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E 14 A Picturesque Take on Healing your Sh*t
93 Plays2 years ago
YA’LL. Listen in to today's chat with Gina Graham, LCSM for a discussion that will give you some goosebumps around thought-provoking reflections regarding self and body love, creating curiosity around roots of behavior regarding relationship with food and body, and discover HOW you can live in a world that continues to feed a problematic narrative.
This conversation with Gina lit me UP and gave me so much inspiration. The way she talked about utilizing photography as a complementary tool to her therapy as a social worker specializing in eating disorders was just … so good.
Mmm Mmm! Listen in.
Gina D. Graham is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the Western Suburbs of Chicago specializing in Eating Disorders, Body Image, Depression, Anxiety, and Women’s Issues. Gina is also a passionate portrait photographer, photographing teen portraits and portraits of women to empower them and show them their natural and unique beauty. Gina has developed a unique blend of using portrait photography in therapy and offering time-limited sessions to focus on and improve body image. Gina also recently published a book called Body Beautiful; How Changing the Conversation About Our Bodies Has the Power to Change the world.
The book is a collection of stories, art, quotes, information, and inspiration to challenge cultural messages for girls and women about body, weight and appearance and inspire them to focus on what they are here to do in the world.
Find Gina:
https://www.instagram.com/lifelensandlove/
https://www.lifelensandlove.com/
Theresemartinezrd.com
Remember nothing you hear on the Eating Between the Lines Podcast should be taken as medical advice. Please consult your physician before making changes to your care.
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Transcript
Introduction & Mission
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Eating Between the Lines.
00:00:05
Speaker
I am your host, Therese Martinez, and I am so happy to have you here. If you want to untangle yourself from diet culture conditioning and get appropriate actionable options to nourish your unique life and body, I'm going to dive deep into the nuanced spectrum of health to help you figure out what to prioritize in your journey without getting trapped in the extreme ideology of health optimization or total complacency.
00:00:32
Speaker
I am here to help you apply the science effectively, not rigidly, and get you feeling better in your body and mind. Here is how to eat between the lines.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello, welcome back everyone. I am excited for this conversation today.
Meet Gina Graham
00:00:54
Speaker
We've got Gina Graham on. She is a licensed clinical social worker in the western suburbs of Chicago, specializing in eating disorders, body image, depression, anxiety, and women's issues.
00:01:09
Speaker
Gina is also a passionate portrait photographer, photographing teen portraits and portraits of women to empower them and show them their natural and unique beauty. Gina has developed a unique blend of using portrait photography in therapy and offering time-limited sessions to focus on an improved body image. Gina also recently published a book called Body Beautiful, how changing the conversation about our bodies has the power to change the world.
00:01:38
Speaker
The book is a collection of stories, art, quotes, information and inspiration to challenge cultural messages for girls and women about body.
00:01:47
Speaker
wait and appearance and inspire them to focus on what they are here to do in the world. This is just everything and more of what I want to dive into and like, oh, just totally encompassing so much of my messaging and curiosity of society and our culture and the world,
Changing Seasons & Photography
00:02:08
Speaker
Gina. Welcome, how are you? Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yes, yes, of course. How are things going in Chicago? Good, good. We are just, you know, kind of hunkering down for our change of seasons here. So, you know, Chicago is just such a fun and amazingly cool city. But anybody that's been here in certain months of the year knows that sometimes it can, you know.
00:02:40
Speaker
brutal so we're ready for like fall which can be really pretty and particularly with photography being outside this year is just really beautiful and and you know we get lots of pretty colors so yeah in the thick of all of it you know yeah yeah in practice it's good sounds uh sounds comparable to Spokane Washington and Washington state kind of in general where it's like I will recommend
00:03:07
Speaker
to come out here until I'm blue in the face, but I'll be like.
00:03:11
Speaker
but make sure it's these months, unless you're like super into snow and winter and cold and gray and things, but yeah. And I didn't even think you had mentioned with the photography kind of having this be like a particularly nice season. You've got to probably have just that eye all the time. Like even just like traveling, probably thinking about, you know, in the back of your mind, like this is good lighting. This is like, this would probably be great over here. It's just the,
00:03:39
Speaker
It's a knowledge base I do not have and just not something on the forefront of my mind, but you probably, I imagine seasons make a big difference with that kind of lens. Totally, totally. It's really interesting because I was always interested in photography growing up, but it was definitely, you know, I definitely sort of had this mindset early on that I wasn't a creative person. And so in a lot of ways,
00:04:04
Speaker
I just didn't, you know, I love the way you said like kind of looking at the world through a specific lens, I just didn't really allow myself to kind of explore those things. And so when I did start to get into photography, it is funny how much I've become even more of a visual person in that way. So even, you know, like odd little things I noticed, I'm like, I bet that's, you know, part of the photography piece or this or that the way I kind of walk around and notice things or frame things or even just
00:04:31
Speaker
Um, because I tend to, I mean, this is a little bit technical, but I tend to be kind of a natural light shooter, which means I don't use flash. I tend to not use like studio lighting and things like that. And so I'm almost always in my spaces, like turning off lights and just like studying how natural light falls or just more comfortable in natural light. So it's little, like that, that I'm like, yeah, I, I, I think that's probably specific to, you know, um, this, uh, this passion that I have. Yeah.
00:05:00
Speaker
to be in the world through that medium. So yeah, totally. Well, we were just talking to you about how much you enjoy like sunlight and being outside in the nicer weather and such, which I think, you know, many people could probably relate to, but now I'm all kind of curious of like that has a lot of correlation to just kind of the enjoyment of
00:05:19
Speaker
the art form that natural light has with what you do too. Yeah, I very much just am always noticing light in shadows and the strength of the light or the quality of the light or the color of the light or all of those things. Yeah. Cool. How long have you been doing photography?
00:05:39
Speaker
Well, in this capacity, I've been doing it for, I would say I really started teaching myself how to do photography in more of a kind of formal way when my kids were really little. So I have two boys that are 14 and 16. And when I was home in those like early toddler years, I was just getting really frustrated with like pictures that I was taking on a point and shoot camera.
00:06:03
Speaker
I grew up, you know, interested in photography. My dad was really interested in photography. I learned a lot about, you know, watching him photograph different moments of our life and things. And so I just kind of picked up a camera as a young mom, like, okay, I just want to document these days. But, you know, when you've got little wins at home, you know, they say like the days are long and the years are short.
00:06:28
Speaker
you know, there were some days where I just kind of felt like, okay, you know, everybody's here, they're safe, they're contained, what is a way to kind of stimulate my, my creativity or my thinking and, you know, how can I kind of, you know, take something away from this day that, you know, just simulates me. And so I just kind of started learning photography, I got an entry level DSLR camera and just kind of
00:06:51
Speaker
between what I learned in high school in the dark room back, you know, just kind of started piecing together some knowledge and just kind of it from there, it really took off. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's, let's kind of dig in. I want to kind of keep going with the photography topic, but let's back it up a little bit. I
00:07:17
Speaker
Can you kind of break down a little bit of what you do and how you got into this field and line of work? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Career Journey & Personal Inspiration
00:07:28
Speaker
So for over 20 years now, I've been a licensed clinical social worker working specifically with the eating disorder population. So very early on in my career, I was on a behavioral health hospital unit working at the inpatient and intensive outpatient level of care, specifically on
00:07:44
Speaker
the eating disorders unit and then a few years after that had kind of transitioned into doing private practice work. So, you know, backing up even further when I went into my graduate degree to get my master's in social work, I always kind of knew that I wanted to work with this population. I knew I wanted to eventually land in private practice because of the flexibility for
00:08:10
Speaker
Having a family and making your own schedule and being autonomous in that way was very important to me. So those were things that even before I had a family or even before I was fully licensed were kind of on my radar. I had had the benefit of working with a clinician in private practice work when I was in college going through some of my own struggles with body image and cultural.
00:08:37
Speaker
messaging around food and weight and exercise that I had really struggled with from you know about middle school on and so a lot of those issues for me came to a head when I was in college and I was a far away from home at college. I grew up you know in one part of the country and went to college in another part of the country and in dealing with
00:08:59
Speaker
all of that had the privilege of working with an incredible therapist who really helped kind of set me on this trajectory and also kind of gave me a model really in a lot of ways in watching her be a mom raising her boys but still having this
00:09:17
Speaker
career where she was able to, you know, give back and, you know, be passionate about helping people. So all of those things kind of came together for me. And I kind of knew early on that I would want to do private practice work. So, you know, over the years, it's kind of
00:09:34
Speaker
um you know transition to where I don't exclusively work with the eating disorder population but it's always been a niche and early on when I started there were not a lot of practitioners that could say that they knew how to treat in fact I used to have people get referred to me saying you know like
00:09:52
Speaker
therapists and psychiatrists are saying like, I don't feel comfortable with us. I don't know how to help these clients. And so kind of having that niche, you know, really attracted a lot of people, especially early on when there just wasn't that many. Yeah. Interesting. And then how did the photography kind of come into play too?
Photography in Therapy
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, so that was kind of, I don't know, it was just sort of something that started to dawn on me over time. I mean, I was always working with clients around the issues of body image and I tended to be more experiential in nature and just kind of was always looking for different things to kind of grab onto.
00:10:38
Speaker
that would be meaningful or have some kind of resonance. The body image piece, you know, is just the hardest part, right? It's so ingrained in our culture. And even when we can kind of get clients to a place of being in recovery from active behaviors and pathology, there's still this struggle for body image. You know, I mean, I think that's part of what inspired the book is it's like, I don't know a single
00:11:02
Speaker
you know, female and a lot of males, you know, for that matter, walking around who would say that they haven't in some way struggled with some aspect of their body image or the way that they feel about their bodies. And so, you know, I was always early on using photographs and timelines and different things to kind of try to understand
00:11:24
Speaker
that discrepancy between how someone experiences their body and how they see it and how that can be so different from how an outsider would see it. Using the classic example of being on the unit in my early days with someone who was admitted to the inpatient who was on an NG tube feeding tube,
00:11:46
Speaker
you know, needing to be in a wheelchair because their body was so emaciated, but them really explaining and struggling with how they saw themselves as a larger, you know, heavier weighted person than they actually were. So I was always trying to get at that distortion and I very early on was using
00:12:06
Speaker
any tool I could to understand individually with people what was triggering that distortion or how we could try to shift that distortion. And so when I was doing more portrait photography, it kind of was like this thing that was just like a side hustle, right? Like, and I was doing like more family photography then and people were like, hire me to book, you know, Christmas card photos. And it just
00:12:29
Speaker
Eventually started to dawn on me like i'm working with all of these clients and their photographs and they trust me and we have this relationship what would it be like if i if i took photos of them and we tried to make it visually.
00:12:46
Speaker
artistic or in some way meaningful. And then we really sat together and tried to dive into like, okay, well, what are you really seeing, right? Gosh, that's fascinating. So I was, so I kind of started really doing it just with my own clients because, you know, they trusted me and, you know, they, they kind of.
00:13:05
Speaker
you know, were I think a little bit more able to jump on board because they kind of knew in the context of the work that we'd been doing where it might fit. So, so yeah, so I just kind of started doing it with my own clients and, you know, and then the pandemic hit. And, you know, I kind of found myself doing more
00:13:27
Speaker
virtual clinical sessions and taking on more of a caseload than I think I typically would because of the nature of this crisis. And just we were, anyone working in this field or in mental health was just integrated with, you know, calls who were struggling. We, we saw a real uptick in eating disorder pathology, you know, as, as you know,
00:13:46
Speaker
um you know during the pandemic and so I was just working a lot in the clinical realm and kind of missing the photography piece right and so when things were opening up and safe enough to at least like be in a space with someone um
00:14:03
Speaker
you know, at that point, my wheels were already turning about, you know, how can I create this project that is very photography driven and focusing on, you know, just the diversity of our bodies and the beauty of the diversity of all of our sizes and shapes and how do I put all those pieces together. So, you know, it's kind of evolved over time into, you know, just working with clients one on one and then, you know, putting out this book and
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. I love it so much. That's a, it just, um, I kind of keep playing, I am playing my own make believe experience that I would have in that, that realm when I was a little bit more in the depth of my own battle. And then additionally, like patients of mine and how this would be beneficial. I'm trying to like, so how does this,
00:14:55
Speaker
Oh gosh. Cause there is, there is such a spectrum of, of eating disorders. Right. And I, I find that many people kind of say, well, I'm not, I'm not like bad enough, like quoting that. Right. So I don't, I don't actually binge and purge or I don't actually like restrict to a clinical point. And so, which is a whole other thing because of the metrics that are only utilized for it to be
00:15:25
Speaker
considered anorexic and things like that. But in any case, behaviors don't manifest to be like bad enough. But I see, like you said, like I see people come in that have a degree of disordered eating or poor relationship with food and body. Like without a doubt, to some degree, most people have something going on. And so I'm trying to picture like,
00:15:51
Speaker
working with you and seeing my own pictures and kind of like just understanding like that visceral response and the immediate like judgments that come into play. And then what happens from there? So is it like, do you kind of
00:16:08
Speaker
roll through like, I don't know if you practice any dialectic behavioral therapy, but there's a skill that's called check the facts. And so you just kind of keep rolling through the narratives that come into your mind and, and identify them, work on combating them and, and, and hopefully get to a point of a little bit more, uh, settlement in, you know, realizing kind of the.
00:16:32
Speaker
I don't know the false narratives that come into your mind and the practice there, but what does it look like coming into your practice? What does that break down to look like? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting from the standpoint. Well, first of all, well, from the standpoint of doing the photography body image piece, there are a few parameters that I will have around that to begin with. So I won't do this work with anyone who isn't fully weight restored. So I won't do this work with anyone who is actively
00:17:03
Speaker
engaging in nutrition therapy to kind of get back to that sort of set point, right? Or to kind of be at this kind of considered restored weight. So it really is sort of looking at it through this body image perspective of, okay, you've really done a lot of great work on the behaviors,
00:17:21
Speaker
that you're struggling with and you might still be struggling in some way, but there's not necessarily this kind of like active eating disorder piece because we know too enough about how, you know, just being malnourished in general is going to, you know, kind of contribute to some body image distortion and just some different things that we know happen in the brain in terms of contributing to some of that distorted self image and self perception.
00:17:47
Speaker
So, so I am always kind of working with people who are a little farther along in the recovery process. And my kind of work
00:18:00
Speaker
Prior to that, or kind of where we start off with is at least this assumption that someone is wanting to challenge the cultural narrative wanting to challenge the, you know, kind of very narrow definition of how we sort of are all bombarded with kind of these
00:18:20
Speaker
visuals of how our body is supposed to look, right?
Societal Pressures on Body Image
00:18:23
Speaker
So it's kind of like, let's at least establish that you are open to this idea of, you know, not all bodies are supposed to look alike. And there's no one definition of what beauty looks like. There's no one definition of what fitness looks like. There's no one vision of what health looks like. So we kind of try to open that up a little bit too.
00:18:43
Speaker
find someone for sitting with the reality of what their body actually is in this hopefully more health restored place. I think, you know, when you talk about the cultural piece, you and I both probably have just so much accumulated experience of people that come to see us who are suffering emotionally, who are suffering with health issues, because they sort of look the part of what society would say is like,
00:19:13
Speaker
you know, fit or healthy, but that's not their natural body's size and shape when they're behaving in a healthy way. And so it's kind of reintroducing themselves to their physical self is kind of what we're working on. And so I've had a lot of really interesting experiences and I can never really anticipate, although I will say I've had far more
00:19:42
Speaker
positive experiences than one would think doing this work, which is interesting, right? When I talk to people who are in the field, they're like, I could see how this would just be a landmine of triggers. And how do you navigate the emotional reaction that you get? And of course, those things do happen. But my experience overall has been that people really can kind of see themselves differently through these images. And the way that I do try to shoot them is
00:20:10
Speaker
you know, I try to be artistic and kind of really focus on what's a beautiful portrait, right? And so my hope is that they can kind of look at it and see like, that's a pretty picture or I don't look the way that I feel in my body. And that does tend to be a fairly typical response. Now that being said, you could take pictures of
00:20:32
Speaker
probably a lot of us in our culture and show us a picture of ourselves and then we kind of like pick it apart, right? So like, I don't like this, I don't like that, I see this, I see that. So a lot of it is just kind of working through that cognitive piece. You know, DBT skills are always great in terms of reality checking and even just looking at radical acceptance, like, okay, you know, like you don't love this part of your body. So how do you live in the world
00:20:59
Speaker
in a healthy and constructive way when this is the way this part of your body actually is, right? Because we know you can do all kinds of unhealthy and destructive things to try to change that part of your body or this size and shape of your body. And that's not even going to guarantee that it's going to work.
00:21:22
Speaker
But, you know, what's the cost of all of that? So can we actually look at this image with radical acceptance and instead say, okay, maybe I don't like the way my tummy looks or my thighs look, but I really think my eyes look beautiful. Or I really love this image because of all these other things.
00:21:43
Speaker
Right. And so it's kind of trying to kind of practice even more just, you know, body acceptance and, you know, it doesn't even necessarily have to be coming at this like positive place. Although my experiences can sometimes really get to that positive place sooner than I think they might.
00:22:03
Speaker
There's something about putting the image in front of them that makes them be like, that's me. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's really interesting. I got a couple things. Like one, so relatable to have the experience of feeling one way in your body and then seeing yourself and having like a little bit of a
00:22:28
Speaker
a reaction, right? Like a negative reaction. Sometimes that can even be, it's not even seeing yourself. Maybe that's also put like getting on a scale and like, there's some sort of like desire to confirm what's happening inside of you so that you can not like, like, um,
00:22:47
Speaker
for lack of a better term, like let yourself go without knowing it. And that can just be in any regard to health, right? Not necessarily just weight, whatever it is, but like, we're kind of talking about like the scales a little bit more around the weight there, but I have had experiences where I will feel so good, like so good, capable, strong, able, and I will have looked in like walking past a window or something like that. And it will be like, whoa,
00:23:15
Speaker
really? No. And then boom, cascade of thoughts, like, have I not been like moving enough? Have I not been eating well enough? Have I not like, you know, what's the deal? Like, you know, all these things that then kind of come up, and then these judgments and then, and it's so interesting, I've done
00:23:32
Speaker
done so much therapy through my life that like I've kind of understood how to track my thoughts and then kind of see where it's all leading and then also kind of identify the fear around it. And I think, I mean, it's just there's just so many layers to kind of unpack here. But yeah, it is it is so fascinating to kind of
00:23:54
Speaker
actually see this train of thought go through your mind and then be able to kind of catch certain thoughts and like pause them and really dissect them to be like, whoa, you are getting upset right now because of whatever you saw in the mirror. And
00:24:16
Speaker
You just felt so good in your body. What is it? What is it that have the having a, you know, a bigger stomach or whatever it is that you saw? Like, what does that mean to you? What does that actually say about you? You know, what is the narrative that you think is coming in?
00:24:39
Speaker
that now changes the way you feel and think about yourself because of that versus being in your body, being in and connected to your body. It's like the immediate reaction takes you out of your body. And I find that to be such an imperative understanding and disconnect when it comes to disordered
00:25:04
Speaker
relationships with food and body because it is not your own interpretation. It is other people's and the wiring we have just been so ingrained with for so long. It's just, it's crazy. I see it a lot with, um, when people track calories and like track macronutrients and all of that can be a great tool sometimes, but it's this whole thing of like, you are,
00:25:33
Speaker
you're not listening to what your body needs and wants. And you are strictly following these calculated numbers that most times are not actually accurate for you, right? They're formulaic, they like don't really know you. And again, yeah, they can have a place for some folks, but I do think that it's just another way that we get disconnected. We're afraid, we're out of our body. Any thoughts with that?
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, definitely I think, you know, ultimately talking about this idea of embodiment and intuition is so powerful, right? And I think really when I think about my ultimate goals for people that I work with is to get to that place, right? Where everything kind of comes through this filter of how does my body feel?
00:26:24
Speaker
Um, and how do I feel in my body? Now we cannot, we cannot, and part of, you know, where I've struggled with doing portrait photography and even using the word beautiful, very intentionally by the way, like I just have not slapped, I don't slap that word around thinking like, you know, meaning it in this conventional sense. Like I'm very intentionally using that word because I want us to reclaim it. But
00:26:49
Speaker
You know, it's like I've really struggled with like, ooh, I'm like very much immersed in digital media imagery when this is part of the problem, right? So how do you be in that world and find the solution and not part of the problem? Because part of what you're talking about is like the inescapability for us
00:27:14
Speaker
In terms of everything, especially image driven that we're seeing constantly right like it's 2023 I've been doing this for over 20 years, and the the surgeons of real.
00:27:29
Speaker
women and young growing girls in terms of like media representation or even just like media representation across the board for all body types, sizes, shapes, colors, all of those things. Like it's still so new, right? I mean, I was like very much in the trenches trying to kind of work with people around media and advertising when the dove campaign came on the scene, like what?
00:27:56
Speaker
15 years ago, it was like this mind blowing, like what they put like real women in their underwear on the side of the highway on a billboard to sell soap. And it was like mind blowing, right? And I was spending so much time and energy trying to convince people that like the images that we see in media are not real. They are airbrushed, there are tricks, there are things that they're doing. And all my clients were like, I don't get that. Like I think that they look in real life like they do on the cover of the magazine.
00:28:24
Speaker
And so this is all very newly happening in culture, particularly for females. But there's a whole slew of things we could we could have a whole separate podcast about men and males and boys and other populations.
00:28:40
Speaker
that don't identify as female. But the point is that this is all a newly part of the conversation. So just this week, I've been seeing things on my social media feed about how brave and heroic
00:28:55
Speaker
And remarkable, it is that Pamela Anderson, who if people don't necessarily know who she was, she was like a star, like a star of like a show. She was just considered this like bombshell, beautiful woman in the 90s who, however old she is now, recently showed up in an award show with no makeup on.
00:29:16
Speaker
And it's like, wow, that is like groundbreaking. And everybody's like, she's so brave. And it's like, she's brave because she didn't like put all, you know, I'm not saying that it's not brave, but I am just saying that it's like, you know, we're not used to seeing what real bodies, real skin, real texture,
00:29:36
Speaker
looks like and we're constantly evaluating ourselves about that. And that comes from like the deep survival hardwired parts in the brain that cannot help but compare and contrast, right? So when we're talking about embodiment,
00:29:52
Speaker
There is this piece of how do I get to where I can live in a culture that is image saturated. It's inevitable for me to struggle with body image from an image saturated cultural place, but I have to have the tools to work through that and get back to this place of feeling embodied or feeling intuitive or feeling in tune with my body.
00:30:17
Speaker
I mean, you talk about like, you know, catching yourself out of the corner of your eye. I had someone that I was talking to for a podcast, you know, a couple of years ago and she asked me like, when do you feel the most beautiful? And my answer was like, probably the time culture would say I'm the least beautiful, right? Like I'm a woman in middle age. So it, for me, it's like on the beach.
00:30:39
Speaker
Like I've literally been in the ocean with like salt in my hair, like no makeup on, in a bathing suit, all of my lumps and bumps on display for everybody to see, right? Like culturally, our culture would say like, that's not me at my most quote unquote beautiful. That's when I feel the most myself, the most free, right? So, but whenever I work with people around imagery or anything related to body image, it's like,
00:31:07
Speaker
before they even leave the photo shoot, my experience nine times out of 10 or 10 times out of 10 is that people are saying to me, that was not nearly as bad as I thought it was. That was fun. I feel really good. They leave feeling empowered, excited, seen, worthy, beautiful because of the energy in the shoot. And they haven't seen the images yet.
00:31:36
Speaker
So when they see the images, if their reaction takes them to a place where they don't feel those feelings, it's like, but that's how you felt, right? So how do we connect those dots and how do you look different between how you felt in that moment versus now how you're judging that through this cultural lens, through this media saturated image driven lens and can you see anything else or how do you work with that?
00:32:05
Speaker
That is so, yes, that is so interesting. Oh my gosh. I love that. The way that you kind of painted that picture too. Cause it is, it's so true. It's like when you feel a certain way of going through like a photo shoot or whatever you feel, like you said, the most beautiful. And then if you snap a photo and there's an immediate disconnect,
00:32:28
Speaker
There is reason for the disconnect, right? There is wiring that for some reason tells you that is not true. And so yeah, connecting that is so, what a great route for therapy. I love that. I love that. There's such a challenge.
00:32:50
Speaker
that I have found too around when you're talking about images like in the media and how you know
00:32:59
Speaker
you probably have an even greater knowledge of how things are like airbrushed and like filtered and all of that. I think just growing up, I've been told this all the time, right? It's photoshopped, it's photoshopped, it's not real. It's like over and over and over again. There is the knowledge, but the belief lacks. It's like, and trying to figure out a way to make something resonate more so it feels,
00:33:29
Speaker
more true to you is really hard. And I think that that comes in a lot of different areas when we're thinking about body image and attractiveness and all of that. Cause it's like, you can be told, well, you know,
00:33:44
Speaker
this person's beautiful, all bodies, shapes, sizes, colors, what have you are beautiful. And you can kind of like know it, but for some reason the belief is still lacking or it's like not true for you for some reason, it's not true for you. And I think that's another really interesting area to dig into with.
00:34:06
Speaker
Um, with the therapy, I recently listened to, um, do you listen to the Glenn and Doyle podcast? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I bring this up like every podcast, but like they, um, they had a gal Hillary, I want to say like Hillary McDuff or something. Her book is like right behind me, but she was talking about, she's combated, um, uh, disordered eating in her life as well. And she.
00:34:32
Speaker
talked about the benefits of psychedelics in her therapy, which I found really interesting in a way that like is just that it's creating the actual belief around the knowledge. And I found that to be like just so key and not recommending that everyone go do psychedelics or anything like that. But I just found like that
00:34:58
Speaker
that component. I mean, it's really, it's so true because I feel like people can just learn and learn and learn and learn. And yeah, we have a lot of rewiring to do. So it's not harming us to try to bombard ourselves with this other knowledge and reiterate. And sometimes it just doesn't stick. It just doesn't stick. And so, anywho, do you have any like thoughts on that component?
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, definitely I think, you know, what's exciting is we are newly
00:35:33
Speaker
having these conversations and breaking these things down and kind of trying to understand, you know, even like, okay, well, what's the conversation around body acceptance and what does that mean? And what does body neutrality mean? And what's this movement that I see on social media sometimes about body positivity, right? So we're kind of like starting to understand body image through all of these different pieces and ways of talking about it. And then that's happening alongside
00:36:01
Speaker
some research and changes in the mental health field in terms of understanding our perceptions and how our neurochemistry and neuroplasticity and all of those things are kind of wiring and firing. Definitely, unfortunately, I think, particularly for eating disorders, it is still far, far, far behind so many other
00:36:27
Speaker
significant mental health issues in terms of research and funding and really trying to understand it. There's a book I read recently that really breaks down how far behind any research into understanding the pathology of eating disorders is relative
00:36:43
Speaker
you know, to other mental health issues that impact a much smaller part of the population. So, you know, hopefully we continue to look at the things like, you know, how psychedelics might help and how different cutting edge science things might help the neuroplasticity
Research Gaps in Eating Disorders
00:36:57
Speaker
piece. But, you know, I really think that the reality for
00:37:04
Speaker
most people struggling with these issues is that they're not necessarily going to land in a place where they're like, I wake up every day and I feel really amazing and positive and beautiful about my body, right? And so it's almost kind of, again, going back to that radical acceptance of, you know what, like,
00:37:26
Speaker
we are up against such an incredibly high mountain of cultural forces and bombardment and historical patriarchy and all of these things that have really stacked
00:37:42
Speaker
the deck against us living in this positive embodied peaceful place. And it's not to say we don't aim for it and develop tools and absolutely try to spend as much time in those places as possible, but it's to really normalize the struggle and to normalize that for some, you know, for a lot of people on some days it's like, how do I just focus today on what my body can do for me?
00:38:09
Speaker
right? It's coming back to like, I'm just going to release the hope and the expectation that today's the day where I'm going to feel really positive in my body. It's like, I just want to kind of break even with, you know what, I didn't love it, but I'm going to try to not be at war with it. I'm going to try to not engage in either mental or physical or behavioral
00:38:31
Speaker
patterns that don't honor me and my body or don't serve me well or make me feel bad about myself. The book is very much not designed to necessarily be a how-to book about body image or a book specifically even about eating disorders, but I do offer little nuggets at the end of each chapter to say, here's some things to keep in mind. And one of the things that I,
00:38:59
Speaker
you know, talk a lot to clients about is this idea of reverse the golden rule. You know, most of my clients that come in are such loving, caring, wonderful humans that like are the best friends or the best listeners or like the best cheerleaders for other people, you know, and they would never say to someone else what they say to themselves about themselves.
00:39:24
Speaker
So instead of treating others the way that you want to be treated, treat yourself the way that you treat others. And so I talk a lot with clients about like, let's reverse the golden rule. And maybe today you just don't beat yourself up and pick yourself apart.
00:39:41
Speaker
and be in that place of just, you know, focusing on what you're even here to do, right? Like that's why I really loved your concept of like, I think you call it the juice. It's like what's getting you out of bed in the morning? It's definitely not like,
00:39:59
Speaker
you know, how you look, right? It's like, what really gets you going? Everything that we know about like flow state and everything about like what really switches people on. It's generally not about our aesthetic appearance related perception. Right. Yeah. For others. Yeah. So sometimes like, you know, it's coming back to like, what are you, why'd you even get out of bed today? Like what, what can you do that's meaningful? Maybe it's just your vehicle to do that and just start there. Yeah.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah, I find that like, the body positivity that you're kind of talking about, I've been exploring a lot more of these like, I don't know, like movements and such as of late and really digging into like, the history of trying to solve the obesity epidemic. And you just mentioned patriarchy is like, this goes so far back with like,
00:40:54
Speaker
why this narrative has even started with how women need to look. And it's just wild. But beyond that, working on an understanding of the body positivity movement, I have also kind of learned, oh, like what you were talking about, where it's not just be like, raw, raw about your body all the minutes of the day. It's, you know, it's kind of like,
00:41:18
Speaker
you know, I don't have to love my body today. Like in the sense like I don't have to like it, but I can respect it. I can still treat it with respect. And I think that kind of like
00:41:32
Speaker
I don't know, for me it's like, huh, okay, good. Like, so then I'm not failing or something if I'm not, if I have a bad body image day, or if there is something that just feels like, ugh, okay, a little off. Cause like you said, it makes sense. It makes sense and it's okay. And we still don't need to engage in behaviors that are going to be harmful or destructive mentally or physically, right? And so I really liked that.
00:41:58
Speaker
Let's see here. So, um, anything else that you are kind of curious to chat about today? I mean, I feel like we could talk for so long. I mean, first question I was like asked, so there's so many layers to, to dig it in with the, with mental health around food and body and his like the historically speaking, how this is all like shaped the way that we,
00:42:26
Speaker
of live and perceive the world in so many ways. I don't know. Any thoughts?
Critiquing Recovery Approaches
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I just definitely think that what's interesting about being an eating disorder professional for so many years is this assumption that recovery looks like deciding that you're going to just like
00:42:50
Speaker
eat a certain way and be okay with all the things and it won't, you know, and I can eat all of these foods and it won't bother me. And I've always really kind of bucked against, you know, this idea that we can't kind of really tie together this idea of recovery from a health focused place. You know, I mean, I think, you know, even as someone who myself is getting older and kind of reaching this stage of life where myself and my friends are all going through different
00:43:18
Speaker
things related to how our bodies are changing at this developmental stage. My lens and my eyes are even more opened up to how can we tie it all together about health and wellbeing in every sense of the word. That's why I was so excited to talk to you.
00:43:36
Speaker
because it is about food and nutrition and taking care of ourselves. That way it is about longevity. It is about energy. It is about staying rested and taking care of ourselves through sleep and movement. So I love the fact that like you could look at this from so many different jumping off points, right? It's like, okay, if you're struggling in your relationship with your body, maybe you start to think about your relationship to food, right? Like I love a good, you know,
00:44:05
Speaker
cheeseburger. I love French fries. I very much practice all foods in moderation. There is no doubt that when we kind of talk again about embodiment and intuition, that different foods respond differently in my body. And this is true of all of us. Some foods give us more energy. Some foods make us feel lethargic. Some foods feel a little heavier. Some foods don't digest well. So it's kind of like really looking at
00:44:35
Speaker
you know, how do we live in this overall way that honors our health and takes care of ourselves because ultimately we are here for something greater than ourselves. But that's like where we get our juice or what we're doing that gets us out of bed in the morning, our creativity, the things that we're here to do, the gifts that we're here to share, the work that we do, whatever.
00:44:56
Speaker
you know, our bodies and our health is like the vehicle to get us there, right? So I just love that people can be struggling with body image, but we can say, well, maybe you start by just trying to get enough sleep. Start by just being hydrated as you go. And so it's really giving people such a wide range of places to say, I might not be ready to tackle this,
00:45:26
Speaker
I might not be ready to go and be photographed and start to think about my body image, but I can start to think about how to not beat myself up if my friends are going out for ice cream and that's part of what we're doing and I want to enjoy that. Or I can think about how movement
00:45:43
Speaker
honors my body and helps my mental health or whatever. So I love the perspective of it not being just about recovery from one thing, not being just about eating disorders, but really broadening the horizon to just being about health in general. There's so many different avenues even to explore in terms of the cultural
00:46:05
Speaker
wellness health space, like can be loaded with misinformation and things that trigger people to have kind of like, how do we, how do we take, whether it's imagery or, you know, health and wellness and make it really positive and empowering and truly helpful and healthy for people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause there's so many different layers of, of what health is and what it means. And I think it's just so tempting to latch on.
00:46:33
Speaker
to what you feel like is going to fix it all, right? And then instead of kind of bringing it down to foundations, while also recognizing there is an amount to do with like trying to restore relationship with food and movement and what have you, right? But it's seeing, I don't know, so much of it is developing the understanding that
00:47:02
Speaker
that food is here to nourish you and also to be like a spectrum of experiences, right? And so is movement and so versus utilization for body manipulation, right? And so
00:47:17
Speaker
stepping away from that, redesigning that relationship I think is so helpful. And then to expand on it, to expand and understand, oh yeah, and also stress plays a big role. The amount of stress that like is heightened when a person is so preoccupied by food and body is bananas. I remember I was in therapy at one point and my therapist was like,
00:47:46
Speaker
What does it feel like to you, if you were to just kind of picture yourself without these thoughts, you know, without the preoccupation and it was just like mind-blowing. It was like, like just weights lifted off my shoulder and it was like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:48:05
Speaker
what do I think about? Like, oh my gosh, I have so much mental capacity now to go into other things, help other people do more with my life. And it's just crazy how that can,
00:48:22
Speaker
really translate. And it's just so helpful to recognize the nuance of health, which is so much of what this podcast like wants, like dives into. Because it's not just one of these things. And nutrition can play a huge role and movement can play a huge role. It's just not isolated. And so if we are at the point and recovery or in our own ability to have
00:48:49
Speaker
like in whatever relationship with food that we're having, maybe it's time to put a pause on like trying to perfect our intake. And we look to these other other pillars that may make a difference too. And then we start to kind of continue to compound recognizing the area that can use a little bit more work that might make a little bit more of a difference. And then we just keep moving forward in that regard. And so I think that's helpful. And I also think that like,
00:49:19
Speaker
I don't know. The whole like health movement is like, I don't know, a whole other topic, but I have to really learn and check myself to not project the health on other people. Like it's not my decision to help them like want to be healthier, right? It has to do with them. And it's not, yeah, I think that that just gets shoved in people's faces too. And it doesn't,
00:49:48
Speaker
help the situation, it just shoulds on people and feels daunting and overwhelming. And then people go back to their old coping mechanisms and just feel guilt and shame. And so, yeah. Well, and we can see the ways too that it just makes people truly sick. I mean, there's a story of a woman in the book, you know, the book is very much kind of story driven. And I really did a lot of interviews. It's interesting because I set out to just mainly capture photography and I wanted it to be like that.
00:50:17
Speaker
coffee table, art, photo book, and it totally took on like a totally different direction because I would show up to photograph someone and be like, let's talk for like five or 10 minutes about body image, just thinking like I'll get a quote or a nugget that maybe I can caption by the side of the photograph. And an hour and a half later,
00:50:37
Speaker
through tears, I'm hearing their whole life story of their relationship with their body. And I, this happened multiple times in quick succession. And I was like, this is what the book is supposed to be about. Right. And so it ended up being so much more story driven.
00:50:53
Speaker
where people just share their experiences and then the question is, okay, as you read the book, what do you relate to? What sounds familiar? What do you think about that? You externalize something through someone else's story that maybe you're also thinking about and what happens for you when you externalize it and see it through the perspective of somebody else struggling with that, right? And so there's a woman who so bravely shared her story. She's actually like a
00:51:20
Speaker
health and fitness coach now, who her story boils down to like, she got the gold star at the gym. You know what I mean? Like she like lost all of this weight. She looked the part of like the Uber health and fitness person on the cover of the health and fitness magazine.
00:51:40
Speaker
But she was physically so deteriorated. She was exhausted. She was obsessive about everything on the food scale. She was in adrenal fatigue. She was miserable.
00:51:54
Speaker
And everywhere she went, she was getting these kudos, particularly from the health and wellness space about how amazing she looked and how healthy she looked. And it started to really hit her like, if this is what health is supposed to be, I don't, I mean, I feel like garbage, right? So what she said to me was literally like, I feel like garbage. And everyone's telling me I'm so much healthier than I was when I was living in a larger body with less muscle mass.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yep. Right. And so it's really about just having a critical eye on all of this, right? Because the assumption is, well, if I look, I mean, this is what the messaging is to constantly forget, I like, I forget what the current metric is for how many ads hit our eyeballs in a day, right? But it's a lot how many minutes we're on our phone, like how many times we're tapping our phone, right?
00:52:50
Speaker
And so, you know, the messaging is so insidious that like your life will be perfect and you will feel so good if you just look this way. If you just get across this finish line or accomplish this goal and you and I will forever in these fields sit with people who are like, yeah, I did that and it didn't work.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, it landed me here and I'm sick and I'm unhappy and I'm obsessive and I'm depressed and I'm miserable because I'm chasing after something that I actually accomplished and I still don't feel like it worked. Mm hmm. Yeah. Right. Yep. Oh, man.
00:53:30
Speaker
Well, Gina, what a pleasure chatting. I want to be respectful of time. Oh man, though, I would love to, to pick this back up at another point for sure. I think that there's just so much talk about where, where can people find you?
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah, so people can find me at lifelensandlove.com, and that's on Instagram, it's on Facebook, it's on my website. The book is called Body Beautiful, and that is available on Amazon. You can also find links to my website, or if someone can't access it through some of those other channels, they can feel free to message me through my website. But yeah, yeah. Awesome. All righty. Well, so good chatting.
00:54:19
Speaker
I just want to keep going, but I've been doing this a long time. I could talk for a long time, but that's what I love about this topic. There's just so many pieces and I just so appreciate you bringing me on in our conversation. I love the work that you're doing. Like I said, when I heard you talking about the juice, I was like, that's where it's at, man. That's what we're all going for.
00:54:48
Speaker
That's what we're all waking up looking for, ultimately. Totally. I love that. Yeah. All righty. Well, I will talk to you later and catch you guys next time. Thank you so much for listening today. If you found this information valuable, please share this episode and give it a review. They truly help a ton. If you want additional support and information, you can head over to my website, teresmartinezrd.com.
00:55:16
Speaker
where you can snag my free guide on how to improve your hunger signals, get on my email list for regular juicy content, or apply for the next round of my signature program, Restoring Nutrition Intuition. Otherwise, Instagram at Teresa Martinez RD or my Facebook group Fed Fit and Fad Free Nutrition with Teresa are always places for more content and support. Until next time.
00:55:47
Speaker
you