Doing The Work. Recovering From Binge Eating Disorder, with Sarah Dosanjh

Oh wow - we had Sarah Dosanjh on the pod!!! And how lovely is she? 

Sarah is a qualified and BACP-accredited psychotherapist specialising in binge eating — not just through training, but lived experience too. After over a decade of struggling with binge eating and bulimia, it was deep inner work that finally transformed her relationship with food. That journey now informs how she supports others.

Since publishing I Can’t Stop Eating (an Amazon bestseller) in 2020, she's raised awareness through BBC Radio One, Sky’s Roundtable, BBC Breakfast, and delivering training for other professionals. Her YouTube videos exploring recovery and self understanding have been viewed over 3 million times.

It was a super interesting conversation with someone who has lived experience with an eating disorder and now supports others with her incredible knowledge, insight and authenticity.

We talked about Sarah's ED story, what helped her in her recovery, and how recognising impermanence of thoughts and being honest (even if that is super hard) can be incredibly powerful tools for recovery, as well as cats and whether to watch or listen to podcasts ;-) (with 'Find your Strong' you can do either or both!!)

We also touched on GLP-1s and how they can be a massive challenge for anyone with disordered eating or an eating disorder - for a more detailed discussion we highly recommend you listen to Sarah and Stefanie's 'Life after Diets' episode on GLP-1s

If you want to find out more about Sarah and her work, here are some links:

Her book 'I can't stop eating' (highly recommended for anyone struggling with overeating and bingeing)

Her website https://thebingeeatingtherapist.com/

Her podcasts (with co-host Stefanie Michele)

Life after Diets

Feelings and other inconveniences (brand new!!)

Her instagram @the_binge_eating_therapist

Please reach out if you would like some support with your relationship to food OR movement. Ela currently has limited spaces for Intuitive Eating coaching and if you'd like to reconnect with movement, contact Christine.

AND if you enjoyed this episode, please share and follow the 'Find Your Strong podcast' and if you have time, write us a short review. It would honestly mean the world. Love to you all, Ela & Christine x

Transcript

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Ela Law: Hello, and welcome to another episode. We are so excited today we have the wonderful Sarah Dosange as our guest

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Ela Law: to give you a quick. Bio Sarah is a qualified and bacp accredited psychotherapist. She specializes in binge eating, and not just through training, but her lived experience, too, after over a decade of struggling with binge, eating and bulimia. It was deep inner work that finally transformed her relationship with food. That journey now informs how she supports others.

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Ela Law: Since publishing. I can't stop eating. It's an Amazon bestseller in 2020. And I've just finished reading it. It's amazing. She raised awareness through BBC radio, one Sky's Round Table, BBC. Breakfast and delivering training for other professionals.

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Ela Law: Her Youtube videos, exploring recovery and self-understanding have been viewed over 3 million times and Christine, I am not surprised because she is so wonderful to listen to. She's so eloquent in when she talks and explains concepts.

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Ela Law: I really I really really enjoyed our conversation.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, no, me, too. And I've been watching. I wasn't saying to her, I've been watching her podcast life after diets with Stephanie Michelle for quite a long time.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And I think that the conversation today was mind blowing. I find it really fascinating.

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Ela Law: And really quite surprising. And I think our listeners will. It'll resonate.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: With lots of our listeners today.

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Christine Chessman: I.

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Ela Law: Agree, because there's there's such a massive element of just realness and authenticity.

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Christine Chessman: Very much.

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Ela Law: Sarah, I think, because she's had lived experience of having an eating disorder, recovering from it, working her way through all of that and her incredible knowledge. And you know, being a psychotherapist, that's obviously something that we can't speak to is just so. So, yeah, so so interesting and fascinating.

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Christine Chessman: And she's very open. Yeah, you know I love that I just, and she welcomes tangents.

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Ela Law: No.

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Christine Chessman: She's a.

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Ela Law: She's a favorite.

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Christine Chessman: So please enjoy this episode. If you like the episode, please share share with your friends, share with your family comment. Send us some feedback. Follow whatever you like.

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Ela Law: Like all of the above, it helps others find us.

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Christine Chessman: Or just listen if that's where you're at today. But I think you're going to enjoy it. Here's Sarah.



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Ela Law: Welcome, Sarah, so so nice to have you on the pod, and thanks for giving up your time to be with us today. How are you doing.

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Sarah: I'm good. Hi, Ella! Hi, Christine! Thanks for having me.

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Ela Law: Pleasure.

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Christine Chessman: We're very excited. As we were just talking about before we hit record, I have been watching your podcast life after diets for a long time. I actually I use it. If I ever have got a guest on that you happen to have on, I'm like right.

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Christine Chessman: Let me go.

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Christine Chessman: Look at what questions you asked. It's really interesting to me, but I just wanted to start off. We have a list of questions, but, as Ella has said previously. We are tangent queens, and we like just letting it flow. But I really was interested to talk to you. We're going straight in no small talk. We're just diving straight, in fine, by me, but I see your little cat, which.

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Sarah: There's 2 of them they'll be prancing around.

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Christine Chessman: In the back.

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Ela Law: Lovely.

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Sarah: For people on Youtube, they'll see them. And just if you are looking for more engagement on things like Youtube getting your pets in the video.

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Christine Chessman: I know.

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Sarah: Recommended.

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Christine Chessman: I've just got a kitten, and I am in love with cats. I don't know why I've not had cats before. They are the best and

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Christine Chessman: cat person. Now.

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Sarah: Can I see your kitten before we say goodbye? Yes to the recording. Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: She'll probably be scratching the door in a second so, and trying to eat my gerbils.

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Ela Law: Cat, Fomo. Now I need to get myself a cat.

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Christine Chessman: Do.

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Ela Law: Do, of course, 2 dogs downstairs, but I'm not gonna schlep down and show you.

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Ela Law: But anyway, as you can tell already.

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Christine Chessman: So I was really interested to know you mentioned that you had a decade of struggling with eating disorders, and I'm really interested to know a little bit about your story, having come from a quite a similar place myself, and just what helped. Now, that's a big question, because I'm sure there was lots of different things. But was there a turning point, or was it a combination of lots of different factors.

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Sarah: Yes.

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Sarah: the second one. But I can expand if you want. Yeah. So my my onset of my disordered eating, I think, was a little bit unusual in terms of how it came about, because I believe the trigger for it was hormonal originally, so I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a pituitary tumor which was affecting my pituitary function, which meant a lot of my hormones, had just been suppressed without me knowing.

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Sarah: So one of the 1st symptoms I remember being aware of was just insatiable hunger like, think of your worst Pms. Day, and it was like that constantly. I could have eaten a huge meal, been absolutely stuffed at 8 Pm. Gone to bed, and I would be up at midnight eating again, and I would say, it's the only time, really, significantly, in my eating disorders that I was nighttime eating, getting up in the night and eating

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Sarah: so my weight. I was gaining weight very quickly, and I was very distressed about that. And after about 9 months.

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Sarah: that's when the binge eating, which is what I had kind of self-diagnosed with.

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Sarah: tipped over into Bulimia because I was so frightened at how quickly my body was changing in such a short period of time when my whole life, my weight, had been stable. It had never, I'd never had fluctuations in weight

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Sarah: and

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Sarah: Probably I always struggle with the maths of this.

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Sarah: So probably, I think about 18 months after it 1st started was when I got the diagnosis that I had these hormonal problems. So when they started replacing my hormones, which was hrt. Thyroxine growth hormone, and then eventually antidiuretic hormone.

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Sarah: The really intense hunger that would get me up in the middle of the night. It did abate, but I was still binging, and I was still losing control, and I was still having periods of time when I would purge. I always felt like.

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Sarah: although some of my behaviours would tip over into Bulimia. More often than not I was binging without any bulimic behaviour, so I always identified more as binge eating disorder than I did Bulimia, even though there was interspersed with that

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Sarah: and I think there's a few you asking what actually helped. I think I had never realized at that time how even planning to restrict could trigger binging. So I remember the 1st time hearing about Last Supper eating.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Sarah: That made so much sense to me at the time. So I think that was one of those realizations which, just for your listeners, if in case they haven't heard of it. But you may have spoken about it before last Supper. Eating is when you are planning to start a diet tomorrow or start a diet on Monday. What happens between now and then is normally this feeling of well, this is my last chance, and it often comes from a place of I've already blown it. So I was going to start today. I was going to be really good today, but I blew it at some point. So I need a clean slate. It's that clean slate thinking.

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Sarah: And when I could see that

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Sarah: that started to make sense because I never identified as somebody who particularly restricted. I was always trying to lose this weight I'd gained through binging, but I didn't think I was doing it in a restrictive way, because 9 times out of 10 I couldn't stick to restriction for very long, either.

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Sarah: so that, I think, was one piece of the puzzle.

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Sarah: And so through that process of letting go, of pursuing intentional weight loss.

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Sarah: The binging became less intense. It did reduce, but I still found myself

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Sarah: eating to numb, having times when I was binging, but it had a different quality. It felt more emotional, it felt more like self soothing. And I think, looking back on it now what was going on was I was struggling to come to terms with, oh, this is my life! Now I have this chronic illness. I've gained this weight which I don't think I'm ever going to lose now. I can't pursue weight loss, because that's going to trigger more binging

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Sarah: And I felt like I'd already lost so many years by this point, which I know in the scheme of things with a lot of people I work with. And you guys have probably had similar. I'm well aware that people have this problem for much longer than I did, but at the time in my life I thought I'd lost so much of my life to this

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Sarah: and I think I was just living in a place of chronic shame, really

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Sarah: of feeling, disappointed in life, in myself, in my body, and then eating morphed into this coping mechanism.

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Sarah: So then I became much more interested in

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Sarah: just more existential themes about like, why are we here? And you know what? What are my values, and how do I reach this place of acceptance, of knowing that there are things now that have changed irrevocably through this eating problems that I've had.

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Sarah: How do I come to a place of peace with that, knowing that I can't change that?

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Sarah: And so

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Sarah: that was looking at things like radical self-acceptance. I found Byron, Katie, and Eckhart Tolle's work enormously helpful. I also decided at this time.

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Sarah: whilst I was still struggling with food, to train, to be a therapist, and to do that you have to be in therapy yourself. So I also had 5 years of therapy which none of my therapists knew anything about food or eating. So in that aspect I never felt like I got anything directly from therapy that was specifically helpful to the food. Sometimes it was actively unhelpful, like the therapist who suggested I did the 5 2 diet when I was bulimic.

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Ela Law: Oof.

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Sarah: Yeah, because she was doing it. And it was working great. It was when it was really big. This must have been 2,013 or something like that. It was really big at that time.

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Sarah: but it it helped me to, I think, learn a lot about myself, and who I see myself to be, because I often say I think the bedrock of disordered eating is

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Sarah: how you feel about yourself is contingent on how you're eating. So you're eating well, you feel good about yourself. You're not eating well, you feel terrible about yourself, so your whole, my whole world could shift in an instant, just because I feel like I'd messed up my eating, and there was something about becoming more aware of that

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Sarah: and the whole like. Who am I, anyway, like I believe I'm more than my conditioning. So some spiritual leanings in there, not religion, not a specific dogma, I think, was also

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Sarah: helpful for me.

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Ela Law: That is so interesting. You know what this is, exactly what I wanted to ask you about it, because I've just finished reading your book which is amazing. And I'm going to so recommend to people. It's this kind of

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Ela Law: this enmeshed kind of thing with our behaviours and our identity. And what you just said rings such a massive bell with all of

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Ela Law: probably all of my clients where their identity is so tied to their eating behaviors, and the way they eat or their struggles with eating. So this kind of identification also with an eating disorder, you know, making that your identity. So how do you. How do you? What sort of practical steps can you suggest? To step away from that? To kind of

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Ela Law: what one of the things you said in your book is to kind of look, really look at semantics and look at language, and instead of saying, I am blah blah, whatever it is to just recognize that in that moment you're feeling XY. And Z. Whatever it is. So is that just one of the steps that you would recommend, or how would you say? How can we disentangle our identity from our eating behaviors or disordered eating.

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Sarah: Yeah. So since writing the book, I take it a little bit further now. So one of the, I think, hardest emotional experiences that I just experience quite not as often now as I used to, is despair.

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Sarah: And despair, that despair and hopelessness feeling for me was the most horrendous feeling ever. Because there's a story attached to that that nothing can ever get better. This is it forever. You're in this dark hole.

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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Sarah: So rather than saying, I am hopeless, or even I'm feeling hopeless, or I'm feeling despair.

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Sarah: I now say to myself, I'm experiencing.

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Ela Law: I'm experiencing despair.

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Sarah: And when I say to myself, I'm experiencing

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Sarah: for me in that language, in that shift of the way I'm talking to myself about it. There's a part of me that can recognize the impermanence

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Sarah: that can remember. Oh, yes, you've been here before, and you've never stayed here forever, but every time you visit here it feels like, oh, no! This is the reality, this despairing reality I have. This is the truth anytime. That's not this. I'm just kidding myself.

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Sarah: So I think that's 1 piece. I think the other piece that really helped me to be able to step back and not believe everything, I think, because that's crucial for changing our minds, and our minds have got these conditioned thoughts running around all the time, and we're so seduced by our minds, and we want to believe them because we think it's us realizing things rather than our mind telling us things.

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Sarah: That's when I found the work of Byron, Katie, really helpful. And you can just look up her stuff on Youtube. And then she has these worksheets that you can download on her website. I have an app that I think I paid 2 quid for about gosh, 10 years ago, and it was just a 1 off payment.

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Sarah: and you can go through. You ask yourself questions, and you question your thoughts, and you look at the opposite, and you find evidence for the opposite.

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Sarah: It's quite Cbt in some ways, but that has genuinely been transformative for the relationships in my life, actually for letting go of old hurts, and all like having a different experience now of people for whom

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Sarah: I felt wronged by in some way.

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Sarah: Joe Dispenza, I'm not so much into his stuff now. But back then, when I 1st read the book, breaking the habit of being yourself to this day. The meditation practice I do is based on the meditation in that book, which is space meditation.

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Sarah: and I was able to. I got to a point where, even when I was still actively binging, I could have binged, and when I went to bed and did my meditation, I could still feel peace.

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Sarah: So I would say how I how I felt about my behavior around food changed

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Sarah: before my behavior changed, and the place where I was always getting stuck is I was always trying to just change my behavior. Just stop doing it. Just eat like this just don't eat like that.

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Sarah: So that was the other resource that was really helpful. And then a lot of the stuff that Eckhart Tolle talks about being in the here and now, because so much of the pain is in the past, when you feel so horrendous after a binge. It's not just that one binge that's making you feel like that. It's every binge you've ever had gets triggered in that moment, and often every binge you imagine you're going to have in the future, the hopelessness and futility of the situation.

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Sarah: So there was something about this coming into the here and now.

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Sarah: What problem do I actually have in the here and now? That isn't just this overarching story about the past and the future.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Ela Law: yeah, it's the stories we tell ourselves, isn't it? And the meaning we attach to attach to them? Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: It's I mean, this sounds incredible. I really struggle with with everything that you're saying in terms of.

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Christine Chessman: from my perspective with the Adhd brain because I it makes total sense to me, and I think it's spot on. But I really struggled to get there. And with the work of Byron, Katie.

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Christine Chessman: I've pushed against it because

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Christine Chessman: I find her fascinating. But she talked about suffering, and it's it's something that I wanted to bring up with you only, and it's about not getting too attached, and

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Christine Chessman: you know, and if you don't get too attached you'll never suffer. There was a you don't need to suffer, and oh, that just really I find that really hard. I've just lost my mom this year, and I really am like, Oh, you won't. You suffer? People suffer, and you can. You can absolutely not get too attached. But it's something that I really find hard. Does that make any sense, Sarah?

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Sarah: Of course, of course, and I still have times when I suffer.

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Sarah: and there's a difference between pain and suffering. So I've lost, you know. My mum died in 2010.

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Christine Chessman: And.

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Sarah: I have moments where I've had waves of grief that have hurt, but have felt exquisite.

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Sarah: There isn't suffering in it. There's almost like a relief and a release. It's something moving through the body which is incredibly cathartic.

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Sarah: So it's but it's still painful.

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Christine Chessman: But it's.

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Sarah: No, I'm not suffering.

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Christine Chessman: I, I see, I see, yeah.

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Sarah: But I think that the ideal place like yes, if we could like, gain mastery over our minds.

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Sarah: then sure we wouldn't suffer.

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Christine Chessman: Hmm.

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Sarah: But I think sometimes to give this message to people like the saying, you know, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional, can feel a bit gaslighty when you're like I'm suffering.

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Sarah: I really wouldn't be suffering if I could figure out how not to suffer. And you telling me I have to just distance myself somehow, and I can't do that. It's not a helpful thing to say to people.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Ela Law: It's this is really timely because I've been talking about this in my groups recently. And I recorded a Youtube video about it today. Oh.

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Christine Chessman: Oh!

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Sarah: Is that I will ask people

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Sarah: so when you imagine the situation in your life that you feel like is causing you the most suffering or emotional upset at the moment. And if you were to ask yourself

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Sarah: how much of this just instinctively don't put any pressure on yourself to go one way or another. How much of this situation

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Sarah: is perpetuated by your mind.

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Sarah: what you're telling yourself, what you're believing, how you're speaking to yourself about it versus the objective circumstances.

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Sarah: And a lot of people are saying, well, actually, most of it, or all of it. And it's okay if it's only a bit of it, but I don't know that any of us can say that's not my mind at all right. The mind is in there somewhere, and I think probably in a lot of situations. It's the main

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Sarah: main perpetrator, if you like, of spinning that. Well, then, that leaves us with 2 potential solutions. One is changing our minds.

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Christine Chessman: Which okay, sometimes we can do that. Sometimes we don't know how to do that with certain deep things like trauma, where it's just coming up again and again, like, you know, how are we supposed to just change that through some kind of positive thinking.

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Sarah: And the second would be to disidentify from our minds like we're not our minds.

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Sarah: So we're not suffering.

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Sarah: but we're human beings. So we attach to our minds, and I do it all the time, so I don't want to sound like some grand guru here. I've just had glimpses. I've had glimpses of it.

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Christine Chessman: I mean I, the what I sort of am really drawn to more now is getting into the body. And sort of

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Christine Chessman: you know. That's why I would disassociate, not disassociate. That's the wrong word. But disengage, maybe is just if my mind is too busy, or it's telling me things that are uncomfortable, or just that that aren't serving me. I get into the body and move and kind of maybe do some nervous system regulation or some tapping, or some.

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Christine Chessman: I find that that's a really nice way to calm yourself and kind of get out of that space.

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Sarah: Yes, I agree. And so mine would be more getting still, because when I get still my body calms down, not everyone's nervous system runs like that. And this is what's unhelpful if you're told. Oh, get still in meditation. What you're saying, I think is really important. Christine is sometimes it's movement movement that's needed to calm the body down, not just trying to be still, to calm the body down.

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Ela Law: Absolutely. Yeah, it's really interesting, because the mind can be such an amazing tool. But it can also be such a.

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Ela Law: It can really hinder our progress and our healing because we are. We are too much. We think too much, and we intellectualize too much. And I like what you said, Christine about sort of going into your body, because by default that embodies you, that makes you in the puts you in the moment and not in the past or the future, or the you know the worries or the thoughts that may spiral into a rabbit hole.

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Ela Law: So yeah, it's it's a really interesting.

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Christine Chessman: And we.

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Sarah: Get. We get scared of our minds. I've definitely been there where I've been just scared of my mind. I don't want to stop with my mind. Let me just keep feeding my mind. I'm going to binge on content. I'm going to binge on Youtube. I'm going to binge on TV. I'm going to binge on social media, whatever it might be.

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Sarah: And this is why I feel like this work is so important, this capacity to

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Sarah: calm our mind down, because our minds turn into these sort of tyrants.

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Sarah: these monsters that are dragging us around.

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Sarah: And I'm not saying that we'll necessarily have full mastery over our mind, or that's even the goal. But maybe a little bit more allyship.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And what so for you? Is meditation a part of your daily practice? Then, Sarah, would you.

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Sarah: I've not been as consistent as I would hope to be. So I did for gosh! 7 or 8 years it was every day.

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Christine Chessman: Wow!

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Sarah: And then it's got really the last couple of years. Interestingly, it's got a bit more sporadic.

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Sarah: Which I've been noticing. But I've signed up for in a couple of weekends time I'm going to go and do the transcendental meditation course.

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Sarah: So I'm thinking of, like, maybe trying a different type of meditation. I have got a friend who raves about it.

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Sarah: so yes, my my plan is to it's I would say it's something that I'm actively at the moment trying to figure out how to incorporate back in.

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Sarah: But I think that

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Sarah: the whole point in my mind of meditation is also yes, to experience it in the moment. But ideally you have a different experience outside of meditation as well.

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Sarah: So again, like, how are we using this word meditation? I think I'm somebody who regularly like watches what's going on in her mind.

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Ela Law: -

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Sarah: That might not be a formal meditation practice.

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Sarah: Maybe meditation has like helped with that. I think therapy's helped with that as well like that constant introspection to be able to stop and pause and look and see what's there?

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Sarah: So yes, I haven't been as

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Sarah: have to be truthful that I've not been as consistent as I would hope to be recently, and I'm not even 100% sure what that's about.

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Ela Law: Oh, that's interesting. Have you noticed that? I mean, obviously given that you signed up to another cause? You obviously noticed that it could be beneficial to

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Ela Law: to do a bit more again. Have you noticed over the last couple of years where you have been more sporadic with it that

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Ela Law: I don't know. Unhelpful things have crept back up or.

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Sarah: not so much, and that's probably part of it, too. I haven't noticed a big difference. I did. The night before last. I had a meditation practice before I went to bed, and it felt wonderful. And I had that whole. Why aren't I doing this every single night again? Do you know who, I think actually made the biggest interrupt was last October getting a kitten. There you go!

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Sarah: Oh.

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Sarah: because they had the zoomies at the time when I would normally be meditating. I had a lovely evening practice. I'd get on my yoga mat for half an hour, do my yoga and meditate, and I'd go to bed, and that was all thrown up in the air by getting the cats.

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Ela Law: Kitten did not like that.

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Christine Chessman: Oh, you don't have as much quiet time in the house with a kitten.

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Sarah: Yeah. So my mindfulness practice. Now, because someone someone wrote on my Youtube channel that Eckhart Tolle talks about actually playing with cats or spending time with cats. I think any pets is like a form of mindfulness.

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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Sarah: And it is because I'll just play with the cats. And I'm just in the moment with the cats. So maybe it's taking kind of different forms

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Sarah: that it's not like. I'm not having time in the moment.

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Ela Law: Yeah, I think mindfulness can be really scary for people, especially. I mean you. You. Obviously, you like stillness, and that is helpful to you. I know a lot of people who find that the scariest thing in the world to be still and just, to be with yourself, so I often encourage people to practice very informal mindfulness, like literally, when you're brushing your teeth. Can you spend a moment just noticing what's going on? And or when you do the washing out just really sort of very.

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Sarah: Not sitting on a cushion and meditating for half an hour, because that seems too scary to some people. So yeah, I do. I agree with Eckhart on that one.

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Ela Law: With the kids in.

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Sarah: Yeah, I think.

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Ela Law: Hopefully.

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Ela Law: Well, Byron, Katie talked about doing the dishes as a type good.

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Sarah: Afternoon.

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Ela Law: Right.

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Sarah: No, no.

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Christine Chessman: It's

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Christine Chessman: you know what this is. This is also something I'm struggling with at the minute I need to do the dishes. I need to be watching my favorite show. So at the minute I prop up my laptop. So I'm watching TV while I'm doing the dishes, which is really bad. And it's the opposite of what's not bad. There's no good and bad with

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Christine Chessman: it is the opposite of being mindful.

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Sarah: Because that's okay.

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Sarah: Don't have to.

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Ela Law: We don't have to be mindful all the time.

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Sarah: Supervisor, I was saying to her, this was a couple of years ago I was talking to her about, you know. I feel like I'm just checking out because I'm watching this TV thing I'm checking out.

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Sarah: And she said to me, I think sometimes we just need to check out there. You know

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Sarah: what the 1st time it occurred to me, because I think I had this sort of grand idea that this self actualization place, or whatever is about being constantly in the moment, and maybe it is. But I'm a human being, and I shouldn't kid myself beyond my own evolution.

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Ela Law: Yeah, absolutely no 100%. I think we can't. And I think it's not. I mean, we'd be a monk somewhere in.

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Sarah: That sounds wonderful. I think I could do the monk life.

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Ela Law: Could you.

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Sarah: Oh, I'd love to.

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Ela Law: But you.

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Sarah: Yeah.

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Ela Law: Would you not get bored? I think I'd get bored.

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Sarah: Because you'd be in a state of bliss all the time.

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Ela Law: Yeah, maybe that would take a lot of practice for me to get into that state of bliss.

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Christine Chessman: This, like 2 days of camping, is enough for me.

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Ela Law: Yeah, point.

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Christine Chessman: I mean, that's

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Christine Chessman: isn't that interesting? I remember listening to 10% happier. Podcast. And Dan Harris had on Cara, lai, who's a meditation teacher, and she's just spent a year at a retreat and meditation retreat like a full year. And so she kind of left her husband and and left the area that she was living, and went and.

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Sarah: Left, left her husband as in broke up, no, oh, just.

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Christine Chessman: It was a full year.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: So it was like, bye, I'll see you in a year. I'm off to meditate for a year, and I find it really fascinating, because I have a lot of time for her. But equally it was more like through anthropological lens, because I'm like there's no way I would want to do that, but I was fascinated by somebody who would.

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Sarah: I'd love to do that.

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Christine Chessman: Really.

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Sarah: Yeah. Gosh! If someone said, you know, cover your bills, off you go. I'd be like, thanks.

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Ela Law: Bye.

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Christine Chessman: No, Ella, would you.

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Ela Law: I don't know. I don't know. I don't think I could do a whole year.

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Christine Chessman: No.

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Ela Law: Did a meditation retreat once for a long weekend, and that was plenty, I would say.

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Christine Chessman: Talking about the meditation and kind of going in and out of it. I got really into tapping eft sort of emotional freedom technique. And I find a tapping teacher who I loved Jason Winters. I had him on the podcast and because the Adhd thing. I get obsessed. I'm like he's on the podcast and then I buy everything that he's ever done. And I tapped consistently for quite a long time, and it was fabulous. But then it fell away.

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Christine Chessman: And I kept saying to him, Why am I not tapping? And he was like, There's a ask yourself why and keep, and I couldn't quite work it out. And it is an interesting one, isn't it? Why am I

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Christine Chessman: choosing not to? Or why am I shying away for it or not giving myself that time.

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Sarah: Relate to that. And I also think you know, through an Adhd lens the brain craves novelty right.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Sarah: So it might be that you do. Your brain does want to move on to the next thing, and rather than going like oh, I should just be able to stick at this one thing. How about you? Just go like this is how my brain operates, and let me just try and go with it instead of getting into a battle with it.

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Sarah: Go do some. Tm, come, do some tm with me.

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Christine Chessman: I mean, I went back into that.

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Ela Law: I also wonder whether some of these things are tools that serve us for a period of time, and then, when

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Ela Law: when we kind of fall off them, or that we don't use them as much. We maybe not don't need them as much as we did before. I don't know. That's just the thought that occurred to me just now, because sometimes we really need to do something to help us through a particular period of time. And then, when we got through that, maybe the tools are not

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Ela Law: as effective or as efficient anymore. And we need something different, or we don't need anything for a period of time. I don't know.

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Sarah: I think sometimes that is the case, and I also think partly

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Sarah: does it? Does it matter? You know, we always try and figure out like, what's the motivations? Because some have. It's just fallen away.

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Ela Law: Boom, boom.

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Sarah: Benefit from doing it.

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Sarah: And it's not because, you know it's had its use. Then I can make myself wrong for that and go well, you should be doing it because it would be beneficial for you instead of just yeah. I'm a human being, and I struggle a bit with consistency. Sometimes.

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Ela Law: Yeah, exactly.

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Christine Chessman: I wanted to tangent away and circle back to.

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Christine Chessman: I find it really interesting. What you said about your therapist when you were in therapy, the 5, 2. And how? It's just so refreshing and nice to have a therapist who is aligned in terms of eating disorder. Recovery. So my daughter struggled with an eating disorder, and it was really a struggle to find a therapist who would be able to help her, or would understand kind of

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Christine Chessman: what she was dealing with, and wouldn't further

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Christine Chessman: trigger her, or just, you know, accidentally do harm without realizing

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Christine Chessman: and it's just really it's it's a very important, I think, to have that

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Christine Chessman: therapist who's aligned with that kind of recovery. And I have a therapist I who I love.

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Christine Chessman: But she started talking to me about the fact. She only eats 2 meals a day at 11 and 3, and then doesn't eat, and I immediately was like, I can't.

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Christine Chessman: I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I'm like, maybe I should do that.

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Christine Chessman: I'm like, No, go away, go! And it is. I think it's so important. I don't know if you could speak to that a little bit. Do you tend to work with clients

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Christine Chessman: who is a general clients, or do you tend to work with people who are recovering from eating disorders.

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Sarah: So I work with binge eating only so some people they would be falling into the binge, eating disorder, criteria, and other people. Not so really, it's any kind of where people feel like they're having problematic bouts of out of control eating. You know, we don't have to

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Sarah: put a label on that. But it's just. It's such a.

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Sarah: It's kind of the bane of my life a bit because I struggle to have other therapists to recommend people to, because it is one of those things that because it seems to defy rationality when you really understand binge eating and the mechanisms of it, it does make sense, but it seems to defy rationality when you're in it.

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Sarah: So, therefore, for any therapist who doesn't understand it. Gosh! The things my clients tell me that previous therapists have said to them, you know when they don't get it, and I think it's a big piece of why people come to me because they know and they feel it, that I get it.

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Sarah: but also recognizing with every therapist.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Sarah: Personal bias is going to come into it. We're human beings. We can't get rid of it. The reason why we have supervision is to be examining our personal biases. We can't put them anywhere else, so I will tell people when they come to me. Some people will come and say, I think I'm addicted to sugar, and I think I need to cut sugar out. Now I respect that. That might be

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Sarah: how somebody sees their problem, and that's their truth, and that there are some people out there who take that approach, and that does seem to be their way through it. But it doesn't fit with my frame and my modality. So I'm very upfront about that, like my model, is a food freedom approach.

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Sarah: And that's not to say someone's wrong for doing it differently, but because my bias is so strong. If I were to try and work with somebody who's trying to quit sugar. I think I'd be conflicted.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Sarah: And that would show up. It would show up in places where I'd be looking for ways to kind of go. Oh, see, see, this is why this doesn't work, and this is why you should think of it like that.

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Sarah: And that can happen kind of in a more negative way when you are sitting with a therapist, perhaps doesn't understand the foodstuff at all.

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Sarah: but I think there's a lot of resources out there which which can be really helpful, so I don't think everybody has to work with a eating specialist in order to recover, because if you are able to educate yourself on it.

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Christine Chessman: You can.

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Sarah: Take that stuff into therapy and try and work on how to actually apply it.

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Sarah: But yeah, if you've got therapists out there who, like my therapist, was doing the 5 2.

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Sarah: That was her bias that was coming in, and she was in a small body, and she had been since before she started doing the 5 2, so I don't know what was going on for her. Why, she was doing the 5 2 to begin with.

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Sarah: but

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Sarah: that bled into the session, and I used to do training for therapists on binge eating used to do weekend training, and there was one therapist who'd done my training.

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Sarah: and then I'd met her socially.

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Sarah: and the way she was talking about food and talking about this work, I thought.

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Sarah: did you not hear a bloody thing. I said. It really disheartened me with actually doing the training for the therapist, because I don't know.

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Sarah: I just felt like the message wasn't going in. I thought, maybe that's something in how I was communicating it I don't know. But

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Sarah: yes, I mean, you said to speak to it, but I feel like I've been quite negative. I didn't mean to be.

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Christine Chessman: No.

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Ela Law: It's.

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Christine Chessman: It's Ella. I don't know if you're similar, but I do work with clients who still want to lose weight. But I make it very clear that that's not something that I can help them with, or that it's not a goal I set when I'm when I'm teaching movement at all. And it is I get clients telling me, oh, I've just started this new diet, and I'm I'm oh, I just immediately want to go.

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Christine Chessman: I try not to react and be judgmental. But they all go. Christine, I can see your face.

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Christine Chessman: Yes.

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Christine Chessman: I can't hide it, I'm like. And then so I think it's a conflict for me, but I don't want to not work with somebody, because if they want to work with me, they know that weight loss is not something. I don't work for aesthetics, so they know that. So there must be a part of them.

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Christine Chessman: That is curious, at least, so that's why I sort of

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Christine Chessman: even there might be a slight conflict there. I feel I can continue to work with them, because it's not. I'm not giving them meal plans. I'm not talking to them about food. It's more about the movement side of things. But, Ella, I don't know, for you.

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Ela Law: Yeah, I mean, I said, I said that out quite.

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Ela Law: you know, initially in the, in, the, in the discovery call even that I don't

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Ela Law: work on intentional weight loss. So I

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Ela Law: but but, like you, I still get clients that would.

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Christine Chessman: Hmm.

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Ela Law: That are hoping that intuitive eating will lead to that.

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Sarah: Yes.

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Ela Law: That just generally happens, and it's usually in session. 4 or 5 is like, Oh, I kind of. I have to be honest with you, Ella. I was hoping that it would lead to weight loss. I'm like, I'm not surprised. And let's talk about it. But

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Ela Law: yeah, definitely is one of those things that people kind of find very difficult to

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Ela Law: to, to not focus on.

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Sarah: And people move in and out of it as well. So one week someone might come to me, and they're like, Yep, I'll do anything to stop binge eating. I don't care about the weight loss. I'm just in too much pain with the binge, eating.

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Sarah: And then another week. Maybe they've seen a photo. They've got an event suddenly that that's live again. So it is going to come in and out. And so it's a conversation that I am having regularly, pretty much with every client that I have, and there's many clients I've worked with that have come in and been like. I'm absolutely done with weight loss. It feels very kind of black and white, and there it's a solid because we are conflicted, and we've been bombarded with messages all over the place about it, as well.

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Ela Law: Absolutely, can I? Just very briefly. I know we're kind of almost at the end of our time together. But when you said conflicted, and we're talking about sort of dieting and the wish to lose weight. I do need to mention the glp. One S. And clients that choose to take those medications, and

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Ela Law: is there for you if you work with someone who who takes those weight, loss, injections, is there a conflict? Is there something that you feel. I know, that you have a support group for people who are on them.

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Ela Law: Can you talk a little bit about that? I think this is another whole podcast. Episode. And also I just want to say, I'm going to link in the show notes to your and Stephanie's conversation about Glp one S. Because I thought that was very refreshing and very interesting to hear that there are, there is no clear yes or no, that there is no clear. We should never take them.

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Ela Law: But we need to be aware of what the consequences of taking them are, especially if we are in recovery from disordered eating or an eating disorder. But yeah, I just wanted to check in with you about your support group, and how you how you handle that, because that is a bit of a conflict. If you are coming from a food freedom, intuitive eating, non-weight centric approach. And someone is very clearly on a drug that is meant to help them lose weight.

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Sarah: It's an emotive topic. The glp ones and people tend to go very strongly one way or another.

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Sarah: and I've always been a bit of a fence sitter, not because I'm indecisive, but when you sit on the fence you can see both sides.

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Ela Law: True!

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Ela Law: And so it's.

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Ela Law: That's.

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Sarah: It's a it's a therapy group that I run. So it's not just a support group. This is.

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Ela Law: Okay.

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Sarah: People who are actively trying to work on their relationship with food. Whilst on these medications, as well.

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Sarah: So we're in an experiment because it is such early days. There is no research on these medications

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Sarah: along with disordered eating recovery. We don't have the data on the long term use of these medications for weight loss purposes. We do because people say it's been around for 20 years for diabetes, but the weight loss dose is, I think, 3 and a half times higher than the diabetes dose, so we don't have more than 2 years of data. As far as I'm aware, maybe we're kind of going a bit further than that. Now.

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Sarah: On this longer term. At these level doses.

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Sarah: We also, appetite is so complex, so it could be for someone who's having a binge eating problem. Maybe it is insulin resistance or Pcos, or something very biological, that is, shooting their appetite up and making it really hard for them to feel regulated with food that no amount of therapy or emotional and psychological work is going to touch.

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Sarah: So there's an argument kind of in this case that this could be helpful for some people. There are also people who I'm working with where

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Sarah: the quality of their life is so significantly impacted by their weight. And it's all very well for the Hayes people to come along and say, well, you can do some like strength exercises. You can do some mobility, but when you are struggling to walk certain distances, and life has become very difficult from a mobility perspective because of your weight

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Sarah: that can be understandable, like in those situations as well.

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Sarah: The bit where we're getting into danger zone is. And I also want to say I'm not casting any moral aspersion on any use of this, even if it's for aesthetics. I'm not moralizing that because I understand how people's body image can be so distressing that for them it feels as disabling as somebody who's struggling to move around because it's affecting them that much in the world as well.

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Sarah: But then, on the other side of it, we've got people that are struggling with body image.

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Sarah: and, like their bodies, are

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Sarah: functional. They are able to navigate the world and all of that, and they're taking it in the hope that shrinking their body is going to make them feel better about themselves.

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Sarah: There's also

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Sarah: because we know about food noise right? And there's a lot of food noise. And these medications can get rid of food noise just like when you. You probably have this, Ella, when you work with someone who's binge eating and they start eating more consistently that as well can get rid of food noise for some people.

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Sarah: But what tends to happen with the disordered eating bunch more than what I want to call the Gen. Pop, who's just.

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Ela Law: The disordered eating category, but perhaps wants to lose weight for various reasons.

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Sarah: In the disordered eating category.

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Sarah: I've just lost my train of thought. What was I saying?

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Ela Law: For the people who have disordered eating or an eating disorder, who take those medications. It's different.

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Sarah: Oh, the the true noise that was it.

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Sarah: Food, noise? Yeah, food, noise.

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Sarah: So the food noise gets quiet. But what gets very loud is body noise.

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Sarah: So now that obsession that used to be on food is on their body, and that is dangerous. When you have this medication in your hand that you can manipulate your appetite with, you can change your body shape with. And so there are some people who are very vulnerable to taking it too far, and many people who struggle with binge eating got to binge eating because they were originally restrictive.

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Sarah: And it can be like, Well, I'm a binge eater now, I'm not a restrictor anymore. But sometimes the restrictive voice just goes dormant, and that can be woken up with these medications as well. So I personally like, I have a lot of concerns about them. I would never recommend or encourage anybody to go on them, and that's why I had. That's where I did have a conflict where it's like, I want to offer this space for people to work on this, and I want to understand the impact better as well.

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Sarah: Does it look like? I'm now an advocate for grp, one s. Because I'm offering a place for people to come and actually work on them, so that, I think, has probably been more of the conflicting part.

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Sarah: And yeah, for most people with disordered eating, it's not like they're taking these medications and

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Sarah: and everything's fine even when they're on them. These are people who are still saying I need therapy because I'm still struggling with food. I'm still struggling with my behaviours and my mental health around food.

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Sarah: So it's it's complex. I am conscious of time. So I'm trying to keep my answers yeah, nice as possible, but throw as much in there so that.

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Ela Law: That was really.

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Sarah: Doubled.

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Ela Law: Yeah, no, no, that was really helpful. And as I said, I'm going to link to your and Stephanie's episode in the show notes. So if anyone wants to sort of hear the extended version, they can just listen to that episode which was really really good, and and helped me kind of get clear on a few things. So thank you for that.

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Christine Chessman: Really like.

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Christine Chessman: and I think it is that sort of the doctor. It seems to be at the moment. The Nhs are quite happy to hand it out without much

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Christine Chessman: research into why they're handing it out so. Certainly a friend of mine was given it within, you know, a 10 min consultation because she had a backache.

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Christine Chessman: And it was like, Well, lose some weight. So here we go. And it just feels, yeah.

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Christine Chessman: And there's it's yeah. We're not. There's a lot of gray. There's a lot of gray there.

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Sarah: Always.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah. As you say, it could be another podcast.

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Ela Law: Yes.

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Ela Law: Needs to be.

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Christine Chessman: Are we gonna do that question?

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Ela Law: Yes, yes, you're the 1st one, Sarah. You're the.

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Christine Chessman: It's a weird question, because she might not understand what we mean.

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Sarah: It's open to interpretation, isn't it?

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Christine Chessman: Yeah. So this, this podcast. Is called, Find your strong. And I named it before Ella came along.

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Christine Chessman: And and you decided, oh, we'll just keep it. So.

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Ela Law: Kept it because I like it.

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Christine Chessman: I like it and find your strong to me means find what works for you. So one person's strength, routine, or what is strong for one person is not going to look the same to another. Strength training for me doesn't look the same to a weightlifter in a gym or to so it's finding your strong. So if we asked you, what does that mean for you? What is? How would you find your strong? Is that what we're trying to say.

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Ela Law: That's what we're trying to say.

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Sarah: With movement, or is more like just a.

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Ela Law: 94 really.

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Christine Chessman: You like, Sarah. Anything like that.

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Sarah: Okay.

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Ela Law: Putting you on the spot here.

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Sarah: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Oh, it is!

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Sarah: Think.

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Sarah: Do you know, I just tell you what's popped into my head. You know how

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Sarah: like the word manipulation has a really bad rap because it sounds like, if you're manipulating people, you're being really insincere.

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Sarah: But actually, people manipulate

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Sarah: to different degrees. I'm not talking about cruel manipulation because they don't know how to get their needs met.

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Sarah: So what came to my mind actually was, it's Martha Beck's book, actually, the way of integrity.

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Christine Chessman: Love, her.

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Sarah: Is about being really honest.

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Sarah: Even when it's hard to be, which isn't just saying everything that comes into your head, or being unkind or opinionated.

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Sarah: But it's those times when

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Sarah: you know what we want to do is we want to just say the thing to like gloss over, but actually going back and saying the difficult thing, I think, is such a strength, and I think it creates such safety in relationships as well like, I've got a couple of friends where we have that relationship where I know if I've said or done something that's bothered them.

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Sarah: that they'll mention it because they'll understand my motives are in the right place, but also like they want to clear the air. And I'm like that as well. And so I love that. And it's quite a scary thing to do sometimes.

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Christine Chessman: Hmm.

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Sarah: If you've ever said something to someone you're like, oh, I think I hurt them there. Well, let's just pretend that didn't happen, and move on to go back and say, did that hurt when I said that, you know, and where that came from? So I would say, Find your strong is about being honest.

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Sarah: even when it's difficult for you personally not talking about like making it difficult for other people. But when the easier thing is to try and be indirect to get an outcome. So if you are wanting support for something, and you might hint, rather than just saying, I need your support here because I think

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Sarah: for me. Anyway, I have this idea that what many of us want is we just want another human being to be perfectly attuned to us perfectly attuned to our needs and to read what we need, and anything less than that's not good enough, but to actually put ourselves out there and say, I need something from you. Are you willing to give that to me

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Sarah: is quite a vulnerable thing to do? I think.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Sarah: Scary. I think we devalue it. And that was just the 1st thing that popped into my head with the question. So wow!

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Christine Chessman: I mean that is, that's incredible. I'll put Martha Beck's book in the show notes as well, because I think she spent a whole year, didn't she? And she didn't tell a lie for a whole year.

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Christine Chessman: and had lots of consequences.

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Christine Chessman: But it's just fascinating. It's a great book to read, Sarah. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time today. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

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Sarah: For inviting me. It's been good to connect.

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Ela Law: Yes, thank you so much.