class that can produce appropriate religion, interpretation and symbolism. Today, we have a priestly ruling class in the religion of health online. The bloggers come marketers with degrees from pay for play online certificate farms and dubious claims to perfect health outside of the vision of their aesthetically pleasing bodies. These gurus also have their own claims to religious interpretation, sermons on nutrition and health that we attend via mailing list webinar and social update. They also claim their own language and religious symbolism based on whatever diet or fitness plan they follow, signaling their brand and teaching us how to signal to others that we follow it.

Alan Levinovitz 51:24

There is no way to become superhuman and fully avoid suffering. There is no way to look like Gwyneth Paltrow. If you don't have Gwyneth Paltrow, jeans, and there is nothing more damaging than scrolling through endless Instagram feeds of people who look the way they do because of who they are, and hoping that you can become like them, even when you can't. That's the first problem. The second problem is that that's somehow that that fake the fantasy that people are using to sell whatever it is that they're selling you that that is something that makes you happy, because it doesn't, right. I mean, that's the sad thing about the the lurch away from religion is that at least with religion, happiness was tied up with some kind of transcended purpose, while as with the dietary stuff, whatever anyone's going to tell you about improving their health, a lot of it has to do with how you look. And there is, you know, for all of the, for all the lip service paid to holistic health, in the in the diet community, I actually find these are some of the least holistic people I know. So they never take into account for example, the way in which dietary rules affect your ability to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with your family, they they don't think about how being neurotic about refined grains means that you can't send your kid to a birthday party without freaking out over whether they're going to be served cupcakes, right and true Holistic Health has to do with considering every aspect of your life and, and not all of those aspects are going to be balanced double. And sometimes you can have to compromise in one area, sometimes you're gonna have to compromise and another, there's nothing worse than trying to make it all line up with a fantasy vision peddled by a person online, who does not have your best interests in mind, because they don't know who you are.

Kaila Tova 53:12

Right? Right. And, you know, when we're talking about, especially people who are peddling things online, a lot of this isn't just tied up with this transcendent sense of purpose. Right, where, you know, there are a lot of people, you know, who they show up in, you know, it's a co worker, and they're like, I'm doing this for my kids, I understand that sense of purpose, right? Even if it's still misguided, and they're, you know, on their diet, dieting, they're miserable, they can't focus on their work, because they're, you know, thinking about their next, you know, snack of carrots and celery or whatever. But there's a group of people who not only see this as a purpose for, you know, improving their own health and their for their family and maybe modeling it for some of their friends and co workers. But there are people who do this and model health to make money. Right?

Alan Levinovitz 54:04

Yeah, absolutely. That's what this is. There's an extraordinary, there's an extraordinary reluctance on the part of people who reject, you know, big sugar, or big government or big whatever, and do it understandably, right. I mean, there's a way in which, you know, corporations are out to make a lot of money, and they are trying to undermine science, and they're doing all sorts of horrible things. But, you know, you walk through the nutritional supplement aisle in a CVS or you look at the kinds of the kinds of, you know, that the the trademarks after the names of these holistic doctors. And it's strange to be that people don't realize that that is also an industry and that they have equally strong conflicts of interest when it comes to trying to get people to believe that what it is that they're selling, is the real deal.

Kaila Tova 54:54

Right? Right. And they have to look the same way as somebody on Instagram, right, because they have to be the person who then becomes the person on Instagram that will influence somebody else. And so managing your health becomes kind of a prison, and you become tied to those beliefs, right? Because letting go of those beliefs, not only could damage your eternal health, right, but it could also damage your wallet, which in a capitalist society is a very bad thing.

Alan Levinovitz 55:27

Yeah, no, for sure. And there's this idea of this idea of sunk cost, I think, not just in terms of the sunk cost of these diet gurus in their own schemes. But But of also people who have invested in these diets is really important as well, right? You know that the same thing is true of religion, it's very, very difficult to spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of energy on something that initially works for you. And then think to yourself, Hmm, maybe I can back off this little, maybe I didn't need to ban this from my life. And that that kind of sunk cost, the end investment of our bodies and souls and lives into certain sets of rules, makes it so that people become unwilling to see different perspectives on on what it is that they are eating and how they ought to live. And so that's something I've become very cautious about now, having written the gluten line, talk to lots of people is, is, is pushing back on the kinds of investments that people have made. So you know, it means a lot when you say that the book helped you. But I realized that for people who aren't in that place, who are too invested in whatever it is, or aren't looking for an alternative. The book is the equivalent of walking into someone's church and pointing at their icons and saying, This is idolatry. This doesn't work. I can't believe you're praying for healing. Don't you know that? That's nonsense, right. And, and, you know, it's, you know, if someone is someone suffering, or the relative suffering and prayers, what's getting them through it, you know, Neil de gras Tyson walking in and telling them that like, it's, it's all fairy tales, isn't isn't necessarily the right thing. And so, I I'm trying to at least as best I can, talk and think in a way that I didn't in the book, which is, which is a way that recognizes how these rituals become important to people and the and the delicacy with which we, we have to approach them with our friends and family, or anyone who we think might be making a mistake when it comes to how they eat, you know, you gotta, you gotta do what you gotta do. But I do think people need to be aware of the potential dangers of these sorts of things, you know, so with diets, for example, one of the things I like to tell people, I don't know, if we talked about this on our last podcast is that, you know, a diet is a medical intervention. So don't don't take it lightly. Just because it's not a pill, doesn't mean it's not a medical intervention with side effects. And you might come out this diet with an eating disorder, you might come out of this yo yo dieting for the rest of your life, you might end up worshipping at the scale instead of an altar. And, and those are things you know, if you're going to go into it fine. You know, do what you're doing. But be be clear about the potential consequences. Don't think, you know, I always hear people say, Well, what do you have to lose? And the answer is you ever want to lose, you have a healthy relationship with food to lose, that could take years to build back up again.

Kaila Tova 58:32

It is so easy in this world to get caught up in the spiritual aspects of purifying a couple that with true food restriction or over exercise. And it becomes really difficult to separate yourself from your dogma, especially if you're building a business and a brand on it. The trouble with making your body your brand with tying your identity to income is that when things do start to spiral out of control, and they often do, because you will need to constantly be fixing, improving, experimenting, or otherwise working on yourself in order to quote unquote, create content. when things start to spiral out of control, you won't be able to differentiate between your dogma and your disorder, your body and your brand. Here's more of my conversation about pathologies and clean eating with Andrea Lamar.

Andrea Lamarre 59:27

So I go on the internet, right? And I read a bunch of blog posts, and I follow all the health news. And what I see are like posts that are like, yeah, if there's people in your life who are trying to keep you unhealthy cut them out. If there's if your family refuses to make the meals that you want to make either hide the food inside the food, you know, like bake your vegetables into the zucchini muffins or whatever.

Yeah, or or, like make your own meal and don't let them bring you down, right? There's like all of these commandments that are coming out from like the medical community, or supposedly the like medical scientific community. There's all these, you know, things that every single article on any health website with the exception of the like, is this a new eating disorder like sensational article for clicks? You know, all of that advice seems to me that to be a promotion of all of the things that orthorexia is. So when you go then to say to a person, like, Hey, you have maybe a problem, it's really hard to communicate that,

you know, yeah, for sure. I think it's such a tricky one. And, I mean, before we kind of started recording, and I mentioned this briefly, it's also hard, because when do we pathologies and when do we kind of just let people do whatever the heck they want to do with their bodies, whether that's, you know, engaging in these practices or not. And I think I've really changed my tune about this over the past couple of years, as I've, you know, started to accept that some people that's just going to be they're super priority, and maybe it's not necessarily always an issue. And I think before, like, in early recovery, I was pretty hard line against, like, I thought, you know, nobody should go gluten free. Unless they were celiac. I thought that, you know, nobody should, you know, adopt a paleo lifestyle, or nobody should do CrossFit. And I was like, really vehement about it. But then I realized that in my doing that I was also silencing some people for whom that did bring them joy. And so like, to me, the line is always the distress like, if engaging in that sort of behavior is causing them like significant the preoccupation and making their life a living hell, then for me, that's the time when it becomes a problem. But like, if somebody really wants to, you know, focus a lot on health, and that's where it quote unquote, health, like their version of health, and that becomes their priority. I don't know that it's always necessarily a problem. But to me, it's like that distract us is more of the delineating feature, as opposed to kind of trying to like ad hoc diagnose people, but it's so tricky, because people can sometimes think that it's not bringing them distress when it is. And so I think that's where the conversation becomes super complicated. And you're right, like, I also think the other line is that a lot of the time, then people become quite evangelical about it. And it becomes very, like almost a religion, of following this type of thing. And then they think that that should work for everybody. Like, if I had a dime for every time that somebody thought that I should go gluten free to solve whatever health problem I'm dealing with, and be a very rich person.

Kaila Tova 1:02:28

So how can you tell when it actually is becoming a problem? Emily, Dean's explains.

Emily Deans 1:02:36

Yeah, that's a tough question. And I guess, for the for the most. So when I was having that small percentage of real OCD kind of stuff, where paleo gets wrapped up in it. If people know it's a problem. For the other people, it's more like the equivalent of what we call obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which is actually quite different than the official diagnostic, OCD, obsessive compulsive personality is, in this modern world, I can quite adaptive, it's the kind of person who when you used to have all your CDs or albums, they would all be lined up in alphabetical order, or by color, or, and that made you happy. And you like all your shoes put away and that makes you happy. And, you know, if you took notes that would be in a certain rainbow color of this, and you will keep track of things. And again, it makes you happy, you get rewarded in school for this, I think most doctors after this, you get rewarded in life for this, because again, you pay everything on time, and you know what all your passwords are. And but, you know, the minute you come home and somebody has hasn't, and you have a family and someone hasn't put their shoes away, and you have an anxiety attack, then it becomes a problem and you drive everybody else crazy, who doesn't have it. So that's where people it's not so much, internally that they really don't have a problem because to some extent, they enjoy it, they enjoy having that control. They enjoy feeling better, they enjoy feeling pure, they enjoy the ideal that they're kind of trying to live up to. And so it's really hard to get someone from that side because they're having fun. It's you have to get to them from are you driving your family crazy, because you're only allowing your husband to eat sprouted wheat bread. And you know what he really loves the Wonder Bread, but I'm making fun of husbands too much in this but but it's it's really when you start to drive everybody else crazy is the one thing into, I will see people it's gone so far with their obsessions of composers, they're so worried about being perfect, and they have to have all their other I's dotted and T's crossed, that they develop a clinical depression and anxiety on top of that. So they don't come to me about the Paleo issue, they come to me because they have anxiety, they're having panic attacks. And you just realized there's so much rigidity, rigidity in the way they run their life that it contributes to that society. And once they're having a problem, that's where you address it. So either their family can't stand it, or their families driving them crazy, because their family isn't living up to their ideals. And that's, that is causing clinical anxiety and depression symptoms. And that if you can work on that rigidity, and back that off, and usually you can with an obsessive compulsive type of person, it's the tough part is is that there's, in this modern world, it's quite adaptive, you can make a you can make a lifestyle out of it, you can make money on youtube out of it, you can do all these kinds of things. Your friends love you, you're the You're the best coach at the CrossFit because you know, you eat so well, and you know everything and you seem so cool and awesome, and you're seem so healthy. But if you're driving your family crazy, then you know, is it worth it? 100% you know, are you better better off dialing it back.

Kaila Tova 1:06:00

At the end of the day, if you invest in your body, or in someone else's body brand you may be buying into or even selling disordered behaviors around food and fitness. It's complicated. Because if selling your body image or a cookbook or a 30 day fitness plan, is the way that you make money. And a glass ceiling or a wall stands in the way of other paths to income. What do you do? Sarah Vance had to ask herself that same question.

Sarah Vance 1:06:27

I went to California for a photo shoot and for like a fitness entrepreneurial summit. And I was still very disordered and worked with the top photographer. And he said, don't worry about it will Photoshop your stomach. And that was the moment when I was like, it was like, have you ever seen a car crash when everything just like goes as a collision, and it's like ships flying everywhere. And it's in slow motion. That's like what I felt like I was like, holy shit, this is a lie like that. That's remember, that's what I remember thinking like, this is a lie. Like, I knew Photoshop, like I'm an intelligent human being, but like, you buy it to it, you buy into all of it. And so I was like, this is a lie that I bought into. And not only that, but now I'm going to be selling this lie to people that are looking up to me that are wanting to be like me that I'm supposed to be helping, and they have no fucking idea what I'm going through, and that I am completely unhappy, not competent, not healthy, extremely disordered, and just in general, not in a good space. So I knew that things needed to change. But I still continued. Being a personal trainer, I just didn't take anybody that had weight loss or fat loss goals. I only worked with women that wanted to basically just move their body feel good and get stronger. And I had to basically stop doing that and stop being in the gym completely and work on my own recovery process. And that was tough, you know, but it really was a combination of a few things of just being fucking tired. I was honestly just tired. And I just asked myself, is this what I plan on doing for 10 years in 10 years? This is how I really want to live my life and it was a resounding no. And I was like, Well, how am I going to learn how to live my life and not have food and body and movement be such a prominent aspect of my life where it is my life. I mean, I want it to be obviously part of my life but not in the obsessive fear, anxiety producing way that it was.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Kaila PrinsJuly 7, 2021