Reclaim You- Strategies to Reclaim You From Diet Culture
Season 1: Episode 4- Strategies to Reclaim You from Diet Culture
Welcome back to the Reclaim You podcast with Reclaim Therapy!
We hope this episode empowers you to rise above the suffocating grip of diet culture. We've been diving deep into the covert ways diet culture infiltrates our lives, but now it's time to ignite the momentum to reclaim you. In this episode, Sarah, alongside Reclaim Therapist, Emily Cinque, lead the charge in reclaiming your life from the clutches of diet culture.
First up, Emily dives into the transformative power of resiliency and its crucial role in breaking free from the shackles of diet culture. Discover how tapping into your inner strength can help you navigate the rocky path towards self-acceptance and body liberation
As we navigate the treacherous waters of social media, Emily spills the tea on essential strategies for consumption. Learn how to dodge the misleading diet trends, body shaming influencers, and the never-ending parade of perfectly photoshopped images. It's time to curate your media feed like the boss of your life that you are and reclaim what you allow into your brain space.
We want you to know that we get it—it's not easy to untangle yourself from the web of diet culture. When that lightbulb moment hits and you realize the harm it has caused, the Reclaim Therapy team has your back. Emily shares self-care strategies to help you heal and nurture yourself as you come to terms with the toxic beliefs and behaviors ingrained by diet culture.
So, buckle up, Reclaim community, and get ready to reclaim your power, your confidence, and your unique and wonderful self.
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[00:01] Sarah: Hi there. Welcome to Reclaim You, a podcast published by the Reclaim Therapy team. Join us as we share stories, tools, and insights on how to reclaim you in the wake of trauma, disordered eating, and body shame. Grab your coffee, tea, or your favorite snack and get cozy because we're about to dive in. Welcome back to Reclaim You, a podcast for folks who have experience trauma, body shame, and disordered eating. Today. We're talking to Emily. Emily is one of the therapists on the Reclaim Team. Emily specializes in treating eating disorders, body image concerns anxiety, and trauma. So welcome, Emily.
[00:41] Emily: Thanks.
[00:43] Sarah: Good to have you here.
[00:44] Emily: Yeah, excited.
[00:46] Sarah: So today, Emily and I are going to be talking about strategies to reclaim your life from diet culture. This whole month on the show, we've been talking about, of course, diet culture, all the ways that it disconnects us from ourselves and people we care about, things we care about. So, yeah, we're talking a lot about just reclaiming your life from it today. So I'm excited to dive in. So before we start, what I've asked everyone so far is, what does the phrase reclaim you mean to you in your life and your work with clients?
[01:20] Emily: So I spent a good bit of time thinking about that, and I think the biggest things that came up for me, like, in my own life, kind of two aspects. So, like, reclaiming my relationship with my body was really big. But I think actually the biggest thing that came to mind was reclaiming my relationship with my thoughts. So I have generalized anxiety. I have a history of anxiety, like, ever since I was a kid, some pretty bad health anxiety. And it controlled me for my entire life. Like, I just would worry about everything. I was anxious about everything all the time, and I just lived in this constant state of fear, I feel like. And it wasn't until, I think in my early mid 20s, kind of when I did a lot of this work to really start reclaiming myself. I can remember I was working with a therapist, and I just had this huge breakthrough. These are my thoughts, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're true and I don't have to do anything about them. I can just kind of notice them and figure out how to care for myself through them. But it doesn't mean that I keep having to go to this worst case scenario situation. Wow. Yeah. So I think that is a huge thing that came up when I thought about reclaiming myself and then obviously reclaiming my relationship with my body. I feel like it actually happened around the same time did it. But I was working with the same therapist, and she kind of introduced me to the concept of body neutrality, and I feel like it was just a light switch.
[03:07] Sarah: Yeah.
[03:08] Emily: I cannot love myself and how I love 100% of the time. I can still have these thoughts. Again, going back to I can still have these thoughts, but it doesn't mean that they have to control me. It doesn't mean that I can't still treat my body with respect and love and kindness. So that was what came to mind for myself. And I think that that's something that I always try to encourage with clients as well.
[03:36] Sarah: And I imagine that spaciousness that that created by kind of reclaiming that that brain space and how you engage with your thoughts and things like that just expands everything, expands your world and all of that.
[03:48] Emily: I think it's a good thing to talk about because this is hard work. I know it's hard work because I've done it, and I know that it's hard work for clients. And I think that that can be a really big sticking point. We are still going to have these thoughts, but it doesn't mean that they have to run the show. We can reclaim how we interact with them.
[04:09] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. That automatic function of the brain just operating and going and going, I can just kind of be awesome. So let's kind of dive into reclaiming your life or how you support folks or how folks can reclaim their lives from diet culture. What kind of hope do you feel like there is to start to reclaim your life from diet culture?
[04:37] Emily: I feel like there's a lot of hope. I think that the world is changing slowly, very slowly, slowly faster. I know it's only yeah, right. But I do think that there are some positive changes coming about, like people are actually talking about these things. So I think that that's one of the biggest things that gives me hope, at least, is that there's actually awareness. I think another thing, I think taking that step to actually work on these things and address these things with a therapist is indicator that there is hope to move forward and get past some of these things.
[05:16] Sarah: Yeah. And to be able to have that space to really volley things back and forth about what things are sticking, what things are like, I don't believe in that. That's fine. And to kind of negotiate how to start to loosen your grip on some of the messages and beliefs and things like that from diet culture.
[05:33] Emily: Yeah. And with somebody who gets it, because I think it's hard to have that conversation with somebody else who might also be kind of entrenched in diet culture and not necessarily realize what's going on. So I think having that space to talk about those things, talk about our questions, concerns, fears, sticking points with somebody who gets it, is huge and really important.
[05:59] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I know that in my work with clients, I talk about the concept of resiliency. It feels important in maintaining hope of reclaiming your life from all of the messages and the expectations and all of that. What do you feel like resiliency has to do with all of this. Reclaiming yourself from the expectations of society and diet culture and wellness culture and all of those things.
[06:25] Emily: I think it can be helpful to think about and define, looking back, how have I been resilient in my life? And kind of point out those specific times like, this is resiliency, this is what it means. This is when I was resilient. Because a lot of times we don't give ourselves credit in these situations. It's like, oh, I went through this thing. Like, I never thought I could get through it. And we do, but we don't necessarily stop to acknowledge that and process that and really celebrate that. So I think that that can always be helpful with these sticking points. Especially to be like, this is when you were resilient. You can make it through this, you can do this work.
[07:09] Sarah: Yeah, it's like acknowledging those hooks into diaculture that kind of sneak in when we don't expect it. And I think a lot of people, especially the clients that we work with, a lot of people are able to kind of move through those hooks or reject the hooks and stay on the path of just, like, honoring themselves and kind of like you were talking about with the thoughts of, like, you can notice it. You can know that it's there and not engage with it and then take care of yourself through the process.
[07:39] Emily: I think if we look at some of the more formal aspects of resiliency too, so like flexibility, character, connection, contribution, I think that those are all big factors of this work as well. We have to be flexible. We have to consider new ideas. We need to have a good support system to do this work. We need to redefine our values and feel like we're contributing in another way besides just our physical appearance. Sure, bringing that into it can be really helpful too.
[08:10] Sarah: I know for a lot of people, I think us included as just people in the world who are constantly consuming media and social media. How social media is such like a hub, a dangerous, toxic hub for diet cultures, messages for you even in your personal life or what you work with clients on. What are some really important or helpful, even strategies to consider when it comes to consuming social media or being on social media or even like posting on social media because that feels so important in all of this.
[08:47] Emily: Yeah, think first and foremost you got to do a cleanse of your social media feed. So if there's people on there who are posting things like what I eat in a day videos or like talking about their weight, like really focusing in on physical appearance like some people in videos, like or even body checking, like if there are people that keep coming up that are doing these things, they've got to go.
[09:16] Sarah: Because if we out, they go, yeah.
[09:19] Emily: We got to go. It's time to go. Because if we keep engaging with that, it's going to keep telling our brain, this is normal, this is what I should be, this is what I should do. We have to stop engaging with that and taking that in 24/7. So I always encourage that as like a first step we need to go through and like any accounts that don't feel good or you see their posts and it's like, this makes me feel bad about myself. Let's go ramp them. And I think it can be helpful to replace some of those follows. Let's find more maybe body neutral influencers or body positive influencers. Follow that. Let's follow people who believe the same things we believe or believe the things that we want to work towards. I think also it can be really helpful. Follow people who look like you normalize. Like, this is my body. My body's. Okay. Make sure that it's represented so that it's not. I keep seeing the same type of body and this makes me feel really bad about myself.
[10:30] Sarah: Yeah, that feels so important to be able to be with or witness or observe folks who are in similar bodies as you. Having fun and experiencing joy and relationships and getting, I don't know, promotions at work or whatever it is. But so many of those things are the folks that we work with. And I know historically, probably in our lives, we believed that that wasn't possible for us because our bodies or our disordered eating or whatever it is. And to see that it can happen for folks in all bodies is really important.
[11:03] Emily: And obviously I think if people are open to it after we kind of go through our social media feed, maybe limiting it so we're not on our phones all day. 24/7 totally doom scrolling. Yeah, just set a limit for yourself and then find other things to fill your time that maybe bring more joy than just scrolling through Instagram.
[11:29] Sarah: Yeah. What do you feel like is the tipping point for people of noticing when social media is becoming toxic?
[11:38] Emily: I think it goes back to that gut reaction if you see a post. So if you're noticing I'm spending a lot of time on social media and I'm seeing all these posts and they're making me feel really bad. And then maybe they're bringing up old thoughts or they're making me think like, okay, I need to look this, I.
[11:58] Sarah: Need to do this.
[11:59] Emily: I think that's a definite red flag that we need to make some changes. And doom scrolling. I always think about Google, like the WebMD Googling, your symptoms. If you find that you're going down these rabbit holes. What is this? What is this? What does this mean? Should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? Another sign. Maybe we need to take a step.
[12:22] Sarah: Back, take a little break. Yeah. Focus on something that's going to bring different energy into your being.
[12:29] Emily: Yeah. Like, if you're finding that it's just making you anxious, we got to make some changes.
[12:36] Sarah: Yeah. Not worth it. Totally. So when people start to realize the impact that diet culture has had on them, what can they do to take care of themselves as they kind of grapple with what they have known or what they have done or have been taught, really from the culture or even family of origin, that kind of stuff. And the harm that those things has caused in their lives. So, like, that intersection of how do you take care of yourself when you're acknowledging, oh, I want to be here, and here I am, and I've been taught all of these things, it feels like this really hard negotiation.
[13:15] Emily: So I think it's okay to feel mad about these things. I think that that is an important part of this work. We have to feel mad. We feel sad, we feel grief. That's all a really normal part of this. So I always do encourage people, feel your feelings. Like, we have to feel our feelings about this, while also recognizing this often is the result of a lifetime of messages. So if we're feeling mad, if we're feeling frustrated, that, oh, my gosh, I'm learning all of these things and what all these things did to me, I'm back here, and I want to be over here. Just recognizing this is an entire lifetime worth of information, and it's not going anywhere. We still live in diet culture, so just really giving ourselves some slack. This is going to be slow work, and that's okay. And that doesn't mean that I'm doing anything wrong.
[14:13] Sarah: Yeah. So, like, exiting the shame that diet culture promotes of not being where you think you should be or somewhere, anyone else's and showing up for yourself differently, that's so important. Yeah.
[14:24] Emily: I think it's hard, especially with family members, too. I see that a lot, anger at family members. Why did they teach me this? Why did they do this to me? Or friends? I think something that has been helpful that I've tried myself and that I've seen clients use, reminding ourselves, like, these people are also victims of diet culture. That can sometimes take some of the edge off and make that anger a little bit more manageable. Like, yeah, I still wish this didn't happen, but they also are a victim in this society as well.
[15:04] Sarah: Absolutely. That gives a little bit more space for even some compassion, which is not 100% necessary. That's not what I mean. But some space for, oh, right. We're all swimming in this every day. And people, when they don't know, they don't know. And we can kind of plant seeds and hopefully they'll be receptive and ready to receive them, and oftentimes not, which I think creates more anger at times, which is totally appropriate as well.
[15:31] Emily: And again, feel your feelings. We have to. But almost extending that compassion and those well wishes to them. Wow. Almost like, I wish they knew what I knew. It can help with, I think, that compassion towards others and then towards ourselves.
[15:52] Sarah: Yeah. It feels like that even loops in with some resiliency, too, of being able to extend, oh, my gosh, the entire society, so much compassion to society for really just being steeped in all of this. Some people don't know better. Right. Hopefully the word continues to spread and people really continue to externalize diet culture and divest from the pieces that they're ready to divest from and stay engaged with the work. So are there any other strategies that are kind of like your favorite strategies or anything that people can maybe consider or start to use when it comes to distancing themselves or reclaiming themselves in the wake of diet culture?
[16:34] Emily: So I think this social media piece is really big. So making sure that you're not following any accounts that make you feel bad or promoting very diet culturey messaging, step away from the scale.
[16:50] Sarah: Toss that ****.
[16:51] Emily: Yeah, we got to get rid of the scale.
[16:53] Sarah: Smash it, do whatever you got to do. Put in a closet, whatever.
[16:57] Emily: Absolutely. I think finding a community or like minded people, whether that's a friend or a therapist or an online group, just someone that shares like minded ideas that you're able to kind of talk this through with them, because this is very isolating. Like, diet culture is very isolating. So I think just finding someone who gets it can be really helpful and really important and then just really getting in tune with things that feel good, like joyful movement, foods that we love, but foods that also make our bodies feel good. Finding clothes that are comfortable and that we love and can feel good in. Just doing some of these things to kind of take the power back in a way. Like, I don't have to eat a certain way, I don't have to move a certain way, I don't have to dress a certain way. I can do this in a way that feels good for me.
[17:54] Sarah: Yeah, taking your power back. Yeah, reclaiming your power. Yeah. That feels so important. I also love, and I think I saw this on social media, just like, calling out diet culture, when you see it, when you start to see it, you don't unsee it. So when you see it in the grocery store or you see it on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or whatever, it's not lost on me that we're talking about social media. And here we are on social media. But yeah, calling it out so you can continue to create that dissonance of.
[18:22] Emily: Where you are and where you're working towards. Yeah, absolutely.
[18:26] Sarah: Anything else you feel like you want to add?
[18:29] Emily: Nothing I can think of. I think that this was a good little kind of encapsulation of some things we can do to take some power back. From Diet culture.
[18:40] Sarah: I love it. Well, thank you so much. And thank you, everyone for watching. And we will be back next week with our with our next episode, so we'll talk to you then.
[18:52] Emily: Bye bye.
[18:56] Sarah: Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Reclaim You. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast and check us out on YouTube at Reclaim You. We'll be back next week with another episode, so until next time, take good care of yourself.
Reclaim Therapy provides eating disorder and trauma therapy in Pennsylvania. Our team is passionate about helping folks reclaim their lives from disordered eating, trauma and body-shame.
We are passionate about helping people heal from the impact of trauma, complex trauma and eating disorders. Our trauma informed, EMDR therapists support people in moving through triggers, urges, behaviors that no longer serve them and reconnect to the wisdom of their own minds and bodies. If you’re looking for eating disorder or trauma therapy in Pennsylvania, we would be honored to support you.