honestly I kind of don't want to make this video there are probably fewer topics that are so personal so emotional so touchy and I'm going to open myself up to all kinds of annoying comments but you know what I'm going to make the video anyway and this is why when I was pretty sick either in modes of starving myself of food or binging on food I was sent to see tons of Specialists and like nothing helped I felt like nothing helped all the things that were supposed to help didn't and I felt like I was just left on my own to figure it out and it took me like 15 years so I do want to kind of make the video that I wish I had when I was really struggling and while I had an eating disorder uh this video was is not about eating disorder recovery or anything like that it's really just about how I stopped obsessing over food whether you've had an eating disorder restricted binged or just mourned that so much of your brain space was going towards food these are the things that helped me I'm not a professional of literally any kind there's literally nothing I'm professional at but I've put a lot of time and thought towards having a healthier relationship ship towards eating habits and these are some things that helped me as a disclaimer there will be some reference obviously of eating disorders and you know some of that in this video so if that's a trigger to you or just talking about food is a trigger to you then feel free to skip out on this video and to those who have maybe like no relationship to disordered eating in any capacity I want to give a disclaimer to you too cuz I'm going to say some things in this video that aren't going to make sense to you they're just not going to make sense and it's going to seem maybe crazy and that's okay okay it is very hard to understand if you haven't been in that position so if this doesn't connect with you that's okay no need to leave a comment about it but for those who know if you know you know here we go okay okay A little bit of personal background I actually really don't like talking about this stuff and I don't usually talk about it but for a little bit of background I have had experience with eating disorders I was hospitalized when I was 16 um with an eating disorder I had dropped 35 lb from the weight you see me at now my heart rate was 40 beats per minute I was very very ill later on in my life I was binging and purging so there were immediate physical health concerns but to me the greatest tragedy was this immense amount of mental energy that I was put putting towards thinking about food avoiding food getting food resisting food like just this it just felt it was just immense the amount of mental brain space that was going towards food I felt really bad about it I was aware of how sad it made me that so much of my energy was going there and even after some of like the physical symptoms of eating dis disorders stabilized in me this one symptom remained of this immense Obsession about food so much mental and emotional energy towards food and to me it always it always kind of depressed me and I couldn't stop and that kind of food fixation whether it's starving yourself or binging or purging or just having a casually disordered relationship to eating it can be really isolating it can feel so negative if people don't understand it becomes even more isolating you can lose relationships over it it's so emotional so to have all this additional emotional negativity added on to it it's just like the worst it's the worst possible reaction so I want to give you a big hug and talk about some things that helped me okay first the heck of all the first requirement is a lot of time all of this took a lot of time so if you're struggling you're struggling like don't beat yourself up that it's taking a lot of time it it takes time I found that when I had disrupted my intuitive relationship to eating it was difficult to restore it it was difficult to understand hunger signals and what is normal eating intuitively all of that like it is possible to restore it but it took time so these aren't instant fixes it will take you some time just know that it's okay okay probably the big biggest most important next thing I did was that I let myself eat all foods now I'm not here to tell you what to eat it's so personal I know that but for me what worked was letting myself access the whole spectrum of foods you know that I'm not allergic to actually sometimes I do eat Foods I'm allergic to I love mango I'm very allergic to Mango and I still eat it and that's not great but my point is any food that I can digest I will have now because as soon as you make something off limits as soon as as you're labeling something like bad or Untouchable guess what you're obsessing over that's a it's a shortcut to Obsession so I I let myself eat everything and personally I'm much more like a sweet tooth girl I basically refuse to live a life without dessert and so I have little bits of dessert in every single day so it's never off limits it's never something I've been starved of it's never something I haven't had in weeks I'm not obsessing over it because it's been accessible that still can account for eating in moderation and exerting self-control in certain ways I'm not eating chocolate every single second I think of it cuz that would be every single second but um those things that I love making sure they're super present in how I eat was the only way to eliminate binging and obsessing over food and that took a long time I would say it took like a year or two to really reset and to let you know desserts and Breads and all the things feel like a natural integrated part of my life before I stopped obsessing over it that took like a year or two okay big big old tip right here instead of tracking calories please for the love of God let's not track calories here's something you can track willpower tracking your willpower let me explain when trying to learn to eat you know normally again it takes some restraint it does even without trying to diet even without trying to lose weight even if I when I was trying to gain weight in a healthy way it still took restraint to like eat eat how a normal person would eat how would a normal person eat like I felt like a crazy person sometimes it still took a lot of energy and restraint and willpower and I realized it was really important for me to track for myself how my willpower ebbed and flowed throughout the day the amount of willpower you have is finite it's not infinite it doesn't go on forever if I wake up okay I've got like a full battery of willpower cool easy to make good decisions for myself in the morning easy to not restrict or not B whatever your goal is but as the day goes on okay I've been using up some of my willpower to and then something stressful happens at work and then something emotional happens with family and it is eroding my willpower the stress the emotion the hours in the day they are all eroding your willpower and for me the lower my willpower is the more I'm obsessing about the goal the more I'm having to mechanic Ally think about it you know in the morning when my willpower is high it's not as hard to like eat normally but when at the end of the day when my willpower is really low it is taking every ounce of energy and restraint and mental focus to eat normally so that's when it becomes obsessive is when my willpower is low so I plan for that I plan my meals by my willpower okay I recognize my willpower is highest in the morning it's lowest in the evening so I do like lighter meals in the morning and expect to have bigger meals in the evening um and I'm not saying that's how you should eat I'm saying that's how I take into account my own willpower es and flows lots of people say you're not supposed to eat a lot in the evening listen I don't I'm not a researcher I'm not a scient I'm not a doctor I'm not I'm barely a person I don't know what the Sciences behind that but I really don't care what's more important than like well a couple calories you're going to burn or something I don't don't care I'm trying to release mental energy and for me it's easy to not obsess over food in the morning it's way harder for me to not obsess over food in the evening if your goal is to be obsessing about food less you have to be working with your willpower not like all the strain and all the effort and all the trying means more Obsession as a specific call out for me I make sure in every meal I eat protein and a starch for me that's because that's the only way I feel satiated and that's personal it depends whatever makes you feel satiated I'm not saying you have to eat what I eat but just like thinking about what actually leaves you feeling satiated there was periods in my life where I only ate salad and guess what I was hungry all the time and if you're feeling hungry and not satiated all the time then you're thinking about food all the time and then you're obsessing over food so a huge huge key to slowly get yourself from obsessing over food is to make sure you are feeling satisfied it feels like no duh to say it but this was like a huge turning point for me with someone with disordered eating making sure I'm satisfied after every meal for me that means a protein and a starch which can be you know bread potatoes like something hearty whatever I think it can be different from person to person but if I'm just eating a salad I don't care if it's the same amount of calories you know if if I ate like a sandwich bread and meat and I ate salad and both have the same amount of calories I would still feel hungry after the salad I don't know it just like doesn't satiate me and there's science behind that obviously but I also know it's like differs from person to person I think the point is just like what makes you feel satisfied you need like a healthy sense of satisfaction or then you're thinking about the next meal immediately Obsession okay guys we got to identify triggers y'all it's kind of an overused word but triggers got to identify them for me and I think for most people it's pretty emotional family stress holidays things getting out of my control all of these things can kind of send me into Obsession I think a lot of us have our obsessive relationship with food because that provided some kind of comfort when things were chaos or things were upsetting or things were sad it was a comfort so the Mind goes there for me when things like start getting out of my control and so once I identified those triggers I I tried to come up with some like replacement activities that were comforting to me in a time of stress for me that could be doing a craft it could be like organizing a cabinet something that physically engages my body so that when I am like starting to spin and starting to obsess I don't want to lean on my willpower to control the obsession that's like more restraint it's more energy I want to do something that just like naturally takes my mind off of it like getting an craft doing a puzzle or organizing or something you love something where your mind is naturally engaged happily engaged so that you're not obsessing about not obsessing that like more tension and more trying isn't the answer it's just more Obsession so I try to find have like replacement activities that I genuinely love and I've like thought about them beforehand so when I'm kind of hit in the danger zone I can go to them this video is sponsored by Thrive Market I love them and I'm going to tell you a bit about them in case you want to know more about them and then you will know more about them that's how the system works this is always a fun sponsorship for me to do because I've always eaten all my groceries that I've ordered from Thrive Market by the time I'm supposed to film it so here A bunch of like empty boxes of things I've already eaten Thrive Market is a membership based grocery store with savings and every order I love it because I'm lazy as all get out I basically if I if I can't order grocer groceries to my door there will not be groceries ever I love having my groceries delivered to me and also it's all these brands that I loved getting elsewhere but they are cheaper through Thrive Market on my last grocery order I saved $13 that was just in one order I I'm going to give a shout out to this specific probiotic soda which I love you probably Se Me drinking this a lot hello can you focus this is the poppy probiotic soda which I got I got influenced by another influencer because I'm weak but that's like my favorite soda now and these are my favorite bars I've destroyed these boxes but these are my favorite snack bars when I'm running around sometimes when I'm like filming in the car I'm snacking on these Aloha bars in between I got a variety pack okay good job to me if you're somebody who is interested in health food groceries but you don't live near a Health Foods grocery store Thrive Market is a really good option or if you do follow a specific nutrition lifestyle two of my my siblings are gluten-free because of celiacs and Thrive Market has some of my favorite gluten-free Brands simple Mills crackers are the best gluten-free crackers people don't even know they're gluten-free crackers and if you've ever had a gluten-free CRA cracker It's usually the flavor of chalk there's different membership options you can do month a month if you just want to commit for a month it's 12 bucks or you can do annually at $5 a month and if you want to check it out and join Thrive market today you can get 30% off your first order plus a free gift worth up to 60 bucks by going to thrivemarket.com Caroline Winkler so check out the link in the description to get 30% off your first order have a blast nobody can tell you what to do okay and that's all I have to say about [Music] that okay I got to say something controversial maybe for a second I feel like on social media there's like really only there's only like a very specific way that you're allowed to talk about food and food relationships and it's you know just about health we're all just about our health we're all just about our health okay are we none of the people I know in my life are that obsessed with their helps like they're they're all still like people who are Vain and like care how they look cuz they're kind of vain creatures like I think that's pretty human but like no one's allowed to acknowledge that on the Internet it's so weird I don't think it's very honest and I don't think it's very helpful cuz I don't think it applies to anybody we all have a little vanity in us you know we we agree that it's okay to have physical preferences about how your hair looks or physical preferences about how I dress but you're not allowed to have any other physical preferences like we all just have to be enlightened out of that which I just don't think that's realistic I I don't know any people like that I've never met any human beings like that and this is especially true around like eating disorder recovery basically the only thing I've ever heard when you're recovering from an eating disorder is basically like you're not allowed to care what you look like anymore which that just doesn't like feel that's not something that's asked of any other person that like you're not allowed to have like any preference about what you look like anymore I it it just doesn't feel very actionable to me it doesn't feel very like practical it doesn't feel very helpful I do have preferences on how I look but to me the difference is that I will no longer let my physical preferences damage my health damage my relationships damage being balanced in other areas of life I am not going to let my pursuit of a physical preference come at odds with how my body is naturally um I'm like a very kind of bottom heavy person for me to pursue a body type of like really wafy long legs I would have to do really unhealthy things to my body so like I'm not going to do that my point is that like I it actually annoys the crap out of me that there's this attitude like we're not allowed to have a physical preference with how we look yeah you are and you probably do um I think it's really important to not let other people tell you what that preference is supposed to be to not let that preference come at the detriment to the other connection points in your life and your connection to yourself and to at the same time like work really hard on learning to love yourself in the very different forms you come in that's a really hard thing for me I've been working on it for decades and I'm like still not all the way there there's work to be done but I'm working on it that's all I got to say I don't know big big rule for me I absolutely refuse to crash diet absolutely refuse a lot of time you'll hit I've hit those days where I like I'm I'm feeling really down about how much I've eaten or something or how much I've strayed from my plan and then there's that thought well I could do a crash diet I could just do some like really extreme expedited condensed thing to feel like I'm getting back on track no you're not no you are not at least I am not for me as someone who's had an obsessive relationship to food at times crash dieting is not an answer it is is just going to send me in a spiral I'm going to have like reactive responses crash dieting is not an option it is not an option I don't think it should be an option for many people but you know I'm not actually here to tell you what would eat whatever but I do think there's still like a healthy and reasonable and sustainable way to feel like you're getting back to your goals so let's say it's the holidays I've done lots of indulging I've really participated in all the FES of fun and all these social events around drinking and food and blah blah blah and holidays are over I'm ready to kind of like start working back to some of my goals of eating in a more balanced way I make sure that at a bare minimum the way that I adjust what I'm eating is a way I would be happy to eat long term that's a bare minimum for me so I'm not going to be going on some kind of regimen where I'm never eating dessert again cuz that's not a way I'm willing to live long term for me even like a reset period still has to be a way that that I would be happy to eat for the rest of my life a balanced way that includes sometimes going to restaurants that includes um having an extra Indulgence with a friend that includes not beating myself up about whatever extra caloric items maybe being a little more mindful but it's still a way that I would be happy to eat longterm because if it's something that I can only maintain shortterm then it's something that is going to require a lot of concentration and a lot of focus and a lot of restraint a lot of willpower and it's going to lead to obsessing guarantee it's going to lead to obsessing over food so I don't do [Music] it learning to trust your hunger signals I think it was like the hardest thing to restore when you're recovering from like a disordered relationship to eating this idea of eating intuitively I was just like what what even is that what even is that I literally remember going out to dinner with friends and I would have to like look at their plate to see what a portion size was not that I didn't intellectually know but I just like everything gets so jumbled intuition and what hunger signals are telling you it you can really kind of obliterate those signals um when you're going through some of these obsessive behaviors so working on restoring that was really tricky and it became really important for me let's say every morning I wake up and I eat like I said I eat usually a smaller breakfast because that works for me but then like one day I would wake up and just be starving just be starving out of control for no discernable reason like I don't know maybe I exercised yesterday more did I I don't know maybe it's something to do with my period maybe it's something emotional maybe there's some reason I like burned a lot of energy over the night like I don't know what I was doing in the night but woke up and I'm starving and that would be so scary to me because I'd be like well I can't like eat more than I usually eat because my whole plan is that I'm going to eat the small breakfast blah blah blah uh you got to start trusting your hunger signals so these days yes I usually eat a small breakfast but on the day when I wake up starving I trust that it's for a reason and I trust that when I eat a bigger breakfast my body needs it for whatever reason I'm burning the energy I'm using the fuel for some reason extra I eat the bigger breakfast when I feel I'm really needing it and just trusting in the beginning it's blind Trust it's not a ton of trust it's just like okay hoping that it does kind of balance out and it does what really doesn't work for me is waking up starving and then just ignoring that all day long talk about willpower down and then I'm thinking about food and then I'm back to obsessing mm- doesn't work try to listen to when you wake up starving you don't know why doesn't make a ton of sense doesn't really matter I need a bigger breakfast for some reason and trusting that like your body will figure it out the rest rest of the day okay y'all here's a big one on that note talking about balance I needed to rethink balance I don't know how about I don't know how about you guys think about balance but I used to think of like balanced eating as being like every single day is perfectly balanced which like life doesn't happen that way you got a weirdo like happy hour you have to go to an holiday party and like three people's wedding in one weekend cuz all your friends friends are getting married at the same time I am not feeling a lot of balance every single day I kind of reframed how I think about balance with eating and it's it's no longer within a day it's more within a week you know if things seem super out of whack for like a whole week straight then let's think about adjusting some things but I'm not going to freak out over just like not having Perfect Balance within one day and I also need to Define like what balances to me to me balance it includes getting a lot of nutrients it includes feeling satiated includes indulging and it also includes like not indulging every single little whim to eat that I have all the time I don't indulge every single carnal impulse in any other realm of my life all the time so balance includes getting to override some of those impulses and also getting to indulge some and also getting a lot of nutrition and also eating stuff that like has zero nutrition ntional value at all because it's fun how about that so that's what balances to me I really don't think about like just balance in a given day I'm not going to beat myself up over having a wacko day they're going to happen that's actually like part of life that's part of enjoying interactions so I think more kind of about a week like let's find the balance within the week we had a couple you know super indulgent days and I can have a couple days where like I'm not indulging every impulse that's okay this this is a little bonus this is a bonus my knees kind of hurt so I keep moving them around um this is a bonus this doesn't really have to do with obsessing over food but if you have a warped relationship to food I'm guessing you might also have a warped relationship to your body and this is one of the best things I ever did for myself you know this video is not really about body image but obviously there's a lot of crossover one of the best things I ever did for myself was to purge my Instagram feed Purge my influencer feed and and to um be really intentional about the role models I was putting in front of me like you know there's some great Fitness influencers but they just have a body type that I would never healthily have I could never have in a healthy way and to see them all the time kind of subconsciously put a goal in my head that was not a healthy goal for me because to quote one of my favorite movies Silence of the Lambs Hannibal Lector says what do we CET Clarice we covet the things we see every day and how do we begin to covet Clarice We Begin by coveting what we see every day we covet what we see every day so if you are inundating yourself with images of bodies that you will never have it kind of for me it became my focus and my goal so I became really intentional about like the bodies I was looking at all the time bodies that look like me and I'm actually not talking about weight I'm more talking about body type type and proportions so for me that's like people who are more bottom heavy that's just how my body is always going to be whether I gain 50 lbs or lose 50 lbs I'm always going to be heavier on bottom and so like leaning into the fashion that Hypes that up the most the exercises that hype that up the most then again I'm like working with my genetics I'm working with what's given to me in a healthy way it's like optimism around your body type and putting your positive spin on it because okay if you're short no you're not tall but if you're short you got to do all these cool short things and if you're tall no you're not short but you get to do all these cool tall things like you can spin them either way I think it's about focusing you know how you focus your energy okay yeah the reason this is really helpful for me too is because at the root of my relationship to food and my struggle with body image is this feeling that I'm not lovable like that's the underlying feeling this fear that I'm not not lovable and it's a funny thing because I can look at someone else I can look at other people with any kind of body type really and see clearly how they're lovable it's not hard for me to see in other people and but somehow you know it's hard to see for myself so something about like making sure I'm seeing other people that I can relate to and seeing their lovableness reminds me like oh maybe I'm lovable too it was a long journey for me and I'm still working on it I'm still definitely working on it but it's a huge point of Pride for me that I am at like the state of functionality and balance even that I'm at right now I'm going to say it's the most I'm the most impressed with me for it I think it's the hardest thing I've done I remember being like in a really really sick State and just being and you hear this a lot of like how it'll never go away and you'll never feel differently and you can't imagine feeling differently can't imagine putting your mental energy somewhere else and um it did take time and it did take like trying things I wasn't quite comfortable with but it also required trusting me trusting me and like trusting my ability to learn about myself and my ability to push myself yeah so much about trusting yourself my point is that like you can change it I freed up a lot of my mental energy it's still something I'm working on but I feel really happy with the changes and I hope this helps somebody and I hope you get a little bit of relief it's the holidays right now I think I hope you're having a happy holiday um and indulging in all the ways that make life feel good I am taking a few weeks off for personal reasons I won't be back with a video for several weeks but I will be back I will be back I promise I will be back and I will see you guys at that time okay I appreciate you all happy holidays and happy New [Music] Year